jamie gray's personal blog, featuring his always unique perspectives on life, love, politics, corruption, traffic...and whatever else makes him rant. and rant he will. count on it.
We sent them fight
We sent them to die
Now The ones who came back
Have to fight to survive
We owe them our future
We gained from their loss
We can’t leave them to suffer
In the weight of their cost
The flag it still waves
The red white and blue
Oh say can you see what
They’ve given for you
When you wake up today
Safe at home or afar
Give thanks to the soldiers
Wherever they are.
#VeteransDay2022
Conjurer of Bytes, Notes & Words. Seeker of Truth, Peace, & Harmony. Jamie Gray lives in upstate NY.
It’s just another election. Another chance to vote for someone you don’t know or care about, and hope they care about you, even though you know they don’t care about you. Two parties with one goal: to keep us regular people from wanting more.
The more we want, the less they can take. They make promises, but things move very slowly in government, and especially at the Federal level, change comes slowly. It can be frustrating. I’ve been expecting cannabis legalization ‘soon’ since 1980. Maybe it will happen this decade. Frustrating.
But I believe this election is different. They’ve taken away just about all they can take, from as many people as they could, and now they are coming for our democracy. Now they want the power to decide who wins the election without regard for our actual votes. They want the power to override the choices of the people, because their own choices are so unpopular that forcing them upon us is the only way.
It may be the one party that’s pushing for a more authoritarian America than the other right now, but in truth it’s the system that allowed it to get THIS bad. Our elections have become about money and manipulation, not issues that most people care about. Re-election and party loyalty have become more important than American progress and the Constitution.
Our government has lost it’s way. Once the greatest democratic experiment in the World, American politics has descended into a system of corporate rule, where the number of dollars is more important than the number of votes. Two party rule means we get to vote for two sides of the same old shit, and lack of term limits and ethics standards means it can be very profitable to be a lifetime politician.
We get to choose which politicians work for the corporate overlords, instead of public servants who work for US. Our government is run by an elite ruling class, rather than everyday Americans in service to make America better for All.
The Founders would cringe at the horror that we’ve wrought from their precious framework. But they also gave us the power to fix it…IF we choose to use it. IF we decide to reform our corrupt system, and refuse to allow our vote to become completely meaningless. Before the corrupt political elite make sure that we can’t.
I will vote tomorrow, and I’m voting BLUE because there are too many MAGA election deniers running on Team Red, and democracy is just too fucking important to fuck around.
#Vote #Election2022 #VoteBlue #Independent
Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.
People who want to live their lives by their own rules
People who want to tell others how to live
If you’re in the second group, kindly go fuck yourselves with a fire hose. ~jg
Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.
New York Native Jamie Gray is a Conjurer of Bytes, Notes & Words; Seeker of Truth, Peace, & Harmony.
I don’t know why. I’ve never been to the UK. My parents are both from NY. I have no actual connection to Queen Elizabeth. But hearing that she was on her deathbed, and subsequently passed, brought tears to my eyes.
Queen Elizabeth II passed away today.
My Grammy told my mom as a child that she had to keep her room clean in case the Queen were to pay a visit. My mom told us kids the same thing. I suppose I stopped fretting about a Her Majesty’s Inspection a long time ago, but I still found myself weeping today, even as I knew for sure I’d never have to pass the Royal mustard. (That’s a weird expression, isn’t it?)
But if I’m being honest with myself, I know that I’m sobbing, not for a queen I’ve never been subject to, the Mum of Nation, a land far away, but for my own sadnesses and loss. If I’m being honest, I’ve spent a lot of time with tear-streaks on my cheeks the past few years. It doesn’t take much anymore.
The loss of your mom is hard. I miss mine every day; today more than many. Some of today’s tears are for the British people, losing theirs. But as we kids learn to live on, beyond our parents days on earth, the UK will go forward with King Charles (that sounds SO weird to say) at the helm of the British Empire. The sadness will linger, and then fade I suppose, but her reign will be remembered forever. God Save The Queen.
King Charles III becomes King
I wonder how many kids are secretly breathing a sigh of relief that The Queen will NOT be coming to check up on the tidiness of their bedrooms?
