Category: politics

Today’s Theme Music

The stream flowed into nineteen eighty-four, and the prophetic song, “Round and Round,” by Ratt. “What goes around, comes around. Dig.”

I was young when I encountered this. Working as the NCOIC of the 9AF Reports Section, I daily briefed the 9AF Commander and his senior staff on the preceding day’s operational activities. We were part of the now defunct Tactical Air Command, supervising fighter wings. 9AF included the area east of the Mississippi in the U.S., and Southwest Asia, often referred to outside military circles as the Middle East. This was during the Iran-Iraq War. They were all about reciprocity. Reciprocity is the essence of round and round. “You attack my shipping, I’ll attack your shipping.” So it went.

Sure. History repeats, doesn’t it? Especially in politics and war.

It also repeats on personal levels. Every year, I feel more like everything goes round and round. I get desperately tired of it. I frequently encounter people who seem to think what’s going around is being experienced for the first time. Others did not learn.

Yet, as I age, I understand, we can learn, but sometimes it’s beyond us to apply the lessons learned. We become too hard-wired into expectations and behavior developing from routines and rituals, fears and reactions, and failures and shortcomings. We’re looking for the end of the rainbow, and it stays elusively distant. Our bodies betray us, our minds betray us, and our memories betray us. Dreams fade, and goals collapse.

I’ve seen this in older generations, too. The latest craze becomes yesterday’s fad. Today’s star is tomorrow’s memory, and the next generation(s) are generally bemused by our quaint opinions about hip, cool, technology, and politics.

Round and round.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

A friend asked, “Have you tried asking Siri, “I see a little silhouetto of a man?””

I’ve tried it, and it’s a hoot.

The line is from the well-known song, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” by Queen. It came out in nineteen seventy-five, a year after I graduated from high school, and remains an eminently powerful and enjoyable means to rock out. Queen also created one of the earliest and most memorable music videos, years before MTV was launched.

That makes it today’s theme music. Listen along, and do the fandango.

 

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The New Dress Code

After long speculation about what President Trump would do to advance his stalled agenda to Make America Great Again, President Trump signed an executive order announcing a new national dress code.

“Look,” he said at the signing statement this morning, “This isn’t about politics. I don’t want to talk about politics. That’s not what the National Dress Code is about. But have you seen the way people are dressing, especially the Liberals? I mean, have you been to a Walmart? Makes you gag, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it make you want to gag? Sure, it does. Those people don’t dress with any pride. They’re wearing clothes made in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. I have nothing against those nations, but they don’t make great clothes. They’re great nations, not as great as America, no, that’s not what I’m saying, especially China, China isn’t nearly as great as America, and part of that is their cheap clothing. We need to wear neater, higher quality clothes. We need to wear clothes made in America.

“That’s why I’m instituting this dress code, and I’m targeting specific states that really flaunt the way they dress. Those states include California, New York, Oregon, and Chicago. Have you seen the way they dress in these places? All the guys in shorts, and all the women showing all their skin, and they’re not good-looking women, either. It’d be different if they were beautiful women, but they’re not beautiful. These women are showing what’s called their muffin tops. You know what a muffin top is? It’s a roll of fat hanging over their clothes. It’s gross. It’s disgusting. Disgusting. It’s not wonder America is losing its position as number one in the world, no wonder. People used to all used to want to come here to America, but they don’t want to any more. You know why? It’s because of the way Americans dress.”

President Trump went on to say that a dress code was perfectly legal because they impose them in schools and businesses, and the courts wouldn’t have allowed dress codes to stand if they were illegal.

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Today’s Theme Music

I heard this song in the car while running our usual weekend errands, and turned it up and listened. It employs an honesty and simplicity in the lyrics and melody. Later, I learned one of my favorite recent guys, CeeLo Green, was one of the people behind it. The song was inspired by a conversation between CeeLo and Danger Mouse about artists not being taken seriously unless the artists were insane. Yet, watching the news since then, I get the impression, in this era of personality, that being taken seriously when acting insane extends way beyond artists and into politics and business. We’re inundated with the mundane and tedium, so the insane draws our attention. Then, we start listening more carefully to what the insane are saying, and wonder, “Hmmm…can they be right?”

