Category: memories

Munda’s Theme Music

We’ve made it through another cycle, and we’re set up to repeat it again. I mean the week, of course. Today is May 26, 2025. The month is singing its last notes. Many associate Memorial Day in the U.S. with the beginning of summer. I’m a traditionalist, though, and recognize summer’s start with the June solstice, as we’re north of the equator. The weather doesn’t care what we’re calling the season; it’s gonna do as it wants. Today, it looks like it wants more cloudiness baking with some sunshine. 60 F now, we’re be roaming the seventies through the late afternoon.

My bright mood has expired. Darkness has soldiered in. That’s my standard cycle. I just need deep breaths and patience to survive it, and then more normal moods will rotate in, and it’ll be up and down again for a while. That’s me.

In other cycle news, Jamelle Bouie’s opinion piece of May 24, 2025, recounted the Conservative routine: the promise of tax cuts which will strengthen the economy.

“With each new Republican administration, it is the same promise. With each round of tax cuts, it is the same result: vast benefits for the wealthiest Americans and a pittance for everyone else. There is little growth but widening inequality and an even starker gap between the haves and have-nots.“

Reagan promised tax cuts in 1981. Bush Senior was forced into tax increases to address the damage done by Reagan’s cuts. Dubya promised tax cuts, and then Trump in 2017, and now Trump in 2025. Each time those cuts came, the economy did not do better. It took Democrats in charge to clean up the economic mess and get the economy on track again. And here we go again. Will it work this time when it failed every other effort? Time will tell.

But as Mr. Bouie writes of this latest effort:

We are now looking at another round of Republican tax cuts. Yet again the claim is that this will benefit most Americans. “The next phase of our plan to deliver the greatest economy in history is for this Congress to pass tax cuts for everybody,” Trump said in his March 4 address to Congress. But as Paul Krugman points out in his Substack newsletter, this latest package is both a shameless giveaway to the rich and a ruinous cut to safety net programs for lower-income and working Americans.

Today’s song comes from reading about the viral corruption spreading under the Trump Regime. Out of that GRRRRRRRRRR news review, The Neurons dropped “Perry Mason” by Ozzy into the morning mental music stream. Perry Mason is a fictitious lawyer of high repute. He saved the innocent and delivered the guilty for a serving of justice. He came onto the scene in a series of Erle Stanley Gardner novels in the 1930s and joined the pop culture as a television show starring Raymond Burr in the 1950s and 1960s. Yes, I know of the later series. Anyway… Ozzy Osbourne put some words to music by guitarist Zakk Wylde and keyboard player John Sinclair. The song’s chorus goes,

Who can we get on the case?
We need Perry Mason
Someone to put you in place
Calling Perry Mason again
Again

h/t Genius.com

Yep, we need Perry Mason…again…to ferret out all the illegal antics pushed by the Trump Regime and get us some justice.

Rock on into the new week. Coffee is putting me on its shoulders one more time. Here we go. Happy Memorial Day to my fellow Americans. Cheers

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Sunda’s Theme Music

Another sun filled blue sky day cups Ashlandia. It’s a quiet one out there. Like it’s a holiday and everyone else has gone away. They don’t know about the 70 degrees F and sun-kissed wind toying with our hair in Ashlandia. Clouds are gathering and we’ll top off our temperatures at 75 plus F today.

Papi is loving this weather, prancing in and out of the house with his tail up. Whenever we go out back, he emerges from his sun nap to visit with us.

This, for the record, is May 25, 2025, part of the Memorial Day holiday weekend in the United States. As always, my wife and I compare our childhood Memorial Days. For her, it was Decoration Day. Her family would make the pilgrimage by car to the family’s graveyards. They had two, one for Mom’s family, and the other for Dad’s line. Both were born and raised in southern West Virginia and had a family line that went back several hundred years. The graveyard was cleaned up, if needed, and fresh flowers were put on the graves.