Jamie Gray | Conjurer of Bytes, Notes & Words. Seeker of Truth, Peace, & Harmony.
Racism isn’t the real problem, labels are. Don’t get me wrong, racism is a very real problem. I think we all need to practice anti-racism daily. But, that means finding the causes of racism, and effecting changes.
Because racism is more than just learned hatred. It’s about how we think. How we form our subjective opinions about the things we experience around us. That’s what needs to change. Because, one of our biggest problems is that, for some reason, we have the need to lump everything into a group of similar things, and then put a label on it.
When we label something, all objectivity goes out the window. Find an unlabeled jar of green, leafy material in your kitchen cupboard…you might draw the subjective opinion that it’s Oregano. Someone else might start looking for a bong to stuff it in. If there’s a label on it, your opinion doesn’t matter any more. Which is fine, until you open that mislabeled jar, and you smoke yourself into a huge headache instead of making spaghetti.
Objective thinking means overcoming the impulse to label everything, and instead letting everything label itself via discovery. Asking extra questions, rather than assuming the answers, based on labels that may or may not be fact. Observation, rather than intervention. Considering infinite possibilities of our futures, rather than just using past experiences to guide our present actions.
Objective thinking means that everyone gets the benefit of the doubt. Each person we meet becomes an opportunity to grow, rather than someone you can trust, or someone you should fear. Using our subjective opinions about events from our past should inform us in the present, but not control how we see unfamiliar experiences and new people in our lives.
Because a lot of times, we’ve got a mislabeled jar in the cupboard, and before making purple kush pizza for the family, maybe we should open the jar and give it a sniff. ~jg
Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.
Jamie Gray | Conjurer of Bytes, Notes & Words. Seeker of Truth, Peace, & Harmony.
Is everyone properly horrified yet?
Or will some folks continue to sit silent while even MORE of our liberty is sold to the highest corporate bidder?
Because THIS America we have now is complacency’s reward. We MUST demand a BETTER America. Better for ALL, not just a privileged few. E Pluribus Unum. From many, one.
Happy July 4th. Happy Birthday to the most divided America since the Civil War…Funny how little we’ve REALLY changed in 150+ years. Except the Mason-Dixon line now runs through every town, right down Main Street.
But we don’t have to accept this America as Ours. We can change Our America to become the Home of Freedom for realz, Freedom for ALL, not just Freedom for the ones who can afford it. ~jg
What if your vote mattered, and the money you paid in taxes was actually spent on things that mattered to YOU? Imagine if you got to vote on where that money got spent. What if you could check boxes on your tax return to determine what purposes your tax money could be spent on, and the government HAD to spend it on those things only? Yes, spend my taxes on education. No, don’t spend anything on military. Yes, feed the poor. No, tax breaks to ExxonMobil.
Well, it probably wouldn’t work because rich people would start paying just enough taxes to fuck over the rest of us…but the point is this: We don’t live in a democracy. It’s a plutocratic oligarchy. Your vote may count for WHO you elect, but what they do when they get there is decided by money. Legal bribery, really. They call it lobbying, but rich people pay cash to get the government to do what they want. The more money you have, the louder your voice and the more likely you are to get your way.
Most of us have better things to spend our money on, because we know the puny amount we could spend wouldn’t buy us a second thought from our government. But wealthy people and corporations have deep pockets, and control the outcome of our votes. We don’t get to decide ‘pass gun control’ or ‘don’t pass gun control’. All we can do is vote red or blue and wait for nothing to happen.
Our voices have been silenced by big government and a rigged two party system that is designed to self perpetuate and grow, exploiting the masses more as it does. The rich get richer. Pandemic Recession. War. None of it matters when you’re rich as fuck. Bank accounts keep growing. Lobbyists are hired. Votes are solicited. Laws are changed to spend more government money here or there. Never where it’s really needed by the majority of our citizens.
People who need help go without, while the rich get tax cuts. Billions go to subsidize fossil fuel corporate shareholders while our veterans are forgotten. Teachers use their own money to buy paper and pencils because schools are underfunded. Folks lose their houses because of medical bills, while Jeff Bezos blasts his ugly bald head and all his rich buddies into space. It doesn’t matter who you vote for. As long as money makes the decisions in DC, it doesn’t matter who you elect. Not in this system.
