Author Archives: johnozed

About johnozed

I'm 50+ years old, 210-ish#, 6'2", reddish blonde, blue eyes with glasses (and without) masculine, funny, relatively intelligent, enjoy the company of assorted friends and family especially sordid friends and family. I love music, reading, writing, conversing, laughing, going to films, shows, concerts and smoking cigars. And I also enjoy looking nice in a suit and tie. Looking more like Lewis Lapham than Tom Wolfe. I'm sure there is more, but we'll just have to find out when I write about it. In a lifetime relationship with partner Bill Vila.

I Can Feel A Hot One

A day off and it’s been somewhat busy. After shaking off the strange dream of me trying to kill Rosemary’s Baby I got out of bed and started my day. I woke up with I Can See For Miles by the Who in my head.

A shower, a shave, some breakfast and coffee and soon I was off to the bibliothèque to find out what the hell is going on with my library card. I dropped off some CD’s last week and they were still on my card and in danger of being late. Bob Dylan’s Witmark Demos (Volume 9 of the Bootleg Series), The Scissor Sisters Night Work, the Jimi Hendrix Experience- Are You Experienced and the motion picture soundtrack of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The quite helpful librarian took a look and saw they were back in stock and dutifully removed them from my online library card. I love my bibliothèque.

From there it was off to the supermarket to buy groceries. Then it was home for a spell, did some cooking for tonight as well as for the week and also made some tuna salad for lunch for when I go back to work tomorrow and the days following.

Right now it looks like a major storm is approaching from the west. Yesterday, one of the bright spots in the day of staring into the abyss was seeing a hawk flying above the border of Hoboken and Weehawken, above the area called the Shades, in the shadow of Troy Tower. It took a few seconds to recognize it as a hawk and not merely a sea gull and yes it was majestic to watch. It was the high point of my day. I neglected to write about it and wish I had a taken a photograph of it.

And now it is raining.

I was also thinking about my education today and why I didn’t continue onto college. Would things have turned out differently? Probably. I had 13 years from kindergarten to senior year of high school which was mainly spent trying not to fail and get a passing grade.

I remember in junior year of high school, Sister Reginald telling the class that we were there because we had to be, but when we continued onto college there would be no one forcing us to go to class. Me being the type of person to not do something that he doesn’t want to do, had an epiphany and realized that it would be a waste of money since I loathed education and more than likely would be skipping classes.

For some reason I also remember a classmate, Don Francis being made to stand out in the hallway for something that he had done and slowly unzipping his zipper with a smile on his face while staring at me in class as he looked through the door. Don Francis left my school that year and I never saw him again though perhaps if he told me to go to college with him I might have, even though I believe he was straight.

So from Mrs. Burson to Mrs. Talamini to Sister Carla to Sister Reginald I did not enjoy school, going through it with much difficulty and when I graduated high school it made more sense to go from part time to full time working for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich where I worked in the college department and read a lot of the books on my own time that my classmates were paying hundreds of dollars to own.

Who knows, perhaps they bought the books I had already read. In any event, I don’t have any regrets about not continuing my education and with the employment situation today and knowing a few college and university graduates who are currently out of work it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference anyway.

And still I delete hundred, perhaps thousands of spam subscribers to this here blog. It’s an ongoing process and if I don’t stay on top of it, it turns into several pages of names and email addresses to be deleted. I don’t know what will happen if I do not delete, but I am more comfortable with the three subscribers that I have.

So thank you Rand, HarbCard and Denali Kid for subscribing. And I guess some recognition should also go to lazy teat Greg who reads this blog every day. Well scratch Denali Kid off the list. Just sent an email and it came back as undeliverable.








I Can Dream About You

Well this has been quite a day from hell. Once again it started last night, not a good night of sleep which carried over into today. I was pretty tried and when I went to bed, Bill still wasn’t home.

A melatonin helped a bit and by the time I started drifting off to sleep Bill had come home. It wasn’t easy falling asleep after that despite some tossing and turning. Some sleep was had but not nearly enough.

I was hoping that Bill would have been home when I arrived since I wanted to share the rare good mood I happened to be in. It seems I just get really messed up in the head when I am alone. And last night I was alone for too long.

Bill apparently met up with his friend Fred after bringing his mother back from the beauty parlor. Fred gave Bill a brandy warmer shaped like a skier to give to me, as well as a snifter.

I suppose it would be nice if I drank brandy, or drank anything really. Perhaps life would be so much better if I was an alcoholic. They seem to have all the fun and some of them turned out to be pretty good writers, up to a point.

It was a day where I would have preferred to have been left alone on my lunch hour but no, the odd customer finds me and proceeds to talk to me about U2 living in his building.

He was also impressed to see me reading a book, telling me he was donating about 250 books to the United Nations. I was hoping that he would not offer me any books. And he didn’t so that worked out well.

I started reading ‘Our Band Can Be Your Life’ by Michael Azerrad. It’s all about the underground indie scene in the 1980’s. It was definitely what I needed to read to jump start my day, only a few hours late which by the way is so punk.

I also made the mistake of playing music that I wanted to hear since Calvin was out. It’s just Bradley and Thomas and I today so I played Sandinista which turned out to be too much for the lunk heads in the man cave.

The lunk heads were vocal enough to complain so I gave the controls to Bradley who proceeded to play only the very best narcoleptic jazz music. When I came back from my lunch hour it was still playing and I realized that jazz is the silliest music around, at least in the cigar shack.

And even though I was reading about how Greg Ginn enjoyed jazz (as well as thinking the Grateful Dead were the best band ever) it still leaves me quite cold. I should have gotten it by now, but it just alienates me more and more when I hear it.

Right now, I am just looking forward to going home and seeing Bill and having a day off tomorrow. And it’s off to the bibliothèque for me tomorrow.

Glad to be home, Bill is making noise a few feet behind me. It’s been a long day and a few times I stared into the abyss. Bill was great, listening to me on the phone and greeting me when I walked through the door with a great big hug.

I am so happy to be off tomorrow. This retail world is grinding me down. You might think that after a year it would get better, but it hasn’t. Still I hang in there. There are people that don’t have a job and there are people with worse jobs than mine.

Tons of spam subscribers every day, a good portion spent deleting each and every name. Are you one of them?