Category: memories

Monday’s Theme Music

I began as a ZZ Top fan in high school art class in 1973. I introduced them to my friend, who became my girlfriend and then my wife when Tres Hombres came out that year. “La Grange” become a song that had her reaching for the volume knob and twisting it hard right whenever it came on.

I’ve seen them in concert three times. Today’s song came about from a dream last night. Multi-tasking in the dream, one sequence had me trying to feed the cats. They were going nuts for the food that I was offering them. I was trying to keep them out of it while putting the food in bowls for them. Meanwhile, a dozen interruptions were transpiring.

Anyway, from that feeding sequence, I started singing to them, “Gimme all your kibble, all your hugs and kisses, too,” because that’s how it seemed in the dream. My music stream picked it up and started cranking out “Gimme All Your Lovin'” from Eliminator (1983).

Never seen the video before, though. I was overseas during those years in places that usually didn’t have television available. Kind of a cheesy video. But it was the 1980s.

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

I have another confession to make: I sing to my cats. They all enjoy it. That’s what I take from their purring. Maybe they don’t like it, but believe that I’ll stop singing if they start purring.

Level 42’s “Something About You” (1985) is part of my offerings. Some lyrics fit tight.

Now, how can it be
That a love carved out of caring
Fashioned by fate could suffer so hard
From the games played once too often
But making mistakes is a part of life’s imperfection
Born of the years
Is it so wrong to be human after all?

h/t to Lyricsfreak.com

It’s human to care about animals, to love them, to discover their personalities and flaws, and rescue them. Sometimes taking them on goes against the wisdom given to you, and sometimes force inconveniences on your life, but in the end, they frequently give so much, they’re a mistake worth making.

 

 

 

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Friday’s Theme Music

How ’bout an Elton John favorite today. Let’s consider two. “Funeral for A Friend” and “Love Lies Bleeding” are often played together. They nicely complement one another. The first is an instrumental that starts with blowing winds. I can see the funereal procession of somber faces, and then the aftermath, thinking about what’s brought you to this moment. The music picks up as you think about what you’ll do next. It’s a bit chaotic, but then starts clarifying and rising, lifting your energy as you march forward, your decisions made.

“Love Lies Bleeding” begins like brisk fresh start. “Okay, this happened, but life goes on, and I’m going on.” But the words tell an unfolding story of betrayal, reflection, and exasperation.

Together, you end up thinking, “Yep, that’s life.”

Of course, the two songs came off of the fascinating 1973, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, an album about growth, change, and rock and roll’s influence on a young person’s life. Yeah, we played it a few times.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

I was in Germany when this song popped into the world in 1988. It felt “Armageddon It” and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” were being heard everywhere I went. It was played on the radio, on boom box tapes, CDs at parties, in clubs. Def Leppard seemed fabulously popular. A friend showed me a video of her as a young goth girl dressed in black leather dancing to “Armageddon It”.

Are you getting it? Armageddon it.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I’m stuck in a sour war mood, which prompts recall of my military days.

This song, “Civil War” by Guns n’ Roses, came out two years before I retired from the U.S. Air Force. I retired because the military personnel powers-that-be wanted to move me to a new duty station. I was first offered a position with Air Force Space Command’s Inspector General team. A prestigious position, it would mean a lot of traveling, but it would take me to places that I’ve always wanted to see. Although I was keen, my wife was weary of me being away all the time.* So they instead wanted to send me to manage a missile site command post in the northern boonies. No, thanks.

It’s curious. We stood ready for war, but we didn’t want war, right? That’s what we told ourselves. But we spend all of our time and money preparing for war. That leaves us little prepared for anything else. This trend has gotten way out of hand since I retired in 1995. More and more resources are turned toward preparing for war and fighting war; less goes to social nets, education, infrastructure, etc. And we’re constantly being told that preparing to fight and going to war is what must be done to keep us safe, but as we do so, we’re fighting to save a collapsing nation.

Guns n’ Roses’ lyrics sums it up better than I do.

Look at your young men fighting
Look at your women crying
Look at your young men dying
The way they’ve always done before

Look at the hate we’re breeding
Look at the fear we’re feeding
Look at the lives we’re leading
The way we’ve always done before

h/t AZLyrics.com

 

* Ironic side note: I retired from the Air Force, and became a customer service/sales operations manager for a medical device startup. Two years later, the company offered me an associate marketing product manager position, and I ended up on the road visiting hospitals, doctors, and trade shows…

 

 

 

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The Green Chair

Above – Scheckter (on ottoman) and Pogo on the green furniture.

Well, the green chair is gone. 

I know, it was just a chair. An ottoman and love seat originally went with the chair. Made of a textured green material, the furniture had straightforward lines and were without embellishment. But they were comfortable and sturdy, and they fit our little study.

