Author: Michael Seidel

Science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer. Singer (sorry, no shows) & nudist (in my home). Beer, cat, cheese, coffee, pie and wine friend. Left IBM and Silicon Valley for the southern Oregon life but I miss the ocean. We're too far inland. Gotta move.

Friday’s Theme Music

Ashland, southern Oregon — Friday, July 24, 2026.

It’s a hot, sunny day. 85 F now, 95 later. But the air is free from smoke.

Fasted last night so I could go get some blood tests done today. So then went off and ate breakfast after that was completed.

Then the morning got a little complicated. My wife lost her cell phone. Children found it and wouldn’t return it. Yes, rewards were offered. She didn’t have the phone locator turned on, a choice she made years ago but now regrets. She also didn’t set up phone security. Fortunately, she used it for nothing except texting, games, and phone calls.

BUT —

It was the primary number for receiving security texts for different accounts. So I’ve been going through the very painful process of changing that number with several companies. It isn’t just ‘log in and fix it’; it’s log in — or, call us. Give us your name, DOB, address, social, UserID. Now, take a photo of both sides of your driver’s license. And a selfie. Now hop on your right leg three times, turn in one complete circle, spit toward the sun, and declare, “New phone number” three times.

Classic first world blues.

It’s pretty apparent these days that Trump’s shallow thinking has exhausted its ability to come up with new ideas. Deeply into repeating himself, Trump is inflicting new tariffs on us (even though the US is projected to refund $85B in tariffs and our customs duties receipts are negative $26B in June) and trying to add his name to another building as part of Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL!

Not surprising, given Trump’s flat ideas and bullying leadership style, Trump is losing staff. Those he chose who were approved by the Senate are escaping while they can. Could be that they know that the mid-terms are looking like another Trump disaster — like:

No worries; he’s not.

We’re becoming the land of the poor, sick, and broken under Trump. According to a Harris Poll, 95% of U.S. adults believe the country is facing a severe affordability crisis.

Still living in a fantasy, Trump thinks the next president will have it great.

Your Trump Quote of the Day:

The other way that we can take this quote is that Trump made another Freudian slip. He’s actually acknowledging that he’s doing a shit job, and that anyone after him will look much better in comparison.

Given his declining physical appearance and the way he often babbles, I wonder if he’ll be alive to see the next Oval Office inhabitant.

Maybe Trump will pull a Mitch McConnell. That might be even why the GOP isn’t trying very hard to prove Mitch is still alive; they’re testing the waters to do the same with Trump.

Today’s song came to me as I was driving and thinking, returning home from my lab visit. I had the radio off, thinking about my dreams from last night. With my daily routine shifted, I thought, “Come up for air.” From that, “Miracle Mile” by Cold War Kids began playing in my morning mental music stream.

May the season’s winds carry you to a happy, healthy, and safe future.

Cheers

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The Sisters Dream

I was with several of my sisters. We were all younger than now.

Don’t know where we exactly were. Outside. Mostly flat and sort of muddy to start.

I’d been off doing something and then returned, looking for them, as it was time to go. I found them by a large broken cement sewer pipe coming out of the base of a dirt hill. Multiple bottles and trash was there.

One of the sisters asked, “Michael, can you help us? We want to clean up these bottles but we don’t know how.”

They had two large plastic containers with a spout on top. Way too small to put the bottles in. So I tore the top of the plastic away. They thanked me and we loaded the bottles up, often breaking them. Some bottles were already broken. As they warned me to be careful, I picked up the bottles and put them in the plastic. Then I carried those away, depositing them somewhere safe.

I was ready to go, so I began walking. My sisters were several hundred yards away. I wanted time to myself. Deciding to avoid them, I began running. My sisters called my name: I ignored them, running faster.

I crossed the muddy plain and then ended up on a highway’s wide shoulder. Traffic was heavy to my right. Dusk was coming. Left was a lot of new constructions: houses and stores were being built, but was suspended for the night.

I thought, wow, that’s a lot of construction. The construction and changes threw me off. I hadn’t been in the area for a while. Confused about where I was going, I decided to go back to my sisters.

Turning around, I gawked with some amazement. I hadn’t realized how far and fast I’d run. Running back, my speed amazed me even more.

I reached the spot where I’d last seen my sisters. They weren’t visible. I called them; no answer.

Then I found them, along with their previous husbands, and more of my family. I looked for my wife but she wasn’t there. I saw my younger sister’s ex-husband, JJ, and said hello to him, adding, “Good to see you.”

