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HARRIS GRAY

~ Telling You Stories

HARRIS GRAY

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Trump or Hillary – or Both?!

03 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by harrisgray in Uncategorized

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Can you imagine Donald Trump as president? Can you stand the thought of President Hillary Clinton? How would you feel if they were both president? Welcome to the Imperfect Compromise.

Election day 2016 ends very badly. Hillary crushes Trump in the electoral vote. But the popular vote is a dead heat. Riots ensue as reports of fraud pour in—hacking, postal irregularities, entire states unable to post results. The last straw: NFL teams refuse to play, in the name of political justice for all.

Our nation comes unglued. The system is broken and must be fixed now!

A select presidential election commission needs a year. In the meantime the 2 candidates will share the presidency. Six months for each. The nation (and the NFL) are temporarily mollified. Inauguration Day 2017 arrives, and Trump goes first….

Russian invasion, Middle East conflagration, terrorist attacks on the homeland. Economic recession, border intervention, and what do we do about healthcare? One of these deeply flawed candidates will be our next president. How would Hillary and Trump handle foreign and domestic crises? What path would they pave for our future?

Don’t cast that vote until you read our voter’s guide, The Imperfect Compromise.

Trump, Hillary, politics, Election 2016

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Harris Gray – Guy’s Guy Guys

24 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by harrisgray in Uncategorized

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Our favorite interview yet. Big thanks to Robert Manni and his Guy’s Guy Radio program. http://percolate.blogtalkradio.com/offsiteplayer?hostId=320433&episodeId=8096459

The Golf Shot

06 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by harrisgray in Uncategorized

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Tags

dream interpretation, dreams, golf

Have you ever had a dream like this? This is my recurring dream. I can’t call it a nightmare, although it’s worse than frightening. This dream leaves me unfulfilled.

All systems go

All systems go

I’m golfing. The dream picks up in the middle of a round, and I’m feeling great. Strong and supple. There are people watching, and I am fearless, because I know my game is on, and my stroke is…you know, strong and supple. It’s my turn to tee off.

I address the ball, surveying the beautiful fairway. Which is a little narrow, but that’s fine, I’m going to boom this thing, no one will care whether I end up in the rough. I start my backswing, and the ball falls off the tee.

I replace the ball, but now I realize the tee is a little high. I push the tee deeper into the ground—which has turned into one of those rubber driving range mats. Instead of a tee, I have to use a flexible built-in rubber tube.

No problem. But now when I stand up, there is a tree in the way. I mean right in the way, pretty much in my face. Crap, I’m going to have to play safe and hit around the wide trunk, not going to be able to let the big dog eat. At least not until the next shot. I shift my stance to aim right and pull the club back, but the tree branches won’t let me get any kind of backswing.

I’m frustrated, as are my playing partners, the group behind us, and the spectators. And now it turns out I have to hit through a window. Not a “tight window” but a real one, because my ball is actually sitting on a counter in a kitchen. I have to play through a house, just like Chevy Chase in Caddyshack, except there is no helpful homeowner offering me a fat stogie-doobie and cannonball chaser.

The countertop is waist-high. I’m choked up on the club, willing to take my best shot, but now the refrigerator is partially obstructing the window, and I’m going to have to hit left-handed with the rounded backside of the club, with a restricted backswing to avoid breaking a hanging light. And when I look down, the ball has become nestled into an egg carton sprouting greasy black chicken heads. The awful chicks might even still be alive. I’m pretty sure I don’t have a club for that.

Everyone else is now done with the hole. “For crying out loud,” says someone (probably Jason), “just pick it up.” I do, feeling absolutely awful.

So, is that a classic golfer’s nightmare? Or is there deeper meaning, the unsuccessful golf swing just a metaphor for a failure to launch? I’d like to know if anyone else has a similar dream, where they are ready and willing to take the shot, golf or otherwise, but just can’t pull the trigger.

 

Foreign Joy

28 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by harrisgray in Uncategorized

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Tags

Austrian Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Low-cost airlines, United Airlines

Flying Austrian Air to Vienna and then Bucharest. It’s time travel—not to a different time, but in one. We just finished a full free dinner. There will also be free breakfast.

Our tickets were $1300 per person. For all I know we paid an extra $100 per ticket for these meals. And we are delighted.

