Frieda’s Theme Music
Sunshine broke on through, just as the doors urged. Frieda, April 4, 2025 is a windy, sunny, warm spring day. High and thin clouds scrub some blue sheen of the sky. It’s 52 F and heading to the high sixties.
Papi the ginger blade was so happy. At first. Prancing into a sunshine pool, he washed and lounged. Then, wind ruffled his fur and pushed his ears around. The little Butter Butt pressed to come in, pronto.
A shopping day is planned. Our household subjects have veered between Trump’s impact on our personal finances and situation to buying a bidet attachment or something. “Should we get an attachment or a seat?” my wife asks. She’s rethinking herself.
“I’ll research and report back,” I reply.
“I’m not even going to look at my 401K,” she says. She means that. I will discreetly check it for her. Keep the results to myself. Mine has lost about twelve percent of its value. My other stock holdings have dropped ten percent. It’s early, though. I consider divesting all.
Today’s strong jobs report surprised me. But, then again, no. I’ve read of substantial business closings. Layoffs and terminations. Food traffic down in stores. Sales down. I’ve not read of any companies gushing, “Look, we’re hiring! Woo hoo!” Trump’s administration puts out those jobs numbers. He’s a known liar. So are the lackeys populating his regime. I’m sure they looked at the first set of numbers and told one another, “Oh, no, we can’t publish those. He’ll fire us all.” So they doctored the jobs number to look good.
PINO Trump tweeted about it this morning. Sorry, he X’d about it. “GREAT JOB NUMBERS, FAR BETTER THAN EXPECTED. IT’S ALREADY WORKING.”
What does he think is already working? Farmers are being hit, Federal workers have been shelved, tourism has dropped and is expected to drop more. The stock market keeps dropping…well, if you’re not in the Trumphosphere, you know. Projections are not rosy. First quarter reports are going to be interesting.
A friend added comments yesterday to one of my posts. They linked to a Jimi Hendrix song, “Still Raining, Still Dreaming”. Hearing that provoked The Neurons to begin different Jimi Hendrix Experience songs in my head. I ended up with “Stone Free” in the morning mental music stream. The song coincides with my urge to take a trip, see the coast. I’ve been working on my wife for such a trip. Her stars aren’t yet aligned enough. That doesn’t stop me from joining Hendrix to sing, “I got to, got to, got to get away right now.” But I’ll hold on for my other to be ready.
Difficult to find a good video of “Stone Free”. I went with this one, despite its sound glitches. I enjoy the members playing and seeing Hendrix’s fast, meticulous playing.
Coffee has made its morning visit to my body. I’m rockin’ and arollin’. Hope you have an awesome experience today, wherever you are. Cheers
Thirsta’s Wandering Political Thoughts
It’s Trump’s morning in America.
“The stock market is down over fourteen hundred points,” my wife greets me.
“Hey girl,” I answer. “Good morning.”
If my wife seems gleeful about the stock market, it’s because she’s angry. Bottom line, she’s in the FAFO camp. Reads ‘The Leopard Ate My Face’ tales daily. Spoons up all those tales about Trump supporters and apologists who are now Trump victims.
Trump said he would do tariffs when he ran for POTUS in 2024. Professional economists have almost all agreed, bad, bad, bad, bad, terrible idea. Trump always thinks he knows better than everyone else. He usually doesn’t. I mean, this is the guy who bankrupted a casino.
Facts don’t matter to Trump. You knew that if you watched his tariff announcement yesterday. He displayed a chart with bogus tariff info. It shows tariffs imposed on U.S. goods. Almost all those supposed tariffs by other countries are inflated by significant amounts.
With almost no surprise, then, worldwide markets dropped after his tariffs announcement.
Some people rationalize what Trump is doing as necessary. They prophesize Trump’s tariffs will bring jobs back to the United States. Factories will spring up like mushrooms after a rain across the nation. And those factories won’t use robotics, as many modern factories do. No, they will employ human, American workers. Even though the U.S. must import many of the raw and finished materials used in modern products, imported materials which will be high-priced due to Trump tariffs, those goods produced in these new factories will be amazingly cheap because they’re made in the U.S.A. There won’t be any profit taking and price gouging, because that’s not how corporations work in the United States. And the workers in those factories will be magnificently compensated for their hourly labor because companies in the United States are known to generously pay hourly employees. Why, it’ll be the greatest economy ever!
