The cat agrees with me. It’s a nice day to rest. Allergies have me nose snorking. My throat feels a little sore and inflamed. I wonder over whether it’s allergies or some other new diseases encouraged my Trump’s feckless management.
Trump is quite the feckless person these days, pivoting from idea to idea. Feels like we’re being guided by a two-year-old who is just discovering words.
Outside, the weather is better than my mood. Sunshine skips between clouds. It’s 50 F but feels warmer. Springier. A mild wind sometimes lashes nature into movement. It might touch 70 F today. I had plans but my whining side is undermining them.
I smirk as I read news of Trump supporters like Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, et al, barking and whining about Trump’s tariffs. Will he listen to the shitheels? Questionable. They encouraged him to be who he is. Supported him all the way. Told others to do the same. That’s probably confusing and irritating to puppy Trump and the pack. “Why’d you vote me in when I told you I would do this, only to turn around and tell me not to do that after I’ve been voted in?”
Painful as this is, we wouldn’t be enduring this pain if those people — those ‘influencers’ — thought more about what was going on and what was going to happen. But oh, no, eggs! So ‘pensive! Border! Fear! Kamala is a woman! Female POTUS — so scawy!
Now look at their worry and fear. Who let the dog out?
Reading these things, pondering them as coffee warms my throat, The Neurons bring “Mad World” by Tears for Fears into the morning mental music stream. That makes total sense.
Yes, coffee is warming me but it’s giving little comfort. Trump’s supporters are turning on him but that’s also offering little comfort. GOP reps are supposedly resisting Trump’s budget and tariffs. That gives me little comfort. They’ve proven themselves to be feckless and spineless. Like that Mitch McConnell, basically declaring with a pout, “Oh, no, he’s going too far.”
You created that monster, fool.
My wife passed “Death of the Author” to me after she finished reading it. She said, “You’ll thank me later.” I think I’ll go read a book.
I tell my wife, “I’m wearing over eight hundred dollars worth of clothes.”
She looks me over. “Gold-plated underwear?”
“That wouldn’t be comfortable nor practical.” I reconsider the gold-plated undies for a few more seconds. “How would that work?”
“Why are your clothes so pricy?”
“My socks,” I admit.
I’m wearing my compression stockings, as the medical ‘they’ likes to label them. I received a statement about them last night. Review, sign, return. Custom made in Germany to help me cope with lymphedema, the statement reveals that each stocking costs $366.
I explain this to my wife. “Good thing that they’re paid for by Medicare and Tricare for Life. I would have never bought these on my own.”
“No. You’re not comfortable with a pair of shoes that costs over a hundred dollars,” my wife says.
This is true. Fashion doesn’t interest me. I like to be practical. Today’s shoes cost me about sixty. They’re several years old. My jeans are a pre-COVID purchase. Forty dollars. My shirt was bought at an outlet store for $25, I think, over ten years ago. My Columbia fleece is even older. I think I bought it for $40 on sale. Other than the stockings, my undies are the newest things on my person.
Four more stockings are on the way. $366 each. I think about getting a safe to keep them safe.
I begin typing on my computer. Goldplate underwear for men is available at Kohl’s, a search result says. I click on the link. It comes up with gold-plated stainless-steel chains.
Just as well. I don’t think I’m up for gold-plated underwear.
President Trump announced on Monday that he planned to relax limits on pollution from cars, saying that the move wouldn’t “mean a damn bit of difference to the environment.”
But decades of science show that the pollution from automobile tailpipes has harmed the environment and public health, from the days when leaded gasoline sent neurotoxins into the air and soil to the carbon dioxide emissions that are heating the planet right now.
No need to read any further. ‘Decades of science’ means nothing to PINO Trusk. Those are facts. Facts do not count in Trumpworld. We’ve already seen that with vaccinations and COVID-19. Measles and vaccines. Anything and vaccines.
Trump’s vision for the United States is a dark and poisoned place.
I’ve been using a secret weapon to amuse me the last few weeks. Two, actually. Both are throwbacks for me.
Tim Dowling is an American living in the UK. He writes a column for the Guardian. I find them hilarious. I used to regularly read him. Then The Neurons dropped him out of the rotation. I never noticed.
I regularly read news in the Guardian. I like their coverage of U.S. news. So, while reading an article a few weeks ago, I saw a reference to the latest Tim Dowling column. Clicking on that, I resumed reading him, catching up on his past columns by reading one everyday.
He’s sixty years old. Married, with three sons. They have just moved out. He also has a dog, cat, and tortoise. He plays in a band and deprecates his playing. Being an animal lover and very fond of cats, I enjoy the tales relating to his household animals the most. Today, I read his column from September of 2023.