My family, in contrast, were relatively new, in some ways. Mom’s side came over on the Mayflower and kept moving west. She was born in Turin, Iowa in the 1930s. Her grandfather helped establish the town, and her mother was born in Turin in 1910. Dad’s father’s family came over in 1899, went to Pittsburgh, PA, and stayed. His mother’s family arrived in Pittsburgh a little bit later and also stayed.

Memorial Day for me, then, wasn’t and isn’t about graves, but about sports, family, and food. As I aged, it did become more about military service and sacrifice. Now it’s just my wife and I out here in Oregon. Her mobility and diet are limited, and Memorial Day has been relegated to just another spot on the calendar.

My theme music today relates to a conversation with my wife this morning. A friend highlighted a post for me on Facebook. I don’t go much on Facebook. My wife doesn’t have a FB account but uses mine to lurk, so she saw the post and told me about it. The post is about misunderstood song lyrics — mondegreens. One song was “Panama” by Van Halen. A popular mondegreen, unfamiliar to me, is that they’re singing “padded bra!” instead of “Panama!” Reading this to me, my wife sang the “padded bra!” part, cracking herself up. The Neurons immediately shipped the song into the morning mental music stream, where it shares time with my thoughts.

My wife and I were in the office this morning, each pursuing our computer agendas. Suddenly she bursts, “There’s a FEMA carveout for Trump’s residences in the bill that was just passed.” She was livid. “Trump doesn’t send FEMA to help anyone any more but if one of his places are hit, he’s taken care of. This is ridiculous! This is disgusting! He’s supposed to be the servant of the people, not the other way around. When will those idiots wake up?”

A few minutes later and she launched into Trump’s latest crypto scam, piling on about how he’s using the presidency to enrich herself. I commiserate but don’t otherwise respond. I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of how Trump and the Greedy Ol’ Trump Party is enshittifying the United States. I’m taking the day off from it.

Hope you have the best day you can. I’m gonna try to do the same. Coffee is at hand. And away we go.

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Saturda’s Theme Music

Mid-morning, it’s 60 F today, Saturda, May 24, 2025, in Ashlandia. The sky is summer blue. 84 F is projected as our plateau. My neighbor is out working on a project involving cars, trailers, campers, and motorcycles. That’s who he is. He’s often away, but when he’s home, people frequently arrive to bring things or take them away. He’s a gregarious man with a carrying voice, and will do whatever he can to help people.

Papi was out early and quick, enjoying the weather. Watching him through a window, I saw him hunting. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Papi in hunting cat mode. In tall grass back in the yard, not far from the fence and some bushes, he was hardwired into something going on at his feet. I opened the door and stepped out to check the weather. He gave me one fast look and returned to his activity. I don’t know what his prey was. A little later, he came in for his second breakfast.

I read that the Trump Regime is gutting the Space Force. Wasn’t he the one who created that?

But that’s Trump and subsequently, the United States under Trump, tottering around with little focus, babbling something one day and then on to something else with a toddler’s ambition but less curiosity. His only constants are that he’s hired a cabinet full of reality-displaced people willing to prop him up and lie like and for him, and his golfing and bragging. It’s not a good way to run a nation, as people might find out, when they wake up and climb out from under their rocks and prejudices.

Trump also signed an EO to hasten the building of nuclear powerplants. Because when you’re dealing with a deadly force that has the potential to kill and sicken millions, building fast is very important. Given the Trump Regime’s tendency to be hasty, mistake-prone underthinkers, I’m not looking forward to that result.

Trump has also signed EO to cut down the national parks and forests. Like, who needs trees when we need to build? Look at all that land that they can use for homes and buildings! That there is no infrastructure to support all their feverish dreams of all those homes and buildings never entered their thinking. Nor did the impact to the environment when all those trees are removed. Historically, we know what happens to air quality, soil erosion, and flooding when trees are removed in great quantities and the topography is drastically changed. But the Trump Regime proudly shuns history and knowledge, and too much of the nation follow him like lemings, little Trump-faced orange lemmings in red MAGA hats, marching right over a cliff.

