It is 12:10 and I hate 2017. I can't wait until 2018.

[+ Oliver]

PK - we will need a really well-rounded curmudgeon in PS in late April. But I'm not sure how well Bonehead and Shadow would get on!

[+ purplekow]

Lo and behold, this continues to be my favorite thread here. And it refreshes my soul to discover so many curmudgeons and curmudgeon-wannabes. The world is clearly a better place than I had thought after all (and after the November election I was even less sure. . .)

 

Aww come on, really? There is a law that dogs need to be in safety belts in Jersey? And other posters of repute have chimed in on this offering corroboration? You guys are all in cahoots about putting one over on us. How does one strap a cocker spaniel into a seat belt and shoulder harness? I really can't imagine it. Is this some new kind of restraint that they're pushing over at Fort Roff? I really thought PK was just pulling our chain - but then I realized that would really mean the thread should be moved to the fetish board. Then too I thought PK was setting us up for some sort of salacious story about the policeman pulling him over (maybe culminating in him simply pulling PK off, the lucky dog)I thought maybe it was some kind of pre-arranged role-play game with a certain well-liked escort who I believe is gracing my fair city and the surrounding countryside right now. Imagine my disappointment when PK went on to say that the cop was really on the level. Too bad he only had treats for Bonehead, I say.

 

Really, PK, I'm glad you seem to be feeling better (and even sick I bet you looked hot in your sleep sweats and whatever else you had on your ravishing self!)

Phil in Post 39 I quoted an article and left the link about the law in NJ and some other states. $250 to $1000 fine per pet. I use a harness on the dog and strap the seat belt through the harness. My dogs are larger and really do not do much moving in the car.

[+ purplekow]

Day 9 of The Year of the Curmudgeon.

I looked up some quotes on the word: Dare. I was set off on this mission when some one made a comment about a bear and I thought:

Do I dare to be a bear. Do I dare to be bare. Do I dare to be a bare bear. And I answered myself: Yes I dare to be a bare bear but barely.

 

Anyway, while I was short circuiting the language centers in my brain, I came across this quote of a man of whom I knew nothing, Joseph Story. Turns out, Justice Joseph Story was quite the influential Associate of the Supreme Court from 1811 when his ideas of a strong central government was the leading line of thought and his voice to protect property rights of the wealthy shaped the laws of the land, until 1845 by which time Jacksonian principles had taken hold and Justice Story found himself in the minority more often than not. His most famous decision opinion came in the case of United States vs The Africans of the Amistad and in the Spielberg movie Amistad, a portion of his decision was read by retired Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmon. Justice Story, despite my ignorance of his import, is considered one of the two most powerful jurists of the 19th century. The other being Chief Justice John Marshall who headed the court in Story's early years.

In any case, I read this quote and though I believe I would not be a proponent of Justice Story's general outlook, this quote seemed to ring true to me.

 

Republics (Curmudgeons) are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.

 

Joseph Story

 

Now as a curmudgeon, I would be deeply disturbed to have this thread moved to the Politics forum, so I would ask those who would feel it necessary to comment on this as to how it pertains to our current politics, to do so in another thread I started in that section.

 

I was not so much captured by the political aspect of the quote but rather the concepts of virtue, public spirit and intelligence being the building blocks of a Republic and the failure of a Republic which occurs when we fail to heed the wise, the honest and we reward the profligate flatterers.

 

I thought that we could substitute the word CURMUDGEONS for Republic. Other choices include Stalwarts for Republic or even Citizen for Republic of possibly Patriots. I believe the concepts of virtue, public spirit and intelligence and wisdom are slipping into the realm of curmudgeonry and while I embrace them as part of what it to be a curmudgeon, it is my hope that it is not only in that realm that these concepts live and thrive.

 

So I ask you, are virtue, public spirit and intelligence passe? Is wisdom being banished? Not just politically but in all aspects of our lives.

[Phil_musc]

Oh PK, I wasn't thinking the thread should be moved to the politics forum. Rather the mere mention of a harness and restraints (for Bonehead) suggested that it should go to the fetish forum. But thanks for the history review about Justice Story, who I haven't thought about since my law school days.

[+ purplekow]

Today is Day 10 of the Year of Living Curmudgeonly.

