Category: memories

Today’s Theme Music

Good morning, Mr. Phelps.

Thanksgiving is yesterday’s news until next year. Black Friday has commenced.

Winter is coming.

Now it gets serious.

You’re going to what today…? Diet? Exercise? Shop till you drop? Keep talking with the voices in your head and writing while maintaining a reasonable facade of sanity?

Drink till you drop, or never eat or drink again?

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to get it done, whatever you’re pursuing today. Here’s the music to use at pivotal moments to build momentum and carry you on.

This message will self-describe in five seconds, taking whatever you’re reading this on with it. Oh, come on, don’t act surprised. Planned obsolescence has become a fine manufacturing art. Its destruction will help the economy because you’ll be forced to buy a new one. So it’s really a blessing.

 

 

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I Lament

I lament that there doesn’t seem to be any good Thanksgiving songs in America. Christmas songs are being played in many stores. Why didn’t those Pilgrims and others write some good Thanksgiving songs? What happened to, “Hark, the herald Pilgrims sing, Thanksgiving has come again?”

Nobody sang, “I’ll be home for Thanksgiving, if only in my dreams.”

Nobody marched to the chant, “I don’t know but I’ve been told, the Thanksgiving dinner is getting cold. I don’t know but I concede, roasted turkey makes me sleep.”

Disappointing.

Perhaps, per my wife’s view, Thanksgiving doesn’t deserve a celebration because of all the Native Americans killed as they took over the ‘new world’.

I lament that I don’t know much about Christmas in other countries. It’s been a few decades since I was overseas for the holidays. Are Christmas songs being played in stores in Japan, Europe, Australia, et cetera, already? Do other countries have their versions of Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Do citizens in other nations have any idea what I’m writing about?

I lament that my rear end falls asleep so easily. By ‘falls asleep’, I mean it becomes uncomfortable and grows numb. I want to know: have studies been done? Does writer’s butt affect other writers besides me?

I lament that I have but one lap to give to my cats. Tucker is a big fella and takes up the entire lap. That doesn’t stop Quinn, a small fellow, from making the attempt. If Quinn is already occupying my lap, Tucker will go high and attempt to perch on my chest or shoulder. Not comfortable.

Our two recent rescues, Boo Radley and Meep, haven’t demonstrated any lap interests. Boo likes sleeping alongside us, following the standard cat practice of tucking up against a leg or hip. Meep keeps his distant. He’s not socialized to co-exist with humans well. We’re working on it.

I lament that so much fake news and false information permeates the Internet. Worse than relying on this information, when it turns out to be false, or worse, deliberately false, it undermines other information. I come more and more to distrust news on the net. It requires greater due diligence on my part to vet information, and that’s just damn wearying. It’s nice to impossible to fix false information once it’s out there. Stories that were proven false as far back as 1998 get some cosmetic updates and become circulated as a new truth.

Of course, I lament that I tend toward globalization. When one corporation or politician is caught lying, I tend to brand them all. But then, there is a rich history of corporations and politicians lying to us and misleading us.

Likewise, I lament that there seems to be some seriously flawed understanding of the star system, when people give one to five stars to hotels and restaurants.

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Today’s Theme Music

Theme music is all about being a signature song. I offer them as a signature song to establish the day’s tone. For today, I’m dropping into the wayback machine and pulling out a little theme song from a television series, ‘Bonanza’.

‘Bonanza’ was a television series produced and aired on NBC from 1959 to 1973. Meanwhile, it was syndicated and shown as reruns. It wasn’t unusual to walk into someone’s house after school and see ‘Bonanza’ on the telly. Most amusing to me is that visiting its set in the Lake Tahoe area really impressed people. Paris and the Eiffel Tower, the Great Pyramids, rock of Gibraltar, the Louvre, etc…nah. But the house where Hoss, Ben, Little Joe and the rest strutted? Wow. 

The show’s title came from the expression for a big discovery of ore. Hope your day brings you a bonanza. Thank you, Jay Livingstone and David Rose, for creating this music.

