New Year’s Day Wandering Thoughts
I wished people Old Year’s Day yesterday, December 31. They looked at me like I was a talking squirrel.
New Year’s Day Theme Music
Mood: hopeful
Let’s give a warm welcome to 2024. I’ll do anything to make you happy, 2024. Well, anything legal. And it also can’t be against my principles or unethical. Or anything that will embarass me. Or anything too expensive. Other than those stipulations, I’ll do anything to make you happy, 2024. I figure if we can make you happy, you’ll make us happy. Fingers crossed that you’re a happy year. I know, the odds are against you from the stroke of midnight. But I think you can overcome it.
It’s Monday, January 1, 2024. 2024 looks a lot like its predecessor so far. Blue sky with sunshine and a glowing grand fog bank billowing in across the westward view. 38 F now, prophecies are for a high in the mid fifties. In truth, our hopes would be about receiving some snow on our mountains to build up the snowpack. It remains too thin to sustain us.
Hope you all had a new year celebration that fit your desires. Ours was on the low end, staying home, drinking nothing but water and coffee, eating a healthy Old Year’s Day meal, and then telling one another happy new year before going to bed around 12:30. It was a long way from the years where we’d dance and quaffed a few drinks before running around, doing things after midnight, shouting our accomplishments. It was all significant stuff, like, “First to pee in the new year!” “First to finish a drink in the new year! First to turn off a light in the new year. First to turn on a light in the new year.” Silly fun.
I read my friend’s blog this morning as coffee was firing up The Neurons (first to drink coffee in the new year). Jill Dennison is always a terrific read. This morning, she suggested that we start the new year with some Elton John. She provided “Sad Songs (Say So Much)”. My rascally Neurons injected “Crocodile Rock” into the morning mental music stream (Trademark delayed). Released in 1972, the song became Elton John’s first number one single in the US. Hearing it as high schoolers, we assured each other, this cat is going to be around a while.
The song’s history isn’t pure. Wikipedia notes:
The song was inspired by John’s discovery of leading Australian band Daddy Cool and their hit single “Eagle Rock“, which was the most successful Australian single of the early 1970s (with 1,000,000 sold),[5] remaining at No.1 for a record of 10 weeks.[6][7] John heard the song and the group on his 1972 Australian tour and was greatly impressed by it.[5] A photo included in the album packaging features John’s lyricist, Bernie Taupin, wearing a “Daddy Who?” promotional badge. The song also includes a lyrical reference to the 1950s hit record “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and his Comets (“While the other kids were rocking around the clock…”).
In a 1974 lawsuit filed in the US District Court of Los Angeles by attorney Donald Barnett on behalf of “Speedy Gonzales“‘ composer Buddy Kaye, it was alleged that defendants John and Taupin illegally incorporated chords from “Speedy Gonzales” which produced a falsetto tone into the “Crocodile” song co-written by defendants. The parties reached a settlement between them and the case was then dismissed.
Taupin also stated in an Esquire magazine interview that “Crocodile Rock” was a funny song in that he did not mind creating it, but it would not be something he would listen to;[8] it was simply something fun at the time. John has dismissed criticism of the song that it was “derivative”, quoted in the booklet for the 1995 reissue of Don’t Shoot Me … as saying, “I wanted it to be a record about all the things I grew up with. Of course it’s a rip-off, it’s derivative in every sense of the word.”
Such drama for such a quaint song.
Stay pos, be strong, and have an outstanding 2024. I’m just finishing up with the first cup of 2024 coffee. In with the new, right? Here’s the music. Cheers
Lootching
Lootching (floofinition) – Combined stretching and looking at something by an animal who has been sleeping. Origins: Internet, US, 2023
In Use: “Walking into the bedroom, he awoke his floof, who responded with some intense lootching before curling into another sleeping position and resuming his nap.”
In Use: “The dogs and cats conducted synchronized lootching when Carrie walked in, and then pause, watching to see if she offered food, before returning to their snoozing.”
Recent Use: “An ancient Floofverb states, ‘There’s no lootching among distrustful animals.'”
Old Year’s Day Theme Music
Mood: chillaxing
This is it: Old Year’s Day 2023. 2024 begins tomorrow. Despite that big event, it’s chilly, wet, and foggy this morning in Ashlandia, where coffee feels like a medical necessity to get the day started. Maybe that’s just me. Don’t know. I’m in the house and not going out until I’ve have enough coffee to get un-naked. It’s a public kindness thing.
41 F now around my house while the weather masters say it’s 48 F elsewhere in town with a 53 degree high on the radar. This might have been a record warm winter month for us.
2023 was a solid year personally. I wrote a novel and revised it multiple times, and the process goes on. My family members have endured health issues, and it’s not pleasant to be a spectator to that, but they continue pulling through. My wife continues managing her health matters, and the cats are doing well.
I’m not happy with my country. While the economy is doing well, the political and cultural divide yawns wider. Social progress regarding equality and justice slid backward in many ways. Under the guise of ‘freedom’, our education system stays under attack by conservatives limiting what is taught and what can people can read, which is basically the opposite of freedom. I won’t go into the multilple failures I see in the GOP with their continuing support of Trump no matter what, except to say it’s disappointing and a challenge to all branches of government.