 

Since becoming unemployed at the onset of the new year, essentially I have been incommunicado. I do not miss most of my daily interaction with other human beings. In particular, I do not miss responding to questions such as:

How was your holiday celebration?

Did you go out for New Year's Eve?

Is it cold enough for you?

How do you take your coffee?

Paper or Plastic?

Do you always come that much?

 

I do not miss forced smiles at the parents of little children who have pressed all the elevator buttons. I do not miss an acknowledging nod to total strangers whose line of gaze temporarily intersects with mine. I do not miss people texting and walking with no regard for the paths others around them are taking. In general, I do not miss most of the day to day nonsense that had filled many of the dwindling hours of my existence.

 

In case I run into any of you out there in the mean streets of suburban New Jersey,

The holidays were okay.

I went to bed early and alone on NYE.

It is indeed cold enough for me as my asthma is cold reactive and I have been wheezing since just before 2017 started.

I take my coffee light and sweet.

Neither plastic nor paper as I have brought reusable bags.

As for secretory volume, only with you baby.

 

However, as a force of habit, I find myself keeping up my verbal communication skills by more intensively talking with my dogs. It used to be I would only use my voice with my dogs to give them a command or to give them praise. "sit" "lie down" "come" "good boy". Phrases I went on to learn in three other languages for interactions with escorts who did not speak English.

 

Then I began speaking to my dogs as though they were infants. The occasional " Who loves you booby boo?" or ""Who's a good boy, who IS a GOOD boy, who's a good boy?" Never who's a good girl because Brandy, my only female, is never a good girl and even when she has not actively done something destructive, I can tell she is planning and waiting for me to let down my guard.

 

More recently, I have started having more involved conversation with my canine roommates. "What did you do?" "Do you want to go out?" "How do you take your coffee?" The answers were always silent but meaningful looks and brief eye to eye contact, which they held a little too long and then usually broke off.

 

Over the last two days or so, I have not been out of the house and as a result of people texting instead of calling, I have gone days without verbal human to human conversation. So I now I have taken to having ongoing discussions with the dogs.

 

I asked Ben, if he was better off than he was eight years ago and he suggested to me that eight years ago he was homeless in the mountains of West Virginia with little hope of a healthy and happy life. Today, when I asked how his beef treat was tasting, he reminded me that I had failed to trim the grizzle off of his piece of steak and the fat upsets his stomach and it was a bit over cooked. .

 

Bear and I discussed who gets to sleep on the left side of the bed and why. He made a cogent argument for eminent domain not extending into sleeping arrangements and he convinced me that he was there first and that there were other usable alternatives so I had little recourse, I slept at the foot of the bed for the second straight night.

 

Bonehead responded with a knowing look and a head nod when I thanked him again for working his magic with the policeman. Bonehead is the strong, silent type and while he is really the most affectionate, he is also the one who is almost impossible to really know. Conversations with him are really long periods of shared silence in front of the fire.

 

Brandy, despite being quite charming, just cannot be trusted and so other than our mutual disdain for the Kardashians, particularly Khloe, our conversations are more utilitarian and less intimate. Still, she is quite up to date on social media and posts under three names on this site and also posts to a a number of other sites.

 

So for those considering the curmudgeon life, but who have some concerns about the lack of meaningful interactions, I am here to assure you that you will not miss 95% of what other people have to say and that animals in your life actually have some valid opinions, These include thoughts regarding the time space continuum, the relevance of god in our lives and the validity of the Shrodinger's cat paradox regarding time doing crosswords behind the closed doors of the toilet. The last of these, has been used to try to convince me that there really is no benefit of my closing the door and that they, the dogs, do indeed suffer the consequences of thinking I am both alive and dead behind the door as a result of their inability to observe.

 

So Curmudgeons in training, consider what, if anything, would you miss about person to person communication? When you realize, not much, you are ready to proceed.

[+ Charlie]

Your dogs sound remarkably like boyfriends I once had.

