Friday, November 11, 2011

Let's see -- I can't..., I can't. . . I'm sorry ... oops...

. . . (based [loosely] upon http://www.rickperry.org/issues/)
America is at a crossroads. One in six work-eligible Americans cannot find a uh, the uh...struggling to avoid foreclosure or to just make ends meet. As national leaders spend more time assigning blame than laying out a clear vision, the prospects for recovery seem let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops..

Rick Perry will get America working again.
As Governor of uh, the uh...let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops, Rick Perry has helped build the nation's strongest economy. Since June 2009, more than 40 percent of all net new jobs in America have been created in Texas. Thanks to his fiscally conservative leadership, Texans enjoy one of the lowest tax burdens in the country and one of the uh, the uh...

The principles that have guided Rick Perry's leadership in Texas are the same principles that will guide him as let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops:
Don't spend all the money. Keep taxes low and regulations fair. And invest aggressively in job creation, because good jobs make the American Dream possible. It's time for a leader who will allow us to believe again – to believe that America's best days are ahead, that we are not consigned to a fate of high unemployment and economic uh, let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops., and that our place in the world can once again be secure with a policy of peace through strength. That leader is Rick Perry. And the restoration of the American Dream begins today.

The Issues

Jobs
Rick Perry will get government out of the way so we can get America working again. By cutting taxes, repealing regulations, balancing our budget and uh, the uh...America can create millions of new jobs. Perry not only espouses conservative economic ideas – he has put them to work in his home state, where nearly 40% of uh, the uh...let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops.

Fiscal Responsibility
Washington is broken. President Obama and other establishment politicians think it can be fixed with let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops. Rick Perry knows it will require taking a wrecking ball to the three pillars of big government: overtaxing, overspending and overregulation.

Security
As a proud Air Force veteran, Rick Perry believes we must pursue peace through strength and provide the resources to maintain uh, the uh... Perry will advance American interests abroad by standing firm with our allies, and ensuring American blood and American Treasure are spent only when American interests are threatened. Equally important, he will protect the American homeland by forcing Washington to let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops.

Healthcare
Rick Perry believes government must stimulate job creation so more Americans are covered by employer-sponsored health plans. We must repeal Obamacare, and completely transform the uh, the uh...let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops.

Social Issues
Rick Perry is a conservative of conviction, not of convenience. On the bedrock issues of life, marriage and uh, the uh..., Perry’s conservative values are clear and uh, the uh...let's see -- I can't..., I can't. I'm sorry ... oops.




What do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html


Download your
very own copy of
ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak
Ray Jozwiak: Another Shot



Please Visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com




My Zimbio
Top Stories

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Good or bad. . .

. . . music brings something out of EVERYBODY. . .


(from http://www.quotegarden.com/music.html)
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~Berthold Auerbach


All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! ~Thomas Carlyle


If the King loves music, it is well with the land. ~Mencius


Without music life would be a mistake. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche


Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. ~Gustav Mahler


Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass? ~Michael Torke


And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs
And as silently steal away.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done


He who sings scares away his woes. ~Cervantes


Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. ~Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name


Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the Beautiful is dead. ~Benjamin Disraeli


Music is what feelings sound like. ~Author Unknown


There's music in the sighing of a reed;
There's music in the gushing of a rill;
There's music in all things, if men had ears:
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.
~Lord Byron


Musical compositions, it should be remembered, do not inhabit certain countries, certain museums, like paintings and statues. The Mozart Quintet is not shut up in Salzburg: I have it in my pocket. ~Henri Rabaud


Music is the poetry of the air. ~Richter


If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth. Sydney Smith


There is nothing in the world so much like prayer as music is. ~William P. Merrill


If in the after life there is not music, we will have to import it. ~Doménico Cieri Estrada


Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. ~Henry David Thoreau


Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. ~Ludwig van Beethoven


I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality. ~H.A. Overstreet


My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require. ~Edward Elgar


Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. ~Charlie Parker


Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years. ~William F. Buckley, Jr.


Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself. ~Henry Ward Beecher


Play the music, not the instrument. ~Author Unknown


Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken. ~Ludwig van Beethoven


Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence. ~Robert Fripp


[An intellectual] is someone who can listen to the "William Tell Overture" without thinking of the Lone Ranger. ~John Chesson


Music's the medicine of the mind. ~John A. Logan


You are the music while the music lasts. ~T.S. Eliot


Music is the universal language of mankind. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Outre-Mer


Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music. ~Ezra Pound


He who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once. ~Robert Browning


You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's Seventh and go slow. ~Oscar Levant, explaining his way out of a speeding ticket


The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scots as a joke, but the Scots haven't got the joke yet. ~Oliver Herford


What we provide is an atmosphere... of orchestrated pulse which works on people in a subliminal way. Under its influence I've seen shy debs and severe dowagers kick off their shoes and raise some wholesome hell. ~Meyer Davis, about his orchestra


Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. ~Victor Hugo


...where music dwells
Lingering - and wandering on as loth to die...
~William Wordsworth, "Within King's College Chapel, Cambridge"


