Category: music

Munda’s Theme Music

We’re rockin’ into a new work, children, hustling toward spring in Ashlandia. It’s Munda, March 10, 2025. Sunshine highlights clouds stretched thin and silvery against a weak blue sky and misty green mountains. 38 F now, but 60 is possible. We poked 66 yesterday, and it was lovely. Air felt fresh but cool, and the sunshine offered a warm counterbalance.

Called Transitions, which is the place coordinating my custom-made compression socks. The right one still hasn’t been received so I wanted to see if they can provide any tracking info or insights into why. Ordered 2/19/25, my physio expected it by Feb.’s end. We’re in limbo with my treatment until that puppy comes in. Basically, I’m done with the massage therapy when it is received, as this is a ‘maintenance’ sock to help my body cope with lymphedema. The Transitions individual responsible for my case is out so her pleasant, accomodating supervisor took the info, passed it on, and told me to expect a call back tomorrow.

Today’s song comes from a 2023 television series. I’m re-watching The Last of Us. Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal star in this dystopian series about a zombie issue. Twenty years after the breakout, he’s taking her across the depleted U.S. because she may have the answer to a cure/vaccine, as she seems immune.

Yesterday’s episode introduced us to Bill, played by Nick Offerman. Bill is a misogynistic prepper. Living alone, intelligent and well armed, he’s set up a compound where he can live free from zombie attacks and outsiders. After a few years, along comes Frank (Murray Bartlett), a survivor trying to make it to Boston. Bill feeds Frank and the two become lovers and a couple. It’s such a sweet, sweet story, and my favorite episode.

A Linda Rondstadt song, “Long Long Time”, is the couple’s song. The Neurons appreciated the 1970 song and kept it alive in the morning mental music stream.

Hope you have someone who helps you carry on through the days.

Coffee has met my taste buds and our daily romance continues. Have the best day possible. Cheers

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Sunda’s Theme Music

Another Sunda has come upon us, and it’s landed on 3/9/2025. We set our clocks ahead today in most of the continental U.S., part of our human struggle to make the best use of time and light and be productive. Arguments abound about the productivity of changing time and I’m not going there. It’s 48 F in Ashland, mostly sunny. A soft zephyr hisses around trees. Thin clouds skirt the area and sunshine peeks through, giving us a springy winter pastiche.

I don’t know why one song dominates the morning mental music stream. The Neurons have shuffled a 1983 Michael Jackson song in. “Human Nature” is a soft pop ballad written by Steve Porcaro…originally Porcaro had success with a band called “Toto” that he helped found. Meanwhile, he played keyboards or synthesizers on Michael Jackson songs. The Toto song, “Rosanna”, was said to be based on Porcaro’s girlfriend for a while, Rosanna Arquette, which was denied and then acknowledged. Porcaro played on so many albums with other artists in the late 1970s through the 1980s, if you listened to pop and rock during that period, you were exposed time and again.

Michael Jackson, of course, was the King of Pop for a long reign. This song was from the Thriller album, which was the #1 album for 37 weeks. “Human Nature” was one of seven hit songs from the album, with all of those songs reaching the top 10. The biggest hits from that album would be “Billie Jean”, “Beat It”, and “Thriller”. With all of those songs on that album, the album became the best-selling album of all time, selling over 70 million copies. Staggering.

Meanwhile, “Human Nature” was written originally by Steve Porcaro. Quincy Jones was producing Thriller. He heard a demo of “Human Nature” and liked the sound but he had the lyrics re-written by John Bettis, a songwriter who wrote over 1600 songs for pop and country music performers. His songs and music was often featured in hit films of that era, like Cocktail, Say Anything, Vision Quest, Curly Sue, and a whole chunk more. What a business it all is.

The chorus of “Human Nature” is well-known:

If they say why (why?), why (why?)
Tell them that it’s human nature
Why (why?), why (why?), does he do me that way?
If they say why (why?), why (why?)
Tell them that it’s human nature
Why (why?), why (why?), does he do me that way?

h/t to AZLyrics.com

That phrase, “tell them that it’s human nature,” is often used to explain the unexplainable about people’s actions.

