Tuesday’s Theme Music
Mood: Pepperyfresh
An endless duvet of clouds challenges the sky. Flat and almost featureless, the clouds vary in tones of blue, white, and gray. Sunshine is out there because it’s daytime but the heat and light are undercover. A cold layer has settled across Ashlandia’s soul and the trees’ colors are fading as they shed leaves. 48 F now, we’ll clock out at 58 F today.
Received my molasses mail for my planned surgery yesterday. Gotta call it molasses mail because snail mail conjures too much speed for how slow local mail is in this age. Been waiting and waiting for that piece from my surgeon’s office, wondering where it was.
My surgeon’s office is about twenty miles up the Interstate from Ashland, in our region’s largest city, Medford. Recent local posts claim that mail between Medford and Ashland now requires seventeen days. That’s because Louis DeJoy reorganized things to make the USPS more like a business. So our mail takes days of traveling, handling, and waiting. It’s picked up in Medford, goes north up I-5, gets processed, and comes back down south via I-5 to travel the final twenty miles. I can’t testify that seventeen days is accurate, but that package did take over ten days.
Hell, twenty miles, they could have walked it over in less time. This is the GOP idea of ‘progress’.
Meantime, not having that letter caused confusion. It informed me that they would be reaching out to me to make a pre-op appointment, and what would happen during it. The document set up milestones and provided instructions. Meanwhile, the electronic side of the system hummed along. I received email notification of the pre-op last week, along with the post-op appointments. I guessed the gist of all of that but it sure would have been nice to have the explanatory documents beforehand. Guess the med system needs to change its methodology now that Louis DeJoy broke the postal system. It’s another reason to give thanks to D.J. Trump, who appointed jackass DeJoy.
Makes you shudder to think of how badly Trump would break the government with Project 2025 as his instruction manual.
With the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame happenings taking place, The Neurons revisited music by the various inductees. Dionne Warwick, Mary J. Blige, Kool & The Gang, A Tribe Called Quest, and the Dave Mathews Band. Cher, Ozzy Osborne, Foreigner, and Peter Frampton. Awesome music and a wide range of superb tunes were put out by these performers.
I ended up with A Tribe Called Quest playing “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark famous). It was a confluence of factors guiding the choice. My wife and I went to leave the house, and I said, “Oh, wait, I left my wallet in the office.” As I’d just been reading and remembering songs, Der Neurons instantly pounced with “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo”. The song has a steady, hip moving beat and humorous lyrics about a road trip that goes askew. Who hasn’t had something like that happen? Well, I imagine there are a number of people who haven’t had one askew, but came close enough to identify.
Here we go, time to rock and roll. Coffee and I are bopping along ago, and my pulse has acquired some strength to it. Be strong, stay positive, test negative, and vote blue. Here’s the music. Cheers
Tuesday’s Political Thoughts
Donald Trump is cancelling things. Some reports claim it’s exhaustion.
I’m not surprised. Of course he’s feeling exhausted. He pretended to work at McDonald’s for fifteen minutes.
Snark aside — and yes, that was snark — as this article points out, he’s been canceling many interviews and appearances. Seems like he lacks energy. Not a good sign to me for someone who wants to occupy the Oval Office and its high demands.
What’s really fucking hilarious is that this poseur — that’d be Trump — has his campaign put out a statement about Kamala Harris lying about her McDonald’s employment in her youth. Isn’t it laughable how someone stages a stunt like this and lies about it, and then claims the other person is lying about? Seems like clear projection, doesn’t it?
The simple truth that Trump and his campaign are trying to hide is that he’s too old and in poor physical condition. Certainly looks too old and in poor shape, AI creations showing him as a buff individual aside. His reported diet is not one of a healthy individual. Certainly the person in that AI creation that shows Trump as a Steeler player would not be too exhausted to keep campaigning.
What is that word that Trump likes to call others? Oh, yes: LOSER. Yes, that’s it. Trump is a fake and a loser. As we close on election day and the pressure increases, he shows more and more cracks. His mask keps slipping, and he’s falling apart in the national arena.
Put a younger person in office. One not tainted by felony convictions as Trump is. One who has the energy for the job. Vote blue. Elect Kamala Harris as President of the United States.
Doublefloof
Doublefloof (floofinition) – To be guarded, blocked, outmaneuvered, or coerced by two animals working in concert.
In Use: “One famous instance of being doublefloofed was shown in Jurassic Park when two velociraptors took Muldoon.”
In Use: “A woman who rescued some kittens had the field flipped on her when they double doublefloofed her.”
Monder’s Theme Music
Mood: Mondering
Monday trotted in on rain and clouds but sunshine has made the scene. It’s October 21, 2024. Fall continues its strong run. Traditional Halloween colors dominate the landscape. Colorful leaves blanket the roads, smother the sidewalks, inundate the yards and fields. With a temperature now of 56 F, we don’t expect much more warmth today, as temperatures will sputter to a high in the low sixties. As they used to whisper in a certain set of novels and a television series predicated on those novels, “Winter is coming.”
I’m gifting today’s Monday the name of Monder, a sort of mix of Monday and wonder. As we start the week and advance toward election day — one day and two weeks away — I wonder WTF the MAGAlopes’ leader will do next to surprise and disturb the world.
News is heavy with trumpcapades. Lord, the things he does while ‘running’ for office. Put it that way because it’s more a comgedy as he embarks on surreal rifts and character assassinations, expressing little about his policy. Served fries — such a man of the people! (Yes, that is snark.) Also posted AI generated imagery of himself as a muscular, built Steeler player, a far reach from his true physique. The man’s ridiculousness and outright weirdness are deep. And yet, they’re unconsciously so very Trumpian, revealing him as a fake person, pretending to do and be things which he never was.