Gun violence remains prevalent and demoralizing in the US as the nation collectively refuses to do anything except T&P, which does nothing to reduce violence, curtail the killing, or help the victims. It’s a pathetic and inept response to hear of a these mass shootings and learn that ‘leaders’ offer their thoughts and prayers. How many years of thoughts and prayers has it been? How many more will come before anything beyond thoughts and prayers are offered? As my friend Jill would eloquently say, GRRRRRR.
As for the rest of the world, I’m disappointed that wars continue and threaten to expand to encompass more of the world, just as we were experiencing a century ago.
The Neurons fed “Time Has Come Today” by the Chamber Brothers out of 1968 into the morning mental music stream (Trademark delayed). Just thinking about time, for some reason (sure, that’s a smidget of snark, which is called smark). I posted it before, back in December, 2017, and that point was much the same: thinking about time (“Time!”) and there it is in my head.
Many people think of these song getting stuck in your head as an earworm. I’ve read that about 96% of people experience an earworm once a month or more. I seem to experience one everyday. Studies say that people who hold music as important to them experience earworms more frequently. I’ve never addressed how important music is to me, but Mom was always playing music, and it became a habit for me. They rarely bother me, these earworms, although every once in a while, a song burrows in and makes itself comfortable that does irritate me. “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy,” is one of those songs which comes to mind.
Stay pos, refresh yourself for the tilt against another year, be strong, and lean forward. Hey, ho, let’s go. Here’s the music. Happy Old Year’s Day. Cheers
The Writing Moment
Another revision of the novel in progress has been finished. The book has grown with this effort and is now 157K words and 520 Word pages one-inch margins.
Hoping I’m not jinxing matters, I feel happy and comfortable with how it has developed. This last revision was an entertaining project. I’m more familiar with the story and characters and had greater understanding of what to emphasize and what to cut back.
I finished just in time for the year end. Now I’ll take a pause for the holiday and then begin another revision cycle after the new year has begun. Cheers
Saturday’s Wandering Thoughts
Bike lanes and sidewalks abound in Ashlandia, but today, as in many days, cyclists were riding down the sidewalks — on the wrong side of the street — forcing pedestrians to stand aside, while a guy in a wheelchair on the other side of the street was in the bike lane, ignoring the sidewalks with all the smooth new wheelchair ramps as cars — and bicyclists — pass him.
Sometimes I wonder what’s going on in people’s heads.
2023’s Final Jigsaw
We enjoy jigsaw puzzles at our house and do a few a year. I do most of them as my wife does the edge, walks away for a while and then returns to help finish. We usually get them from the local library of things in Ashlandia. That was the case for this one. Unfortunately, as happened with two other puzzles this year, this one was missing pieces. The first one missing a piece this year, we didn’t know it was missing one until the puzzle was done. With the second episode, a note in the box noted that a piece was missing and showed where it was missing.
In this case, nothing was said about a missing piece, and it was more than one piece. In fact, six to nine pieces were missing, including multiple edge pieces from two sides. As we didn’t know, we spent a lot of time carefully going through pieces looking for those edges.
It’s a shame, though, because the thousand-piece puzzle was challenging and otherwise fun, and a beautiful scene. Several times while working it, I thought, I wouldn’t mind being there, sitting a table with a glass of wine.
When we take it back to the library, we’re going to point out how many pieces are missing. My wife says she’s going to suggest to them that it be removed from circulation.
Saturday’s Theme Music
Mood: coffeefied
It’s a showery and sunny blue and white marble sky day on December 30, 2023, in Ashlandia, where the coffee houses are busy and the offerings are above average. 46 F now, we’re edging toward a 54 F high on this early winter day. Many of us have mild colds with hay fever overtones. Most wonder if it’s something worse as COVID reports are up in town.
I read much news each day. I think one of the wildest and saddest stories read this morning was of a Texas teen who shot two other teenagers in his home. Shooting them in the head after showing them a revolver, one was killed and the other was severely injured. A third teen, safe in the bathroom, called the police, reporting he’d heard two gunshots.
Most traumatic to me was that first, the seventeen-year-old stated he’d wanted to commit homicide for a long time, and had thought of shooting himself, and allegedly had cajoled his mother into buying him the weapon, although the family attorney denied the mother bought her son the gun. Let’s pause to think of what she’ll be going through now and for the rest of her life, regardless of her role.
Secondly, though, after he’d killed, he walked around the house crying, asking himself, “What have I done?” In some ways, he reminds of Kyle Rittenhouser, a killer who had little understanding of what killing another fully means. In that sense, I mean, do they understand that the other person will never get up again? Do they comprehend the legal and moral implications? Do they understand what they’ll do to their own psyche once they’ve killed? I think that a lot of this is lost in a culture where killing is often glamorized.
Today’s music was brought to my morning mental music stream (Trademark flushed) by Tucker. Tucker is my mixed long/short-haired black and white big foot feline. Wildly whiskered with a thick tail, he was constantly following me around yesterday and today. He frequently does this but it was a more intense session. I asked him the usual about his health, if he was hungry, and what he wanted and needed. And I petted, scratched, and brushed him, allowing him lap top while I was reading and net surfing, but nothing seemed to satisfy the boy. He’d eaten well and had his usual bowel movement (trust me on that), so those things didn’t seem issues. And he’d used his scratch pad quite vigorously, and then galloped around the house, so he had plenty o’ energy. After noting he was following me everywhere, The Neurons began “Everywhere” by Fleetwood Mac from 1987.
Stay positive, test negative, lean forward, and be strong. Now coffee up! It’s Saturday. Here’s the music. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 