Category: pop culture

Today’s Theme Music

Everything’s so blurry
And everyone’s so fake
And everybody’s empty
And everything is so messed up
Pre-occupied without you
I cannot live at all
My whole world surrounds you
I stumble then I crawl

You could be my someone
You could be my scene
You know that I’ll protect you
From all of the obscene
I wonder what you’re doing
Imagine where you are
There’s oceans in between us
But that’s not very far

~ ‘Blurry’, by Puddle of Mudd, 2001

I have a good life when you consider everything but it sometimes still gets all blurry about how good things — and how bad it could be. ‘Blurry’, though, is about emotions. Emotions care little about a situation logic, something often forgotten during passionate discussions and angry debates.

‘Blurry’ also show us that emotions can help us overcome ‘logic’:

There’s oceans in between us
But that’s not very far

I might be adding layers and insights. They’re clearly writing about love and a tumultuous relationship. I see more. That’s the point of art, including literature and music, isn’t it? The composer, writer and artist are drawing their vision. Their vision, though, remains unique to them because it must be shared with others through the filters the viewer brings upon the scene. And these individual, personalized interpretations of words and intentions can make it all seem very ‘Blurry’.

 

Hope this all comes out properly. It’s relatively colder than usual outside (17 F). Google Chrome apparently has some problems when it’s cold.

 

 

 

 

1

Today’s Theme Music

Decided to do something more recent and upbeat. The mental jukebox came up with Bruno Mars, ‘Just the Way You Are’. Hey, it’s only six years ago it was released. That’s like yesterday in beer years.

This is a good song for walking around and singing. In fact, I witnessed just an episode about two weeks ago. I was walking. Another guy approached from the other direction. I could tell he was singing but couldn’t yet make it out. It was clear he was budded up. And then, crossing the street, he sang loudly, in a pretty close approximation of the right key:

And when you smile
The whole world stops and stares for a while
‘Cause, girl, you’re amazing
Just the way you are.

I smiled to myself, impressed that he was so willing to sing aloud.

Sing along. Don’t worry about the key.

 

0

Today’s Theme Music

This isn’t a theme song. I could tell you that I chose this song because it’s rainy, cold and foggy outside. Or it’s Thursday and this song fits Thursday’s vibe.

It’s none of that, though. I just like the blues, Albert King, and this song. Play it. Listen to that playing and singing. Appreciate it and play it back in your head later.

Here’s the late Albert King with ‘Born Under A Bad Sign’. 

 

1

The Real

He awakes. Stillness is king.

Big snow storm was striking the area. They weren’t due snow in his zone. Snow was expected above five thousand feet. That gave them an almost three thousand foot buffer but weather is fickle.

He checks the time and temperature on his weather station. Three fifty-five. Thirty-five degrees. Three five. The numbers made him smile. Those were his lucky numbers as a kid.

Two cats investigate him. Deciding all was safe, they expect rewards. He feeds them and goes to the kitchen for water. Drinking it, he surveys the remnants of two dreams. Odd, of course. One involved his mother-in-law, sister-in-law and her husband, their car, and a white bi-plane. The other was military oriented, of course – structure and identity. The dreams remind him of wreckage after a hurricane.

Peeing was required. The business didn’t require much attention. His mind wandered to blogs and knowing people through blogs but not otherwise knowing them. He pondered the difference between aspiring writer and struggling writer and the choices the words reflected.

He went to bed and thought of a road trip movie. A writer. A series of events. A wife passed away. A writer road trip to meet bloggers that he’d never met. It reminded him of a movie more than a decade ago, perhaps two decades. A man retiring. He bought a recreational vehicle. His wife dies of a heart-attack while vacuuming. He can’t recall more. Details trickle in. Man discovers his wife was having an affair.  De Niro? Murray? No.

Ah. Nicholson. ‘About Schmidt’. What year? That’s too much for dead AM.

A working title arrived for his movie: ‘The Real’. He smiles at that. He thinks of it as a dramedy.

He wonders how much of this he will remember in the morning. “Sleep,” he whispers to himself and lets his breathing seek its rhythm.

So much to write, he laments to himself, and sleeps.

1

Today’s Theme Music

In light of the beer news of acquisitions, sell-offs and mergers, I thought I’d go with a brew theme. What could be better than Cream’s ‘Strange Brew’. Most Americans and many other world citizens have watched Donald Trump win the presidential election to become the President-Elect. His support and campaign were also pretty strange brews, as was the whole election cycle.

So what the hell? Let’s finish this year and see how far the strange brew carries us. BTW, be sure to check out Eric Clapton’s clothes and hairs. Woo. Stylin’. Sadly, perhaps tragically, or comically, I remembered being adorned in somewhat similar styles in my teens.

Life sure is a strange brew, and fashion can be the strangest brew of all.

6

Today’s Theme Music

Randy claimed he wasn’t racist. We believed him. “Some of my best friends are black,” he said. That was true. We knew them. But coming from Alabama, he said a lot of racist – and sexist – things. He was a genuine throwback, but he was genuine. Still, that didn’t keep us from getting indignant about his attitude, pissed off at him, and worried about getting our asses kicked.

