Sunday’s Theme Music – Going Down

Ashland, southern Oregon — Sunday, May 3, 2026.

It’s a springy 63 F in Ashland this morning. Clouds feather the sunshine effect. We’re expecting a high of 77 F and thunderstorms.

All is quiet on the Mom front. I’m privately mourning the changes and losses to her life. Don’t know what my sisters are thinking but their relationship with Mom was rockier than mine. Part of that is that I moved out early and was away for years at a time, inuring me to her chaos.

Unfortunately, we’re not inured to Trump’s chaos. Let’s call it Traos. No matter what I drink or how much, he’s still there, and the reality of what he’s doing to us gets worse with every viewing.

Now several months into Trump’s second year of his second term, certain trends have become cemented as part of his legacy.

  • Trump is a corrupt person, enriching himself at the expense of the country
  • Trump’s cabinet is inept and chaotic
  • Dizzy Donnie’s health is worsening and he’s hiding something
  • Whatever is in the Epstein files, Trump doesn’t want it found
  • Trump has no plan forward except to cut everything except Homeland Security and Defense, impose more tariffs, and isolate the nation
  • Between his lies, broken promises, failed policies, and delusions, Trump can’t be trusted

Some will say that I’m being harsh. I am. But I’m using standard benchmarks for my judgements.

  • Trump keeps playing ‘hide the Epstein file’
  • His personal wealth has grown while social services and education are being cut
  • The national debt is growing at a record rate and has overtaken the GNP
  • Prices are rising and he can only offer band aids like the $6000 tax credit for seniors that results in $720
  • Awakening to his grift, his approval ratings are falling, and his disapproval ratings are rising
  • He promised no new wars and started one
  • Declaring himself the unity president, he’s done more to polarize voters than any other in modern history

And as final proof of how delusional he is, he keeps ordering things renamed for himself, and planning monuments for himself, because he thinks everything is going great. The rest of the world knows, if he was worthy of monuments, we’d be proposing and building them on our own. Instead, brown nosers who like to kiss his ass are trying to find new ways of doing it.

Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! still goes. No doubt trying to regain some of his mojo, Trump announced some major gun safety changes. Makes the NRA happy. That’s what’s important. *snark*

We have months to go before it’s all over.

BTW, have you seen Iran’s humorous take on Trump?

The confluence of news, dreams, and mood inspired The Neurons to pull the trigger on “Sugar, We’re Goin Down”.

The Fall Out Boy chorus fills the morning mental music stream:

“We’re going down, down in an earlier round, and sugar we’re going down swinging. I’ll be your number one with a bullet.”

My hope for you today is that you weather it all and come out stronger, healthier, and happier.

Got my coffee. Time to rock on. Cheers

A Dream: Graduation

I dreamed I was at a sister’s house with other family members, getting ready to go somewhere. I never actually saw anyone but knew this and frequently spoke with them, but just in passing comments.

I knew my sister had decided to start a new business. I saw these large, clear plastic trays, made for transferring fluids, were dirty, so I stopped and cleaned them all, to help her out.

They were all in my sister’s car, waiting for me, a maroon vehicle. I then downloaded two computer things to her car: business planning software for her, and directions to my uncle’s house for me.

When I got in the car, my sister said, “There are two downloaded items.” I explained what they were.

She was driving. I got on the phone with my uncle for directions. I knew how to get there; I just needed the final address. (This uncle is deceased in real life.)

He gruffly asked me if I had pen and pencil. I didn’t but felt that wasn’t needed, and would just depend on my memory.

My sister dropped me off at a facility where I was to graduate. Others who were to graduate were also arriving, in groups. Most were younger. I got in line alone. Watching the operation, I realized that they graduated us in small groups in a building and not on stage.

As I reached the door and stopped, waiting to enter, I noticed the man behind me was trying to push me forward. I turned around and told him not to do that. He, a bearded white guy with wavy blonde hair and blue eyes, backed off.