[+ purplekow]

Today is day eleven of the year of living Curmudgeonly. Time seems to be passing unbelievably slowly and incomprehensibly quickly at the same time. In looking back, events that took place yesterday in my mind, are now forty years in the past. This led me to consider that I should have a bucket list. I am not sure if a bucket list is a listing of things which will fill up the bucket of one's life to come or if it is a list of things which will fill up the only partially filled bucket of the past or if it is just a wish list of things to do before one kicks the bucket. So there it was, the first entry on my bucket list:

 

#1 Figure out what a bucket list is.

 

This is important, as if a bucket list is a blueprint to future accomplishments, that future will require practical planning including finances. Travel arrangements are time consuming. I would need to arrange a dog sitter. I just bought some milk, so I would have to decide whether to leave it and risk it going bad while I was away or tossing it which is wasteful.

If a bucket list is merely a wish list of things that I will likely never do, then I need to think big. If one is not going to do something in the future, but one is going to say that one has always wanted to do it and that it was indeed on the bucket list, one should make sure that the item which is not to be done, is worth mentioning that you always wanted to do it, but alas, you have not. Space travel, Himalayan Mountain scaling, base jumping are all fine, but it needs to be grander and more exotic and guaranteed to get nods of agreement from all who hear it

 

If the bucket list is to augment the rather substantial bucketed achievements of the past, one need not do too much. One can simply amplify and embellish and expand one's experiences such that they fill up the vacant nooks and gaps of your past. A trip to the Rome, becomes a meeting with the Pope. The lottery win of $5 at a scratch off becomes a $50,000 windfall as a result of finding a ticket in your wallet which you had left unchecked for nearly a year and which you were in the process of tossing when a ethereal figure tells you to check it and then seems to vanish into the crowd rushing to seek shelter from a sudden rain downpour. Seeing a celebrity across a crowded restaurant, through a window, as he entered into a much more expensive restaurant across the street, becomes a humorous story about how you surreptitiously wound up sharing a sumptuous meal and a bottle of Chateau Lafite 1865 with Freddy Mercury in October 1991. That Freddy could really pack away the Veal saltimboccca despite his slender waist.

 

So which bucket would I be putting on my list: The Big Plan The Big Fantasy or the Big Tale? Well, I decided to just put making a Bucket List on my Bucket list.

 

Next, my Fuck it List. No, this is not the list of highly desirable and likely unattainable sex partners I have intentions of bedding and then leaving sweaty and whimpering for more. No these are the things which I once thought were important, which, as it turns out, are not that important or absolutely unnecessary on the life trip I am taking. You know, the speedo, one takes to a ski resort , because #1 they might have pool and #2 it has been decided that one does not need to lose that extra 25 pounds in order to wear it.

 

So FCIT (Fellow Curmudgeons In Training) what is on your Bucket List. Which type of list is it? Who, that is to say What, is on your Fuck It List?

[+ Charlie]

I have already done everything on my bucket list, except for surviving my spouse. So I can just relax and enjoy the rest of the ride.

[+ purplekow]

Well hopefully he gives you a good long run for your money.

[+ purplekow]

On Day 12 of the Year of Being a Curmudgeon, I must say that this is a much more difficult task than I would have ever thought. I guess that decreasing testosterone levels have allowed a greater sensitivity and tenderness to sweep into my emotional framework, just when I need it the least. For the most part, I have been a relatively sensitive guy most of my life. At about age 9, I once overheard my father talking about me and telling my mother: "He just doesn't think like anyone else I know. He seems to care about things that most people just do not give the time of day." This conversation was put into motion by my trying to convince my mother that aluminum foil could be saved and reused. She refused to even consider it and then she caught me going through the kitchen trash and taking out the foil. In fact, I still reuse foil and I figure I have saved nearly $100 in foil expenses over the years. Anyway, there is commercial now which joins the pantheon of commercials that I cannot watch without tearing up. There is a relatively young man, perhaps 45, bald in a sickly looking way, lying in bed in his panamas with nasal cannula attached to an oxygen tank. His young son is watching through a door and his wife begins helping him to stand up. The music in the background is the Doris Day version of Que sera, sera. As he struggles to stand, he and his wife start to slow dance with her helping him to keep his balance. Each of the dancers have a plaintive forlorn look on the face. This will be their final dance and the son is looking on from a distance. The voice over then comes in and you hear: What will be does not have to be. Don't smoke."