That’s exactly what Rich said that night at the St. James Infirmary in Mountain View, California, around 1994. “They’re going to kick our asses.”

‘They’ were the black people who dominated the club and were having a great time dancing. Randy called the music being played ‘Black music’. He saw nothing wrong with that as we argued with him. “Play some white music,” he yelled whenever a song ended. That prompted a lot of heads swiveling our way and deep stares.

Eventually, the DJ said, “Would the gentleman who wants some white music please come talk to me.” Randy did. Randy got along with everyone. After he returned, he said, “They’re going to play some white music.”

The white music that was played was one of our favorite drinking songs. We were in the military and we did a lot of drinking. We liked to gather in a circle and sing this song.

Randy passed away from cancer in 2016, sixty years old. He never changed, to my knowledge. But his Facebook page mourning his passing has a number of entries by black people from his church lamenting his passing. He was a character.

Here’s Meatloaf with ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Lights’, 1977. 

 

 

4

Today’s Theme Music

I wanted something lighter today. A favorite parody is ‘My Cubicle’, a take-off on James Blunt’s song, ‘You’re Beautiful’, 2004. The parody probably emerged within two years. I always had an office. However, my team and a lot of friends worked in cubicle warrens, and my wife was an office manager and HR manager. Between them, I received a daily infusion of irritations and frustrations with cubicle working. I once visited an enormous Air Force office space that had been converted into cubicles and was appalled. Of course, I think cubicles are better than those enormous open spaces of rows and columns of desks and filing cabinets that provided no privacy. That’s just my sense of it because I never worked in one of those, but only knew of them through visiting, television shows and movies.

Anyway, turn it up and sing along. I hope it provides you with a laugh.

2

Grokking It

I grok the story but don’t know if others can. It’s the writing challenge: you see, hear, feel and experiences these stories being told in details and colors and sounds technology can’t approach. Your job, Writer, is to capture these events, people and places, and organize it in a coherent, satisfying and entertaining matter.

That’s my interpretation of writing. Yours may vary.

Grok is a word that Robert Heinlein created in ‘A Stranger In A Strange Land’. It’s a classic novel. His expression, grok, has spread like wildflowers in the spring, going far beyond a word in a novel to have other meetings. The essence of grok remains the same for me: to intuitively grasp and understand a matter. It has larger and more expansive definitions and usage, but that’s the essential distilled for my use.

I’m encountering the grok gap while I’m writing. It’s a pretty familiar with whatever I’m writing. I grok what’s happening in my novel. I need to explain it to everyone who isn’t me. That meant spending a few days further defining terms and relationships. The big one is the ideopat. It is telepathy among the Travail Avresti Forus and Seth, and the Travail Favrashi Forus and Seth but telepathy is but one component among the names, gults, vhylla and races. I needed another term for one of the other components because it doesn’t fit with human knowledge and experiences.

While researching my invention, which ended up being termed the phena for now, after reading about consciousness, phenomenon and epiphenomenon, I grok and researched it for a while. After all, phena and grok share commonalities. The insights I encountered about what grok meant and was used in the original novel opened my thinking. Such sessions are always the most satisfying and treasured for me.

I hope you grok what I mean.

5

Things I Don’t Miss

Didn’t need to scrap ice off my car this morning because it’s garaged. I felt for the neighbor out there de-icing his vehicle. There, I thought, is something I don’t miss, which launched me into musings about what else I don’t miss.

I don’t miss lite beers in any shape or vintage. Thank the gods for micro-brews and craft beers!

I don’t miss saving and counting pennies to buy a bag of pretzels as a treat or to go the movies. My years of extremely tight budgeting taught me the value of budgeting and saving but I enjoy indulging myself now, and I don’t miss those days at all!

I don’t miss military recalls, deployments and twelve hour shifts. I don’t miss midnight shifts, either, or pressing uniforms and getting haircuts all the time. Mission success was satisfying and I met some excellent people and saw the world, but I don’t miss all those other military accouterments.

I don’t miss cable television. Cable was cool and fun for a while but as it developed into a commodity and charged more and more while offering me less and less, it became a huge weight of disappointment. The smart television, Roku and streaming services aren’t perfect but they’re better than cable.

I don’t miss all those company meetings. Six AM, 9 PM…on some days with IBM I was on telephone calls and sorting and answering emails for hours. Don’t miss them at all, nor the annual performance report rituals. I really don’t miss completing expense reports. Just like the military, I enjoyed the company of some great people while I was with IBM (and the companies IBM absorbed, NetworkICE and ISS). Them, I miss. I also get a little misty eyed about the absent paycheck and its company.

I don’t miss old technology.  Take my old floppies – please (badaboom – tish). You can take them to where the IBM Selectrics and my Brother portable typewriters are buried, along with my old KayPro 10 and Zenith 150, and my clunky SVG and EVG color monitors, and 4.87 and 10 megahertz operating speeds.

It’s a short list of what I don’t miss. I had a good time through it all and came out fortunate in the end.

What don’t you miss?

 

 

8

Today’s Theme Music

The big questions arise. Didn’t we just do this? Didn’t that just happen? Didn’t we learn anything? I feel like we’re going around in circles. Sing it with Billy Preston – ‘Will It Go Round in Circles’.

2

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