Category: Thinking, thinking

Satyrda’s Theme Music

If my grip on reality is sure and we’re sharing the same reality, today is Satyrda, June 28, 2025. A strong sun lords over us with a hot hand. Mid 80s to upper 80s is the sun’s upper reach for us. Funny, but Mid 80s to upper 80s was what I remember as a new house price range in South Carolina in the early 80s when we lived there during a military assignment.

Upon scouring the news for lowlights yesterday and cringing through the Roberts Court rulings, The Neurons told me, “That’s it. We’re out of here.” To where, I asked the squirrelly gray beasts. “Kathmandu,” they replied. To reinforce their notion, they sprang the Bob Seger song on the morning mentl music stream. So here we go with the fifty year old song, “Katmandu”.

Seger related that the song was born out of frustration and exasperation, so it’s wholly fitting for this era for many of us. At least, in theory. The Neurons were speaking out of my disappointment with my country, the United States. I love it and don’t plan to move away, but the current political atmo leaves me panting for some friggin’ other place, at least until TACO madness has subsided and we get back to being a democratic republic.

Time to rock and roll another summer day in the U.S.A. Hope you’re dealing, wherever we’re you’re at. Cheers

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Frida’s Wandering Thoughts

I was ravenous. I carry sufficient emergency energy stores (fat) on my body that starvation didn’t come up as a serious concern except for my stomach’s urgency to refill. It bellowed complaints like an irritated wooky. Much of this is diet limitations. I’m on low salt for hyper tension, and still remained constrained by my oral surgery. It’s healing well but missing molars and recovering surgical sites disrupt the biting, and chewing, and swallowing routine. It’ll be over in four to six months, so that’s just a temp thing.

I’ll be pleased to see June 2025 finish. Frustrating, disappointing, wearying, and just plain sad, that month holed my energy during its 30-day reign, and my soul is despondent. Personally, June of 2025 will remain a strong memory because it was memorably messed up. I’m putting high hopes on July and the rest of 2025. July’s first week features two dental appointments, my annual physical, and natal day #69, so the beginning is loaded with potential.

For the record, I think Natal Day #69 could be good song title, with the right music behind it.

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Frida’s Wandering Political Thoughts

As I survey life in the United States from my home in 2025, it feels to me like we’ve gone from Nanny State to Bully State. Trump demonstrates his bully tendencies with everything that he does.

Donald Trump Makes Legal Threat To CNN And The New York Times Over Their Reporting On Iran Intel Assessment

Along the way to becoming a bully nation, the Trump Regime is energetically dumping facts. Trump’s own regime’s Intel said Iran wasn’t near completing a nuclear weapon. Trump claimed that he knew better without offering any facts.

After the bombing, Trump said that the mission resulted in Iran’s nuclear capabilities being “obliterated.” The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment said that Iran’s program was probably only set back a few months. Trump insists, without evidence, we must believe him.

On June 20, a reporter asked Trump: “What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon? Your Intelligence Community has said they have no evidence that they are at this point.” Trump responded, “Well then my Intelligence Community is wrong,” and he said that Gabbard was “wrong.”

You can see why doubt is blooming like flowers in the spring. The Trump Regime’s response to everything among its directors, press secretaries, and cabinet members is, hey, trust us. They really dislike questions and react with violent anger when questioned, especially when facts get involved. Yet, we have several parts of the government saying one thing while TACO insists its otherwise. We have metrics saying one thing while TACO and his trumpizens insist their alternative set of facts say differently.

Polls are showing, for now, that more U.S. citizens believe the United States is on the wrong track. We see more of the same in the latest consumer confidence index.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans’ view of the U.S. economy worsened in June, resuming a downward slide that had dragged consumer confidence to its lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago.

The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index slid to 93 in June, down 5.4 points from 98.4 last month, which represented a brief uptick.

Of course, as a group, the U.S. electorate is a jelly-filled crumbly invertebrate. Many critics will say of this group and my gross generalization, there are so many issues, the issues fracture us. Yes, and that’s normal in any democracy. But shouldn’t history, truth, and facts mean more? As we’re frequently finding, truth and facts only matter to same when they slap people in the face like a used diaper via personal experience.