Here’s Gnarls Barkley with “Crazy,” from two thousand five.

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Today’s Theme Music

This song hit the scene in nineteen eighty-four.

Remember that year, with portends of George Orwell’s prescient novel hanging over us, fueling worries about privacy and government spying? “There are laws against that,” people say, smirking. “It could never happen to us. We’re America. We’re a democracy. It’s the Soviet Union and those totalitarian states like it that should worry.” The U.S.S.R.’s collapse a few years later seemed to vindicate our innate American superiority. We’d won; the communists had lost. Yes, we were so silly to be worried.

Into this era came a German group with a hard-rocking message: “Here I am, rock you like a hurricane.” I didn’t know much about the Scorpions before “Rock You Like A Hurricane.” I knew of them, but little more.

I thought of them today because of my stormy dream. The dream rocked me like a hurricane with its unceasing gloominess and desperation until its climax. I didn’t awaken afraid, but thoughtful. Thinking of the dream, I remembered this song, and its use in Dave Eggers’ novel. Odd, how the mind works, with everything connected and nothing terminated, but spreading and sprawling into new connections.

But with that, I think about the weather again. One difficulty in modeling weather is the planet’s complexity and dynamics. Everything is connected, but tracing the source back to the wings that began the storm can be tricky.

So it is with thinking.

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Today’s Theme Music

Feeling a little tired, a little numb, unthinking and unresponsive. Just a little N.E.S.*

To suit my condition, I offer Dolores Riordan and the Cranberries with our composition, “Zombie,” from nineteen ninety-four. The song was written in memory of two children killed in the nineteen ninety-three IRA bombing in Warrington.

onizuka_blue_cube

The song hit the waves as I contemplated my military career faced some choices. Stationed at Onizuka Air Station, home of the infamous blue cube in Sunnyvale, California, I was part of the Air Force Space Command. After I’d been there a few years, I was invited to join Space Command’s Inspector General Team. My wife didn’t like the situation’s dynamics. First, it would require a move from the SF Bay Area to Colorado. Second, I would be on the road about ninety percent of the time. Those conditions stirred her ire. Not being zombies, we said, “No.”

Disliking that answer, the Air Force informed me they would move me to Whiteman AFB, Missouri. Deciding I didn’t want to go there, I submitted my paperwork. Onizuka became my final duty location, and I became a civilian and Air Force retiree.

 

*N.E.S. – Not Enough Sleep

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Today’s Theme Music

It’s a basic rock and roll, guitar-hero, hot as hell day. I employ hyperbole, of course. It’s not as hell today, but will be a toasty, sweat inducing, hyperbole-inspiring ninety-seven degrees on the beloved Fahrenheit scale.

Love this song. Stationed in Germany with the U.S. Air Force and watching the Soviets when the song hit the waves and created a stream source in my head, I always considered it a direct, mocking response to President George H.W. Bush’s inauguration. Here’s my reference:

We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores
and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people,
says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
got roads to drive.

h/t to azlyrics.com

Yes, values, priorities, and directions can get a little skewed in the free world. Here’s Neil Young from nineteen eighty-nine with “Rockin’ In the Free World.”

 

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Today’s Theme Music

It’s July 4 in America. Probably that date in many other parts of the world, too. For Americans, though, it’s associated with Independence Day, a holiday commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So, what the hell. With that in mind, I started streaming this song from nineteen eighty-one:

“America”

Far,
We’ve been traveling far
Without a home
But not without a star

Free,
Only want to be free
We huddle close
Hang on to a dream

On the boats and on the planes
They’re coming to America
Never looking back again,
They’re coming to America

Here’s Neil Diamond with the rest of the song.
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