Coffee has overtaken me again. Hope you have a most excellent Sunda to repurpose an old phrase. Here we go. Cheers

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Sattida’s Theme Music

Welcome, welcome, welcome. It’s Sattida, March 8, 2025. The spelling for today is inspired by memory of how one of my younger sisters used to pronounce the day. She was a sunny child. When I laughed and teased her about the way she said it, she glowered with thunder cloud intensity. That put an end to that.

Right now, we’re a 39 F but it’s climbing fast as the big swirling ball of energy breaches the blue sky. An upper limit of 64 F is expected, the weather ‘they’ tell us.

Happy International Women’s Day. International Women’s Day (IWD), marked annually on March 8, is a global day of recognition celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women while also calling for increased gender equality.

This day has evolved from its early 20th-century socialist roots to a worldwide observance embraced by the United Nations and countless organizations globally.

The observance dates back to the first International Women’s Day in 1911 when over one million people across Europe protested for women’s suffrage and labor rights, according to UN Women.

Women are still protesting for women’s suffrage and labor rights, over 114 years later. As others note, as we witness it, the progress they’ve made is reversible. Many men will state things like, “I think it was a mistake to give women the right to vote.” So, apparently men are born with that right, but men gave it to women. What a crock of maladjusted, egotistical thinking.

The Neurons invited an Elton John song into the morning mental music stream. “Your Song” has lyrics written by Bernie Taupin. Released in 1970, I was fourteen. I found the song to be introspective, a person thinking about who they are, what they want, and where they’re going. That felt perfect for me in that age and era. Bernie wrote the song but Elton John found the inflections and tone to sharpen the focus and enrich the words’ sensibilities.

It’s in me this morning because of dreams. Not a specific dream but the way my dreams lifted me up. I admittedly view the world through a lens of disappointment. We we do not live up to our potential to be so much more. We seem to be regressing, perhaps even devolving. It could be true that we’re doing both of those things, and pondering the mechanics and influences which might make them true is a challenging bit of logic work on its own. Despite my outward anger and disappointment, I constantly experience uplifting and reassuring dreams these days. Like our state of the world, the why behind these dreams are worthy of their own thinking and writing time. We’re still explaining dreams as a species, trying to understand what creates them. Either way, my dreams’ uplifting nature feels like a gift. I’m just not sure who is sending it to me.

“Your Song” wasn’t featured in a dream, though, no. It came about from my thinking, “It’s funny how I feel inside despite my pessimism and disappointment.” It was a short flea jump from that bridge to Elton John’s opening vocals, “It’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside.”

Hope your Sattida lives up to your needs and hopes. Coffee has been welcomed into my gullet once again. Time to rock another day. Cheers

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Thirstda’s Theme Music

Someone kicked the bucket. Grays splashed across the sky. White highlights relieve the gray’s relentless hold and the sunshine skips in through whatever cracks it can find. Still, better than it was at 7:30 AM. I was on the road, northbound to a medical appointment then. Rain drizzled the traffic and motorways. 39 F then, we’ve jumped to 43 F now and may spring up to 50 F. Lot of the horizons were mystified as well, plying us with a wuthering heights vibe.

This is Thirstda, March 6, 2025. Remember, the holiday season begins less than nine months from now. Better get planning.

Coming back from ‘up north’…okay, ‘up north’ is actually almost due west northwest and just fourteen miles up the Innerstate. But it’s north and south on the maps, so, what am I going to do, just declare it differently because I think myself king of the world?

But coming back, heading east, snow topped the low northern mountains. The snow level looked like 2500 feet in elevation. The ridges on I-5’s southern side were snow free. That changed a bit as the valley pinched closed. Turning off the highway and climbing a surface street toward home, snow glazed the evergreens around 3000 feet in elevation. Nothing around our house, though. Typical of the period when seasons change, it all gets a little edgier, swirlier, and more unpredictable.