We see this especially demonstrated in the Immigration issue, as orchestrated by Killer Noem and her banditos. After teaching people to question authorities and question mask-wearing gunmen, we’re now supposed to just accept that it’s okay for ICE to disappear people? We used to fill milk cartons with people who went missing. Now, like a lying president and mass shootings, disappeared people is becoming a new American norm. Doesn’t matter if the disappeared are criminals; doesn’t matter if due process is followed. Who needs law and order in this growing lawless nation?

Remember when we used to say, “Innocent until proven guilty”?

Do you recall the days when “Everyone has their day in court”?

What about that old idea that, “If you’re not doing anything illegal, you don’t have anything to fear”?

Hey, that shit is gone. This is what happens when history, facts, and truth no longer matter. Little by little, day by day, decision by decision, act by act, truth, justice, and due process matter less and less.

And then a point is reached when nothing matters except the bully in charge.

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Thirstda’s Theme Music

My phone was ringing and dinging with a plethora of text messages. I clicked on the app to see WTF was going on. My phone tried calling people. Sighing, I rolled out of bed. 6:48.

Sunshine was again championing the blue summer sky. 58 F now, it’d be 84 F later. A thin line of nascent white clouds trouble the sky blue from being as rich and pure as possible. I tried again to check messages but they wouldn’t come up on an app. My sister, though, corresponds with me on a separate app. Her summaries detailed an overnight firefight in The Mom Saga between Mom, her boyfriend, his family, and my family.

I exercised to engage my muscles and get blood moving in the right direction and consulted my Fitbit for the results. Fitbit hadn’t registered anything. Some scrolling revealed that my Fitbit was fritzing. WTF.

Thirstda, June 26, 2025, was not off to an inspiring launch. Maybe coffee and perusing the news would help. Meanwhile, I would reboot my Fitbit and phone. I mean by that, turn them on and off. That’s often modern technology’s rudimentary fixes: turn it off and back on. It failed this time, leaving me with some WTF mumbling to my caffeinating self. Almost in parallel, I went to the net via computer to search for help. Blank pages came up. Really, WTAF?

Finagling of computer settings were engaged. Results showed. Turning off the Fitbit and turning it on again a few times, I drank coffee and considered the failed results. With coffee in, brain neurons engaged in what was going on.

Hey, they said, did you notice that the time is going backwards on the Fitbit?

Whaaat? I answered. Yes. Each time I turned the FB off and on, the time it showed went further back.

The Neurons said, This has happened before.

I’d tried snyncing the Fitbit with the app. That failed. The app kept telling me that an update was available. But It also told me that the update was already installed.

Well, hold on, partner, The Neurons said. The app is probably hung.

Of course.

Bringing the app up, I worked a hard shutdown on the phone. Yep, that fixed all Fitbit problems.

Thank god for coffee.

Tethered to my computer and technological issues, The Neurons are huddling with songs about freedom. The morning’s hours have sprinted away. Solomon Burke ends up singing “None of Us Are Free” in the morning mental music stream. A line resonates with me: “If you don’t say its wrong, then you say it’s right.” Yep. That’s how I view those Trump voters who say, “I didn’t vote this. I don’t support it.” You spoke with your actions. “The truth is shining bright right before our eyes.”

On into the day I go. Hope you have a better one. Cheers

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Thirstda’s Wandering Thoughts

TL/DR: AI is fucking up. And that’s fucking us up.

One of my childhood passions were cars. From that grew an intense interest in auto racing. It wasn’t something that I shed as an adult. Passions aren’t easily surrendered. Yeah, as an adult, auto racing, with its environmental impacts, ridiculously increasing costs, and inherent dangers, lacked substantial commonalities with the human condition and the challenges Earth and humanity face. I excused myself for decades with the subterfuge that we don’t want a vanilla existence. Year after year I followed sports car and Formula 1 racing. For a while, I also hunted NASCAR, IMSA, and IndyCar news. But sports car and Formula 1 was it for me. As I aged, the passion became muted and dulled. Part of that was that the sport just wasn’t as competitive. Aspects of its relevance to real existence also troubled me, though, and that grew.