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Each

Each day brings a new requirement to re-balance priorities, needs, desires and the rest.

Each week brings an increasing gentle awareness of time.

Each month brings a new assessment of what’s been done, what needs to be done, what hasn’t been done, what you hope to do.

Each season brings new requirements for clothing, repairs, vacations, work and celebrations.

Each holiday brings a new influx of decorations – ghosts, Santas, elves and reindeer – and renewed promises to clean out the previous collection of decorations. Each effort bring renewed efforts.

Each departure brings thoughts and reflections. Each arrival brings anticipation.

Each year brings fresh nostalgia and growing awareness of mortality.

Each morning brings a new hope.

Each hour brings a new beginning.

And each thought brings a new perspective.

Each time, it’s not the same.

And each time, you wonder how has it changed?

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Twelfth Night

A friend gave us tickets to Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s ‘Twelfth Night’ as a thank you gift.

We attended the play last Sunday night. It was updated to take place in 1930s Hollywood. That premise seemed a little thin at times, as characters were still called the count and the jester, and the studio was referred to as a land. Overall, it was well acted and enjoyable…for as much as I paid attention. For as the lights dimmed and the play began, I thought, “What does Handley’s imagination look like?”

Almost everyone (future studies estimate over ninety percent of people) in the future have an augmented memory. The augmented memory has a variety of options available. One of them includes creating an avatar of your external memory. This presents you with the opportunity to talk to your memory about your memories and life. Your memory can also be a memorable companion, so you’re never alone. You always have your memory, which is useful in space.

Madison Handley, however, went a little further than the norm. Although she embodied her memory as an avatar, she also embodied her imagination as an avatar. Thus, she and her memory played with her imagination as well as her friends when she was young. But, as her mother warned, “Someday your imagination is going to get you into trouble,” her imagination caused trouble and Handley took the fall. (It is her imagination.) After that day arrived, Handley banished it. Now her memory is requesting an audience for her imagination on its behalf because her imagination has some suggestions to help Handley out of her current situation.

All of this led to the standard use questions about the character. As I developed the background to this while at the play, I thought of other imaginary characters and the troubles they caused. A movie was semi-recalled. It seemed like it was in the 80s or 90s. The imaginary character was green and male. They had disappeared, but now they were back.

That’s all I could remember. I thought I would google it sometime but didn’t get around to it. Then, today, while thinking about the imagination and shaving, I remembered, ‘Drop Dead, Fred’, Phoebe Cates, Tim Matheson, Marsha Mason, 1991. Then, remembering those sudden details, I searched for confirmation on the net. Yea, verily, I was correct. The movie only received 9% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I wondered, why do I remember it so well?

All of this cogitation, delays and results – the process – amused me. Took a while of circling but the memory finally landed.

Now back to my novel. I still don’t know her imagination’s appearance but I believe that will come. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

I woke up with this song in my mind so I went with it.

It was written before I was born but it’s a pop standard, and has been used in movies. Lots of famous people covered it, and even some later groups, like The Cure. I know it from my mother playing it. I primarily grew up in the towns, townships and suburbs surrounding Pittsburgh. This was the 1960s. Hi-fi stereo was the iPad of the day and vinyl was emperor.

Mom listened to many records on her hi-fi stereo console and I became familiar with many artists through her enjoyment. This song was one of her favorites. I always enjoyed these lines:

“And if you should survive to 105,
Look at all you’ll derive out of being alive!
And here is the best part, you have a head start
If you are among the very young at heart.”

(n/t to Lyricsmode.com)

That’s what I awoke to in my mental jukebox today. Don’t know why. I slept well and had interesting but common dreams.

Here is Frank Sinatra with ‘Young At Heart’. He didn’t write the song but it was his hit, and it seems most associated with him. Enjoy. Cheers

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Today’s Music

So many songs call me today. My spirits are high, but we’re bracing ourselves for a storm. The remnants of typhoon Songda is heading our way up in the Pacific NW, so thoughts drift that way as we prepare for high winds, power outages, and possible flooding. We appear to be on the fringe as we’re inland, but we’ve gone through storms elsewhere, so we prepare.