Well this commercial is play something like 954 times a day. As soon as I seen the poor man's face on the pillow at the beginning of the commercial, I want to run and smack a cigarette out of the mouth of the next person I see smoking. Then the melancholy sets in, and I if I am still watching by the time he is standing, just like his son, I am transfixed and devastated. So really, this commercial and those like it are serving to undermine my ability to be a curmudgeon. I need them to bring back commercials like the Be A Pepper commercial, such syrupy treacle that Mother Teresa once called it tripe, that allow a curmudgeon to keep his vinegar mood firmly in place and his disregard for a healthy emotional expression staunch in its sourness.

 

So fellow curmudgeons, don't you hate it when commercials that play on your emotions work and you are left defenseless again the onslaught of loving feeling and memories? Since the commercial of which I speak is a local campaign, here is a copy. Well as it turns out it is not a local campaign, the one I have been seeing is sponsoring the New York Cancer Society, but his copy is an Australian version. I have taken that last dance and it is just as heartbreaking as it is here portrayed.

 

[+ purplekow]

Just in case you need it: Dr. Pepper

 

 

That is James Naughton who went on to star as an American Werewolf in London and who had a minor hit record with the theme song of his short lived TV series, both of which were entitled Making It.

[+ Charlie]

I refuse to watch commercials that include old dogs and puppies.

[BigK]

I refuse to watch commercials that include old dogs and puppies.

 

You curmudgeon you!

[kewtex]

At about age 9, I once overheard my father talking about me and telling my mother: "He just doesn't think like anyone else I know. He seems to care about things that most people just do not give the time of day."

 

Mornings at the Kow residence:

[+ purplekow]

Friday the 13th is nearly at an end and nothing catastrophic has befallen me. Unlike Franklin Roosevelt, I have little fear of the number 13 in general and Friday the 13th in particular. When I lived in Mexico, Tuesday the 13th was felt to be unlucky. I think the Mexicans probably got this right as even a bad Friday is better than an average Tuesday. Tuesday is at best the beginning of the middle of the work week. On a holiday weekend, Tuesday is the day you have to drag your sorry ass back to work after three days off, sort of a regular Monday on steroids. So I shall show no fear of Friday the 13, Jason Voorhees or no Jason Vorhees. Just to keep up with my curmudgeonry, I should mention that I find the entirety of the horror genre an unadulterated waste of entertainment time. I do have to admit that I watch very few, usually the ones recommended by the phrase, I know you do not like horror movies but this one if different, Invariably, they have not been so.

So, CIM, horror movies, yea or nay?

[Despardo]

I can't do horror movies (except maybe some of the classics) because they frighten me. Besides, today watching horror movies is redundant. I'm lucky if I can get through Facebook.

[+ Charlie]

There is enough horror in real life.

[+ honcho]

I quote from the Wikipedia article on Arnold Schoenberg:

 

Later years and death

 

Schoenberg's grave in the Zentralfriedhof, Vienna

Schoenberg's superstitious nature may have triggered his death. The composer had triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13), and according to friend Katia Mann, he feared he would die during a year that was a multiple of 13 (quoted in Lebrecht 1985, 294). He dreaded his sixty-fifth birthday in 1939 so much that a friend asked the composer and astrologer Dane Rudhyar to prepare Schoenberg's horoscope. Rudhyar did this and told Schoenberg that the year was dangerous, but not fatal.

 

But in 1950, on his seventy-sixth birthday, an astrologer wrote Schoenberg a note warning him that the year was a critical one: 7 + 6 = 13 (Nuria Schoenberg-Nono, quoted in Lebrecht 1985, 295). This stunned and depressed the composer, for up to that point he had only been wary of multiples of 13 and never considered adding the digits of his age. He died on Friday, 13 July 1951, shortly before midnight. Schoenberg had stayed in bed all day, sick, anxious and depressed. His wife Gertrud reported in a telegram to her sister-in-law Ottilie the next day that Arnold died at 11:45 pm, 15 minutes before midnight (Stuckenschmidt 1977, 520). In a letter to Ottilie dated 4 August 1951, Gertrud explained, "About a quarter to twelve I looked at the clock and said to myself: another quarter of an hour and then the worst is over. Then the doctor called me. Arnold's throat rattled twice, his heart gave a powerful beat and that was the end" (Stuckenschmidt 1977, 521).