As far as medical updates from my appointments, my limbs are doing great and show no swelling. But appointments are necessary until the right side’s sock arrives. It seems lost in Truskland.

Didn’t have any sense of what today’s theme music should be. Like The Neurons in charge of that activity went on strike. Maybe they were fired. Terminated for poor performance. Who knows? Lot of that seems to be going around.

Fortunately, Dame Fortune stepped in and guided me to Rock n’ Roll HOF performance from 2008. Joan Jett, Billy Joel, John Mellencamp, John Fogerty and others were doing a cover of a Dave Clark 5 1963 teenbeat, “Glad All Over”. It’s a fun presentation, an excellent example of the thumping and rocking that attracted many to pop and rock. Hope you get a kick out of it, too.

Sunshine has made a breakthrough. Clouds are scurrying clear and blue sky is bowling in. I’m downing some coffee and hitting the writing circuit. Hope the day works out in good ways for you and yours. Cheers

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Wenzda’s Theme Music

Someone must’ve pressed the ‘misty’ button on today’s weather menu. 44 F, cloudy, drizzly, misty, a little sunny, the high will jump to 51, 52 F. Not a bad day, just not particularly inspiring or uplifting, here in Ashlandia.

Fortunately, I experienced uplifting, energizing dreams. Returning from them to here was a rough landing. There, I was supremely happy, eager for the day, embracing the future. Here…everything is knotted with uncertainty, fused with irritation and frustration. I keep telling myself that this too must pass. It presently feels like empty rhetoric.

Papi the ginger blade, aka Butter Butt, is doing fab, busying himself around us, scampering about with tail up, sometimes punctuating the moment with his high pitched meep. That sound gifted him his original name of Meep. My SO ordered a change. Didn’t think Meep conveyed enough gravitas. Now she calls him Butter Butt. Like, that has gravitas?

Today’s song is a product of the news. Joey Molland of Badfinger has joined the gig in the sky. Badfinger was an early rock power guitar group. The Beatles fostered them and the group lent their talents to my teenage years. With Molland’s transition, the original group’s lineage has ended. For their part, The Neurons inserted “Baby Blue” from 1972 into the morning mental music stream. The song was written about a woman who showed up and toured with them for a while, Armstrong. It wasn’t a relationship meant to last, though. I went with a recording that’s a little muddy but it shows the most successful lineup during the glory period when they were young, before things began going to crap for them.

Coffee has made another successful landing in my gullet. Let’s rock and roll. Cheers

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Twosda’s Theme Music

For Twosda, March 4, 2025, in Ashlandia, the numbers are 44/50/37 F. Current, high, low. Showers spray us like a gardener going by with a squirt bottle. Some artist used spray paint of the sky. Layers of white with gray highlights. Some spray spills over the hills and mountains, obscuring the tops. Snow still streaks the northern ridges when they’re seen.

The household ant report is unchanged. I did several patrols and counted no more than twelve. They still wander without clear intentions or origins.

Well, as many of us predicted, the future of the PINO Trusk US economy has alarms sounding about bad things coming. Atlanta Fed model forecasts nearly -3% GDP growth in first quarter of this year

But the Feb. 28 update of GDPNow saw a plummeting forecast from roughly that same 2%+ mark to -1.5%. The model updated Monday with an even more pessimistic outlook: -2.8%.

The Atlanta Fed web page stresses that the GDPNow estimate is not an official forecast of the Atlanta Fed, and there are no subjective inputs to the model. 

“The estimate is based solely on the mathematical results of the model,” it states.

