My friend @Bricker59 has an expression I like, ”older than dirt”, well I am a few years older than Thom so I guess I may be called “older than the primordial slime and lava that the dirt is made from”. I mention this because, in my circle of family and friends I am known as the “sixty’s music fan”.  Since the 80′s when they started calling my 60′s music Oldies, I haven’t listened to much else. I have listened to 60′s music performers that have had new hits though. Van Morrison, Cher, Paul McCartney, John Fogerty and strayed to the 70′s / 80′s to Tom Petty, Tom Waits, Mellencamp and Springstein, but hardly any 90′s or current bands. Got to admit I love Smashmouth, Greenday and Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders.

My daughter gifts me “Rolling Stone” magazine each year for Christmas and I really do watch the Top 40 each week. So I’m not totally oblivious. But I’m known as the 60′s guy and this Christmas, my music in passing, was called old fogey’s music by my grandkids although they all can recognize the Beatles, Stones and CCR when they hear it. I have seen to that.

So here’s the deal. I do love lots of music, rock music, pop music, classical, jazz, blues and the big bands. I decided it was time to get with it and come to appreciate “current music”, music my younger family loves. I figure if I ever wanted to have a conversation with them again that they felt important enough to pull the ears plugs from their ears attached to what ever MP3 player, IPhone, ITune device they are currently plugged into, I better get hip to their music.

So this year I am going to try to get acquainted with at least one current popular tune and band/artist each month. I really think the kids will respect me for it. i need to show the interest. I must break out of the shell from turning into my parents or worse yet my grandparents. So I’m looking for new musical talent. Last month, January, I discovered L.P.’s “Into The Wild”, I’ve included it below. You will recognize it as the music for the Citi Bank Utah rock climbing commercial.  
That song was an earworm for me through January and much of February.

For February’s new talent, to me, maybe not you, is the Band “Fun” and their single “We Are Young”. This also I first heard from a commercial that was shown during the superbowl this year which I include. The studio version shows their talent. They also performed on the Letterman Show recently.        

Here’s the complete performance.

Next month for March, I’m leaning toward some very good tunes from  Florence and the Machine. There may really be life after the 60′s, there really may be.

E.

As the street lights hum to life
roads reflect with orange flavored sheen
car lights bright of red and white
leave trails behind the wiper blades
Mercury vapor parking lots,
piled high with snows remains,
white hot stains of rocker salt
are washed away by the winter rain  

many nights of snow and skidding ice
with no hope of warmer days
we bundled up in down feather coats 
and followed the orange plowers sand and blade.
we slowly walked in our winter boots
our minds wandered to nicer days
when winds would change from north to south
and blow in the warm winter rain. 

E.

I can tell Bull Shit from a mile away. Not because I spent my first few years on a farm around livestock which included bulls. Frankly shit smells the same no matter what specie of animal it is deposited from, even from man. The difference is from man it is squirted from the mouth or the pen or the computer. We read it here on Xanga all the time.

I was taught that when I bragged about myself,  I was spewing B.S. My parents despised braggarts.

1. Thou shalt not brag. If thou brags, thou art spewing Bull Shit.

You see their logic was if I did things well, then it would diminish my accomplishment by allowing others to know about it. They might think I was good at something. And we can have none of that. Some logic huh? That was Commandment #1. To this day I have trouble putting together my accomplishments that I have had through the year for my performance review at work. I guess I’m just not Texan or Canadian enough to brag about myself easily. I work for both. 
Never did figure out how many Commandments our family had because as I grew and acquired more knowledge, new Commandments were written to cover any deficiencies. They were living documents you might say. An other was :

 2. Thou shall not mention sex in any form, if thou speaks of sex, thou art spewing Bull.Shit.

If asked about your sex life, your answer should be ”I was taught as a gentlemen to never speak publicly concerning matters of the heart.” Of course at my young age, my matters of the heart consisted of only a few private moments alone in the bathroom, which had to be fast. I had three older sisters and my bathroom time was usually at the bottom of the occupancy schedule. And  I was never going to speak publicly about what I was doing in there, I really didn’t need to be reminded of that. I thought I was the only one that had discovered it and I wasn’t going to ruin the fun by telling anyone. Even if I did, I probably would be breaking Commandment #1 also because I certainly would have been bragging. And probably really couldn’t handle the additional guilt.

3. Thou shalt not spend time in the pool hall, if you play pool thou art spending time doing Bull.Shit.

The pool hall was a terrible place for me to go. When I went it was always clandestinely. I was never good at pool for two reasons. One, I didn’t get to go to the pool hall that often, it was just too hard sneaking around so no one would see me go in the joint and two, I had to learn to play while keeping my eyes trained to the door, in case my Dad or one of his good friends came in. You can not learn “english” while looking over your shoulder at the front door. That really was B.S. because I really loved playing pool. It wasn’t until my junior year in high school that I learned from one of my dad’s oldest friends that my father was the local pool shark in town when he was in high school. I would have loved to play pool with my dad when I was a kid but we never did. You see, he never bragged about it. It was B.S. you see. I never did understand that Commandment.