The group told me we were going to Sharon and John’s. She’s my sister and that’s her husband. Then the group kind of wandered around, dawdling. Impatient, I went to Sharon and John’s house.

It was a small place. In the dining room was a large oval, polished wood table. Arrayed in front of it on one side were three rows of seven baby highchairs. They were different colors and ages. Each had a placard on it.

I was mystified. Like, what’s going on here? Is this where they expected us – adults – to sit? We wouldn’t fit in those chairs. No, they seemed to be set up for something. Classes for children?

Then the chairs rearranged themselves. Many disappeared. Matthew Perry was seated at one of the tables. Reprising his role as Chandler Bing from “Friends”, he did a few scenes. Except, he was the size of a baby.

John came in. I said, “How was that done,” gesturing to Perry/Bing in a highchair. John explained, “Oh, that’s Matthew Perry. He was in “Friends”.”

I answered, “I know all that, but that’s not him. That’s the size of a child. Is that a puppet? Animation?” It was completely lifelike.

We went back and forth, with John explaining the same thing in almost the same ways. I kept asking questions, trying to clarify it, but never got an answer. My sister came in, interrupting us to announce that there were sandwiches in the other room.

Dream end.

1

Thursday’s Theme Music — Billions & Trillions

Ashland, southern Oregon — Thursday, July 23, 2026.

Cooler today, although the sky is blue and the sun is brightly shining. 75 F now, we expect a high of 93 F.

The air was much better last night and today, as well. The East Evans Creek Fire is now 38% contained, and there were no flare ups despite yesterday’s strong winds and high heat.

Extraordinary how often things in the news are now measured in billions and trillions. They used to be eye-opening amounts. Now we see them daily in the news:

US House passes record $1.15trn defence bill to fund Iran war

US national debt hits record $39 trillion ($113,616 per person!) and $40 trillion could be right around the corner

Kansas City Chiefs Unveil First Renderings for $3 Billion Stadium Opening in 2031

Google hit with $1 billion in fines as EU braces for Trump battle

Trump made more than $2.2bn last year. Experts say this extraordinary haul is only part of the story

AMD to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic as part of computing power deal

Meanwhile, down here in the trenches, life is still measured in dollars and cents as we struggle with affordability.

Current U.S. Beef Prices (July 2026)

As of the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data (July 22, 2026), national average retail beef prices are up modestly from last month, with most cuts seeing gains of 0.6%–1.2%. National Average Retail Prices (per pound, USDA Choice cuts unless noted)

  • Sirloin Steak (USDA Choice): $14.45/lb — ▲1.2% vs. June, ▲6.6% vs. last year
  • Round Steak (USDA Choice): $9.84/lb — ▲0.6%, ▲13.3% year-over-year
  • All Uncooked Beef Steaks: $12.88/lb — ▲0.6%, ▲8.5% YoY
  • Chuck Roast (USDA Choice): $9.55/lb — ▼0.6% (but still ▲13.2% YoY)
  • All Uncooked Ground Beef: $7.14/lb — ▲1.1%, ▲9.8% YoY
  • Ground Beef (100% Beef): $6.83/lb — ▲1.2%, ▲9.1% YoY
  • Ground Chuck (100% Beef): $6.98/lb — ▲3.8%, ▲10.1% YoY

Your Trump Quote of the Day:

Of course, Trump had already claimed 20 times that prices were coming down quickly, back in February of 2026.

The price of a pound of ground beef was $6.74 compared to $6.83.

That’s some more of that Trump math.

Same math Trump used to claim that the ballroom would cost US taxpayers nothing:

“It’s a private thing, yeah, I’ll do it, and we’ll probably have some donors or whatever, but it’s about $200 million. So, we’ve been planning it for a long time. They’ve wanted a ballroom at the White House for more than 150 years. But there’s never been a president that was good at ballroom. I’m really good.”

Donald Trump, July, 2025

Back then, Trump was also bragging that the ballroom would cost $200M.

Trump administration quietly shifts $352m in federal funds for White House ballroom

That headline is from June of 2026.

All that has The Neurons playing “Billion Dollar Babies” in the morning mental music stream. The Alice Cooper song (and album of the same name) came out while I was in high school. My friend, Bob, was instantly enamored with both and used to spit out parts of choruses as we went from class to class, a period which I think lasted a week or two.