My other secret vice — Well, it’s not my only vice. I have a large list of secret vices. It depends on whose morality is used to judge me.
But this vice is watching an old British science fiction show called Red Dwarf. I recently re-discovered it playing on a live TV channel on Prime.
I began watching that show in the early 1990s. I was assigned to Onizuka Air Station then in the San Jose-San Francisco Bay Area. KQED introduced me to Red Dwarf during their science fiction fund-raising marathons.
Red Dwarf is an interstellar mining ship. It’s principally manned by Lister, Rimmer, the Cat, and Kryden. Dave Lister is the last human alive. He was in stasis as punishment for having a cat onboard the Red Dwarf. He stayed in stasis for 3,000,000 years while the radiation levels declined to safe levels.
That was needed because Arnold Rimmer had an accident. The accident resulted in a radiation link that killed all the crew members except Dave Lister. Because Lister was in stasis.
Rimmer and Lister were roomates and worked together. They do not get along. But the computer, Holly, brought Rimmer back as a holograph as a companion for Lister so Lister doesn’t go insane.
Lister isn’t happy about Holly’s decision.
The Cat is a direct descendent of the cat behind Lister’s punishment. Cats have evolved into a sort of human cat variation. He’s a vain, vapid, and selfish character who intensely dislikes Rimmer and is often Lister’s ally.
All manner of science fiction action happens to the Red Dwarf crew. Others species are encountered. Time travel happens. The mail catches up with them. Rimmer believes in order and is ambitious but inept. Lister likes to party but is intelligent and lazy. They plot against one another. Nanobots stage a revolt. All males, they are hungry for female interactions.
Yes, it’s silly. Full of all gaps, contradictions, and plot holes. But it’s fun. Watching it returns me for a bit to when I was thirty years younger and the future looked brighter.
You gotta do something to get through these days, right?
Ford and GM have both announced production increases. Ford focused on its lowest priced vechicles. GM focused on its truck production in Indiana. Both moves are attempts to offset expected losses coming from the Trump tariffs.
The measles outbreak in Texas continues growing. 481 total cases, with 59 new cases over the last three days. Five states now report outbreaks. An outbreak in Mexico is related to the Texas outbreak.
Oil prices have dropped to their lowest in three years. Oil prices are softer because energy companies expect less demand due to economic downturns. Those downturns are associated with less manufacturing production, a decrease in international trade, and a drop in travel to and from the United States.
It can mean some good news for people. Gas prices have dropped and will drop more in the short term. Watching how the mounting problems at national parks, such as closures, no trash pick up, reduced staffing, and congestion caused by those things, will affect travel as the weather warms in the United States.
Several articles which pointed out major problems with PINO Trump’s trade war. All are classic errors. No exit strategy; a poorly defined enemy; no clear terms for victory. These factors sank multiple efforts to change things in decades past. If Trump fails — or when he fails — he’ll blame others. His family’s motto is, “It’s not my fault.”
Despite the great Jobs Report, layoffs spiked by 205% last month. This represents the third-highest monthly total ever recorded.
Arias ring through the room’s air. These originate in my wife’s digestive system. She’s on day 3 of a fast. A lacto-ovo-pescatarian for over 30 years, all that she’s permitted herself during these days is green tea and water. Plenty of both have been consumed.
Fasting is her go-to response to matters. First time that she fasted was while I was in the Philippines on military assignment. Living with her parents, she decided to fast and did so for ten days. In this case, she’s dealing with two fronts: RA flares afflicting her shoulder, and being dispirited about the current political clime in the United States. She’d taken to long days of doom scrolling. Friends finally told her, “You need to stop.”
So stop she did. She stopped eating and doom scrolling. How long will she continue, is the question put to her. She’s not certain. She’ll reach some point where she’ll decide she’s clean enough and will resume eating.
While she isn’t eating, she’s still treating herself to warm epson salts baths and near infrared red-light therapy in our home pod. She’s also staying in the house, limiting social contact and physical activity. She’s reading a lot of fiction.
I hope it all works. I hope she recovers and is eating again soon.
It’s a bleak and featureless Sunda morning. Like winter and spring both decided not to show up. The sun complained, “If you guys aren’t in, I’m not either.”
The gray feels like a weight pressing down. I wonder what the weather was like when Robbie Robertson wrote “The Weight” for The Band.
It’s three quarters through March, 22 of 2025. 46 F now, the weather ‘they’ are trying to sell me on mostly sunny skies and a high of 66 F. I’ve gone past skeptical about that. Then I read that we’re hitting the seventies for Monday through Wednesday here. My heart harbors doubt. Do they mean the 1970s? With Trump still in office, there’s a reasonable question about the reference.