If you believe all that, I have an automobile manufacturing plant in Ashlandia to sell you.
Thirstda’s Theme Music
Thirstda, April 3, 2025, is here. The day arrived in a morose mood, dangling thick gray cloud strands over the mountains, covering the sun’s influence, and acting like it planned to dump us in moisture. Then some mystical order was given. Cosmic stagehands raced out. Clouds were shoved to the scene’s edges. Blue sky lit up. Sunshine burns down with a new hope. It was 36 F. Now we’re touching 45 F. But, hey: it feels warmer.
I stepped into the bathroom. Doing bathroomy stuff, my foot landed on something hard and mildly sharp. This was an attachment to an electric razor. One I had to trim my beard and mustache. I always have a mustache. My first mustache was noticed on me when I was fourteen. Mom told me that my face was dirty and to go wash it. “There’s something above your lip.”
My older sister laughed. “That’s his mustache.”
The beard comes and goes. A goatee is almost permanent. I’ve had it since I left the military in 1995. But the electric razor that piece attached to has been gone for over a decade. Turning it over, I pushed to understand how it came to be on the bathroom floor today. Unable to come up with anything except The Borrowers and aliens, I tossed the piece into the trash. It’s another page in my Book of Life Mysteries. I think we all keep one of those record books, don’t we?
Three songs were competing in the morning mental music stream. I introduced the first one. This was “Valley Girl” by Frank and Moon Zappa. This song capture the California valley girl subculture, and their unique verbiage. ‘Valleyspeak’ swept the nation. Too many people walked around, smirking, telling me, “Gag me with a spoon.” Variations of that phrase quickly emerged.
I was singing my variant of the song to Papi. Papi is my housefloof, feline by looks and attitude. The boy loves treats such as Churri squeeze tube pastes. My wife rechristened it chumley. Chumley is how we refer to any of those treats.
Today I sang to Papi, “Chumley cat, he’s a chumley cat. Oh my my, fer sure fer sure, he’s a chumley cat and there is no cure.”
Second up was Elvis Presley with “Blue Suede Shoes.” Carl Perkins did it first, after writing in in 1955 and releasing it in 1956, the year of my birth. The Neurons delivered this one to the mental music stream. They didn’t explain why. I was in the bathroom doing bathroom stuff when it arrived. I used to perform this song for my family when I was four or five. Hip swiveling and singing the chorus. No, video and photographic evidence doesn’t exist. I remember doing it and Mom verified it.
Third up is “Don’t Bring Me Down” by the Animals. I’m feeling absurdly young kitten energetic and happy. I don’t know why. You’d think that with Trumpzilla burning down the world economy with his outlandish tariffs, I’d be more depressed. My stocks are down. 401 K and IRA worth down. Prices are up and will go higher. But here I am, happy as the mythical lark. Sensing that mood, The Neurons introduced the 1966 song into the morning mental music stream. This is today’s theme music.
Hope you’re experiencing some of what I’m getting and your day doesn’t bring you down. Do the best you can, right? Cheers
What An Idiot
What an absolutely brainless sack of meat Tommy Tuberville reveals to be again anagain anagain. That doesn’t paint his constituents as a very bright crowd, either.
The Godzilla Dream
I was with several other people cowering in a building’s wreckage. Trying to rest.
The building was in a disaster area. It’d been storming. A dark day was ending. Night was arriving. The storm was beginning another act. It wasn’t the storm which caused the wreckage.
Talking to one another, we knew it was time. The creature was regular and consistent. It would be returning. The creature caused all the destruction.
We also knew that it knew about three of us. We’d been fighting the creature, as others had done. One by one, the creature had found and killed the others. Through conversation, we agreed, the thing knew where it was. We discussed who would fight it next. A young woman said that it would be her.
Noises told of the thing’s approach. Peering out through broken walls, we looked for the thing. Dusk was giving up its last hold. In it, we saw the unmistakeable profile of the towering fictional lizard monster, Godzilla.
