Company . . .

. . . man


I'm feeling dead on my feet
I've got the stubble on my chin
Spent half the night on the job
I'm gonna bring that new account in
There ain't no supper on the table
The lady knows just where I've been
I do the best that I am able
With the limited resources I have
In matters of the heart
And if it's coming down to minding my own business
It's just the business I've been minding
That I've been minding all the time
You gotta make up your mind

I only wanted to
Grow up shooting outlaws
While riding on the back of a horse
But that just wasn't a part of the plan
My mother told me to always be a good boy
But I'm a company man
I do the best that I can
My wife and children will
Have to wait in line for my time
Cause I'm a company man

This looking bad isn't good
The only answer is ignore it
A little pain here and there
You get some medicine and cure it
It's not that I can't take the pressure
The pot is boiling all the time
It's only that I'm being
Measured by the powers in the boardroom above
They're always watching me
And if I miss an opportunity to make another
To make a dollar they will find it
And it will certainly be missed
Another cheek to be kissed

I only wanted to
Grow up shooting outlaws
While riding on the back of a horse
But that just wasn't a part of the plan
My mother told me to always be a good boy
But I'm a company man
I do the best that I can
My wife and children will
Have to wait in line for my time
Cause I'm a company man

I was so young and idealistic then
Couldn't see the trees for the forest
Most of the time
Until I tasted all the choicest wines
Saving money up for that rainy day
Finding phony rendezvous getaways
Am I really fooling somebody
Or is it the pay

I was a child of the light
I always learned to do the right things
And though they said I was bright
There's still a fire inside me burning
For all the riches that I'm missing
For all the love I never found
I wonder who she might be
Kissing in the middle of a cold winter night
When left alone again
I wonder just what I would do if she would leave me
Pack up the kids and run away
Without a singular goodbye
Why in the world would she try

I only wanted to
Grow up shooting outlaws
While riding on the back of a horse
But that just wasn't a part of the plan
My mother told me to always be a good boy
But I'm a company man
I do the best that I can
My wife and children will
Have to wait in line for my time
Cause I'm a company man


Company Man
©1994 Raymond M. Jozwiak




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Twister. . .

. . . of a game

Pam and Harrison are the sports fans in the family and I would venture to say that their two favorite sports are baseball and football (the American one).  I can understand the former much better than the latter.  I would never go to sleep lulled by the mellifluous tones of the baseball broadcasters by choice but the other night. . . I did.  Pam fell asleep as the Orioles and Rays began their extra innings.   I slept fitfully but managed to make enough sense of the broadcast each time I awoke to know that it was still undecided.  About 2:05 and 18 innings since the game began, I heard the bad news (for Baltimore fans). . . the Os lost.


(from http://www.peterga.com/baseball/quotes/the_game.htm)
Mark Twain
Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century.

W.P. Kinsella
It is the same game that Moonlight Graham played in 1905. It is a living part of history, like calico dresses, stone crockery, and threshing crews eating at outdoor tables. It continually reminds us of what was, like an Indian-head penny in a handful of new coins.

Bernard Malamud:
The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

John Cheever
The poet or storyteller who feels that he is competing with a superb double play in the World Series is a lost man. One would not want as a reader a man who did not appreciate the finesse of a double play.

Roger Angell, "Agincourt and After," Five Seasons:
It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look -- I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring -- caring deeply and passionately, really caring -- which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete -- the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazard flight of a distant ball -- seems a small price to pay for such a gift.

8 year-old Jewish boy, quoted in "The Children's God", (Psychology Today Dec. 1985)
I don't know if this is what you're asking. But I feel closest to God, like after I'm rounding second base after I hit a double.

James Thurber
The majority of American males put themselves to sleep by striking out the batting order of the New York Yankees.

Norman Cousins
At a Dodger baseball game in Los Angeles, I asked Will Durant if he was ninety-four or ninety-five. "Ninety-four," he said. "You don't think I'd be doing anything as foolish as this if I were ninety-five, do you?"

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Don't Cry. . .