I went into the room when called forward. I again had to wait. I noticed that they were providing mysteries to the people ahead of me. They were expected to solve them using math. I began trying to shift my focus to do better.

We went left, and then right, lining up. When I was second in line, a man helping with giving out the diplomas came to me to identify me. After he did, he explained that I was graduating at a higher level than the others, and things were a little different for me. He moved me to one side to wait.

After a little bit, he brought over a white sheet of paper and told me to hold onto it. I examined it and gathered that it was a summary of my achievements and records, but it was written in a small font and was often different foreign languages so it didn’t make much sense to me. There were also symbols, like the ‘eye on the pyramid’ used on US money.

Dream end

Another White House Dream

This is my sixth recorded white house dream as far as I can tell. Again I’m not talking about the president’s abode.

Middle-aged, I was at my ‘dream home’, a large luxury apartment in very large building. The walls, floors, furniture were all white. It was a very serene, relaxed place. Many windows and sliding doors, several levels, great views of a busy metropolis.

Friends were waiting for me to go out. I was rushing around to get ready. But I was also concerned about calling the plumber; I had to find my phone and call the plumber.

Hurrying around my place, I also seemed to be familiarizing myself with it, even though, in a contrary way, I already knew it. I had my own suite, separate from my wife’s suite, and they were on different levels. My suite featured a large bathroom and sliders to a balcony. Steps from it led to down the building’s common plaza with tables and benches.

While I was dashing, around, one of my friends, H.E., kept texting and calling me, telling me, “Come on.” I kept telling him to just hang on.

Going through one door, I discovered a small room that I hadn’t known about before. It had a sprawling white sofa and several chairs. A few relaxing space, I was astounded to find it. I thought, I never knew this was here, and then thought, I came here to rest.

I then found two other things: a door to a room that was a nursery, and steps going down, which had been blocked off.

I knew I was the ‘original’ owner and figured they’d made those changes and wondered about them.

Back in the main living area, still looking for the phone to call the plumber, I encountered H.E.

H.E. was a large, sort of goofy young guy. I knew him in my dream but he wasn’t anyone from my real life.

I asked him, “How’d you get in here?”

Sheepishly, he replied, “I picked the lock.” Then he urged me to, “Come on.”

I told him, “You shouldn’t have done that. Go on out and wait.”

But he was looking out the window. We had a huge, deep blue community blue. An infinity pool, it took up an entire view of one wall of windows.

The pool really impressed him. I explained what it was, and he kept saying, “That’s so huge and beautiful.”

I agreed. It was very striking against the building’s white surfaces.

H.E. then stepped out to see more of the pool, going to our private patio. Other families were going down to the community plaza space and sitting down to enjoy the sunshine.

I told H.E., “Okay, I’m ready to go.”

Dream end.

The Party Bathroom Dream

I was young again – LOL – but middle-aged, and part of this large celebration.

Held outside, in a large green park, the party was to celebrate the birthday of someone famous. I have no idea who. Tables the length of football fields, covered in white tablecloths, set with dishware, china, and silverware, lined the park’s perimeter. Terrific food, cakes, sandwiches, veggies.

There were also numerous river-rock buildings which looked like shelters. These turned out to be restrooms.

Strangely, that’s where most of the dream focused: the bathrooms. I needed to use the restroom and spent my time dashing around, looking for one that was available. As I did, the Bob Seger song, “Shame on the Moon”, would play off and on. I mostly heard, “Oh, blame it on midnight.”

My friends found this hilarious. No one was in a uniform but people I worked with in the military were present, sitting in chairs in one section.

What I found as I searched for a restroom was that all of them were in use, and there were lines of others waiting.

I raced around, stunned at this problem, thinking, there must be a restroom I can use.

Thinking I found one, to my relief, I went in and discovered that it was set up as little barbershop. While I wondered, “WTH,” one of my friends called out with laughter, “Don’t even think about going there, Seidel.”