Oh, yeah, and then there’s a real knee slapper in the news: Trump is blaming former President Obama for leaking secrets to Russia. Sure, I believe that *snark*. It’s more likely that Trump is trying to distract us with verbal sleight of hand while more illegal shit gets underway and another disaster is uncovered. He’s using Mr. Obama because Mr. Biden is now suffering from an aggressive cancer. While Trump cares less about that, he’s a sharp con man and knows that people have sympathy for Mr. Biden.

In honor of Trump, Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, and the MAGA lemmings, The Neurons have channeled Molly Hatchet’s 1979 southern rocker, “Flirtin’ with Disaster”, into the morning mental music stream. All of the original members of Molly Hatchet have passed on. Kind of sobering, as all were younger than me. Thinking about that is one of those ‘knock on wood’ moments.

Some sample lyrics, from lyrics.com, for your perusal.

We're flirtin' with disaster,
Ya'll know what I mean
And the way we run our lives,
It makes no sense to me
I don't know about yourself or what you want to be, yeah
When we gamble with our time,
We choose our destiny

I'm travelin' down that lonesome road
Feel like I'm dragging a heavy load
Yeah I've tried to turn my head away,
Feels about the same most every day

You know what I'm talking about, baby

Here we go, into the day once again. Rock on. Cheers

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The Parents Dream

I dreamed of my mother and father last night. Both are still alive. They ceased being a couple by 1961. Both have gone on to several other marriages and long-term relationships.

I’m not surprised that I dreamed about them. It’s Memorial Day weekend. Mom loves the holidays. If little else often worked out right, the holidays usually did. The food was sensational. Mom’s speciaities above everything else is fried chicken and potato salad. These foods figured prominently in the warm weather holidays of Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day. These were always large family affairs featuring picnics or cook-outs.

On the flip side, I only recall one Christmas with Dad. None of the rest. He and I get along pretty well. That’s not the issue. The issue was once he was away, I had to chose between Mom and Dad, and Mom had better food.

Back to the dream. In it, I was an adult. My two sisters who shared Mom and Dad as their biological parents were present, along with Mom and Dad. I was an adult, and Mom and Dad were the standard parents familiar to me from when I was eighteen to when I was sixty. Then they changed, bodies breaking down, in the old people they now are, restricted in their activities, dealing with medical issues, like, all the time.

But in the dream, we five were together as adults. Something had happened, some disaster, that forced us together. The dream didn’t give that info. So Mom and my sisters were moving into the place that I had shared with Dad in the dream, but not in real life. This was a small, wood-paneled dump. Tiny, cramped kitchen with dim lights. Old white refrigerator. Microwave on a fake wood stand. Tiny formica gray and silver table with four chairs. One of the ‘old-fashioned’ answering machines with microtapes.

And there were notes. This was part of some complex, which had a pool and a clubhouse. Dad had a stack of notes. This was familiar to me in the dream but not anything he’d ever done in real life. It was his handwriting, though. These were codes and bank account numbers, phone numbers for different people and organizations. I’d glanced through them on arrival.

In the dream, Mom, walking around in a fake fur coat, said, “Jim, we need the access code. Can you give it to us?”

I took some digs at Mom. I’d seen her snooping; Mom was always and forever a secret, furtive snoop, a trait which my oldest sister developed. After that dream, I saw that connection very clearly. Mom used to do things in secret and tell us children, “Don’t tell anyone.”

So, in the dream, I chuckled and asked Mom, “You didn’t find it when you were snooping around.”

Mom issued the standard warning with her eyes and mouth that said, ‘Quiet, don’t talk about that.’ Dad was his typical tight-lipped and silent individual, dismayed by what transpired around him.