One of the Internet’s commercial strengths is that it notices what you look at, and then baits you with more of the same. The net noticed I checked out LeMans this year. It came up with reminders about Ford’s victories at LeMans in the 1960s via the Ford GT. That effort was highlighted not long ago in a movie called Ford v Ferrari.

A story about Ford’s 1967 LeMans victory grabbed my eye. Driving a red Ford GT Mark IV, American drivers Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt took LeMans in record form. I built a model of the car within a year. It sat on my dresser among my other models until I moved out of Mom’s house four years later. Eagerly, I read the story. Then I wondered: how many drivers have won both the 24 Hours of LeMans and the Indy 500?

I put it to AI; how many drivers have won both the 24 Hours of LeMans and the Indy 500?

AI responded, slightly paraphrasing, Lewis Hamilton won it in 2011 and Max Verstappen has won it four times recently.

WTF?

I know that Lewis Hamilton has never raced at Indy or LeMans. Nor has Max V. Both are Formula 1 champions.

The entire AI answer was fantastically fucking wrong. Now, if I didn’t know the sport, I may have been fooled by the answer. Which pushes the wonderment in me, how many people consult the Internet for truthful and factual information and are being fed wrong answers? How many lack the resources or awareness to challenge the veracity of what they’re being fed?

For shits and grins, I asked AI again. This time, one source said, “…while only Foyt has won both the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500.” Another told me, “Only one driver has won both the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans: Graham Hill.”

So, both answers are wrong, because I knew before asking that Foyt and Hill were the only drivers who accomplished this.

Wrong info on the net is not new. We’ve joked for years, “It was on the Internet so it must be true, ha, ha.”

But the shit is getting deep. The way that wrong information is advancing and spreading with AI’s gentle assistance, the joke is now on us.

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Wenzda’s Theme Music

Daylight come and it’s time to get up. That was not always the case. A shift worker for over a dozen years, I was often driving home as the sun bite into the sky.

Not so today, Wenzda, June 25, 2025. Let’s run the Ashlandia summer day checklist: cool night; check. Blue sky; check. Bright sun; check. Temperature in the low 80s; well, that’s not usual. We generally reside in the 90s at this point but I enjoy the 80s more, when we’re talking temperatures in Fahrenheit. Today, the sun will rouse us from the 60 F where we now chill to the low to mid 80s.

The neighborhood is lazy with low passing vehicle noises and a number continuing a porch project. No trains or aircraft are heard today, and the birds are circumspect in their discussions. I’ve not read much news yet this AM and continue to dwell in a ‘wait-and-see’ spirit. That spirit has songs ’bout trouble circulating in the morning mental music stream. Coming into six months of TACO’s second presidency, many balls are in the air. We’re witnessing the GOTP sabotaging justice and the legal system, the education and healthcare systems, environment and the economy, doing so under the guise of progress while ignoring fact-loaded decades. Meanwhile, PINO TACO saber rattles like he’s an old battle hand and not the coddled man-child born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

The Neurons cultivated a broad selection of trouble songs for the old stream. From it, Buddy Guy’s take on trouble, “I Smell Trouble”, has assumed dominance.

Into the day we go. What happens next, nobody knows. Hope yours goes well. Cheers

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Another Dream Car

One of my dreams last night left me puzzled but optimistic and in a better mood when I awoke. As I went over its details with myself, one part that captivated me was it featured my first car.

In the dream, I was a young man again, and I was driving my first car. This was a 1965 Mercury Comet. Forest green, it was a four door automatic sedan with a 289 V8.

Dad gave me the car. He’d recently remarried, and this was his new wife’s transpo. Dad bought himself a used service van at an auction to drive to and from work, and turned over his 1974 Chevy Monte Carlo to her to drive. I was completely blown away by their decision. They’d not talked to me about it ahead of time. Until then, I’d been hitching or walking to get around.