As always, though, I’m looking forward and back, riding the wave of the day. Some John Cougar Mellencamp creeps through my mind, as does Boston, Pit Bull and Farrell. But then comes a memory from 1971.

‘Riders on the Storm’ was the last song The Doors recorded before Jim Morrison’s death. I vividly remember the first time I heard it in Pittsburgh. I was fourteen, on the verge of fifteen, on the verge of moving out of my mother’s house to join my father. The day was overcast, with a slight drizzle, and this song played. It seemed perfect for my mood and the moment. After hearing it, I sat in a small shed I’d made out of found construction plywood and huddled as the rain finally opened up to full throttle.

1971 seemed like a continuation of harsh years and fast change for me. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin had died the year before, and now Jim Morrison was dead. Listening to rock, drawing, and reading were my escapes, and one leg of that tripod was breaking down. It may sound depressing. I don’t consider it depressing but enriching, and the beginning of my growth as a more introspective person. Of course, I also became more withdrawn then, and socially awkward, trends I still continue. It probably didn’t help that I was reading books like ‘Catch 22’, ‘Catcher in the Rye’, ‘War and Peace’, ‘Cancer Ward’, and ‘Crime and Punishment’ in that period.

Stop and listen to the storm as we brace. Stay safe, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing.

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The Cat in the Bush

Evening was drawing down on Half Moon Bay. Swirling and descending night fog crept in from the ocean. Some dim light remained from sunset and I’d opened our front door to step out and smell the night. The ocean’s fragrance was strong and fresh and beautifully mingled with the scents from Half Moon Bay’s damp vegetation and soil, a pleasing libation for the nose. Cars were heard on Highway 92 less than a quarter mile off but cars heard on 92 almost all hours of day and night. People liked our small town. It benefited from being located on the Pacific Coast Highway between Santa Cruz to the south, Pacifica and San Francisco to the north, and the Pacific Ocean owning the west. Our beaches presented precious beach access.

Noises drew my attention to the right. I wasn’t wearing my glasses but saw well enough to spot a small animal dart between bushes. It looked like a young dark colored cat.

I love animals but cats manifest a hypnotic power over me. My wife likes to claim that I’ve never met a cat that wasn’t hungry. Naturally, this was my first thought. I wanted to see the animal to determine who it was, that it was physically okay, and that it wasn’t hungry. Well, I also just wanted to visit with it. So I went after it, moving slowly but quickly in a crouch and softly calling, “Here, kitty, kitty.”

The animal rushed from one bush to another. I followed, closing the gap to it. Then, it did a weird thing, shaking the entire bush. Perplexed, I lowered myself and moved closer to see. It shook the bush again. I realized, in my half blind state, that it was stamping its legs. That’s odd, I thought. I’ve never seen a cat do that before….

Because this wasn’t a cat.

Skunk.

Carefully, I backed away.

Very…very…carefully.

Once a few feet from the bush, I ran back to the house on my tiptoes, gingerly closed the front door and locked it. You know, in case the skunk came after me.

And then I laughed.

Yeah, I know how lucky I am. I’m a little more careful when approaching unknown animals in the dusk, without my glasses.

You never know what it might be.

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A Bullshit Free Day

I’d like to declare a national day free of bullshit. We can call it National No Bullshit Day. NNBD. Although bullshit is spelled as one word, some call it as BS, or more colloquially, B.S.. So we could do NNBSD. Naturally, I like my idea better. We can have shirts and tee shirts, and raise money, or some other bullshit.

You know BS when you hear it and you call it by your expression. Mularky. Bull. Bullshit. B.S. Garbage. Crap.