Alice Cooper was a cross-dressing rock star for a long period. Yet he’s expressed views against transgenders and supports Donald Trump. “(America) got so ‘woke’ with the Biden people, even they thought it was crazy. If a guy says to a coworker, ‘I like your new dress,’ that means he now gets fired? That’s crazy. It got so over the top that whoever ran against the Democrats was going to win. America got sick of the stupidness and all I can say is, in a shooting war, you don’t want a poodle; you want a pitbull.” Wikipedia

Because of this, I don’t often listen to Alice Cooper much any longer.

Hope your day brings fresh air and some good weather, good friends, and good times.

Cheers

4

The Writing Moment

Finished the first draft of “A Tribe Called Death” today.

Began it on impulse in December, 2025. Set it aside to finish “Unfocused”. Wrote and revised five drafts of “Unfocused” before setting it aside to cool at the end of May of this year.

Then I returned to “A Tribe Called Death”. It managed to flow out in very satisfying ways. I didn’t want to write or talk about it because I didn’t want to jinx it — knock wood — so I only spoke about it to my wife from time to time. Never talked about what it was about; only told her about generic writing progress.

Today, I wrote The End.

320 pages. 70,000 words.

A vampire, detective, and the Ministry of Death.

Now I’ll set it aside. Let it cool. Pick up “Unfocused” again tomorrow. Revise and edit it again.

Prepare to submit it to somewhere, someone.

And go on.

1

Wednesday’s Theme Music — Wild Claims

Ashland, southern Oregon — Wednesday, July 22, 2026.

Blue sky, sunshine, and high temperatures have arrived. 86 F now, gonna hit 99 F with a heat index of 105.

The sky is clear of smoke today. Our major threat, the East Evans Creek Fire, now 12 days old, is 26% contained. That’s good news but it’s a tragedy for the land, vegetation, and animals.

“The American Prospect” has a story about the ‘Freedom Fuel’ that made the White House so happy a few weeks ago.

Circle back. Knowing how MAGA Trump thinks, a gas station chain calling itself Freedom Fuel opened up gas stations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Knowing how to get Trump’s attention, and some free publicity, the gas was priced at $3.47 a gallon, the 47 cent part being in honor of Trump, which makes total economic sense.

Trump publicly pumped the gas station and its price, even though the price went up to $3.57 after a few days. He then crowed about how he promised gas prices were going to come down fast.

Your Trump Quote of the Day:

That was then. This is now. “The American Prospect” and others are shedding light on how that low gas price of $3.57 came about.

Freedom Fuel now averages $3.92 a gallon, and isn’t the cheapest gas around any longer. Meanwhile, thanks to Trump’s new attacks on Iran and other factors, the national average for a gallon of gas is again $4.

Classic Trump math: up is down. More is less.

Trump is always making wild claims. His war with Iran would be over quickly, in weeks — back in March.

Prescription drug prices were coming down over 1,000% — financially and medically impossible. He would cut energy prices immediately, if not by 12 months, certainly by 18.

That was two years ago.

Now — still — Trump keeps going on about election fraud. Has to be fraud, because he doesn’t understand how it works.

No evidence, of course, exists to support this election fraud fantasy, any more than his claims about the war ending back in March or that drug prices were coming down 1,000%, or that vandals damaged the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. He made fantastic claims about that, too, changing the damage from 250 feet to 300 yards.

How does anyone ever believer him about anything?

Today’s music circulating in the morning mental music stream is “Your Wildest Dreams” by The Moody Blues. Justin Hayward wrote the song while thinking back on a first love. But My Neurons, oblivious as they are, took ‘the wildest dreams’ aspect in reflection to Trump’s ongoing wild claims.

I hope your day is calm and fun, relaxing and healthy. Stay safe, wherever you are.

Cheers

0

Tuesday’s Theme Music — You Oughta Know

Ashland, southern Oregon — Tuesday, July 21, 2026.

Another hot day, but this one is cloudy. 83 F now, we’re destined for life in the 90s. The wind has changed, protecting us from the East Evans Creek Fire. The firefighters to whom we owe so much every year have it 18% contained. The fire has consumed over 16,000 acres, and mopping up is underway.

My younger sister, Gina, has been shepherding the project to move Mom’s things out of her home and sell the house. Part of the project is the collection and review of personal papers. I wrote Mom many letters from my assignments around the world. She kept them all, along with letters from her siblings and mother. My sisters are busy recalling the different eras of Mom’s life: the men she was with, where she lived, what was happening to them. A very chaotic period, it finally settled when Mom got her GED, went on to become a nurse, and bought her house. But for Mom and my sisters, its seems like an anguished period before that.

My two youngest sisters. Gina is on the left. The photo was taken in 2019.

