Hi there, I am Ray and here's the scoop on me
.I am 59 years old (yikes - scary) but I feel and look about 60 (hmmm maybe 75 lol !)(I think that because I can't see the bald spot that everyone else can) so I live in denial, which ain't just a river in Egypt......
You could say that I have gone to the dogs since I have been living with 3 of em, who I call the puppies and I must say we are very compatible, occassionally we like to howl together back at the coyotes. For recreational purposes, we like to walk down to the mailbox and thru the woods, and the puppies love to chase large birds.... They love to do stuff so all I have to do is "think" of going out and they start going nuts !, especially when I go for my shoes.
{FROM THE PUPPIES POINT OF VIEW} Hi there, we are the puppies and we have a guy named Ray conned into thinking he owns us, but in reality we own his butt. When we want something we just start howling until he gets off his lazy @ss and performs...We taught him some tricks and we will tell you about them...We just drool on him around dinner time to get him off his lazy butt to feed us...If we don't like the food the cheap sucker got us, we refuse to eat it until he gets the good stuff (boy is he easy lol). Our goal is to teach Ray to roll over and beg and we are close to our goal as we scratch on the door in the middle of the night and he begs us to shut up ! Most of all we are proud of the fact that we have taught him manners...and that is NEVER expect us to go out in the rain, cause we "might" get wet ! He now knows better because if we have to go out in that rain or snow, we are going to come in the house and shake ourselves till the house is covered with wet, smelly dog hairs, and Ray doesn't want to get off his lazy (u know by now) butt to clean up the place.... and besides we kinda like it with a slight smell of "dogginess" in the air.
{BACK TO RAY} Well you can see I have been "dognapped" and they have trained me well.. I am proud to say that I have led quite an unconventional life...learning most things the hard way...doing everything in reverse order...not eating my vegetables.....spending too much time on the internet.....and most of all I would have to say that my main interest is "life", studying it, viewing it, and thinking about it all the time (Does this guy's elevator go to the top floor ? Enquiring minds want to know ). I am interested in anything that is real....
Yes folks,I would have to say that is what is going on as far as I am concerned, and I have come to some conclusions that you can read about by clicking on below, but just like vegetables, I don't like anything shoved down my throat like religion or someone repeating to me what they were just told, so I will just talk about some of the things I have realized, and then you can determine what floor my elevator goes to (or remains idling in the basement)..... what is reality
I grew up in Westchester County, New York in a town called Chappaqua and went to Horace Greeley High school until I moved to Cedarhurst, Long Island where I hated the school there and quit in my senior year. While sweeping floors in a grocery store, I opted to get out of town and I joined the Army at 18 and spent 3 years in Bamberg, Germany (near Nurnburg). It was a good thing because I was missing the Viet Nam war unlike my classmates who were graduating and joining the draft pool which almost seemed like a death sentence once the war got going (just ask bubba Clinton).
Before I joined the Army tho, I led my little reign of terror on the streets of Long Island with my little hobby of drag racing.....I loved it.....We hung out at a hamburger stand on Sunrise Highway everynight, eating Wetson's hamburgers and throwing our garbage out the window to see who could make the biggest mess. Then you would just watch all the hot rods come in and there were some real muscle cars as this was 1963 and all the companies were coming out with factory hot rods, really cool!! These cars would pull in and the whole place would start vibrating, with thumping big motors. Everyone would oooh and ahhh at them and when they left the parking lot, they would have to make a right turn and the thing to do was leave the biggest patch of rubber and make the most noise pulling out......really cool....
At this time I was driving a 1950 Fordillac which was a custom built maroon Ford coupe with a Cadillac motor and it looked completely stock, which made it a "sleeper" and so much fun to drag race cause nobody knew what you had !!
When I was 16, we were moving from New York to Florida as my father was retired and already living down there, and the folks were waiting for me to finish out the school year...but since I was getting Ds and Fs, it didn't seem to matter much so I told my mom let's go. Before I left, I wanted to leave my mark (like a dog on a fire hydrant) and pull a little stunt making my grand departure.....so I fired up a Marlboro in 7th period math class and saw the big finger pointing to the door as I laughed my way out, I am outta here......
The day we arrvived after 3 days driving, he had a heart attack and died. My mom decided it was best to go back to NY since the house wasn't sold so back we came and guess what ?, I HAD to go back to the school I had just exited like a complete jerk (total humiliation)....wow !
