Category: Thinking, thinking

Twosday’s Theme Music

Mood: Twosdayized

28 degrees, Twosday come into the valley with sunshine, blue skies, and patchy fog. The day hovers in the liminal folds between autumn and winter, that murky zone called autner. Feels like it could get colder. Feels like clouds could march in and dump snow. But the sunshine claims it might get warmer. In fact, some forecasters insist, as they have on previous days, that today’s high will crack the fifties and stalk the upper edges toward sixty. But the valley’s stagnant air messes with the forecasting process. Yesterday’s high attained 45 F when 56 F was supposed to be the ceiling. So, I’m not planning to see 56 F today.

This stagnant air is weird. A still, windless phenomena, the chill it carries creeps through everything. You dress for much colder air and the house heating works hard because that creeping chill.

Going through the valley yesterday to shop, I saw that a thin line of brown pollution rimmed the more populated western region. Get used to that, I thought. Trump and his clown cabinet will cut regulations. “Business,” they’ll shout, and the sheeple shout, “Yes. Business first.” Business means prosperity, right? Wage increases. Profits. Bull market.

Most of the sheeple fail to understand that the government and economy worked better under Democratic control. Their limited memories don’t pull up the dark, sooty airs the United States experienced in the 1960s and 1970s before the EPA and their pesky regs came out and ordered, “Thou shall not pollute.” Nor do they comprehend the impact on health that it brings, and the reciprical effect on productivity and costs due to worker illness and absences. They don’t think that fucking deep. Or course, it’s hard to do so with Republicans bleating otherwise in a 24/7 cacophony. And it’s hard to remember and think whn your education is being hamstrung with teachings about how Jesus saved the world and climate change is a hoax, and look! Illegals! Trans! Woke! They also believe that wealthy people won’t hoard their wealth but will spread it around like fertilizer and turn everything cash green for everyone.

Yes, they are fucking fools.

Sigh. On to other matters.

We shopped at Costco. It’s been a go-to for us since the early 1990s. Our local Costco was moderately busy on a Monday afternoon. Mostly older shoppers. Ahem. Like us. As we entered and began our prowl, my wife shouted at the milling shoppers, “What about inflation?” She’s still riled up about that. I told her, “Babe, they’ve heard whispers that it’s gonna get worse. This is Doomsday shopping. They’re out here trying to get deals and soothe their troubled minds with food and toys to help them when reality crashes in.”

Being the second day of the workweek, it’s natural that this is called Twosday. Many don’t realize that the first spelling for ‘two’ or 2 was tue. Somehow, as the language and alphabet swelled into its current shape, tue became two. But the day of the week was already cemented in influential calendar makers, so Tuesdays remained.*

* Yes, that was all b.s.

Today’s music came out in 2020, while lockdown was prevalent. Being retired, I don’t work, so the song doesn’t really address me and my grips. But The Neurons called it up because I’ve been muttering to myself, “I need to get back to the coffee shop and get back to work on my writing.” Ding ding ding. The Neurons had a piece of “Work” by Pop Evil in the morning mental music stream (Trademark being worked): “All I do is work!”

Alright, coffee and I have come to an agreement. I will make it and pour it into my watering hole, and it will kick my energy up. Look up, open your eyes, and breathe deep. Time for another Twosday to be vanquished. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Cyber Mundaye

Heads up, everyone! It’s Cyber Mundaye.

I know, I was taken by surprise, too. Fortunately, I saw sixteen zillion and seventeen emails alerting me to Cyber Mundaye. Deleting them, I almost forgot it was Cyber Mundaye. Fortunately, many pages that I clicked on had banners, headlines, or popups declaring Cyber Mundaye.

Thank Dog we have technology to remind us it’s Cyber Mundaye. What would we do without it?

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Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts

Alexa, we have a problem.

Alexa is Amazon’s ‘virtual assistance’. It’s useful to me for telling me the weather and the news if I ask it. But its recent behavior has undercut my trust in it. Observe.

Night had come on shift. My home weather system said that it was 30 degrees F outside. The sudden downturn surprised me. I wondered if it was right and how cold it would get as it was still early in the evening. So I asked Alexa for the weather.

“It’s 35 degrees in Ashland. Tonight’s low will be 35 degrees.”

Okay, that seemed cool. (No pun intended, because it was cold, no cool. Obs.) I’m on Ashlandia’s southern end, at a slightly higher elevation. Our mountain’s shadows climb over us early and get off us later, as we’re in the valley’s pinched, closing end. I’m not sure where the station is where Alexa gets its weather but it seems to be down where the sun keeps it warm longer. NBD.

A little later, I noticed my system said it was 28 F. I didn’t expect it to keep getting colder after Alexa told me the low would be 35. To Alexa I went. “Alexa, what’s the temperature?”

“It’s 30 degrees in Ashland. Tonight’s low will be 30 degrees.”

Well, wait a minute. That’s not what the system said before.

An hour later, my system said it was 25 degrees. Rinse and repeat with Alexa: “It’s 26 degrees in Ashland. Tonight’s low will be 24.”

What the serious actual fuck? What good is a system that calls out predictions and then indifferenctly changes them? I thought the idea behind her telling me what the high or low will be is to help me plan.

Of course, I asked Alexa about it. It played dumb. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I also asked it where its weather station was. “Hmm,” it said. “I don’t understand your question.”