Papi the ginger blade is energetic today. I make a critical mistake. After feeding him breakfast, I give him his blood pressure medicine in some Churro. He loves that stuff and this is our regular process. But stupid me, I think, I’ll do two things at once. Give him his BP med in the Churro and while he’s eating that, I’ll rub his thyroid medication in his ear. That last is something that must be done twice a day.
Except my nose is a little snoggy. I hear myself breathing through it. In and out like a wheezy, broken machine. Were it a machine, I’d think, I need to replace that thing. It’s beyond fixing.
Doing Papi’s morning meds is not a favorite activity for me. Tucker was on the same regimen. He lasted a year. Papi began it the same month when Tucker passed. Lot of burdensome memories organized in this task.
I bend down to administer the thyroid med. Papi hears that breathing. Thinking a bear or something must be after him, he hits reverse like he’s a Corvette in a police chase and speeds through my legs. I bend over double, trying to grab him while saying, “No, stay there, let me do this, please, Papi. Papi..”
He darts away. I get the gooey white medicine on me. That’s toxic to humans. Cursing, I take off the used finger cap, dump it, and wash off my hand.
Papi has settled by the back door. He did not eat his Churri with his heart medicine. He’s eyeing me the way a quarterback is looking at a defensive end just before the ball is snapped. He is thinking, “Is he coming after me? How do I get away?”
I carry out the Churri bowl like a peace offering. Papi gallops up, all purrs, and bends his head to the task. I back away to give him space.
Papi takes two licks of his Churri and speeds off again. WTF? The Neurons ask. There is no answer.
Okay, I’ll go to the other med. We’re on the clock. This stuff is s’posed to be given every twelve hours. I don a new little finger cap. Put new med on it. Head for Papi.
“Mrr,” Papi says. Watching me, we begin a ballet. I move forward. He moves right. I go right. He backs up and heads left, then turns and prances around the coffee table, saying, “Mrr,” as he does. He looks yearningly at the back door. He wants out. I’ll try to trick him. Heading to the door, I unlock it. Opens it. Papi darts up and skids to a halt. “Mrr.” He knows this trick. Smarter than me, he doesn’t budge when I open the door and brightly declare, “Do you want to go out?”
Papi shies back into the room. I close the door. Verbally cajoling him has worked in the past. That’s the past. Papi’s not having it this morning. He keeps circling me, telling me, “Mrr.” I keep explaining that he knows that I need to give him this med. It’s not that bad. We do it everyday.
He finally decides, okay, here I came. Purring, he edges up to my leg. I slowly bend. Holding gently onto his back, I thank him for indulging me and gently rub the medicine into his inner ear.
Released, he bolts to the back door and releases a plaintive cry. I get what he’s saying. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Time to go out.” I open the door. He’s like a fast wind blowing out. Halfway across the patio, tail up, he turns around, sits, and stares at me. I can’t read that expression. Telling him the usual precautions whenever he’s out, I close the door. Whole thing has taken thirty minutes. I feel like it’s been ninety, ninety five minutes. Back in the office, I take a long gulp of cooling coffee.
Here’s The Weight by The Band. If you read this far, you know why it’s in my morning mental music stream.
I type up this post. Papi comes back in. I set the Churri with his meds down in a different room. He eats it up.
I come back into the office and set. Papi joins me and purrs as I scratch his head and chin.
This is such an easy question to answer. I wish I could write more every day. Yes, fill my cup with coffee and let me write without end. I’m talking about fiction writing. Novels and such. I really enjoy writing fiction.
I also wish I could eat more every day. I’m limited in my eating by obscure factors like sodium in foods, gaining weight, and staying healthy. So I’m restricted in how much I can eat every day. It’s a shame, too, because there are many foods which I really enjoy and would like to eat more every day. Like, right now, I could really go for a piece of pie. Blueberry. With ice cream.
Of course, I’d also like to socialize more every day. I’m writing, and that’s not a social activity, speaking for myself, of course, so that limits how much time I have to socialize. A few more hours of socializing every day would be good for me, I think. So I wish that I could socialize more every day.
Spending more time reading is also something I’d wish to be able to do more every day. I love reading, and there are so many awesome writers out there. So many great novels, books, essays, and articles to read. While I’m at it, I also wish to study more every day. I would love to be able to spend time deeply studying art, architecture, and history, along with literature and quantum mechanics.
Then again, if I could, I wish I could spend more time with my wife every day. She’s an intelligent person and a lot of fun.
Another wish I’d have is to be able to visit with my family more every day. They live in other parts of the country, so it takes time and money to visit them, and doing so interrupts my other wishes. But if we had a teleporter, I could probably make it work.