. . . Forget THIS guy and Enjoy the Music at . . .


Brewer's Alley Restaurant & Brewery
Monday
September 23, 2013
@ 7:30PM
Opening Piano Prelude by Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano
   Monday Night Songwriters' Showcase (now in its eighth year!) is held on Monday evenings in beautiful downtown Frederick, MD, except during December (when we are closed after the first Monday). The program starts at 7:30 pm with a piano prelude, followed by three or four songwriters doing three songs each (lots of variety) and the featured songwriter does a 45 -60 minute set.   Come and support LIVE MUSIC!

(take the elevator on the right to the 2nd floor)
124 North Market Street Frederick, MD 21701
Telephone: 301-631-0089 Fax: 301-631-1874
  http://www.brewers-alley.com/

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My latest release, Black & White Then Back,
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Fall Like. . .

. . . a house of cards

(thanks to http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/19/20580271-pope-francis-says-church-cannot-focus-only-on-abortion-and-gay-marriage?lite)
I'm no holdout rooting for the preservation of the Catholic Church, but it can only be good news that the organization now has a man in charge who appears to be logical, reasonable and totally human.  His latest comments about the church's preoccupation with abortion, contraception and gay marriage being revisited further drives home this point.

The Pope spoke of finding a 'new balance' adding that "Otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards. . . " He also said, quite eloquently I might add, “A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: When God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.”


TUMBLING DOWN
©1994 Raymond M. Jozwiak





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Competition. . .

(from Life Among The Lutherans by Garrison Keillor)
". . . Christmas is a holy day that the early church fathers invented because they were in competition with the Roman religion.  One thing Christianity lacked was a big feast, and the Romans had one toward the end of December, Saturnalia, so the Christians established Christmas, sort of like one chain putting up a store right near its competitor.  It doesn't have so much to do with Jesus as it does with business, and it's been a big hit;  the number of people celebrating Saturnalia and offering sacrifices to the gods has really diminished. . . "

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In Between. . .

Sometimes (especially at my age) life seems like a series of coping with bad things.  These things involve either a physical (although sometimes psychological) issue of my own or of others close to me, or sometimes death itself.  Not trying to be Debbie-Downer or anything here.  It's just how I feel sometimes.  

But in the meantime, I have to live my life to the fullest in between those times.  I must take advantage of all the good things and people in my life.  Living this way should and will strengthen me to cope better when the bad things do roll around. 

And I really don't want to be a pessimist because, as a good friend of mine often says, the glass is half empty AND half full at the same time.

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Still more. . .

 (. . . further refinement of 'A Hero'. . . )



I know you heard some talk today
It wasn't right but now
She won't be gettin' in my way
'Cause she was telling lies they say
It wasn't right but now
I can look the other way
And do as I please
I'm down on my knees
I'm begging you please

Why does a hero run so slow
Like he's got no place to go
And he will never be a hero again
Why does a hero run so slow
Like he's got no place to go
And he will never be a hero again

With thousands of adoring fans
I tripped the light fantastic
Was nothing more than sleight of hand
Don't underestimate my worth
I tripped the light fantastic
I'm just an ordinary man
I worked very hard
For all that I've got
A killer I'm not

Why does a hero run so slow
Like he's got no place to go
And he will never be a hero again
Why does a hero run so slow
Like he's got no place to go
And he will never be a hero again

Heroes run so slow
Just like the tide
Heroes want to take you
They want to take you for a
They want to take you for a
They want to take you for a ride

They're waiting here with baited breath
What is the actual story
They'll love him or they'll give him death
The verdict seems so clear to some
What is the actual story
He's dead before he's lost or won
The worst of his fears
A jury of peers
Can't turn back the years

Why does a hero run so slow
Like he's got no place to go
And he will never be a hero again
Why does a hero run so slow
Like he's got no place to go
And he will never be a hero again


A Hero
©1994 Raymond M. Jozwiak





What do you think?
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My latest release, Black & White Then Back,
can be downloaded digitally at:

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