I flipped him the bird.

An announcement was made. Everyone was asked to take their seats. Miss Shirley Bassey was going to sing for the guest of honor.

I made my way across the grass toward a table.

Dream end.  

Thursday’s Theme Music – History

Ashland, Oregon — Thursday, April 22, 2026.

Strong sunshine spreads across the valley from the east this morning. There are few clouds. The temperature is 41, the forecast calls for sunny weather, and the high end will see 67 F.

The latest move in Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! came out today.

Donald Trump reclassified state-medicinal marijuana as “less dangerous”. News reporting calls it “historic”, making it a perfect component of OELS!

With this, people will stop talking about:

  • High gas, fertilizer, and food prices
  • How badly Trump’s war in Iran is going, which he declared over as soon as it began (among other things)
  • The 1973 War Powers Act and the 60-day limit
  • Upcoming 2026 midterm elections and a potential blue wave
  • The Strait of Hormuz and whether it’s blockaded, who is doing it, and whether ships are paying tolls, and who’s collecting it
  • Trump’s feud with Pope Leo XIV
  • Rising disapproval numbers and bad polls
  • The backlash to depicting himself as Jesus via AI
  • Labor market weakness
  • Exploding national debt
  • Low consumer confidence
  • Trump’s health, stumbling, and slurring
  • The Epstein files, and Trump’s role in Epstein’s life and crimes.

If it’s not one thing, it’s the same damn thing, over and over.

Trump did his Bible verse reading. The right-wingers predictably gushed over Trump’s bold leadership. Many of the rest of us said, “Wow, that was terrible.”

Jokes arose about whether Trump would read from the Quentin Tarentino version. While others’ Bible reading was live-streamed, Trump’s was recorded and heavily edited.

Your Trump quote for the day:

Ah, Trump math. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.”

Sure, we have. Many con artists make outlandish claims like this, such as George C. Parker, famous for selling people ownership in the Brooklyn Bridge.

Today’s music comes from my dream side. During the dream, I kept hearing the song, “Shame on the Moon” by Bob Seger.

But the dream was about this big birthday celebration for somebody. At its end, Shirley Bassey was introduced to sing.

As I remembered the dream, The Neurons introduced a different Shirley Bassey song, “History Repeating”. The one with her and the Propellerheads from 1997 took over the morning mental music stream.

Lyrics

The word is about, there’s something evolving
Whatever may come, the world keeps revolving
They say the next big thing is here
That the revolution’s near
But to me it seems quite clear
That it’s all just a little bit of history repeating

The newspapers shout – a new style is growing
But it don’t know if it’s coming or going
There is fashion – there is fad
Some is good – some is bad
And the joke is rather sad
That it’s all just a little bit of history repeating

h/t to Genius.com

We heard from Mom. The social worker contacted her. Mom sent a chaotic text summarizing it. Basically, the social worker said that they would not be helping Mom move from the assisted living facility. Mom ended the text by asking my sister if she’ll help her move out at the end of the month.

Hope you have a great Thursday, wherever you are.

Cheers

Fascinating Dream: Aliens

It was a fascinating dream for me. When I awoke from it, I thought, I’d been watching a television show or movie. With a bit of surprise, I then realized I’d been in the dream, along with my wife and two children, which were my offspring. But I was both involved by watching as a minor character and sort of injected into some scenes.

My wife and children and I were tourists processing through some station. Aliens were there; sort of Klingon-like, in light grey blue uniforms with a jacket which has a deep red collar and a matching red shirt under it.

While traveling, all of us are stopped by these others who basically want to enslave us. It’s a troubling scene. I’m passive with my wife, not sure what will happen to us verses the others because we’re human and are supposed to have a different status. Nonetheless, we’re detained with the rest.

There’s then a scene where our captor and one of the captives go back and forth about what’s go be done in this cave where we’re being held. I realize that they’re having a disagreement over a matter of reference and perspective.