[Despardo]

I quote from the Wikipedia article on Arnold Schoenberg:

 

Later years and death

 

Schoenberg's grave in the Zentralfriedhof, Vienna

Schoenberg's superstitious nature may have triggered his death. The composer had triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13), and according to friend Katia Mann, he feared he would die during a year that was a multiple of 13 (quoted in Lebrecht 1985, 294). He dreaded his sixty-fifth birthday in 1939 so much that a friend asked the composer and astrologer Dane Rudhyar to prepare Schoenberg's horoscope. Rudhyar did this and told Schoenberg that the year was dangerous, but not fatal.

 

But in 1950, on his seventy-sixth birthday, an astrologer wrote Schoenberg a note warning him that the year was a critical one: 7 + 6 = 13 (Nuria Schoenberg-Nono, quoted in Lebrecht 1985, 295). This stunned and depressed the composer, for up to that point he had only been wary of multiples of 13 and never considered adding the digits of his age. He died on Friday, 13 July 1951, shortly before midnight. Schoenberg had stayed in bed all day, sick, anxious and depressed. His wife Gertrud reported in a telegram to her sister-in-law Ottilie the next day that Arnold died at 11:45 pm, 15 minutes before midnight (Stuckenschmidt 1977, 520). In a letter to Ottilie dated 4 August 1951, Gertrud explained, "About a quarter to twelve I looked at the clock and said to myself: another quarter of an hour and then the worst is over. Then the doctor called me. Arnold's throat rattled twice, his heart gave a powerful beat and that was the end" (Stuckenschmidt 1977, 521).

That is why Schoenberg was never tempted to compose with 13 tones!

[+ purplekow]

The fourteenth day of curmudgeonry has been an uninspiring one. The weather is cold. The day has been spent alone. Even the dogs seem to want to spend the time together and I am acting as their caterer and their doorman. I did the New York Times Crossword puzzle and watched a bit of football, but mostly, I just sat and moped. I had a dream that I was attending my own funeral and only three people showed up. In the dream, though I was dead, I was also alive, as you really cannot be dead in a dream, and I was lamenting the lack of turn out. Where were my friends, relatives, coworkers, acquaintances who wanted to offer their respects. Well, apparently they had other plans and so it was just the three of us, the mortician, the clergyman and me, four if you count dead me. I tried to engage the other two but they were engrossed in a conversation as to whether the clergyman needed to give a eulogy, considering the circumstances. He opted to say a quick prayer. The mortician said to let him know when he could close the box. That was it. Curmudgeon or not, that was it.

 

Late in the day, I watched a movie entitled Genius. The film is the story of a book editor, Max Perkins, and his interaction with Thomas Wolfe and to a lesser extent F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. The movie is interesting but I would only give it a tepid recommendation. There is however one scene in which Perkins is presented with the 5000 page rough draft of the novel which will become Of Time and the River. Perkins reads aloud a section of the book. I have no idea if this was Wolfe's writing or if it was the work of a screenwriter imitating Wolfe, in any case, the language and the flow is beautiful and the writing talent left me in awe. Ultimately, the section is trimmed from about 400 words to the sentence. Her eyes were blue. This caused me to consider, is less more or is more more and less just what most people have the attention span to accept?

 

So in your life, is less more? The details, the vivid pictures, the explanations and motivations, do any of these bring you any joy or any extra insight? Or do you prefer Joe Friday parody: "Just the facts, ma'am."? Black and white or color? Kansas or Oz?

[+ Charlie]

I like details, more or less.

[Despardo]

The fourteenth day of curmudgeonry has been an uninspiring one. The weather is cold. The day has been spent alone. Even the dogs seem to want to spend the time together and I am acting as their caterer and their doorman. I did the New York Times Crossword puzzle and watched a bit of football, but mostly, I just sat and moped. I had a dream that I was attending my own funeral and only three people showed up. In the dream, though I was dead, I was also alive, as you really cannot be dead in a dream, and I was lamenting the lack of turn out. Where were my friends, relatives, coworkers, acquaintances who wanted to offer their respects. Well, apparently they had other plans and so it was just the three of us, the mortician, the clergyman and me, four if you count dead me. I tried to engage the other two but they were engrossed in a conversation as to whether the clergyman needed to give a eulogy, considering the circumstances. He opted to say a quick prayer. The mortician said to let him know when he could close the box. That was it. Curmudgeon or not, that was it.

