2020 certainly feels like a new age. Divisions in the U.S. make us wonder what’ll happen after November’s elections. As people shun wearing masks and distancing, in part because POTUS 45 doesn’t mask and weakly endorses the CDC guidelines, signs are growing that the COVID-19 pandemic is going to be here for a while.
Raucous dreams consumed the night. Oh, yes, there was too a floof fight.
4:30 AM. In this corner, wearing long black and white fur and weighing in at sixteen pounds…Tucker.
In the other corner, by the kibble bowl, that eleven pound ginger blade who used to be called Meep!…Papi.
I know Tucker started it because it’s always Tucker. Little combat was involved because Papi is a shrieker. His first one bought us awake and out of bed in one leap, and it was done. I swear that we moved like ninjas…little aging, graying ninjas…
But it’s email that gives me today’s theme music. Money…financing…sales ending today…the calls for assistance and donations and contributions dominated the box in a depressing blitz. Pelosi claimed her email wasn’t about money but Biden openly asked. Amazon and Costco crowed, look at what everyone is buying. Animal shelters and rescue groups wanted cash. The USPS needs help…
Such an AM gut punch even before my brekkie and coffee. Making them was when the theme song came: “Money (That’s What I Want)“.
The Beatles had a big hit with it, but I was channeling The Flying Lizards’ 1979 cover with Deborah Evans-Stickland. The Beatles were nakedly raw and emotional in their money demands. The Flying Lizards brought a mocking, flat monotone to their appeal.
My email solicitations were across the gamut: fear — they’re winning, they’re winning, give me money to fight back — to logic — no, it was all fear, fear of what will happen if you don’t give or buy, because you will be losing.
Anyway, that’s my music choice for today. Please listen and send me money. And stay healthy. Wear a damn mask.
Arm continues improving. Strength, mobility, and flexibility in my fingers is returning. Improvement has been accelerating. Hoorah. Return to the doc in ten days.
Fiction writing is sloooowww. Did nine thousand words in fifteen days. That should’ve been done in less than five days, easy. Such a whiner, right? Yes, it’s my nature. I let it out, and then affirm, but, hey, you’re writing. It’s something. Be an optimist, not a pessimist.
By nature, I’m a pessimist and an optimist. I complain and release it, then address it to overcome it. Mostly. It’s all a sliding spectrum with moving targets every day. The thing I’ve recognized in myself is that while I go dark, I also return to the light.
I enjoy eavesdropping on my wife’s exercise class. An in-person Family Y class in origins, it went to Zoom after social distancing went live in Ashland, Oregon. Mary is the instructor. She began the class in 1975. Held Mon-Wed-Fri mornings, it’s very popular. Going online has allowed people who moved away to come back and re-fire friendships. Attendees from D.C., Portland, Idaho, Florida, and California are now regulars…again. Such a positive thing, a testament to community and friendship.
A beautiful night favored the area last night, wonderful for meteor spotting, except…cat. Two of the felines often accompany me as I go into the yard and check the sky. The house panther, though, kept winding around my legs and talking. Made it hard to move and focus, especially while craning my head back. I love my cats but sometimes, they’re a little much.
The ginger boy (Papi, aka Meep) apparently had a misadventure yesterday evening. Gone for hours, he returned subdued and disheveled. I checked for wounds and found none. He, a young cat who usually prowls the night, stayed in last night. All night.
Love this political ad. “Enough is Enough is Enough!” Vote Proud.
So, got my coffee, baby. Time to write like crazy at least one…more…time.
My political ire is rising with the latest trumpshit. First is the jump out the gate questioning whether Kamela Harris is eligible to be POTUS. If you haven’t read the ‘opinion piece’ in Newsweek…don’t. Such garbage. Be a while before my respect for Newsweek returns.
That was just starter fluid for my anger. What’s going on with Trump and the GOP the destruction of voting rights is first class authoritarian play. Further infuriating me is the GOP obstacles arising by sabotaging the USPS. We as a nation have worked to find improvements in the USPS and how the mail is handled and delivered. Here comes the GOP, breaking the fucking system so they can undermine democracy to remain in power. It’s a scorched earth plan for victory. Sickening, sickening, sickening.
As it’s happened in the past whenever a political party dirties a nation, enablers turn their heads so they don’t see. In this instance, they’re burying themselves in misinformation.