The captor keeps saying, ‘to your right’, and the other keeps saying, ‘that doesn’t make sense’. I then try to clarify that the captor is talking about the direction from the way he’s facing, while the captive is facing the opposite direction.

I end up getting up and pointing this out on a diagram they have posted on an easel.

We then ‘watch’ as captives are taken to another place to mine stuff. I don’t know what they’re mining. They make a show of it. I then suddenly realize that they’re secretly mining knowledge.

When the captive of before decides they’d learned enough, he reveals that he has a weapon. Shaped like an obelisk – really, just like a foot tall reproduction of the Washington monument, but shiny, silver-gold – the captive holds it up. Pressing a button, he sends a signal.

Suddenly, all these other dead, sleeping, and collapsed aliens awaken and rise. Each of them are equipped with a like obelisk. Using these, they overpower their captors.

As my wife and I watch, we realize that the revolution has begun.

Dream end.

Monday’s Theme Music – A Sunny Day

Ashland, Oregon, April 13, 2026.

We begin the day with rain, which is expected to continue off and on into the evening. It’s 50 now with a high of 54 F possible. Sunshine does break through, but clouds quickly rush over to block it.

It’s another Trump day. We’re now into week seven of Trump’s Iran War. Trump is blockading the Strait of Hormuz to keep it open and bring Iran to its knees after assuring us, “We won.”

The peace president continues to threaten to bomb Iran if they don’t capitulate. That’s the ‘art of the deal’ for you. It’s worked wonders so far.

The Pope’s comments about peace and the Iran war outraged the peace president. Peace president Trump blasted the Pope on crime and foreign policy, areas which Trump has demonstrated no knowledge in. That means that he assumes he knows more than anyone else, in his mind.

To complete the journey around the bend, Trump shared a social media post likening himself to Jesus. Jesus, who helped the poor and sick and counseled against wealth, greed, and rich men; and Trump, who lies, makes life more miserable for the poor and sick, whose names is almost a synonym for 21st century greed and avarice. Trump certainly remains tone deaf to irony.

Happily, over in Hungary, Viktor Orbán appears out after losing the election and conceding. I hope that’s an omen that more positive change is coming.

Today’s music is brought to me by my dreams. I went through another long one last night. Loaded with family, many of my family members were often on bicycles while I was walking or running. We mostly stayed in contact during this shambolic excursion, which was sometimes alongside a river and was mostly on a dusty road. I was young in the dream, and often sweaty. There were stops for food and eating, and beds where I sometimes stopped and rested. While doing that once, an older copy sat on the bed’s edge to rest. Remembering that I wanted to tell my sister and her husband something, I sprang up from the bed, apologizing to them for startling them. I noticed that the man looked like Alan Rickman.

I was thinking about the dream, revisualizing the part where I began running along the river, when The Neurons introduced music to the morning mental music stream. CCR came out with “Walk on the Water” after John Fogarty’s brother died from a blood transfusion. The song makes sense to me because it’s about being near home.

Late last night, I went for a walk
Down by the river near my home
Couldn’t believe, with my own eyes
And I swear I’ll never leave my home again

Hope peace and grace lift you up and carry you through all your adversity and troubles.

We’re off to do Food & Friends deliveries.

Cheers

The Long Dream

My wife and I were staying in a white apartment building, in a spacious ground-floor unit.

Located on flat land, seven stories tall, the building was part of a busy area, full of energetic people and planning. Part of this was about the traffic going on with the broad street in front of the house. Other changes involved landscaping.

I had a sort of control where I could receive and send information. As I passed information on, someone in charge approached and asked how I was doing that. I showed them my control, a black rectangle similar to a television remote control. I demonstrated how I pointed it at things, pressed a button, and learned from doing that. I could then point it to someone, press a button, and share that information with that person.