 

Late in the day, I watched a movie entitled Genius. The film is the story of a book editor, Max Perkins, and his interaction with Thomas Wolfe and to a lesser extent F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. The movie is interesting but I would only give it a tepid recommendation. There is however one scene in which Perkins is presented with the 5000 page rough draft of the novel which will become Of Time and the River. Perkins reads aloud a section of the book. I have no idea if this was Wolfe's writing or if it was the work of a screenwriter imitating Wolfe, in any case, the language and the flow is beautiful and the writing talent left me in awe. Ultimately, the section is trimmed from about 400 words to the sentence. Her eyes were blue. This caused me to consider, is less more or is more more and less just what most people have the attention span to accept?

 

So in your life, is less more? The details, the vivid pictures, the explanations and motivations, do any of these bring you any joy or any extra insight? Or do you prefer Joe Friday parody: "Just the facts, ma'am."? Black and white or color? Kansas or Oz?

Be of good cheer. A great many of us are depressed these days. I find consolation in numbers. Fortunately, my anti-depressants have kicked in. I turned 68 today--big thrill. Spent the day talking to the dog which is fine, polishing off a bottle of Korbel and making a rather nice macaroni and cheese. Next Friday (the 20th) I plan to attend an early evening demonstration in downtown

Seattle hosted by the Socialist Workers Party (it should do nicely) and then a concert of 3 Shostakovich concertos at the Seattle Symphony. Some grim Shostakovich usually cheers me up. As far as writing goes, I like elaborate prose by writers who can handle it like Henry James, otherwise I admire writers who can trim away all that is unnecessary and still make their point, like Elmore Leonard. Leonard once said that he had learned to delete all the parts of a novel that readers tended to skim over. In art in general, less can certainly be more, until it gets to the point where it is just less. On the other end of the scale, to quote Mae West, "Too much of a good thing can be quite wonderful."

[Phil_musc]

Not to hijack but -

 

Happy Birthday, Desperado!

[+ purplekow]

 

 

Despardo:

It may be raining, but there is a rainbow above you.

 

This has long been a favorite song of mine. It definitely made my Top Ten of popular songs that make you feel weepy. Yet there is a positive note to it and a push to live life to the fullest. So, on the Fifteenth Day of the Year of the Curmudgeon, I played a selection of songs which bring melancholia to new depths and new heights.

 

10 The Streets of Philadelphia Bruce Springsteen

9 Time of Your Life Greenday

8 Desparado Eagles

7 Dust In the Wind Kansas

6 Tears in Heaven Eric Clapton

5 The Living Years Mike and the Mechanics

4 Sounds of Silence Simon and Garfunkel

3 Another Old Lang Syne Dan Fogelberg

2 Fix You Cold Play

1 Lady in Red Chris DeBurgh

 

The last song is not generally a cryfest, but it has a particularly sad and wonderful connection for me.

So my fellows, which popular songs bring a tear to the eye and lump to the throat for you?

[actor61]

Thanks for the concern, but in reality, being downsized was the best outcome for me. I had already written a resignation letter when I was called to an emergency meeting and told that the end was near. As a result of not resigning, I received an extra three month's pay and I had time to consider my next decision while still employed.

 

In starting this thread, I was keeping my New Year's resolution to be a curmudgeon. It occurred to me that I was now old enough to be a curmudgeon and I wanted to try it on. So far, it really does not fit, but I am going to give it a reasonable try. If not, it is back to being a delight.

 

 

I did find this handy guide to being a curmudgeon if there are any others out there wishing to join the independent thinking, hard to please, grumpy club.

 

http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Curmudgeon

I became a curmudgeon quite recently and love it with all my heart. It's fun to be grumpy as long as you don't hurt anybody, and there's plenty to be grumpy about. Welcome to the CC - Curmudgeon Club. I'll show you the secret handshake later.