4. Thou shalt not drive a Ford, Chevy or Chrysler product, they are all Bull Shit. Thou shall drive a Studebaker.

I can remember only one Chevy and one Ford in our family while I was growing up. And they were before I learned to drive. It was all Studebakers through High School. “Hey, lets go to the Prom, the ol’man will let me use the ’58  President this time, I promise, I won’t be picking you up in the pink Lark”. Now that is Bull Shit in anyone’s book. We can have airplanes, speed boats, hunting dogs, fishing boats and shotguns but no Ford, Chevys or Chryslers. Jeez!

Well, I could go on for a long time telling of my family Commandments but frankly I have forgotten most of them. I, like Moses, broke the tablets as soon as I left my father’s house and tried to wash them from my mind. Only for them to emerge after I had my own children. Having learned B.S. so well as a child, I really had no trouble spewing it at my children. And like me, they also learned to recognize Bull Shit when they saw it as well.

What B.S. Commandments did you have growing up? How well do you recognize B.S. ?

E.

As we gaze out into the morning’s early start, it is predawn twilight. The Sun will surface very soon, but for now its only evidence is a lighter sky and crimson horizon. The Orange Orb will peek above the earth’s rim, through the lightly layered clouds, at first slowly. But with a squint and blink of the eye, it will appear to pop to the surface as an air filled buoy rising from the Atlantic’s depths. It will be a perfect Orange Circle with sharp defined edges. For just a moment, we get a glimpse of the Sun with the naked eye. For just a moment, as it rests in the distance, we can see its round completeness. We are allowed only that brief moment before it turns into a bright burning point of light that for the rest of the day we are forbidden to stare at for risk of blindness. This is how our days begin. 

E.

“I have read that when the page is blank and you are at a loss, you should write about what you know. I wonder this and think , what do I know? Or rather what do I know that I care to write about or share.

One thing that I’m not sure that I know but I believe I am more aware of than most is, as we work, wander and play around here on the Internet, am I the only one that wonders about all of the information about ourselves that we are putting out there on Google’s and other’s servers?

You know when I got my first (landline) telephone number and started using it, I was very confident that what information I was putting out on the telephone network was private. Unless someone tapped my lines illegally or law enforcement obtained a warrant to tap or collect my phone records, my business was safe from prying ears. It was my legal right guaranteed in our Constitution, one of the amendments about government and privacy intrusion, search and seizure. When and where did that right go away on the Internet, the Internet that we the citizens built with our tax dollars?

 When did corporations like Google, Microsoft and our own government agencies like the NSA get the idea our business on the internet was free information for them to garner, distribute, and correlate. Just because it is there doesn’t mean everyone has a right to it. HTTPS has lost its security if information gathered while on a secure server is distributed among many companies, I’m talking credit card numbers, addresses, phone numbers, financial records, the most private details that you must share with companies in order to do business over the web.

 Consequently information we give companies non internet related, like paying bills personally and other records are placed on those same internet servers. These records are shared also. Read the new Google privacy policy, the information you give any of their companies, which are many and enormous, is shared across their entire corporation. They own hundreds of companies that we are unaware of or companies we choose not to deal with perhaps. I wouldn’t be surprised if this may be challenged in the Supreme Court as early as this year.  I could go on for pages about this but I think we need to know about this. Large private Corporations, like my own, are spending billions of dollars to protect themselves against these intrusions, private citizens should too. There will soon be a worldwide breach in the private information companies like Google are telling us they are securing, which will change the way business will be done for decades to come. Just beware the Android.

It seems the definition of privacy has been changed to “why are you worried, what do you have to hide”. Well, there is a big difference between the words ”hiding” and “privacy”. We should wake up.”

What you just read, I wrote on a Sunday, 29 January 2012. Today, July 1, 2013, we continue to read, hear and wonder about what the outcome of the Edward Snowdon security breach will amount to. Is there really anyone out there that is truly surprised that the NSA is collecting all of our telephone records. The Patriot Act has been enacted and extended at least three times since 9/11/2001. You would have to be stationed at the North Pole for the last 12 years with no access to any communications if you didn’t know that the Patriot Act allows exactly what the NSA is doing. Basically spying on American citizens in the name of terrorism. And as we learn more, European, British, Canadian, Japanese and China’s citizens. Pretty much everyone on the Earth. The internet and telephone landline and wireless network has very thin borders. 

Corporations are in on this also. Google, Verizon, ATT, you name them and they are spewing private information about their customers like teenage drinkers with the dry heaves. When we say the government’s agency, the NSA, we must include the private corporations that the NSA has subcontracted to do their dirty work.  Booz Allen Hamilton being the most notable as the employer of whistleblower Snowdon. We now must decide whether he is whistleblower, spy, traitor, hero or patriot.

I find it hard to call him a whistleblow when as I said, anyone with a brain has heard of the Patriot Act and the debates that have gone on mostly unnoticed. How can you whistleblow when so many in this country have already stood by silently as this ridiculous act was passed and extended so many times. No one, no one in this country should be surprised that the NSA has overstepped into the intrusion of our personal lives in the name of terrorism. Perhaps we have met the enemy and found that he is us.