But a system that pretends to be democratic can’t last. Good intentions or not, this is not what the framers could have forseen. They were wise, not psychic. They built checks and balances, but there’s a way around everything if you’re willing to sacrifice your conscience, and well, most of the politicians we elect have none.
So it keeps growing. Bigger. More corrupt. More money for the wealthy, less of everything for everyone else. Less happiness. Less free time to think about being unhappy. Less money. Less LIFE. Until it ultimately implodes, thanks to corruption and greed, or explodes in revolution, whichever comes first.
There’s still time, for a ‘peaceful revolution’ at the ballot box, but since one party is going out of their way to erode our faith in elections, the other kind of revolution will quickly become the only game in town.
Your VOTE still matters. Choose wisely. Choose Independent. Choose Implosion. Demand better candidates. Demand term limits. Demand money OUT of politics Demand a VOICE in the future. Demand DEMOCRACY. Don’t buy the party lines. EITHER of them. They are both designed to polarize and divide. They are both designed to exploit. Designed to fail.
United we Stand, Divided we Fail. ~jg
Conjurer of Bytes, Notes & Words. Seeker of Truth, Peace, & Harmony. | Jamie Gray jamiegraymusic.com
Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.
Everyone likes to say that children are the future. Here in the United States of Assholia, some asshats want them to go into that future blindfolded, filled with hate and fear for people who aren’t just like them. Those people need to move out of the way, and let positive change prevail. ~jg
Interesting read on the topic:
What rights do US children have? None.
https://bit.ly/3mXiWk5
‘School children have less legal rights than the unborn.’ ~jg
Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.
I would never want to tell you what to think, any more than try to tell you what to do. What to eat. What to buy. Who to Fuck. These are your decisions, not mine. You don’t even have to think at all, for fuck’s sake. Living your best life without thinking might make me a little jealous, but I wouldn’t ever seek to deprive you of that joy.
But I will urge you one thing. If you chooseto think, think for yourself. The act of Thinking is, again, completely optional. I don’t judge you for your ability to turn off the silent, running commentary in your head. Go for it.
But please don’t try to sell me someone else’s thoughts if you have none of your own. Chances are I’ve already heard their opinion…maybe even from them. Nobody likes an unsolicited parrot, pretending to be something they are not. ~jg
“Today may not feel like Tuesday. But what is Tuesday supposed to feel like, anyway?
…Talk amongst yourselves.”
Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter
I think I spent a lot of time trying to be the best version of myself that I could be, rather than just being myself. ~jg
#justthinking #deepthought #whatever
Meet Jack, the Big Black Cock (Jersey Giant we think).
Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.
Yesterday was about 70°F. First nice day of the Spring. So we took the dogs on a hike up the hill that is our land. The dogs had fun. We got some here-comes-spring exercise. Yay us.
Back in the house about 15 minutes later, I felt something crawling on my arm. A little teeny tick! The fucking snow just melted, and these little fuckers are already out?!
FUCK. Panic ensued, of course. Clothes stripped off, straight into the washer. Both dogs were bathed within the hour (because my sweetheart Navi is amazing) and both the floofs got their first spring flea and tick treatment.
I couldn’t stop feeling ticks crawling on me, even after a shower.
I don’t go outside as much as I’d like. Ticks are one reason why. They keep finding new and scary tick-borne diseases that can really fuck you up. Fleas and ticks can give you everything from bubonic plague to Lyme’s disease, while they’re sucking your blood.
Ticks. Fucking Parasites.
Indoors is my haven. When vampire insects hitchhike their way in, breaching the sanctum walls, I kinda freak out. I felt ticks in the bed all night long (there were no ticks). I think I still feel them crawling on me this morning. (Is THAT one?!?)