Eventually, Trump, the GOP, and their users will follow the natural course to crash and burn. By then, judging from their current activities, the destruction they’ve wrought will be huge. Then people will stand and cry with shock, “Who knew?”
That’s happened every damn time. Then they’ll shed croc tears and protest their innocence, “I didn’t know.”
All that at last takes me to a 2006 Pink song, “Who Knew”. Frothy and poppy in melody, it carries dark lyrics about things happening that’s not noticed until you awaken to events after it’s all over, when nothing can be done. Pink sang,
When someone said count your blessings now ‘Fore they’re long gone I guess I just didn’t know how I was all wrong They knew better, still you said forever And ever, who knew?
That’s where Trump supporters and enablers stand. They believe his lies, and that of his administration, rationalizing his morality as good, twisting logic and facts to fit their spin , and will profess to believe until it all comes crashing down. Then, when the air is filthy again, climate change is crushing our society, and the number of people starving and dying swells, they’ll whine, “Who knew?”
As commercials rev up — “Come see us. We’re all wearing masks and are following the guidelines and taking precautions!” — and election day grows nearer, everybody is trying to seduce us as consumers and voters in America.
Buy, buy, buy! Vote for me, vote for me!
It’s right in my head that today’s theme music is Billy Squier singing “Everybody Wants You” back in 1982.
Woke up with The Who’s rock opera, Tommy, in my mind’s center hall. Then the two song medley, “See Me, Feel Me/Listening to You” (1969) goes on loop.
It’s an appropriate song when thinking about the cults of politics percolating around the world, especially of the great wing type, especially of the Trump cult. It’s in sharper focus for me because that’s my country. I hear and read the staggering knots and twists employed to justify supporting him to the detriment of everything that matters, unless you’re white, wealthy, and male. The Evangelicals, Blacks, and women who support me startle me, but this medley seems to illuminate their position.
On the one hand, you have Trump – Tommy – isolated and self-centered, emotionally distant. Where the analogy collapses is Tommy knows his state and wants healed; Trump is blissfully unaware of himself and doesn’t want healed. He doesn’t know he’s sick. Feeding his base, he doesn’t see himself as sick.
Then you have the base. The comparison with Tommy shines here.
Listening to you I get the music Gazing at you I get the heat Following you I climb the mountain I get excitement at your feet
Right behind you I see the millions On you I see the glory From you I get opinions From you I get the story
Listening to you I get the music Gazing at you I get the heat Following you I climb the mountain I get excitement at your feet
Decided to post the Woodstock video as it captures the essence of that time in rock. Have a listen, please, and as they say in America, “Have a nice day.”
Every once in a while during my life, I encountered a person (or group) that so infuriate me, that I think, “You know…if I had the means…”
Know what I’m talking about? Right, getting a gun and putting them down because the world would be better without them. Maybe planting a little C4. It seems so easy on TV.
But I’m not that kind, except sometimes in my writing. Still, the wistfulness of sometimes solving a problem ala “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” as AC/DC proposed back in ’76 seizes me, ya know?
“December” is about endings and breaks from what’s going on. For Ed Roland, the songwriter, it’s about parting with the band’s manager. Pour moi, I pull the sarcastic and bitter sense of weariness from the sound: it’s done. Let’s end this, and this is just the polarized, argumentative state of the United States. I went to see Trump and the disastrous GOP reign end. The sooner that comes, the happier I’ll be.
Woke up hot at three-ish. As I reviewed dreams, got up and drank water, and then opened the back door to entertain cool night air, my mind began streaming Blue Oyster Cult and “Burnin’ for You” (1981).
My mind seems to have a song ready for any moment. I imagine a team of people up there. Males and females are armed with servers loaded with music. Sitting on swivel chairs, they stay poised to begin songs for each sight, sound, thought, emotion, and memory.
“Burnin’ for You” works on multiple levels. Fer instance, It addresses homes in a major way. That’s fittin’ for ‘merica, where Homeland Security and police battle protesters as jobs and savings dwindle and eviction notices fly, leaving folks without homes. BOC catches that:
Home in the valley
Home in the city
Home isn’t pretty
Ain’t no home for me
Yet, priorities: save the businesses! Protect the billionaires! Grow the military!
Sorry. Jumped onto my anti-GOP train as led by 45 hisself. I’ll’ stop now. Here’s the music.
Michael Seidel, writer 