“I could go home now,” I told my wife as we polished off chicken and mashed potatoes, and she knew what I meant. The dinner was blissful. We were complete. We felt loved, by emotionless, attentive flight attendants. We felt valued.austrian-airlines-logo

This is not a plea to the U.S. carriers. There is no way they will ever go back to this model – they’ve gone too far. On the leg to Dulles, a dour (not to be confused with emotionless) United Airlines attendant was asked for a blanket by a sweet skinny older lady, and with absolutely no compassion or apology told her that blankets were removed in the cost-cutting frenzy after 9-11 and the subsequent run-up in fuel prices. “That many blankets are heavy, and they decided they could save fuel by eliminating them.”

Back in our seats my wife said, “Couldn’t they have kept ten blankets? That would be enough.”

There is a joylessness in the airlines’ quest for profitability. In every interview about their atrocious customer service ratings, Frontier will say they’re doing exactly what their customers want, and that once they get really good at it, their ratings will rise.

So we’re 37,000 feet up and just south of Greenland, 10 hours into our trip, and feeling joyful as we follow Austrian Airline’s onscreen seat exercises to avoid dying by blood clot.

Taking off the Pink Suit

27 Monday May 2013

Posted by harrisgray in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

book review, Great Gatsby

Great Gatsby, Book Review

We throw great parties here, everyone says so. Who cares if it’s a kit?

We are not in the habit of putting ourselves into the shoes of an author’s protagonist. After all we each spend much of our time arguing to readers and each other that our own protagonists are based on the other guy. Reading The Great Gatsby was done with the intent to write this review, simply a way to capitalize on a hot topic – much the way Vampire Vic started. And then we got excited and entangled, again just like with VV. Except this time there’s no dispute, we are obviously both Jay Gatsby.

First of all, who knew F. Scott F. could write? Valid assumption on our part – somebody led us to believe Gatsby was the Roaring Twenties anthem, the story of glitz, glamour and excesses. All packaging and scant content, with an early, abrupt and well-deserved expiration, the period and the book, no longer relevant. Somebody must have led us to believe that, because that’s what we thought, and we don’t just come up with ideas all by ourselves.

Turns out Gatsby is about people. Well-drawn people with timeless problems, just like you and us. Well, more like us, and that brings us back to the mirror, turning the page to get another look at Jay Gatsby and seeing Harris Gray, as played by Leo DiCaprio.

We join the story in the Plaza Hotel on a stiflingly hot New York afternoon. Tom Buchanan has just realized he’s in danger of losing Daisy’s love – you know, his readership.

Harris Gray: “Look old sport, Daisy’s found a story she loves. And at a reasonable price, only $0.99 on Kindle.”

Tom (looking a lot like a composite of John Grisham, Dan Brown and Charlaine Harris, i.e., Tom Hanks): “Nonsense. Daisy’s perfectly happy reading my stories. Ninety-nine cents? You don’t know her at all. Daisy could care less.”

Daisy (she’s hard to describe…good looking if slightly androgynous, intelligent, possibly wearing reading glasses): “Damn you Tom, I can be price conscious.”

Tom: “Look at Harris Gray, Daisy. He’s nothing but a damned swindler. Is that what you want? For crying out loud, he’s self–published.”

Harris Gray: “First of all, Thomas, for the umpteenth time, it’s they, plural. One name, two guys – get it? Secondly, Daisy, no! Don’t look at us that way! So what, we’re self-published, what’s the diff? Story is story and money’s money! Look at this suit we’re wearing—suits, plural, sorry—ain’t they the finest? Like buttah, pink buttah. The gentlemen’s shop didn’t care whether we were endorsing over a check from Scribner’s or the Amazon Kindle Select program. And neither should you! Daisy! Daisy…please, your eyes are suddenly so distant.” We paste that unruly lock of hair back behind our ear. Ears. “Honey, old sweetie sport, here, open your Kindle and lose yourself in our novel. Look, you’re already 79% complete, and you said you were lovin’ it. Remember, Daisy? Daisy…?”

But of course it’s too late now, F. Scott F. and his alter ego Tom has exposed us, right alongside poor Gatsby. Pulled back our cover, thumbed to the copyright page and pointed at the words “CreateSpace”, where “Simon & Schuster” should be. Time to climb back in our roadster and head home.

We will however part ways with Jay G. on the tragic ending. Yes, we desperately want Daisy to love us, and no, she isn’t leaving Tom. But Daisy really likes to read, and Tom just isn’t capable of fully satisfying his lady. We the self-published will go on tempting her with blog posts, tweets and free days, and Daisy will continue to dabble with us. Unlike the obsessed Gatsby, we can live with dabbling. And now that our dark secret has been revealed, we can finally take off these pink suits.

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