I agree whole hearted with my friend Steve Wozniac and what he said last week about this Edward Snowdon affair. You may want to read The Woz’s statement here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/26/steve-wozniak-edward-snowden_n_3505727.html

I would have to go a long way to call Snowdon a Hero, but I would call him an expeditor, he has delivered a cold slap in the face to America, waking us up and someone must say “thanks we needed that!”.

Seizing phone records and other information of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American and should be stopped immediately.

E.

 I have felt the ache of hard work
the dull bore of endless rows
I can erase the remaining harvest from my thoughts

I feel the dirt

Only on bent knees and back and cramped neck
Can I peek up to see the horizon
The sun tells me the time
the cool breeze my rest
Warm water from my belt quenches my thirst
but stirs my empty stomach
Silently I work only for Saturday’s pay
and Sunday’s short afternoon. 

I plan the long walk

There will be no kindness of strangers
And only uncertain rides
I will go home and hope it will be there.

 

Now it snows.
The winds have blown,
the cool north weather shifts
Light snow fog breezy and mist
34
branches shine mercury wet
flakes rest melted on grass 
roads splash and hiss
into night. 

Superstition of Friday the 13th is paraskavedekatriaphobia. Triskaidekaphobia is fear of the number 13. I can not pronounce either of those words. And I will not remember them past today. They are words only brought out on Friday the 13th and I don’t believe they are real words.

Other events that happened on Friday the 13th that are only thought of on Friday the 13th:

Benjamin Franklin wrote “Everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes,” . I’ve seen this attributed to a few others, it probably was never said or written.

During WWII, the good ship “HMS Friday” was launched. I don’t believe this is a true story but I love telling it..

 Aug. 13, 1999, would have been Alfred Hitchcock’s 100th birthday. I’m checking this one out, I should be able to find his birthday.

 On June 13, 1986,  the Olsen twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley, were born.  I understand this significance, have you ever seen their movies?

And in the future:

Sept. 13, 2013 is the planned date of the thirteenth installment of the Friday the 13th horror film series. It will probably be just as exciting as 12, can’t wait.  Hockey anyone?

Are we scared yet?

E

My new stainless steel coffee cup kept my coffee very warm. It was more the shape of a narrow tumbler, no handle, stainless inside and out. It fit perfectly into the cup holder. The only plastic was the black lid with an attached hinged stopper. As I drove to work I thought that I would get along just fine drinking from this one.

In the last 10 or 20 years I have left a wide variety of coffee cups all the way from the southern border of Iowa to the Panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma. I can buy a large refill of Java at any convenience store in a 700 square mile area for less than 75 cents a cup. Because I provide my own cup, in this day of 3 dollar something a gallon gas, a cup of hot coffee is perhaps the last American bargain while on the road. I do admit that the quantity and the temperature of the Hojo is offset at times by the quality and the taste. But after a few years you learn where to find the better product. My problem is I tend to leave my mug at my destination, only to notice its absence many miles down the road on my way back home. Surely I have stocked many breakrooms.

Because of my forgetfulness, I gave up on the insulated mug a few months ago and began using a Dixie cup paper  container. If I used cream and sugar, I would order what they call in Canada, a double double. I believe it is a double sugar and cream with a double cup. The second cup is used as an insulator for the first. If you drink it black, as I do, you just order a double cup. Keeps it hot longer. That’s what I’ve been doing, I fix myself a double cup every morning. I don’t need an insulated mug. And I felt it was a cleaner drink. Let’s face it, an old coffee cup gets pretty scuzzy after a few weeks of use. I could refill and make my double cup last all day. I don’t think I have left the setup anywhere and we can buy them for me by the hundreds at Cosco.

This week I began thinking that it was pretty wasteful using two paper cups a day so I went to the cupboard and dug out the new stainless one that my son gave me for Christmas a few years ago. I evaluated it on the way to work and was very satisfied. I don’t like to drink hot coffee from plastic so the stainless is great but totally stainless mugs are getting very hard to find. Because I wasn’t planning on drinking a lot of coffee this week I thought I’d give it a try.

But sure enough, after a couple hours at work, I couldn’t find my new cup. I retraced all my steps and couldn’t find it. Disheartened and busy, I had to give up the search. I used paper the rest of the week. But I continued to have that damn nagging feeling everywhere I went subconsciously looking for that new cup and imagining the mold that by now had grown inside the fresh clean steel.

Yesterday, at 2:35 in the afternoon, I moved a piece of test equipment and there was the cup. Still half full and not a spot of mold. All things are right. The world is once again spinning in greased grooves. I will use it this weekend.

E

 Beyond the shade of evening light
and far from the brilliance of stars
there is a place where thoughts are born
and where they go when dimmed.

It is a place where no man can go
not flesh nor soul or ghost
It is where all dreams are made
and where poems reign as king

Poems within transparent books
Of words from thoughts unseen
When opened the words pierce the poet’s skull
and forms the verse he sees

Books only opened up by love
or peace or hate and jealousy
Pages turned by an emotional muse
Who throws them out at lightning speed

Thoughts caught by hollow porous bone
squarely behind wide tinted eyes
Words caught by a searching willing soul
That he thinks are his own

E.