It’s warm again, but it’s raining, so I’m not even tempted to go out for a hike. I don’t know when the next time I’ll be hiking up there, but there will be repellents involved. Bug spray. Long, light-colored pants. Hair in a ponytail AND a hat. Then I’ll avoid the tall grass, and woodpiles and logs, and stay out of thicket and undergrowth where they may be hiding, hoping to hitch a ride. So they can kill me.
Or maybe I’ll just stay inside, and enjoy the Great Indoors.
It’s up to you, Russians, the children of Mother Russia. Time to stand up and say Fuck No. #FuckPutin. Save Russia. Save Ukraine, and the world. You can be the heroes of this nightmare.
#OverthrowPutin
If you are Pro-Putin now, the whole world is against you. Except maybe China, but they’re still playing it pretty close to the hip. Both Democrats and Republicans even agree, and they don’t agree on fuckingANYTHING.
I think Russians have an important choice to make. You can be on the RIGHT side of history. You can choose to #Resist tyranny, like your Ukranian brothers and sisters are doing.
It’s time for a new Russian government. Actual Democracy. Time to truly be a world leader, rather than just another rogue nation, with nuclear weapons.
It won’t be easy. Doing what is necessary often isn’t. ~jg
Jamie Gray is a New York writer, musician, and thinker of thoughts.
You may disagree and will still be treated with respect, unless you do not show the same respect. #SpeakTruth #BeKind
Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.
Insurance seems like a good idea. You pay some money each month in case bad stuff happens. If bad stuff happens, somebody else pays to fix the damages.
But then it creeps into every corner of our lives. We insure our cars, our homes, our health, and more. Our lives.
Then the insurance company decides to cancel your policy. When they think you’ve become a bad risk (for whatever reason they choose), they can just decide to kiss you goodbye. Sometimes they don’t even explain why. That would make it easier for you to appeal their decision…if you can figure out how.
So, now you can’t drive because you can’t get car insurance. Or your bank calls in the mortgage on your home because they get notified that their investment is no longer protected. If you can’t find coverage, they can foreclose on your house.Losing your health insurance can literally kill you.
Some states have laws to protect your rights, and help for those who can’t find insurance at all. I’m guessing it’s far from universal, and if anything like NY, hard to even find out about, much less apply for help.
Which brings me to our tragic tale, which I think is important to show the kind of absolute testicular vise-grip that the insurance industry has over our lives. They make the rules, and they expect us to bend the knee. This writing is me, refusing to yield.
Welcome to New York (NY welcome sign pic)
New York State is a beautiful place. Utica is a wonderful little city. But the insurance company that shares it’s name, UTICA National Insurance? Not so much. #UticaNationalInsurance is a legit dumpster fire. I don’t usually rant specifically about a named company unless I’m convinced that the world needs to know just how bad we’re talking about. Oh, It’s BAD.
Utica National Insurance is actually a Texas corporation, so they are just exploiting the name (Utica logo pic)
A few weeks after we moved in, UTICA started sending nasty notes threatening to cancel the policy if we didn’t cooperate with their inspection. Apparently, we’d been ignoring calls from “Mueller Reports” that were inadvertently blocked as spam. Seriously. “Mueller Reports.” Oops. My bad.
It ain’t much, but it’s all ours.
#NoMortgage #OurFarm (Pic)
OK. So, we bought a cute little fixer-up farm house, in a little upstate town near Ithaca, NY. We knew it needed some work, but nothing major. We had it inspected. Everything was basically working, and there were no major safety risks. As we waited for the closing our old house, we made a list of all the things we wanted to fix, once we had the money from the sale.
A couple days later, the inspector showed up and I walked around with him throughout his visit. He was helpful. He pointed some stuff out. There were some obvious things, like a missing railing we weren’t sure was required. I pointed out a couple problems I’m sure he also saw, and explained how we would be addressing them. He didn’t test anything. He just looked at it.
He also asked a lot of questions that we, as brand new homeowners, knew nothing about.
-We didn’t know the wood stove was installed professionally, because it was here when we got here. One demerit.
-We didn’t know that the older heating system was an EXCELLENT system, with a LIFETIME WARRANTY on the heat exchanger, fully transferrable. We didn’t know, because we didn’t have it serviced yet because we just moved in. Two Demerits. Now UTICA wants a perfectly good furnace REPLACED.