With a car, I suddenly had a dating life and began dating the girl who is my wife. Our dates were never much because, car or not, I didn’t have much money. Dad did give me gas money and a few bucks besides. But I was in high school and on sports teams, and local jobs in our rural region were scarce.

After graduating, I joined the military and went in for training. After I returned home from basic training and tech school, I drove that car three hundred miles through a snow storm to my new duty assignment at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Fairborn, Ohio. It was a taxing drive. Ice and snow were thick on the car by my journey’s end.

One day, the car wouldn’t start. It was probably a starter or selenoid switch. As it was a 1965 car and this was 1975, and it was a four-door sedan, I did what many guys would do, and bought my first used car, a sleek little 1968 Chevy Camaro with a 327 V8. Ah, fun car! Young car!

I left the Comet sitting in its parking spot. A man saw it sitting there without movement, hunted me down, and bought it. I’m not sure how much he gave me but I didn’t haggle. The thing is, though, when he went to change registration, he learned it was still Dad’s car.

Oh, yeah.

Dad was pretty pissed but the sale went through. I still laugh about it, and he still shakes his head.  

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Two Related Dreams

Two nights past, I dreamed I was being snatched. I was arriving at work each time, which amounted to showing up at a desk where a computer was set up. Others were there — all men, most in suits and ties — setting up their own computers or opening briefcases, talking on phones, or grabbing one another for a quick consult. No one noticed me. I was fine with that.

In the first snatch, a white, muscular man with short hair, wearing a sky-blue shirt, came up and grabbed me. As I struggled against him, demanding who he was, he carried me away. That’s essentially what happened with each snatching, and I think I was snatched a dozen times. A different man grabbed me every time but they were always white, with short hair (usually brown or blonde), wore a sky blue shirt, and had red arm tattooes.

But my reactions grew different, and I grew aware of the impending snatch attack, so the circumstances varied in degrees. During that first one, I was completely surprised. The second one, I was briefly startled but had time to worry about my wife, who was working at another space some distance away. The third time found me exasperated that it was happning again, and had me telling others to inform my wife what happened. The fourth instance, I was more resigned but appealed to the men around me to help me stop what was going on. That happened several more times. Each time I was taken, I was irritated that nobody paid attention, but that’s essentially where it ended; then I would arrive at work and get taken again. By the ninth time, I was expecting it and trying to figure out what to do to stop them. By the twelth, I tried immediately running away when I arrived. My captor expected that and I was easily taken.

Thinking about the dream the following morning, I thought it represented frustrations. At home, executing my budgeteer persona, I fix things and more things break. Likewise, I go to the doctor for one issue, get it resolved, and another arises. I feel like I’m on a bad news conveyor belt. My wife’s health is declining. Mom and Dad are both in spirals of decreasing health and increasing concern and have been for half a decade plus. Personally, I feel frustrated and thwarted by my fiction writing efforts. Politically and economically, I see my nation and the greater world becoming mired in increasing chaos of growing intensity. Personal rights and responsibility seem to be shrinking. I don’t feel like I can do much about any of them. This, frankly, pisseds me off.

So, last night, I dreamed I was tearing things down and rebuilding them. This was being done via huge slabs. I don’t know the slabs’ materials, but they were sized like large pizza boxes. Extremely hard and heavy, they were in shades of gray or black. Light didn’t reflect off them. Each was marked in large bas relief with ‘2804’. I’m clueless about what 2804 means.

At first, I was simply moving them. One at a time, I’d picked one up and relocate it to a new position. As I was doing this, I began pausing to consider my actions and be more selective about what slab I picked up and where I put it. I also started re-arranging some slabs that I previously moved. After some period of doing this, I wondered, what am I doing? I heard a voice respond, “You’re rebuilding.”

I reacted, “Oh, okay, cool. That’s good.” Finishing, “I need to rebuild,” I resumed lifting and moving the blocks with new energy.

Dream end.

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