The little study was in the first home that we bought in Half Moon Bay, California. It was right off the breakfast nook, by the dining room. Sounds fancy, right, but it was small, yet elegant. It’s where we ended up spending a lot of time. With the windows open, we caught a cooling ocean breeze diluting the sunshine. Fog horn often sounded above the sound of Highway 92 traffic. We could watch television, read, and listen to music in there, and be very cozy. Our living room furniture was too large for the little study. Besides, if we put that furniture in there, we’d need to replace it. More furniture was needed, an exasperating decision.

The green chair with the ottoman supporting my legs is often where I sat. That’s where the cats would join me. We had three then. The elderly Queen, Jade, had joined us when we were stationed on Okinawa in 1982 and was twenty-year when she passed away in our HMB home. The sweet, affable Rocky came from our Germany assignment in the late eighties, the sole survivor of his litter. Later came the black long-haired, handsome fellow, Sam, as direct and unpretentious as his name, abandoned at Moffett NAS when some family moved away. Each gave me happy hours of purrs vising with me in the green chair before passing away.

The orange boys, Pogo and Scheckter, (Chubbosaurus Orange) found their way to us, joining us on the green chair and the green love seat, stretching out in the sunshine. They moved up to Ashland with us in 2005. Between cancer and a car, Ashland is where their story ended.

As we moved, the green furniture dwindled. First, the love seat went, because there wasn’t room in our newest house. The green chair and ottoman ended up in the master bedroom. Alas, though, besides sleeping on the chair, the cats found the green furniture to be excellent scratching posts. After Rocky, Sam, Jade, and the orange boys made their marks, Lady and Quinn took up the task of shredding the chair and ottoman. The ottoman was finally defeated and tossed. Tucker and Boo joined Lady and Quinn to work over the chair. All had floofnesia about not scratching the furniture. Lady and Quinn found their way over the rainbow bridge, but then along came Papi, aka Meep. He found the green chair quite comfortable.

Now the final piece, the green chair where I shared their company, is gone. It was just too shredded for my wife’s tastes, so out it went.

Stupid chair. Makes me tear up and cry just remembering it.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Reading news about the Middle-East puts me in a martial mood. Military.com wondered if war between the U.S. and Iran is inevitable, and have thoughts on how that war would play out.

*snark alert* I know that most believe that war with Iran can be avoided because John Bolton is on Trump’s team. One of the architects of PNAC, Bolton was a prominent voice in demands for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He thinks that went well. He also wants preemptive war with North Korea. With Bolton in place, surely the lessons of other wars will be learned and war will be averted.  *end snark*

All that reflecting introduced a 1970 Black Sabbath tune called “War Pigs”. A taste of the lyrics that Ozzie sings:

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor

Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait ’til their judgement day comes
Yeah!

h/t to lyricsfreak.com

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

You ever play with those idle daydreams about your life and where you’re at? Maybe think, if I wasn’t married, or didn’t have kids, or this business, or this job, I’d be gone? Think about getting on that long train running and disappearing?

It’s not that your life is so terrible, but you’ve wearied. The sameness of your routines bury you. You eat the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner, perhaps varying it by the day of the week, perhaps spicing it up by a change of season. The sameness is unrelenting, with breaks for holidays. Once that holiday ends, though, it’s back on the bus, back on the line, back in the cubicle or the office, back with the laundry and dishes, back in the car in a car, racing to work so you can make up the hours and race back home. Then you sit down and watch variations of the same television shows, movies, and sports.

Maybe, instead of disappearing, your fantasy is that you make it big because money, while it won’t buy you happiness, can give you enough room to breathe and try to do go to some of the places of your dreams, something that will break the damn sameness of your existence. Your fantasies veer toward winning the lottery or publishing a book that becomes a best seller, or finally getting recognized and promoted at work.

Doobie Brothers noticed that most people stay where they are because of love. Maybe it’s the love for another person, or maybe it’s the love of the place where you were born, or where you live. Without that love, where would you be now?

Sorry. Pre-coffee rant. Monday morning blahs. The same old song and dance.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

“Even Now” began streaming in my head like I was listening to the radio in 1983. There’d been nothing in my head except, “Where’s the towel?” Then here’s Bob singing, “There’s a highway, a lonesome stretch of gray.”

I said, “Bob, baby, why?”

He said, “Even now, she’s all that I want, all that I need.”

“Bob, that’s answering my question, is it, Bob?”

“She’s givin’ it all, she’s givin’ it free.”

I accepted it; the Universe had chosen my Sunday morning music.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

1991.

I usually think that INXS was performing this song. The beat and vocal delivery reminds me of INXS although, listening, it’s clearly not Michael Hutchence singing. The driving, fast rhythms always moved people in the clubs. It remains a good walking song. I have also sung it to a number of cats through the years. They always just sit down and wait it out.

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