Music has been my playmate, my lover, and my crying towel. ~Buffy Sainte-Marie


Music is an outburst of the soul. ~Frederick Delius


Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory. ~Oscar Wilde


In music the passions enjoy themselves. ~Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886


Music is what life sounds like. ~Eric Olson


If this word "music" is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound. ~John Cage


Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate. ~Arnold Bennett


Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words. ~Robert G. Ingersoll


Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends. ~Alphonse de Lamartine


There is in souls a sympathy with sounds:
And as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleased
With melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touch'd within us, and the heart replies.
~William Cowper


When words leave off, music begins. ~Heinrich Heine


Truly to sing, that is a different breath. ~Rainer Maria Rilke


Music is the shorthand of emotion. ~Leo Tolstoy


Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together. ~Anais Nin


There is no truer truth obtainable
By Man than comes of music.
~Robert Browning


Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific. ~Aaron Copland


What passion cannot music raise and quell! ~John Dryden


The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial. ~Leonard Bernstein


Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die. ~Paul Simon


Music, when soft voices die
Vibrates in the memory -
~Percy Bysshe Shelley


A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges. ~Benny Green


The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides! ~Artur Schnabel


The pause is as important as the note. ~Truman Fisher


The city is built
To music, therefore never built at all,
And therefore built forever.
~Alfred Lord Tennyson


Silence is the fabric upon which the notes are woven. ~Lawrence Duncan


Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without. ~Confucius


Rock music in its lyrics often talks ahead of the time about what's going on in the country. ~Edmund G. Brown


Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love,
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.
~Joseph Addison


My whole trick is to keep the tune well out in front. If I play Tchaikovsky, I play his melodies and skip his spiritual struggle. ~Liberace


Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.
~Alfred Lord Tennyson


Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music. ~Ronald Reagan


The discovery of song and the creation of musical instruments both owed their origin to a human impulse which lies much deeper than conscious intention: the need for rhythm in life… the need is a deep one, transcending thought, and disregarded at our peril. ~Richard Baker


Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains. ~John Philip Sousa


Music is the medicine of the breaking heart. ~Leigh Hunt


Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune. ~Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard, Comments of Abe Martin and His Neighbors, 1923


Country music is three chords and the truth. ~Harlan Howard


An artist, in giving a concert, should not demand an entrance fee but should ask the public to pay, just before leaving as much as they like. From the sum he would be able to judge what the world thinks of him - and we would have fewer mediocre concerts. ~Kit Coleman, Kit Coleman: Queen of Hearts


I think sometimes could I only have music on my own terms, could I live in a great city, and know where I could go whenever I wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, that were a bath and a medicine. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Are we not formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar?
~Percy Bysshe Shelley


Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies. ~Edward George Bulwer-Lytton


A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it? ~Charles Ives


The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic. ~Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz


After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. ~Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays


Music is love in search of a word. ~Sidney Lanier


It is incontestable that music induces in us a sense of the infinite and the contemplation of the invisible. ~Victor de LaPrade


Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life. ~Jean Paul Richter


All the shopping malls and restaurants and airports are riddled with low-fidelity loudspeakers, which apparently have developed the ability to reproduce by themselves; these are all connected to a special programming service called Music That Nobody Really Likes, and you cannot get away from it. ~Dave Barry


Music is a friend of labor for it lightens the task by refreshing the nerves and spirit of the worker. ~William Green


If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong. ~Simon Rattle


Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all. ~Helmut Walcha


I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else. ~Lily Tomlin


The scratches in Yoko Ono records are moments of relief. ~S.A. Sachs


Music is well said to be the speech of angels. ~Thomas Carlyle, Essays, "The Opera"


Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings. ~Robert Benchley


The taxpayers cannot be relied upon to support performing arts such as opera. As a taxpayer, I am forced to admit that I would rather undergo a vasectomy via Weed Whacker than attend an opera. ~Dave Barry


No good opera plot can be sensible:... people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. ~W.H. Auden, Time, 29 December 1961





What do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html


Download your
very own copy of
ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak
Ray Jozwiak: Another Shot



Please Visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com




My Zimbio
Top Stories

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Junk, stuff, things, baggage. . .

. . . whatever you call it, everybody's got it; and probably more of it than they need. And I mean actual, PHYSICAL junk and not the mental baggage we all carry, which will indeed be the topic of another blog at another time.

My wife and I just got rid of a lot of junk in the last two weekends and it really feels good. As each of our parents passed away, I vowed to myself that I did NOT want to leave a lot of stupid junk laying around so our children would have to sift through it, and as is so often the case, throw out most of it in the end. We both are taking that idea a little more seriously now. Of course it is also somewhat selfish on our part. The more we clean out now, the easier it is to find the things we actually need and everything is just so much neater.

Why does it seem that human nature has a tendency to collect, store, hoard, whatever you want to call it? Maybe after additional research in the field of evolution it will finally be revealed that we have not, after all, evolved from the apes (a prospect that troubles so many 'traditional' thinkers) but that we have indeed evolved from a much more noble creature - THE SQUIRREL!