I repeated it in multiple variations. “Hmm,” Alexa said. “Let me get back to you.”

I’m still waiting.

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Thursday’s Wandering Thoughts

I cleaned the kitty litter today. The excavated taters were shoveled into a paper bag. I then went through the house with the bag of kitty litter to dump it into the trash. As I went, I held the bag up and called out, “Ho ho ho, merry Thanksgiving.”

I thought it was good symblism for the holiday season upon us.

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The Swimming Dream

Awoke from a dream where I was swimming. Underwater with my eyes open, I Iooked up at the water’s surface from below and thought, that’s really scummy water. It was some sort of swimming hole and crowded with people. I broke the water’s surface.

I was young, in my teens, with others also in their teens. A girl my age was watching as I broke the water. She wore a red bathing suit. Grinning at her, I said something but she turned and moved away. I was with four or five other guys but none are memorable. We were talking about naming something. I had an idea about naming something and suggested it to them. They wanted more conversation about it. I told them, let’s get over in shallow water and talk about it, because we were all treading water and talking was difficult.

I tried swimming away then but dropped into the water. I thought I’d hit the bottom but the water was deeper than expected. I let myself drop and settle until my foot hit the bottom, and then kicked off hard.

I awoke groaning. I had surgery on my ankle a month ago and am still in recovery. It was now telegraphing pain and discomfort. I believe that while I was dreaming, I moved my legs and foot in real life, and kicked out, hitting something hard with my injured appendage.

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

Sitting here reading a food review. It’s a food gift basket for Mom. Reviewer says that the food in their gift basket was “delicious and tasty”.

My Neurons sat up straight. Aren’t those the same?

No. I always thought of them as being closely related but displaying a difference of degrees. Tasty is a less enthusiastic embrace of something.

“How was the chicken?”

“It was tasty.”

That’s a thin endorsement to me. I’m hedging. Something was wrong with it but I’m trying to put a positive tag on it.

Delicious, however, is an unreserved endorsement.

“How was the chicken?”

“It was delicious.”

To me, if it’s delicious, I’m unabashedly pleased.

So they’re not literally the same to me but in this world, they probably could be said to be literally the same. But in no way I would ever describe something as tasty and delicious. It’s one or the other.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: Chillified

Gray clouds have returned to win the sky. Really, it seems like one big light-gray cloud. Low relative to the upper elevations, it cuts off the view after two hundred yards, giving an impression that the world ends there.

The wind is sedated to an infrequent breeze. Chillier air has shifted back in. We navigate 39 F with a high of 50 proferred, and more rain sometime.

This is Saturday, November 23, 2024.

My song today is “Good Life” by OneRepublic. I’d been reading news and opinions online late last night. One thing after another led me to new insights and angles. I ended up reflecting on the MAGA GOP’s narrow minded views. Their hypocrisy and lack of principles always flavor my opinion, as well. I’m sure they rationalize everything as the ends justify the means. Such cliches allow them to declare they’re for freedom, equality, and ‘protecting women’ even as they curtail equality and people’s freedom. They’re all about conforming. Two sexes and genders, traditional missionary position, trad wife, that’s them, at least in public. We suspect many dark things happening in private, based on what periodically crawls into the light. See, for example, Donald Trump’s “grab ’em by the pussy” philosophy and his affairs, Matt Gaetz, Jeffrey Epstein, et al.

And, it’s their religion and their God to which we must all bow. That’s how they interpret religious freedom in their ‘Merica. Their pasteurized, homogenized history that must be taught. Anything bad that happened is pushed aside so they can pretend it didn’t happen. Mass shootings are all because of people with mental health problems who are troubled by the liberals’ DEI and woke agenda. All is good in the MAGA world, as long as the wealthy can avoid being taxed, the stock market is going up, and everyone is working, even if it’s at menial jobs for slave wages, even if it’s children working, even if the skies and waters are polluted. That’s their version of a ‘good life’.

As for Democrats, liberals, and progressives, they must be ignored, expunged, or re-educated to accept the MAGA way.

It’s so far from my idea of a good life that I’m nauseated when I contemplate the gulf.

Anyway, after I shifted through these strands of thoughts, The Neurons inserted “Good Life” into the morning mental music stream (Trademark rising) where it shared some time with “It’s My Life” by the Animals and “It’s My Life” by No Doubt. “Good Life”, released in 2010, feels like another of those songs people know mostly through movies and television shows. It’s been used in a few of them.

When songs are in my head, my mind often focuses on specific sections. In this case, the specific section is a set of lines:

Listen, to my friends in New York, I say hello
My friends in L.A., they don’t know
Where I’ve been for the past few years or so
Paris to China to Colorado
Sometimes there’s airplanes you can’t jump out
Sometimes bullshit that don’t work now
We all got our stories, but please tell me
What’s there to complain about?

h/t to Genius.com

Well, excuse me, but I have a lot to complain about. Some of it is about aging. Much of my gripping is first world blues, but there’s also a substantial political section to my complaints.

Coffee and I have been re-introduced. We plan to make green chili stew in a little while. The rain has begun dripping down again, clouds have dramatically darkened the day, and the temperature has leveled off at 42 F. Feels like something lower. That stew will go well with this day.

Here’s the music. Cheers

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