While I’m thinking about it, I also wish I could travel more. I’ve done some traveling, mostly around the United States, Far East, some northern Africa, and Europe. I’ve rarely been south of the equator, so I’d like to visit ruins and cultures in the southern latitutes. I wish I could travel more every day and go to places like Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and Antarctica. I’ve also always wanted to visit Sri Lanka.
I also wish I could time travel more every day. I’ve learned through hard experience that time travel has a lot of perks but man, when you screw it up, it’s downright hard to fix. There’s a lot of things I need to apologize to the world about which has happened because of my botched time traveling. I feel really guilty about it, too, but if I can just find the time — ha, sorry about that, that pun wasn’t planned — I wish I could time travel more every day.
Since I’m confessing, I’d also wish to be able to see the future more every day. You know, predict things. But time travel has screwed that up, too, as has my dimension clones. If it wasn’t for them bouncing between dimensions, I’d have a much better life and would be way better at seeing the future. I think we all would. But, anyway…
Other than that brief list, there’s nothing I wish to do more every day. Oh, except exercise. And paint. I painted a great deal when I was young but not so much as an adult. I wish I could paint more every day.
Oh, and go fishing.
Other than those few things, there’s nothing.
Oh, except sleeping. I really wish I could sleep more every day.
But that’s all.
Except, I wish I could just relax and do nothing more every day. Because I really am lazy at heart.
And that’s it. There is no more.
Well, except for a few DIY projects around the house. I wish I had time to do more DIY every day.
If you’re feelin’ some heat, that might be cos it’s Fried-day. Not much heat to Ashlandia’s thin sunshine. Black clouds dropped in and held like smoke curling against a low ceiling. Rain has been jumpin’ in and out, heavy at times. We have jumped from 37 F to 47 F, which is about as high as we can expect. This is Frieda, March 21, 2025.
Out to a late start. Final therapy session for the lymphedema. Things lookin’ good, fingers crossed, knock wood, ‘cetera. Just gotta keep it so.
As it was an early AM appointment and it was in Medord, my wife tagged along so we could do some shoppin’. Pick up ‘sentials. That done, since we’d not eaten, we took a late lunch at a restaurant where we chowed on eggs and hash browns with coffee and toast. Then it was back home and back here and at last I’m sat up in the writin’ position. I jumped immediately in novel writing because some muse critters were hammering at things they felt needed done. With those checked off, I’m turning to posting.
Today’s song comes from offhand exchanges between the other and me. Coming into the house, we chatted about getting online “to see what the orange hooplehead has done now,” as she put it. So we were asking of our computers, what’s going on?
That exchange gave The Neurons ammo to introduce “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes to the morning mental music stream, afternoon edition. But in my search for a video, I came across a cover by Pink which took me in, so here we are.
I also offer the song as theme music for all those coping with the crap which the Trusk Regime is lading on us. As one line goes, “And I pray. Oh my God, do I pray. I pray every single day for revolution.”
Coffee and I have met up a few times today, and I’m doing fine. Hope you are, too. Onward. Courage. Cheers
Mom isn’t speaking to her live-in boyfriend again. Hormones? Mom is 89 and her boyfriend is 95.
The cause of the rift is ‘his girlfriend’. His best friend died last year. Mom thinks her beau has a thing for the man’s widow. The widow called him last Saturday. Mom said she and her boyfriend haven’t spoken since that phone call.
I blame it on drama. Mom lives for being the center of a dramado. If one doesn’t naturally occur, she’ll conjure it.
Take her falls. She falls a lot. ‘Bout every six weeks by my estimate. Ends up injuring herself. She generally falls while cleaning or dressing herself.
Now, the situation can be changed. Mom can move into assisted living. My sisters and I encourage her to do that. We told her we will pay for it. But nope. Mom won’t because her boyfriend — the one she isn’t speaking to, because, per her, he has another girlfriend — says he doesn’t want to move out of the house and they are a package deal.
Okay. How ’bout if we have someone come in and help her? I did hire someone to come in and clean. Originally twice a week. Then once a week. Then every other week. Then once a month, Mom slowly moved her back out. The cleaning person then experienced her own health issues and has never returned.
How ’bout having some medical assitance come in a few times a week then, etc? No, Mom doesn’t want to have anyone coming to the house. That would mean she would need to clean herself up first, clean the house, etc. No, no, no.
Bottom line, she has established her path and remains firmly on it.
Yes, I’m writing simplistically about the routines, emotions, psychology, etc., of these decisions. I do sympathize and empathize with her position. But this challenge has been going on for half a decade. My sisters have each bowed out of the discussions. It’s only Mom and I talking about it now, and she doesn’t really talk. She just says no.
She wrote last week and asked, when can I come back again? Sadly, my life is out here, in Oregon, with my wife and my own issues. So, sorry, Mom, can just vacate my life again, as I’ve done a couple times before.
Michael Seidel, writer 