What do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html


Download your
very own copy of
ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak
Ray Jozwiak: Another Shot



Please Visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com




My Zimbio
Top Stories

Monday, November 7, 2011

Ah, our favorite non-candidate. . .

. . . (from The 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said Calendar)

[After being asked by a television news anchorman if any new initiatives are in the works] "Gah! Nothing specific right now. Sitting here in these chairs that I'm going to be proposing but in working with these governors who again on the front lines are forced to and it's our privileged obligation to find solutions to the challenges facing our own states every day being held accountable, not being just one of many just casting votes or voting present every once in a while, we don't get away with that."

You must have guessed who said this. It's Sarah Palin.




What do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html


Download your
very own copy of
ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak
Ray Jozwiak: Another Shot



Please Visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com




My Zimbio
Top Stories

Sunday, November 6, 2011

On very special. . .

. . . occasions. . .

When celebrating felt right
This place we'd go
With AMBIENCE AND WINE
On a Saturday night
Caricatures hung on the wall
Eavesdropping on our most intimate moments
I love you

It was essential to go there
To mark the passage of time
Between the dates
We used to signify
The bond we shared and to dine
Only served Angus A-1 prime
To patrons of each and every persuasion
I loved you

But now that place is all gone
Where did our love go
Where is the ambience and
McCafferty's piano

While you eat you're serenaded by some local musician
Playing bad renditions of the popular songs
You sing along

And so it ended
Our passion somehow just faded away
And likewise too
That place we held divine
Became a dance club today
The memories come flooding in
Sweet talk and all the romancing we did there
It's gone now

But now that place is all gone
Where did our love go
Where is the ambience and
McCafferty's piano

McCafferty's Piano (from the forthcoming AMBIENCE & WINE [stay tuned])
©2010 Raymond M. Jozwiak


What do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html


Download your
very own copy of
ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak
Ray Jozwiak: Another Shot



Please Visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com




My Zimbio
Top Stories

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Finally it happened. . .

. . . the trials and tribulations of Ful Treatment. . .

A match. A 'club' that required exactly the musical product we were offering. It was a relatively roomy, oblong configuration with a large rectangular bar that encircled the tending staff, located at one end with a dance floor to the side and a stage at the far end of that. It was located in an industrial area to the south of the city, in close proximity to the docks, business of which brought many merchant marine and an assortment of blue-collar clientele for some weekend reverie. In fact, we frequently, unfairly generalizing, joked about the patrons' general lack of teeth and violent tendencies. Let's face it though, large amounts of quickly consumed alcohol frequently does result in less-than-gentlemanly behavior in humans, irrespective of type of employment or socioeconomic level.
Our bigotry was not based entirely in fiction though. One particularly well-lubricated Friday night crowd included two, physically imposing females, complete with the teased, bouffant hairdo, each with a personalized version of a blond-streak adornment. Someone in the crowd was heard to refer to these ladies as 'skunk-heads', referring to the aforementioned blond coloring. As the evening progressed, it became obvious to us and our wives/girl-friends/significant others that accompanied us to the gig that night that the 'skunk-heads' had become enamored with several male members of the crowd. It became more obvious still later, that there was some discontent among the party of ladies and their newly-found, romantic interests. Eventually a real, true-to-life bar brawl erupted as a result of the developing sexual tension (or was it friction?) When the fists began flying, the entire band and our visitors were, for lack of a better description, was flabbergasted. At that point, we all know precisely what happened, but each would relate a different version now if asked, one of the involved merchant marines picked up a chair from a table adjoining the dance floor, and broke it over the head of his antagonist, sending a wooden chair leg hurling meteor-like onto the bandstand. It seemed as thought the frame froze at that point, all sound ceased, and we all stared toward the crowd, mouths agape in astonishment for what seemed to be a short eternity, but ended with Greg (our saxman/vocalist) picking up the disconnected furniture appendage, waving it in the direction of the audience saying something to the effect that he dared anyone to try anything NOW!




What do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html


Download your
very own copy of
ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak
Ray Jozwiak: Another Shot



Please Visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com




My Zimbio
Top Stories

Getting ready. . .

. . . for the rain.

Only once in a lifetime
Does the right time appear
And that time for me
Was the day that I met you
There are good and there are bad things
Misunderstandings
That's just the way life is
So we'll have to face each storm
Before the next kiss

I'm getting ready for the rain
Here come the clouds all rolling by us
Are we ever really ready for another pain
I'm getting ready for the rain

But I know the rain will surely end
And the sun will shine again
It always does
It always will
Nothing ventured nothing ever gained
Always different but the same
When will we learn
When will we learn to

Live like its our last day
Don't take the fast way around
Cause this love we have
Is a fragile thing we've found
Why should we continue hurting
And go on skirting the issue of our love
Cause we know these sleepless nights
Will pass like the clouds from above

I'm getting ready for the rain
Here come the clouds all rolling by us
Are we ever really ready for another pain
I'm getting ready for the rain

READY FOR THE RAIN
©1992 Raymond M. Jozwiak



What do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html


Download your
very own copy of
ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak
Ray Jozwiak: Another Shot



Please Visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com




My Zimbio
Top Stories