I went on to Mom, “Oh, come on, Mom. We all know how you snoop and I say you doing it while Dad was in the other room.” Then I went on to Dad, “What’s the code, Dad? Is it 03? I saw that written down over there. I also saw 258. Is it one of them?”

Dad eventually revealed the code, which I don’t remember. That’s when the dream fades out on me. But it opened my eyes about my parents as I reviewed the dream later.

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Frida’s Wandering Political Thoughts

I wander as lonely as an angry citizen among the piles of debris on Frida, May 23, 2025.

Lookit what the self-professed law and order party is doing.

Trump Instructs Republicans to ‘Erase’ January 6 Riots From History, Congressman Says

Donald Trump has instructed Republican lawmakers to “erase” the events of January 6, a Democratic congressman said, as efforts to honor Capitol police officers with a memorial plaque remain stalled more than two years after its legal deadline.

Following the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, during which over 140 officers were injured and five died in its aftermath, Congress passed legislation requiring a commemorative plaque to be installed by March 2023 to honor the officers’ bravery.

Yet, the National Association of Police Organizations, International Union of Police Associations, and FOP supported Trump last year. Trump, documented and celebrated for the art of the lie. Trump, first convicted felon to become POTUS. Trump, who dismisses due process. More FAFO at work.

Yes, those who let history be rewritten soon find it biting them in the ass.

Howard Lutnick is out there making an ass out of himself more, showing how disconnected he remains from reality.

Crowd’s response to Howard Lutnick’s price rise question goes viral

Speaking at Axios’ Building the Future event in Washington on Wednesday, Lutnick said of the tariffs: “This is on since April. It’s not that the tariff is coming; it’s on.”

“Have any of you felt any of it?” Lutnick asked, to which several audience members responded with an audible “yes.”

The Trump Regime believes that it’s going just swell. They’re masters of oblivion.

I’m pleased not to be traveling by air this holiday season.

Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes threaten Memorial Day weekend

Certain factors about air travel are well established for 2025. Mix a shortage of air traffic controllers with a cup of failures in the software and systems used for air traffic control, stir in a trend of aircraft accidents and incidents and top with thunderstorms and tornadoes. Good luck to you if you’re flying.

It pays to play with the Greedy Ol’ Trump Party in the White House.

Boeing, Justice Department reach deal to avoid trial over 737 crashes

Boeing has reached a $1.1 billion deal with the Department of Justice that will allow it to avoid prosecution for two crashes involving its 737 Max jetliners that killed a total of 346 people. 

“This kind of non-prosecution deal is unprecedented and obviously wrong for the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history. My families will object and hope to convince the court to reject it,” Paul Cassell, a professor at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law who is representing the families, said in the statement.

If you recall recent history, Boeing secures ‘largest-ever’ order from Qatar during Trump visit

It’s all about corporations and the wealthy in the corrupt Trumpland, and fuck We the People.

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Thirstda’s Theme Music

Sunshine is available in Ashlandia, today. It’s Thirstda, May 22, 2025, in Ashlandia, where we’re again luxuriating under comfortable spring weather. We’re rising through the mid-fifties and will give the thermometer a pause at 71 F. Now it’s cooler than yesterday, which hit 78 F, but this is still fine weather. A variety of thin, high clouds are stretching their white fabric over the sky in several different directions, keeping us cooler. But a warming trend is in evidence for Memorial Day weekend for us, with Saturday cresting at 83 F.

In other trends besides the weather, Donald Trump told more lies. He’s lying and bragging again. Let’s call it trumgling, cause it really needs a word because it happens so often. Today’s trumgling is that gas in many states is $1.98. He never specifies which state, right? No, not his way to present evidence. I wouldn’t be surprised if some red-state pure blooded MAGAt owns a gas station and lowers prices, just to give Trump a boost. As it stands now, it’s pure fabrication. This might be part of his dementia, but Trump has demonstrated a lifetime of lying, especially when he’s bragging and spreading falsehoods about how wealthy he is or how great he is.