Godzilla came right for us in our building. Scrambling for cover, we went in three different directions as the building was ripped apart. Cement walls flew past my head. Ducking into a dark safe room, I caught my breath and got ready to go fight.
Jumping up, I ran back out to confront Godzilla. The mechanism of how any of us were expected to defeat the creature was unclear but I was sure that I could do it.
Breaking out onto an office building’s flat rooftop, I spied the young woman raising across rooftops, jumping from building to building. Tearing buildings down, Godzilla thundered after her.
Then his tail swept around and took out the building I was in.
I saw it coming but didn’t react in time. As the building went over with cascading thunderous crashes, I drew my body into a ball and fell through the building and into a street.
I wasn’t hurt.
Godzilla was visible over a mile away. The sky was growing lighter, like dawn was coming. Then Godzilla disappeared.
I watched for him to reappear. Word arrived: Godzilla was dead. Gone. The young woman had defeated him but died in the process.
I was amazed and overjoyed. With the sun rising, we could see the city flattened in every direction. People were crawling out of the wreckage.
Gazing across the wreckage toward blue sky, I saw another creature emerging. I knew I’d need to fight it, too. As I prepared to go, I wondered if there would ever be an end to monsters.
Dream end.
Note: I’m aware that I referred to PINO Trump as Trumpzilla recently. My mind apparently worked that into a dream for me. I’ll let you decide what it all means.
Wenzda’s Wandering Thoughts
I announced, “They want me to send them a photo.”
This aggrieved me. Everyone wants photos of things sent these days. I consider the trend of wanting photos part of the inexorable enshittification of modern society.
My wife was non-committal about her take on it. Sympathetic noises were made. I suspect she wasn’t paying attention.
Breaking down, I dragged out my phone, opened it to the camera app, and took a photo of our Lifepro Near Red-light Therapy belt. Yes, it took about twenty seconds. The time is not the point.
The belt had ceased working. We’d purchased it in October of 2023 through Amazon. It has a lifetime warranty.
The RLT impressed my wife and me. She used it to cope with painful back and shoulder flares caused by RA. I regularly used it to reduce swelling on my legs, ankles, and feet, where I’ve been dealing with lymphedema. I missed using it.
After the belt quit working, I went into my Amazon records and contacted the sellers. Happiness responded for them. Seeing that it was ‘happiness’ answering made me suspicious. We’re in a world where a documented liar calls himself the most honest man in the world, a world where the same man has cheated throughout his life but is supported by people as the Second Coming of Jesus. It has made me a little cynical.
Happiness asked for the order number and date of order. I provided that. Now they wanted a photo and directed me to a form.
The photo was part of an online form I needed to fill out. Grumbling about it, I put the order number in — again — click/copy/paste, filled out all the info, repeating many of the things already done, and then attached the photo. It took almost two minutes. Yeah.
Returning to email, I replied to Happiness and told them that I’d submitted the form. They thanked me and told me my issue would be reviewed and they’d get back to me in two to four days.
I expected to be given a return number. Told how to box it up and where to send it.
Instead, they sent me a new product. This wasn’t from Happiness but from Lifepro Support. Gave me a UPS tracking number and everything.
“What trickery is this?” I asked myself.
The replacement arrived yesterday. Brand new.
I wanted to verify some things for myself. I connected the new cord to the old belt. The cord has three separate segments which can be plugged in and unplugged, etc. This allows you to plug it into a UBS port or plug it into the wall. I always use the UBS port. Through my tests, I confirmed that it was only this segment of cord which didn’t work.
I wrote Lifepro Support to inform them that it was only the one piece that wasn’t working. That meant that I now had two working belts. Asked if they wanted me to send either back.
No, they responded. You can send it back if you want. or keep both. If you do want to send one back, tell us and we’ll give you the instructions. They thanked me for my honestly.
It was a good experience. Happiness and Lifepro Support always responded fast. They were friendly and professional, and the company stood behind their product. When I began, I thought I’d be chewing my nails in frustration by the end. I’m pleased that this wasn’t the case. Kylie, Jae, Renee, and Chad did a great job. The entire process took nine days.
And one photograph.
Hear, Hear!
Ron Howard nailed it. Let me hear an amen if you agree.
Michael Seidel, writer 