Trump double standards — TDS — are in the news today. Trump has unleashed new retaliatory tariffs on Canada. Trump cites how Canada discriminates against the United States by importing fewer American cars and not selling American whiskey. Trump fails mentioning his history in this: that he began that trade war with Canada, that their ‘discrimination’ emerged because he attacked Canada with tariffs and suggested Canada should be the 51st US state.

Meanwhile, Trump is blasting Iran over human rights violations while he actively undermines human rights in the US. Ignoring due process and legal status — and even court’s decisions to not do things — Trump uses ICE to intimidate people, especially citizens of blue cities, run by Democrats, to coerce them to cooperate with them.

Classic Trump: do as I say, not as I do.

If you’ve been paying any attention, you ought to know this by now. You ought to know that Trump is only out for himself. You ought to know that Trump is vain and self-centered, and tone deaf. It’s all about him and how he can destroy our heritage to improve how he’s perceived.

That’s why Trump has done petty things with his predecessors portraits.

It’s why Trump paved over the historic Rose Garden and tore down the East Wing.

He had to change it all to make it about him.

That’s why he’s trying to rewrite history, enlarging his part while dismissing what women and people of color did. That’s why he’s trying to elevate himself to the same position as the founders.

That’s why he wants a place on Mount Rushmore.

That’s why Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize.

That is so, so, laughable. Trump has nowhere near intellect of the founders. He lacks backbone, principles, and moral courage. His current active role in trying to curtail freedom, democracy, and voting rights would infuriate the founders. It’s scandalous how he’s enriching himself through the Oval Office, something that the founders actively warned the nation about happening.

President Lincoln famously warned that the United States is more likely to be destroyed from within. Ironic that the one doing so — Trump — likes to compare himself to Lincoln.

You ought to know, Donald Trump: you are not popular.

Your Trump Quote of the Day:

Another example of his double standards come via the Epstein file, Algaegate — the Trump Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool cockup — and the Jan 6 insurrections.

Trump and his administration keep hiding the Epstein file, ignoring the victims.

For Algaegate, he had a person arrested and charged with vandalism. In classic Trumpyism, his DoJ has screwed the case up.

For Jan 6, after his supporters were responsible for the death and injury of law enforcement officers and the destruction of Congressional offices, Trump pardoned him.

There is the clear line of Trump Double Standards.

Today’s song in the morning mental music stream is “You Oughta Know”. Alanis Morrisette. 1995. A scathing rebuke of a former lover. Listen to that crowd singing with her:

Lyrics:

And I’m here to remind you
Of the mess you left when you went away
It’s not fair, to deny me
Of the cross I bear that you gave to me
You, you, you oughta know

Yep, when Trump goes away, he’ll leave a huge mess.

You also should know that this song came out in the peak years of Trump socializing with Jeffrey Epstein.

Hope your day is safe, prosperity, and builds bridges for a better life for you and your family.

Cheers

3

The Water Bottle Dream

Once again, I found myself younger and off at some gathering. Not huge, about one hundred people, I guess. It was some kind of bonding/teamwork thing. Don’t know who was hosting it.

I was part of management. I knew everyone there, at least casually, and some were direct co-workers or friends. Nobody was part of my real-life world.

We’d just finished eating and socializing. Clean up was underway. The undertaking was moving to a new location. Teams were going to be set up and tasks assigned.

As I was familiar with what was happening, I urge everyone to go on while I cleaned up and supervised that aspect. Finishing up, I found a bottle of plastic water. Drinking from it, I headed down to join the rest.

Everyone was scattered in a sort of ornate, fancy hotel lobby. I wandered through, eyeing the groups, listening to the chatter, drinking water from the bottle.

A woman at a podium accosted me from a podium that was up on a platform. She was young and dressed formally in a skirt but with a buttoned up blouse and jacket. I took her to be a concierge or some sort of hostess. Not knowing what she was saying, I went closer to her.

She said, “Wouldn’t you be better off drinking that water somewhere else?”

I didn’t respond. I realized that she thought that I didn’t belong there.

Feeling feisty and amused, I asked, “What did you say?”

Smirking, she leaned forward and looked down at me. First she repeated what she said before. Then she elaborated, “Maybe you have a home you can go to to drink your water.”

Grinning, I drank water and replied, “I like it here. Why shouldn’t I drink it here.”

Lowering her volume, she explained, “You don’t seem to appear like you belong here.”

“Really? Where do I belong?”

Our conversation had captured my friends and co-workers’ attention. Some came over and asked, “Michael, what’s going on here?”

I smiled, almost laughing, as I saw the concierge realize that I was part of that group.

Dream end.

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