Having seen Project 2025 and Trump’s first term, we have some strong indicators of what his presidency would be like and why he doesn’t articulate policy positions, instead dancing around stages. We’ve been watching the right-wing stripping women’s rights, attacking the social safety net and education system, trying to homogenize the population, values, and culture into redneck vanilla while constructing the foundation for a authoritarian state. All while claiming to do what the Founders desired. Hilarious if it wasn’t so darkly surreal.
Hurricane Oscar is taking on Cuba after beating up the Bahamas, so fingers crossed for that nation and people that they come through without overly horrendous results. We’re still dealing with Milton and Helene’s aftermath in the U.S. The latest problem from the hurricanes is the rise of Vibrio vulnificus, which can lead to flesh-eating bacteria, necrotizing fasciitis, and death.
Today’s music comes off a tangent about thinking about today’s youth. Not just youth but adults. Many adults seem oblivious, disinterested, or overwhelmed with current events and history. I wonder if the youth is paying more attention. I like to hope they are. I remember myself as a youth. My world events interest was peripheral to sports, music, and reading. So I hope our youth is better than me.
Anyway, the song The Neurons fished out of memory for the moment is “Oh Very Young” by Yosuf Islam, previously known as Cat Stevens. The thoughtful but light 1974 song has taken over the morning mental music stream (Trademark young). Came out the year when I graduated. I think I still sound fresh, but then I’m pretty stale.
Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue. Coffee and I have commenced our tango. Here’s the music. Cheers
Something Else
The signs of aging pile up,
Promising on some days to beat you up.
Hair losses, hair changes, where the hell does it go?
Why can’t I get it to look right, why won’t it look just so?
Sometimes you ponder the person you had been.
You think you see them staring back, hiding from within.
Other times you wonder, if you ever were that way?
And if you were, what can you do to look that way again?
The weight you gain, how the body thickens,
Everything sinks and sags and generally looks in ways that sicken.
Then someone tells you how great you look,
and you wonder, is that a joke?
If you think I look good today, you want to say,
you should have seen me back in the day.
I was something else.
Just An Aside
Elon Musk, tech guy, doesn’t trust computers.
“I’m a technologist, I know a lot about computers,” Musk told the crowd during the event. “And I’m like, the last thing I would do is trust a computer program, because it’s just too easy to hack.”
This was during his ‘town hall’ meeting in Philadelphia, PA.
Of course, he was referring to debunked information. Didn’t matter to the sheeple he addressed.
Wonder what his company, Tesla thought about it? Aren’t they the ones pushing driverless cars which basically use computers and sensors to safely traverse road and highways? Hell, if the company’s CEO doesn’t trust a computer program, WTF should we?
There’s so much here to unpack about Musk’s state of mind, thinking skills, and choices, not to mention the sheeple out there applauding him. They’re all untethered from reality, as others were quick to note.
In a statement released following Musk’s comment this week, Dominion pointed out the inaccuracies in Musk’s comments, including the fact they don’t operate in Philadelphia and that most jurisdictions do use paper ballots.
“Fact: Dominion does not serve Philadelphia County. Fact: Dominion’s voting systems are already based on voter verified paper ballots. Fact: Hand counts and audits of such paper ballots have repeatedly proven that Dominion machines produce accurate results. These are not matters of opinion. They are verifiable facts,” a Dominion spokesperson said.
On the website of Maricopa County, officials also stated that voting machines in the 2020 election were accurate, writing that a hand count after the election “found zero variances between hand count results and the Dominion tabulation equipment.”
The increasing craziness on the right is deeply unsettling. I don’t think it’ll end with the next election, either. It’s going to take a long time for that lack of thinking to fade away, especially as people like the Heritage Foundation and much of the GOP are working hard to keep it going.
Vote blue in 2024. It’s a matter of sanity.
Sunday’s Political Thoughts
Imagine this:
Donald J. Trump, former President of the United States, and Republican nominee for the office again, is holding a rally. Coming on stage to great applause, he begins by attacking someone for some reason. Then, losing interest in what he’s saying, he calls for music and begins dancing. As he dances, he strips off his clothing. While doing that, he chats about his terrific, beautiful body. His laughing crowd energetically applauds. He takes off his clothes until he is completely naked, and then dancing more.
The headlines the next day in a few places, on a few columns, read: “Donald Trump dances and strips.” Few of them ask, “Is this really someone who should be the next president?”
We don’t seem far off from this emperor-has-no-clothes scenario. Buttressed by loyalists’ support that’s mostly emotional, with little rational logic attached to it, Trump believes he can do anything and get away with it. Part of the scenario I just described took place: he stayed on stage, listening to music, and sometimes dancing, at a recent rally. He did not strip. Not yet. But I don’t think that’s far away.
Today’s edition of Trump Weirdness had him chatting about Arnold Palmer’s manhood.
Imagine the headlines we’d see if Kamala Harris came on stage and talked about another person’s genitalia as her opening remarks. And you know who would be shouting the loudest about it would be the right-wing media, the right-wing media who cannot ever say that their leader has no clothes.
Yet, thanks to Trump’s cult and undecided voters — or voters who have decided that they’re not sure that Kamala Harris is up to the task, but are certain Trump is — we have an election that’s too close to call. Or so they say. But polls, you know…
Vote blue. Please. For all of our sanity.
Michael Seidel, writer 