True to form of being an idiot, PINO Trusk’s response is said to be to try to conceal the truth, i.e., lie to people. Sure, that’ll work with the true believers, a.k.a. the MAGAts. And yea, verily, a subsection of low-informed ‘Mericans will be confused and taken in. But the tangibles will tell the truth. Economists not swallowing the Trusk pill will understand what’s going on. So will ‘Mericans filling up their cars, paying for ‘lectricity, buying food and goods, and looking for a job. PINO Trusk will try to paste it all up with shoddy gold leaf, you know, like his horrendous golden shows, but most of us will know that he’s taking the piss. Certainly, outside of the U.S., they’ll know and point out the descrepancies.

Whole thing has my spouse diligently doomscrolling and urgently prepping for rising prices and reduced supplies. The song being played in many parts of the progressive world is buy now, while you can.

That scripture has encourage The Neurons to resurrect a 2001 Gorillaz song. Part of this was due to my SO not being familiar with the Gorillaz. Said, “Never heard of them” when the Gorillaz were shown on a television talk show. True to my pedantic self, I had to educate and remind her of Gorillaz tune. I then found “Clint Eastwood” staying in my morning mental music stream cos of its lyrics.

I ain’t happy, I’m feeling glad
I got sunshine in a bag
I’m useless but not for long
The future is coming on

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Yep the future is now with Trusk’s shitty touch. Gonna be a looonnnggg, ugly, messy future, with a problematic, uncertain end. Many have hopes of guillotines being resurrected as part of Trusk’s finish, with Trusk Regime members making the regretful climb.

Oh, sorry. That’s not my music video. Sorry. Didn’t mean to share this video of MAGA Republicans getting booed. Also featured is the Rogan podcast featuring evil criminal Elon Reeve Musk calling social security a ponzi scheme.

Here is the music video.

Coffee has given me a hand up, and I’m ready to go. Hope your day is strong, wherever you are, whatever you do. Let’s rock on. Cheers

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Munda’s Theme Music

Munda, Munda. March 3, 2025, brings Ashlandia clouds, cloudy skies, rain, and sunshine. Temperatures have sunk from the warming late February interlude. We’re now 41 F and expect to see 51 F between bouts of showers.

Here’s a trick for you. If you write the date as 03/03/25, it can be reduced to a magic number. Like, subtract two from five and drop the leading zeroes. Now we have 3/3/3. If you divide 3 by three you have one. Divide 1 by 3 and 1/3 is the result. Or, multiply: 3*3 = 9. 9*3 = 27. 2 + 7 = 9. Oh, the things that occupy me while I’m doing the mornin’ kitchen shuffle. Kaprekar’s constant, it’s not.

PINO Trusk is set to address Congress. Now, the overall arc of the Trusk Regime’s early days is lawlessness. The U.S. Constitution’s systems of checks and balances have been ignored. Trusk has trampled the law and traditions and is subverting the free press’s abilities to report on what’s going on. Claiming to save money and reduce fraud, waste, and abuse, the regime has destabilized the Federal government and disrupted the soft power of foreign aid, forcing the U.S. into isolation.

The question from that setup: should elected Democratic officials even attend that speech? Doing so legitimizes the Trusk Regime. They are holding to traditions even as PINO Trusk mocks and destroys them.

The Democrats planning a rebuttal speech. Given the parameters of the nation’s polarization, which PINO Trusk has abetted by using it as a wedge issue, we can project how the coverage will go. Even if it’s a great speech, chances are three fold: one, the holy MAGAts won’t care. May not even see it. Two, words in the Democrat’s rebuttal speech will be twisted out of context. Three, the great uninformed will not pay it much attention. That would interfere with other things in their lives.

I believe the time for observing and honoring traditions and being respectful is gone. PINO Trusk should not be applauded. I believe that as soon as PINO Trusk tells a lie — and you know he will — Democrats should stand in unison and shout, “You lie.” Do this every time he tells a lie. Break that fucking speech. Don’t give PINO Trusk a stage. Do just as the GOTP has been doing since they stood up and interrupted Democratic Presidents’ speeches by false accusations of lying.