What’s sick and tragic about Trump’s lying is that it’s called out in the press but many people dismiss it for whatever reason suits their thinking. But the White House usually just shrugs it off. Or his surrogates insist without an eye blink that he’s telling the truth. Evidence is not provided.

Some try passing off the constant trumgling as misunderstandings. Some say that Trump is misunderstood. Either way, because of that thinking, The Neurons dug up “Misunderstanding”, the 1979 Genesis song, and have it playing in my morning mental music stream. I’ve always enjoyed the song as a power rock ballad with throwback vibes.

Coffee has been consumed and I’ve assumed the writing position. The day is going mighty fine, despite the “Big Beautiful Bill” passing in the House. Lawrence O’Donnell labels it a ‘suicide pact’ for the Greedy Ol’ Trump Party due to its eagerness to reward the wealthy with more wealthy while making it more challenging for the poor and underprivileged to survive and advance. O’Donnell figures that once voters realize what Trump and the GOTP have done, a revolt will follow. I don’t know. I’ve lost faith in many of my fellow citizens and their willingness to get involved, pay attention, and vote. Many seem bent on a self-destructive path just to ‘own the libs’ or some shit. What will happen? Time will tell.

Cheers

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Wenzda’s Theme Music

Sunshine and blue skies are beckoning me out in Ashlandia today. Supposed to be 78 F today, but it’s gonna have to climb from its current 52 F. Feels like the local weather has it in it to do so, though.

This is Wenzda, May 21, 2025. May is splitting past me faster than forked lightening. I’m astonished by its speed. They tell me that time goes faster for you as you age. If I reach 80, I’m be blinking away in the morning and getting ready for bed at the same time. Maybe it’ll just feel like it is.

I’m in a very good mood today. Don’t know what nutrition and hormones and factors out of my dream network and thinking network brought me to this zenith of eagerness and satisfaction. It’s a periodic thing, though. I wrote almost the same words not a few months ago. How the world seems like it’s getting thrown into the garbage disposal and the water is on and the switch is about to be thrown, taking many good things down the drain and into the past. I hear of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and I just want to puke with disgust and anger, yet here I am, with high spirits and happiness. Probably a high from editing myself. Reading the novel again to fix what’s wrong, I’m happy and pleased. I wrote what I like to read, and I’m enjoying it. Just like that, it’s all about me. Really is a surreal existence.

Today’s music is a ZZ Top cover. Isaac Hayes and Dave Porter wrote it. Sam and Dave recorded and released it. Then along came ZZ Top with their version of “I Thank You.” I do like ZZ’s version best; it just better suits my sensibilities. Why the song has settled into my morning mental music stream is only The Neurons to know. I’ve been reading about recent research on dreams and how they’re made. I was interested because I dream a lot. They speculate now that it’s a network working together using many more functions than originally guessed, and not housed in one specific place, like the hippocampi. Reading that, I wondered if some similar network worked to produce the songs that land in my morning mental music stream.

Going to the music, I’ll give you Sam and Dave and ZZ Top’s offerings, because we all don’t have the same musical tastebuds. Both are terrific.

Coffee is lifting me higher. I’m ready for another day, at least for the moment. Hope you have a great one. Here we go.

Cheers

1

Sunda’s Wandering Thoughts

I wonder if they’ll ‘reboot’ the James Bond movies by re-making them.

Will there be a female or trans 007? I know a Black 007 has been discussed.

Oh, sorry, I remember that Casino Royale was considered a reboot, and that several subsequent movies have been called ‘reboots’. I don’t get that. Guess what I was/am thinking about are ‘remakes’. Will they remake, for example, Goldfinger?

Wonder what other films could be remadeand how they would be changed? Would anyone dare touch The African Queen, Citizen Kane, Gone With the Wind, or The Godfather?

