If you had a college degree and a real career, you would be off on Thanksgiving

And so I was told by my wife as I grumbled about working on Thanksgiving. And so it goes. You are looked down upon for working in retail. There is no respect for the worker or for a salesman either. Management in retail offers no respect either.

I have done it all in retail. Ran stores, stocked shelves, sold for a living, because I have no skills and it was the only thing out there. Could be true, right?

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that buy and those that sell.

Respect is given to the lawyers and doctors and the indian chiefs. Just don't be in retail, that is a nothing job. I tried many times to get me some school learning and get that career, just didn't happen. I tried again later in life and came up short.

I tire of it, I really do. But as my working career winds down, it is hard to be proud of a career that has cost me so many hours, days, weeks, months, years, missed holidays, picnics, parties and so on because I worked retail.

Friends marvel that I have been able to do the backbreaking work for so long, but not the type of work that I have done.

But a man has got to do what a man has got to do.

It's all I have.

signed,
disgruntled
ray

Black friday...Bloody thursday

It is official, Thanksgiving has been hijacked by retail. The one holiday without any baggage is being mauled by the seduction of a super sale on stuff you don't need.

I saw my schedule for Thursday and Friday. I start at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday and will work until 8:00 am Friday.

15 hours straight.

I will leave the house at 4:00 p.m. to get to the store by 5:00 p.m. We will set the ad for the day and open the doors at 6:00 p.m.

Six of us will work all night, five more from 5-10 and then they will come back on Friday. The rest will work from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. on Friday. Why?

We work right next to Best Buy and they are opening at, you guessed it, 6:00 p.m.

So when you sit at the table pouring over the ads, mapping out your strategy, think about it for a moment.

Why?

You will be tired and mad you didn't get what you thought needed but didn't. Huge credit card bills in the mail next month.

You gave in, and now you will pay.

Mad Men must be very proud.

Ray

On being alive when Kennedy was murdered

One thing about getting older is that chances are you were alive when something important happened.

Like when Kennedy was murdered. Assassinated. and not only by Oswald.

I was in the fifth or sixth grade at the time. We had just returned from lunch and getting ready for the second half of the school day when our teacher came into the room crying.  She said the president had just been killed. The girl in front of me began to cry. I honestly did not know what it meant, it slowly dawned on me. He was dead.

Then Oswald was killed, by Jack Ruby. And it goes on and on.

I have watched and read about it over the years. And one thing always strikes me as strange, the pictures of people running to the grassy knoll. Especially the policeman.

And how quickly Oswald was found. And the suspect getting shot. And how all the usual protocols for protecting the president was changed on that day. And all the irregularities of how they handled the autopsy and the body and the sloppiness of the investigation.

It is true, many people hated him. Many government agencies, Cuba, Russia, and the mob.

Many saw a long line of Kennedy's in the White for decades to come. That scared them. Bad for business.

There are many pictures people have not seen, other movies from other angles, evidence that is not well known.

A conspiracy consists of more than one person. Simple enough.

Oswald did not do it alone, he was the fall guy, the dupe. He thought it was him alone.

No.

Fifty years later the quest for the truth is still there. No one is satisfied.

You should not be satisfied.

I am not.

Ray

Dance on my birthday, will ya?

mama, don't let your son grow up to be a football player!

When I was a kid I wanted to become a sports star. Football was a passion. We played in the rain and snow, hot or cold, day or night.

 

We didn't know we were setting ourselves for head injuries and the breakdown of various body parts then and later in life.

We did know not to cross over the line to becoming a medical monster filled with never ending rage that never turned off.

We played hard, hit hard and for the most part played clean. You were always tested. Sometimes you won, sometimes you lost. But at the end of the day you could walk away.

Not true in pro football. People are very uncomfortable now that the sleazy side has been revealed. You watch a game oblivious to men being injured and carted off the field, every game without exception. You shrug it off as part of the game. It is not.

Football appeals to the barbarian deep inside us all. Why else on more than one occasion has a crowd cheered when a player has been hurt? Good thing the thumbs up or down option doesn't exist.

I am glad my son does not play. I never thought I would say that. I have followed football since I was ten or so, that would be about 50 plus years. I know football. 

Sometimes you have to walk away. I am walking.

ray

A touch of madness

whispers in the day
whispers in the night
has it started
will it start

the long journey
into darkness
the mental abyss
the lost touch of
reality

doubt sets in
clarity unsure
can it be
the mental curse
unfolds
to what end

the pit
the pendulum
the scourge
of the mind
waiting it's turn
unheard screams

The days of living off the land are way behind us

I was watching a special on Netflix and a blacksmith was making a sword, one that the Vikings had used in battle and I thought that there is no way we could do any of that today. We don't know how to work a loom, make butter or soap, build a home, hunt like the Indians did, nothing at all.

The closest would be the Amish, who get laughed at for their old world ways. We are totally dependent on factories, big farms, supermarkets and so on. This includes the few hunters among us who rely on the state of the art rifles and technology to bag their game.

The ways of the land and olden techniques long forgotten, someday we will wish we knew how.

ray