Yes, this will further the gap between the ‘two parties’. But one party, the GOTP, has already abrogated almost all of its power in support of the Trusk Regime. The other party must stand strong against it.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

– Dylan Thomas

Today, The Neurons have filled the morning mental music stream with Shaboozey. This isn’t an accident. The Nigerian-American performer’s song, “A Bar Song: Tipsy” Is Now the Longest Hot Country Songs No. 1 by a Single Artist. Congrats to Shaboozey; it’s an impressive achievement.

And why not? The song is about the weariness which work sows, the grind of going to a place where tedium is often the rule, making up the numbers to earn enough money to stay alive while enriching others. Part of the American dream has always been work hard, get educated, and with a little luck, you can move up. That dream seems to have gone past its ‘Best By’ date. So people turn to games…partying…or things like getting tipsy at a bar with other people in the same boat. The water isn’t rising for many in that boat; instead, the boat is slowly going under. Yet, it’s a happy song that encourages many to sing along and dance.

Coffee and I have signed on to work together today to get my ass into gear and out into the world. Hope your day delivers for you in good ways. Let’s rock it.

Cheers

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Saturda’s Theme Music

Yesterday, sunshine was uncorked on us. Washing through blue skies, our air temp crested 70 F and lived there for a while. Gorgeous day, right?

Today, it’s 51 F and sunny. But we’re only expecting 63 F. And…rain. Still, pretty springish winter day. ‘Bout average for Ashlandia on Saturda, March 1, 2025.

Yep, a new month has begun. Sixteen percent of 2025 has been experienced. Those expecting a calm after the 2024 elections are probably disappointed. Those working for the Federal government in any capacity are likely stunned. Those hoping for lower inflation are probably too overwhelmed for emotions.

One thing unchanged are the lies that come out of Trump’s mouth. ‘Another lie’: MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace smacks down Trump and Vance’s latest claims. No matter the subject, he will reliably lie, twist history, and bloviate, a fool who thinks himself a genius. He’s demonstrated these ‘qualities’ throughout his lifetime. Since he first announced his run for POTUS, it has been recorded and documented. And it sill goes on because his cult followers and the GOTP gleefully slurp it up by the spoonful.

Let me turn away from that. Take a coffee break for a while.

The Neurons dragged today’s song out of 2015. It came from a morning compound of wondering and cogitating as I slept-walked through the morning observances related to cleaning, feeding, eating, drinking. Prepping goes with all that. The routines induced a reflective miasma about being younger. Only, I was not the direct object of these thoughts; I was focused on Mom and Dad. Dad is with his third wife. In his nineties, he has issues but she’s younger than him by a decade and tends him well. His situation is solid.

Mom, though, is 89. She lives with her 95 year-old-fiance. It’s an old, three-story house. She falls a lot. Injuries and worries ripple out of each fall. She blames her back for her falls. I blame pride. I blame her refusal to accept her limitations and adjust her activities to their new scope. I understand; I don’t give up my routines. They’re routines because they comfort or reassure, or we enjoy them. These routines address something in our psychological makeup which isn’t easily altered.

The song is by Lukas Graham. As I went through the thought exercise of looking back, gazing forward, and reflecting on now, “7 Years Old” played in my morning mental music stream. The song is about reflections of being different ages and the attitudes and memories of that age prevail. So it was quite apt for my morning mental meandering.

Coffee and a doughnut are trespassing on my taste buds. Don’t know how they got past my defenses. Hope your day rocks in needed good ways. Here we go, in three…two…one…

Cheers

2

Frida’s Theme Music

Spring continues its bold approach in Ashlandia. Winter will probably bound back in a few days but for now, it’s a beautiful day. 43 F with blue sky and sunshine. At one point in this aging morning, I walked into the kitchen and was met by a fierce shineslam of bright light. Haven’t had that kinda experience in months. The weather ‘they’ tell us we’ll crack 71 F today. But we saw 73 F at my abode’s weather thingy yesterday, so I cautiously hopeful that more the 70s will make it to the show.