I watched the first Murderbot on Apple. I was disappointed but I seem to be in a minority. I never heard/saw Murderbot as a male, and the character’s dry disparaging humor seems to be absent. Well, IMO.

2

Sunda’s Theme Music

Rain took its drops and went elsewhere. Though clouds stayed, sunshine rushed in. A swirly, restless day was had. Hot in direct sun, chilly in shadow when the wind played. We did see 66 F at our house. Now it’s dropping, expecting to stoop to the 40s overnight. Tomorrow, we’ll do it again.

For the record, this is Sunda, Mai 18, 2025.

I’ve been busy all day. This was the culmination of a cleaning project. Ashlandia and Recology were taking in trash and electronics free of charge this weekend at the transfer station. This inspired my wife and I to declare we’ll do some cleanup and rid ourselves of unused and broken old items. Beginning Twosda, I pulled, cleaned, inspected, and decided on what to do with stuff which we’d accumulated and didn’t seem to be using. I consulted with my wife as necessary. Like, we have three big boxes of china. It’s a formal dinnerware setting for twelve, acquired in Germany over a period fro 1988 to 1991. We’ve probably used them a half dozen times, and not any time in the last decade. Much of it was awarded to me as prizes in monthly, quarterly, and annual competitions at a base or specific units. Mikasa was one of the sponsors and would often give gift certificates. My wife used ones I won to buy china. No, we didn’t pitch the china. We put it aside to give to a friend who will take it to a charity boutique. A few times a year they have a big sale and include things like china. Proceeds help offset people’s cost for hospice.

My wife’s health kept her sidelined during Operation Cleanup. But I enjoyed the solitary work. While I put in a couple hours every day after writing, today was the load up and drop off. The SUV was backed up and configured. Loading began at 10:15. By 11:30, I was ready for the dump trip. I hit the line at 11:45 and inched the vehicle to the gate at 12:30. They directed me to trash and electronics, which covered my contributions. By 1 PM, I was back home.

Then I cleaned clean the car and reconfigured its seating and all that, and cleaned the garage and rearranged things to be more organized and take advantage of the cleared space. I just finished that at 6 PM. I sweated a few buckets today, and my feet are singing about their unhappiness like a bunch of hounds with the blues. I’m taking advantage of this time to post before I make my dinner.

Today’s song turned out to be “On A Carousel” by the Hollies. They released it in the 1960s. It’s a song about love and the up and down ride you’re on when you’re in love. I was using it to think about Trump. We’re going around and around with him as he whines about the judicial system and courts, ignores the Constitution, threatens anyone who disagrees with him, and then acts like an idiot who mated a jackass. Guess that would be a idioass or a jackiot. Did you hear about him and his video where he’s supposed to be playing “Don’t Stop Believin'” by Journey in concert? His connections with reality frays more every hour. His supporters don’s seem much better. Guess they’re holding on to their dreams.

Time to call it. Hope you had a good one. Cheers

0

PINs & Passwords

PINs and passwords are integral to first world life. Friends and I discussed how we manage our passwords and PINs. All that caused me to think and smile.

There’s an article out there about ‘things our children wouldn’t know about’ because whatever it was is now obsolete. Telephone party lines, rolodexes, TV ‘rabbit ears’ and outdoor antennas, carbon copy or carbon paper, and those sort of things. I was thinking of the reverse mode, and how astonished our children might be that we had no PINs and passwords when I was growing up in the 1950s to mid-1970s. We never had to figure out and remember a magical combination of letters, numbers and ‘special characters’ to get in and out of our online accounts. Number one, we didn’t have online accounts. We lacked the Internet and home computers. Now, there’s a PIN to learn to use a bathroom. Another PIN to access my voice mail. A different PIN to use my credit card, depending on the card reader, and to withdraw money.

I wonder, though, how many years it’ll be until the next generation is amused with our tales of PINs & Passwords and our explanations for how they were used.

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