In response to questions, I clarified that, yes, I could do simultaneous information collection and broadcast it to multiple people at the same time. But I also showed him that the remote was old and damaged; several buttons were weak or loose. I sometimes had to hold them in longer before the desired effects took place.

I hinted that I would really appreciate a new one, and they implied they might be able to help.

In another part of my dream, I had five cats. All were cats who previously lived with me and passed away. They were just hanging around the apartment, being cats.

Then a strange cat entered the front door. Resembling a small gray lion, it came in and then paused when it saw our cats.

One of our cats ran right up and attacked it. Our cat and the lion cat wrestled for a few seconds and then our cat pulled away and stretched. “Oh, he’s only playing,” we realized.

We then watched as the other cats interacted. One of our cats attacked one of the others, throwing them down. But then all the fighting stopped and the cats just settled down and washed.

It was then time for my wife and I to leave to go somewhere. As we left our apartment, I saw that the building’s rear landscaping was torn up. All the grass and plants had been removed.

That surprised me and my wife. We talked about it and then another approached and assured us that these plans had been in place for a long time. My wife and I chatted further, admitting, we must have missed the notice.

Dream end

Friday’s Theme Music – The Circus

Ashland, Oregon — Friday, April 10, 2026.

56 F right now, 62 is our projected high on a day when rain clouds have moved in and await their cue.

Had a big-ass thunderstorm here yesterday. Began with a heavy rain. Not monsoon level — I’ve experienced them in Southeast Asia — but heavier, harder, more intense than we typically experience. Thunder rolled in.

I went out on the porches to check the gutters. There are two places where the water was splashing out. They’re the usual suspects and need cleaned out again.

While I was out there, I saw lightning to the north. As I thought, lightning, boom, thunder cracked through the valley, violent and loud. That storm was right on top of us. We experienced several more sharp flashes of lightning and deep thunder and then it moved on.

I checked on Papi. My poor orange boi was retired to the master closet. No windows there. It’s his standard safe haven.

Stalemate with Mom continues. Won’t sell her house and asks my sister when the house is being put up for sale. Insists that she can live alone, and rejects anyone telling her otherwise. Doesn’t have a plan except to get out of the assisted living place. Which was basically her plan when she lived with my sister. It’s so frustrating.

Melania Trump stormed onto the national stage to insist that she doesn’t have anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein, and put in a demand about helping the victims.

Meanwhile, inflation was up in March to the highest level in two years, 3.3%. Gasoline prices in the US climbed over 21%. It all can all be traced to Trump’s war on Iran.

Trump responded by releasing a graphic, violent, racist video on ‘Truth Social’ and blaming President Biden.

Who is surprised by any of this? This is par for Trump, creating a distraction from bad news, especially inflation and Epstein, and blaming others. Trump has turned our lives into a three-ring circus.

Today’s song is “Hold On” by Alabama Shakes. This came about when I was doing something and my dream surged back to me. I said, “Hold on,” and spent a moment collecting and assembling dream pieces.

But The Neurons, being who they are, kicked “Hold On” into the morning mental music stream. It’s a solid choice. I heard it I think the year it came out. But when I first heard it on the radio, they never told the song’s title or performer. So I listened, memorizing lines, then went back in and did a net search. Glad I did.

It’s also a song I don’t ever hear being played on the radio these days. That’s a shame.

Hope you and yours are doing well, and peace and grace carry you through whatever the circus of life brings to town.

Cheers

Four Microdreams

I had a series of flash microdreams last night.

In the first, I was editing/revising my manuscript, Unfocused. I awoke confused whether I’d been awake or asleep. Falling back asleep, I experienced the novel as a movie.

Another microdream slipped in. I reached for a green glass tumbler which had water in it. When I tasted it, it was coffee, but it stayed clear.

A man asked me to marry him. Then I thought it was me asking him. Then I thought, I’m both men.

Then I ate a chocolate chip muffin from a tray. Finishing it, I wanted more.

End

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