Even The Onion is Mortal

I have to remove the link to the Onion in my web feed because over the last year they definitely replaced all their writers and the new writers are very annoying to me. I realize in a satire institution they have to have new blood because no one can write at the top of their game about the same news cycle events. You need a new voice that understands the market and identifies with the target audience or at least says the same shit in a different way. I get it. I imagine I would last two years on the staff of The Onion before the dismal irony and non-stop parody of our own desperation got to be too much. Eventually even comedy writers get scared that they are not only doing nothing in the wake of one disaster after another but they are mocking the reaction of people who are legitimately trying to do something. And this contradiction has occurred even to humble Oggy in his times of reflection.

I'll Be Home For Chrsitmas

I had a request for some songs and it took some time to get it together and upload it but here's "I'll be Home For Christmas" as performed at the old age home. It's the only sheet music I had in my collection. The sad news is that when I tried to tackle an uptempo version of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, the 87 year old Minnie couldn't help but feel that Christmas spirit and started to dance. She is generally wheelchair bound so I had to slow the Reindeer pack down but it was too late and Minnie had already injured her knee and run out of breath. I really want to die a merciful death early and painlessly rather than have a front row seat to my own decay.
It's one of the great miracles that the virgin birth of a man 2012 years ago on the opposite side of the world somehow is celebrated with songs about flying ungulates in North America.

This makes no sense. I got a pair of socks and some strong painkillers in my stocking.

Nouveau Bohemian

Piano tuning apprentice. Bing Crosby's Sail Along, Silv'ry Moon keeps Oggy company

Attempting to tune a 40 year old Knabe piano in a room without heat. Freezing. Drinking spiked moonshine to dull senses. Using a new digital laptop as a high tech strobe tuner. Spent more on piano tuning accessories than I grossed in all of 2011 which still only amounted to a half day of overtime work in the oil field. (Note rosewood handle on tuning lever) Determined to play tin pan alley songs for the entertainment of deaf dogs....and then blogging about it.

Take a good look because this kind of lifestyle will not exist in the new world order.

As soon as my back gets better I'm going to Guatemala.

Aftermath

That word has been in the news quite a bit. Aftermath. I'm thinking it is a catchphrase in the knee-jerk double speak manipulation of reality that Fox News and other marketeers of disinformation use to keep people thinking less critically and more inside a box that vomits capitalism. They want us to think that at 7am we start our day. at noon we eat. at 5 pm we go home. when tragedy strikes there is a pattern of preparation, ignorance, death, grief and renewal...and aftermath. This is the subtle manipulation of a culture by the big thinkers behind the curtain. We are not a philosophical nation but we like to pretend we are when the rest of the world is watching. Aftermath is a five cent word being used by balloon chested news anchors with big hairspray manes of Sub continent nun hair extensions and false white teeth caps. Those are who we look to for guidance like blind people checking a cemetery for speed dating. If you aren't repulsed then you are numb like Novocaine.

Is Today the end of the world?

Oggy doesn't have to hold a news conference to announce his views on gun violence. If any politician thinks he can control guns then he should run his next campaign on ending prostitution and underage drinking because he's totally insane or else he's the greatest statesman ever. That will never ever happen. We let the cat out of the bag and the FBI can't keep track of assault rifles sold to drug cartels and the CIA sells rocket launchers to Bin Laden to fight the Soviets in exchange for warriors to kill Honduran hippies. Ok, but the Kittery Trading Post gun rack is the problem?? It's too late for a conservative approach to gun ownership. Radical measures for radical people. We won our freedom with stolen muskets in 1776 and then slaughtered each other in 1862 and then gunned down Germans and Japs in 1945 and Bin Laden was introduced to the business side of an assault rifle a few years back. Nobody wants our schools to become killing fields but that also applies to our fear that China will launch an invasion while Family Guy reruns play to stoned obese sloths...so guns are as plentiful as dental floss and we are technically safer because of it... until unpredictable human nature steps in.