-The inspector pointed out a small amount of moss on the garage/kitchen roof. He said it should get cleaned off before it becomes a problem, but it’s wasn’t that bad. UTICA says: REPLACE the ROOF. In the middle of winter. Demerit #3.
-We bought the house knowing that siding on one wall needed to be redone. Three windows in the same wall also were slated for replacement. Thanks to a leaky oil tank found in the yard of our old house during the sale, causing months of delays and lack of cash, this project got pushed to this coming Spring. UTICA of course wants all the siding replaced and repaired in the middle of winter. Demerit #4.
-There’s an old wooden Bilco-style door to the basement that needs replacement this spring. Water leaks around the door and there’s some seepage due to standing surface water and lack of gutters and drainage. The water dried up completely this winter, so it’s not from plumbing. A drainage and gutter project is the top of the list for when the ice melts and the ground thaws this spring. Demerits anyway. #5 and #6.
There’s probably a couple others I missed, but the point is, most of these are minor hazards at best, in terms of safety and risk. Some are blatantly wrong, like demanding a furnace be replaced or a wood stove be inspected because we didn’t have the chimney cleaned before we moved in (and because the inspection they DID wasn’t good enough).
Here’s the worst though. Two days before Christmas…no shit, December 23. I get an email from my agent. She tells me, she just talked to the adjuster from Utica. They want a whole bunch of stuff fixed in 45 days, or they will cancel 30 says later. She included the “Mueller Report” that I was required by law to get a copy of.
Utica National Insurance – The Grinch the Stole Christmas (Grinch Pic)
I reviewed the report. It didn’t specify exactly what needed to be fixed. It was just the report that Utica’s adjuster supposedly based his decisions on, not the decisions themselves. My agent’s list of items needing to be addressed seemed random and incomplete. I also told her that re-roofing in January wasn’t going to happen, and that UTICA needed to be reasonable on their time frame. I further advised her that I would wait until I got the official notification from Utica, and respond directly to Utica upon receipt.
I never got a thing. Not a word, from UTICA or my agent. Until this past Saturday Feb 26 when I got a cancellation notice. 30 days. March 27. Alrighty then.
So, apparently the 45 days have been ticking away, and Utica felt no need nor obligation to actually contact me directly until now. Why actually give me 45 days to fix stuff in the middle of winter in Upstate NY?
It’s pretty clear that they don’t want my business. They’ve been treating me like a criminal or confidence man, since they wrote the policy last summer.
As if I was plotting some heinous future insurance fraud or something. Which is ironic as hell, considering we were the victim of a fraudulent hit and run auto claim, and UTICA REFUSES to actually investigate themselves, forcing me to fight with the police for information that UTICA should be requesting, not me. The police inspected our vehicle (and found no damage) 60 minutes after the supposed accident. All Utica needs to do is pick up the phone and dial the numbers and talk to the cops. Ask for the full report. Nope, that’s my job.
UTICA would rather persecute their customers. They are going to cancel our insurance because the furnace looks old and there’s moss on the roof. Meanwhile, a road raging asshat files a false police accident report that 3 people in our car can testify never happened, and they REFUSE to investigate, putting the burden of proof (and to keep my rates from going up due to a hit-and-run claim) squarely on me.
Are you kidding me? How can they do this?
How can Utica National Insurance be this inept and stay in business? How is it that huge insurance companies can do whatever they want and get away with it? Because they have the biggest Congressional lobbies on K Street. Because they know we can’t do anything to hurt them. Because their profits are ‘regulated’ too.
Jamie Gray (pic)| Writer Refuses to Bend the Knee to Insurance Dictatorship.
Did you get here? If so, I love you. Thanks for reading my rant. ~jg
Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.
If Ben Franklin had his way, we’d be eating the national bird ? every Thanksgiving. Or maybe we’d eat bald eagle, because Turkeys would be a protected symbol of America’s deliciousness? #YouTellMe ~jg
America’s love-hate relationship with the bald eagle https://bit.ly/3hszvBi
The Bald Eagle is protected in the US, but I bet it tastes just like Turkey.
Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.