We were used to it in the military. Bullshit inundated us, which, if you think about it, which I try not to do, is actually a lot of B.S. We had our bullshit meters. Hearing something that we knew as bullshit, we’d say, in a sort of laconic way, “That just pegged my bullshit meter.” That statement meant that the needle went all the way to the right. Another expression used was, “That buried the needle on my bullshit meter.” Buried the needle was an old expression referencing tachometers and opening throttles to the point where the needles entered the red zone or went as far as it could. Of course, the ultimate bullshit expression was, “My bullshit meter just broke.”

Most bullshit meters used to go to ten. Mine, of course, went to eleven. It was the Spinal Tap Special. (rim shot)

I suppose, in this precise digital age, that bullshit meters are way more accurate. They’re probably on a scale of one to a thousand, enabling the ability to assign a more accurate bullshit value to a given statement, action or news. There are probably apps that can be downloaded and installed on your smart phones, iPhones, iPads and tablets. Being sixty, I don’t need a bullshit meter, and will tell you, with a sniff, “I don’t need a meter to tell me when something’s bullshit. I’ve experienced enough bullshit to know bullshit when bullshit is around.”

But many naive and gullibles do not recognize bullshit. They believe you can get something for nothing. I, of course, believe that’s bullshit. Of course, the problem with bullshit is, once it’s in your system, you can’t get it out, debilitating your immunity to bullshit. You soon can’t even detect it.

Still, there times when my bullshit meter gets broke. For example, when a car manufacturer, like Ford, declares they’ve completely re-invented a car, I think, that’s bullshit.

When they announced literally no longer means literally, I shook my head and said, “What bullshit.”

When I see the price of my quad shot mocha is five dollars, I think, that’s outrageous bullshit, even though it’s not, really. Bullshit often depends upon your frame of reference. I have some years behind me so my frame of reference has gotten pretty damn big. First, I would tell you, “Nobody sold mochas when I was a kid. We didn’t have a Starbucks or coffee house on every corner. Coffee houses were part of the beat generation. Only artists and poets went there, not people.”

And then I will tell you, “I remember when a cup of coffee cost less than a dollar.” Someone with a bigger frame of reference will naturally top that and declare, “I remember when it cost ten cents a cup,” and another will say, “I remember when it was free.” I’m not sure if coffee was ever free, so that moves my old bullshit meter needle a little bit, but that’s okay, because they’re old, and it’s honest bullshit.

The Internet doesn’t help. I mean, come on, there is so much bullshit on it that it seems possible that the bullshit will take it down. Which would be a pretty good news lead: “In today’s top story, bullshit broke the worldwide web. More coming up, after this word from your sponsors.” Which is bullshit in its own right, to need to wait to hear about this important news until you’ve heard someone try to sell you something.

I may be showing my age there.

You’d think some tech company could design an application that not only detects bullshit but blocks it, just as intrusion detection and prevention software works. Then, as you’re downloading a page, a little popup arrives on your screen and says, “Warning. Bullshit was detected and blocked.”

We could even assign the bullshit levels of threat: faint, mild, average, serious, dangerous, and OMGWTF infuriating.

I dream of a time when television commercials could contain the disclaimer, “This commercial contains no bullshit,” and you can sit back and listen and know, you’re not hearing any bullshit. Because if they were spreading bullshit when they made the commercial, some great Bullshit God would zap them with a laser and declare in a thunderous voice, “No bullshit allowed. Not on my watch.”

But, yes, that’s a fantasy. For now, I’ll dream of a bullshit free day, or even just, like an hour when I don’t read something and say to the cats, “Can you believe this bullshit?”

I don’t think it’s going to be until after November 8th.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

I first heard and saw today’s song while I was in an Osan City donut shop in Korea in February, 1986. I was there on temporary duty with the Air Force during the annual Team Spirit exercises. This little mocking gem was an MTV staple for the late Robert Palmer, a song that was sexy and debasing as it called your attention to models pretending to play instruments and told you, “You were addicted to love.”

Yeah, it was the love that had you watching, wasn’t it?

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