So anyway, I did three years in the army in an artilley batallion in Germany, and my job when I first got there was to be a chart operator who determines target range and our guns fired 8" rounds (200 lbs) from an 8" howitzer which had a range of 15 miles, powered by Greyhound bus diesel engines that whined and screamed. Not too many related civillian jobs for this one.... LOL But after a 10 day ride on a troop ship, I was discharged a SP5 on July 25, 1966 and I had a little gift to myself waiting, a brand new 1966 427 Corvette, that I had ordered 6 months previously, with the money I had inherited. My mom picked me up, we went home and I got out of those "rags" and went and picked up my new Vette.
In the next few months I voluntarilly showed everyone what a 427 Vette could do, racing all over the place and picking up a few speeding tickets.... Even took it to the drag strip and it just burned rubber all the way down the track, and to keep it stock you had to leave the original tires on which fit the small wheel wells....boy that puppy hauled and it was loud with the side exhaust... It was the middle of August and real hot and you would get caught in a traffic jam and that car was hot ! You sit there watching the temperature guage needle disappear and the motor starts cracklin, and it was a bummer. Well by the third month I was told the third insurance company had just dropped me (like a used rubber), and the pressure was on me, 425 horsepower, 21, and NO place to go....any risk here ???? One night while my mom was getting on my case about the car, she was on a stool and fell and broke her arm.....and while in the hospital I told her I would sell the car, and I did....I had my dream car for 3 months...
One weekend while bored and restless, I decided I needed a change so I rented a U Haul trailer, packed up my stereo and stuff to my new 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix (factory 4 speed w/air) and headed for California...how exciting.....I went back to college ( I got a GED in the army) and actually graduated from something, Fullerton Jr. College and moved back to NY to work on Madison Avenue for S & H Green Stamps as a budget analyst and administrator in their mail marketing dept. After a few years of this, I certainly knew what I didn't want in my life and I quit, to enter into self employment as I opened a stereo equiptment store called Sounds N Stuff which I absoulutely hated because you had to be there all the time. (If anyone ever wants to open a store, go work in one first and get an idea of what to expect).....Six months later I bought a new 1971 VW camper and away I went with my old english sheepdog named Daphne. For the next 2 years we traveled back and forth from NY to LA, having a ball and seeing life....
One day while in LA, I met a guy who's friend sold real estate and they told me I could get my own house for nothing down since I was a Veteran and before you knew it, I had a house ! A real nice 4 bedroom house in the San Fernando Valley for $27 G and $236 house payments.....wow...
see my travels with Transcendental Daphne
So here I am living in a real nice house, and I enrolled at Calif. State at Northridge under the GI bill and my major was film production. The chip on my shoulder was concealed by my long hair and I had opinions about everything, including violence since the Viet Nam war was going on. I was doing real well in school, and then I hit this film class where you have to make 2 movies using a super 8 camera, and it had to be a basic flick including violence.....hmm no way Jose, I wasn't going to do that so I did things my own way. Daf had two puppies (had them on a weekend trip to Yosemite - we didn't even know she was ready to have them) named Flip and Flashback and we had an all white cat named Swami. We also had a wild pigeon named "little bird" who lived right above the front door....So the flick involved the dogs chasing the cat who was constantly chasing the bird all to the background music of Pink Floyd, Dark side of the Moon......I thought it was just great, but ole Sidney the prof was pissed and gave me a C.....
To improve the quality and try to outdo myself, my second movie went a little different...hehe. I went to Kmart and charged a camera, shot the movie over the weekend, and returned it Monday morning....and this flick was to the sound of Stevie Wonder, Living in the City, which was about a young kid who gets busted walking down the street by a narc in an unmarked car. The narc picks him up, cuffs him and puts him in the back seat, and then drives up to the house he just left to bust them. As he charges thru the front door, the house empties out from both sides and the flick ends with someone letting te kid free and all running down the street !!! According to Sidney, goodness must prevail and in my opinion it did, but in his opinion he rewarded me with a D this time....As far as I know, these were the first videos, surely the first ones I ever saw..........and I said to myself, this is a bunch of crap and quit ! This was 1975 and 6 years later MTV came out, but I was outta here, having moved to Oregon in the next year.
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to be continued...........