This is Friday, February 28, 2025. Yes, the end of the year’s second month has arrived. The third month begins tomorrow. That’s how it used to work. But with PINO Trusk’s shitstorm and the Great Undoing, who knows what it’ll be? Maybe he’ll declare it February 29. Perhaps he’ll get it in his head that if the calendar doesn’t advance, then he’ll never leave office. He’ll just label every day as Trump and then append them with numbers.

No, that’s actually too reasonable and logical for him and his band of broken people.

Today’s song shouldn’t surprise. “Beautiful Day” by U2 came into this world at the turn of the century. Just decades ago, that seems like a far away time. It’s in the morning mental music stream because The Neurons heard me look out the window and say, “Wow, look at that, Papi, it’s a beautiful day.” For the record, Papi the ginger blade, aka Meep and Butter Butt, agreed. Or seemed to. He went out into the sunshine, stretched, and then eyed everything for threats and intrusions.

Hope it’s a beauty where you are, too. No matter what, try to make it a strong day for yourself.

Coffee has now crept into my system, somehow getting in there when I put it in a mug and raised the mug to my lips and tilted the mug back. So here we go, one more time. Cheers

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Thurzda’s Theme Music

Pop, pow, sunshine has laid out winter. Sprinter holds Ashlandia in its palm and leans hard toward spring. Blooms and blossoms and things are cropping up on trees as life feasts on the strong sunshine. Current temperature is 58 F and the weather ‘they’ say we’ll punch in over 68 F by the day’s completion. Cool beans.

Papi the ginger blade, aka Meep and Butter Butt, loves the sunshine but seems a little perplexed by its presence. Circumstances have promoted him to the only floof in the house, meaning he is also number one floof. He’s still adjusting to his duties but has taken to sleeping in every chair and surface he can find. It’s like he’s stating, “This is mine, and this is mine, and that’s mine, too.”

My wife and I were chatting this morning. She was indulging in her ritual doomscrolling and worrying that she’s in a news bubble. share the concern. Trying to ensure I’m not, I chased down online newspapers in Des Moines, Bismark, Santa Fe, and Tempe to peruse their samples. They mostly focused on local news stories. Only one mentioned PINO Trusk and DOGE. Most said little about politics in general. Interesting. They do seem like the sort of newspaper my wife is constantly bucking for in Ashlandia, a local site focused on local issues, just telling us what’s happening in the community, like why the firetrucks raced down the road with sirens screaming. We rarely get that sort of info these days, unless someone in the known takes to social media such as Reddit, Facebook, or NextDoor to tell what happened.

I have a 1981 R.E.M song, “Sitting Still”, rocking the morning mental music stream. I think The Neurons directed its playing because of the sense that we’re sitting still, waiting for the fall out from the Great Shitsorm of 2025 and the Great Undoing. I’m personally searching for validation of how I was taught the world works from A-Z, including the economy and features like supply and demand, inflation, and tariffs, and the Federal government and its systems of checks and balances. News about angry constituents at GOTP townhall meetings keep my interest piqued: many people are pissed off about what they’ve seen happening — or so it’s reported in my bubble. The GOTP response is to not hold meetings to hear what the people are saying. I’m sort of amused and intrigued whether this tactic can and will hold, especially if cuts to Medicaid are initiated. So I’m sitting still, waiting for results.

Fer instance, eggs. The price of eggs was a big deal in the 2024 elections. Now, The price of eggs is expected to skyrocket by more than 40% this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Meanwhile, the PINO Trusk cuts have reached home with several friends in Ashlandia. They were planning river trips. To use the rivers, passes are required. To limit the number of passes, a lottery system is used. The Federal government runs the lottery. With the PINO Trusk cuts, there is now no one to run the lottery.

Well, coffee has signed a treaty with me to provide energy. I’m going with it while coffee still exists and is affordable. Hope your day is strong in many good ways. Cheers

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