Tag: 1998

Wenzda’s Theme Music

Happy Wenzda. Jumped out of bed (it’s an expression), and went to the windows and —

“Alexa, what’s the air quality?” I asked. Because looking west, smoke sheathed the view. What fresh hell was this?

Alexa told me the air quality was good. Yes, I did not smell smoke. Windows were open. Cool 66 degree F air was flowing in. But that smoke was turning the blue sky gray. Must be from one of the nine fires burning west of us. Or one of the several blowing along mountain ridges from the fires burning south in northern California.

Supposed to be 97 F today. That’s what we saw yesterday. Ashlandia summer is in place.

I can become obsessive about things. My routine soon incorporate sniffing the air for smoke smells and looking out the window to see if the smoke was becoming better or worse. Some crow was yelling something the whole time. Another was responding from further away. I don’t know what it was about. I don’t speak crow.

Reading about Trump’s irritation with the Epstein files. While he’s still burning down the U.S., his base is upset about the Epstein List. Trump, being true to his core of caring only for himself and lying and throwing aspersians at others when he gets upset, lashed out on a lie-filled text. I read a good rebuttal with a timeline and a reminder, Presidents Obama and Biden didn’t have anything to do with it. It was during Dubya’s administration and Trump 1. Staunch Republicans Barr and Acosta were involved. Indisputably, though, Trump and Epstein were runners together. Photos exist. Trump talked about Epstein in glowing terms. No doubt, Trump is in that file.

Today’s music is a 1998 Eve 7 offering, “Inside Out”. The Neurons had it playing in the morning mental music stream for a bit, slowly turning the volume up. Finally hearing the part that goes, “I’m not as
Ugly sad as you. Or am I origami folded up and just pretend, demented as the motives in your head.” Knowing some lyrics makes the modern net useful for finding the song’s details. Once those details were rehoused in my awareness, some memories about where and when I often heard it — in the car, driving around the bay area, Alex — stacked.

Now I’m feening for coffee. Off we go. Have a most excellent day, as we used to say. Cheers

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Fourday’s Theme Music

Today is Thursday, commonly known as day four of the standard work week. Maybe that’s a used-to-be. Could be different in this 24/7 existence which supposedly rules the U.S. I say supposedly because there are many things not available 24/7. They claim it’s a 24/7 news cycle. We know that’s not true. Politicians and corporations love them a Friday dump because they know that news garners less attention.

I favor using Fourday in honor of Thursday’s tentative origins. Back when the days of the week were being conceptualized, many people wanted to name the days by their order. Weeks weren’t even involved in the first round of thought. Today would have been Nineday because it’s February 9. (2023, BTB). That was rightly criticized as not helpful. Imagine the conversation. “When do you want to get together?” “Nineday, February 9.” Doesn’t add much does it? That’s when the great thinker and philosopher, Whathehellus, stepped up and came up with the days we now use. Whathehellus is also famous for giving us the expression, “What the hell?” Why else do you think we use it?

48 F out in Ashlandia at the mo, cold air bleached warm by rousing sunshine. Solar light splashes in through windows throughout the house’s east and south sides, invoking delightful coziness. 56 F is due up as the high, according to the weather seers. No reason why that won’t be attained can be seen right now, but you know weather and clouds, don’t you? Weather and Clouds, once a proud Brit rock band, now just surfs the sky causes mischief. W&C, as some call them, had their most notable hit with “Shadowing Your Day”, back in the day.

Sol’s presence was noted at 7:15 this morning. Sol will be left out by the world’s ongoing spin at 5:36 PM. Those times are only good for Ashlandia. Your times will vary.

The Neurons planted a couple songs in the morning mental music stream. They’re related. It started with irritation with Papi, our ginger floof. He was going in and out and in and out times three. Poor little one was restless and bored. Naturally, The Neurons responded with The Who, “Squeezebox”, from 1975. But when I finally forced myself awake and out of bed, “Real World” by Matchbox Twenty (1998) was brought up by The Neurons, cause there’s this line, “I wish the real world would just stop hassling me.

Okay, coffee has been consumed (black with a shot of whiskey, of course), as well as brekkie. Time to go write and rule. Stay pos, and make Fourday the best one you can. Here’s the theme music. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Thursday is found and stuck into place. Just like that, the puzzle known as 2022 gets closer to completion. Fitting these final pieces into place is a challenge that I best face when I’m coffee-fied. They’re so very similar. Like yesterday, today, December 15, 2022, is cold (29 F this morning), foggy, with wee, thin sunshine doing little to dint the gray quilt of fog and clouds and chilly winter air. Even the floofs are muttering, brr, with Papi leveling a dagger gaze at the world in expression of his disdain for the weather.

Though sunrise kicked in at 7:32, light at 6:27 AM was astonishing. I easily navigated through the house to let Papi out. Sunset will arrive at 4:40 this afternoon to close out this puzzle piece. Our temperature’s high point will be 5 C.

My wife popped home last night from her holiday book club and said, “I have the weirdest earworm.” She then sang the Texaco jingle. “You can trust your car to the man who wears the star, the big, white, Texaco star.” I had to laugh at that one as I tried remembering when I’d last heard it.

I have a different song in my morning mental music stream. Out walking in the cold day yesterday, I spied multiple home challenged folks trying to keep warm. It’s a constant thing here. We as a community pursue multiple prongs to help, chasing something sustainable and permanent as a solution. It’s been no bueno. Watching them and thinking about them, wondering how they’ve come to be in this situation, The Neurons fed “What’s It Like” by Everlast from 1998 into the music stream. I share it with you for theme music on this December day.

Stay positive, test negative, etc. I’m up for coffee once again. Here’s the music. Hope you enjoy it and experience a day that helps you finish the puzzle that’s you.

Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Coffee has arrived. The first two sips of the gorgeously hot brew invigorate my senses and awakens my palette. Here we go, The Neurons sing.

Today is Friday, October 14 of the common era year 2022. I skim headlines and press on to other matters before the news blunts my energy and takes my soul. 57 and chilly under a pristine blue sky, sunshine began its daily visit at 7:22 ante meridiem. Sunshine will linger until 6:38 post meridiem. Temperatures are again foretold to have a high in the upper eighties. After a windshift yesterday, the smoke cleared and we struck 86 F around my house, a wonderfully warm, comfortable day, with a faint breeze and mild humidity. Our leaves haven’t done much turning in this area, nor are they dropping yet, a huge contrast to where I stayed in Penn Hills, PA. during the move from September to October. Guess the trees decided to wait for my return before launching their fall show. Gracious of them, innit?

For theme music, given that it’s Friday, The Neurons loaded that golden oldie, “Friday Friday”. I grew up on those lyrics. “Friday, Friday, how I love that day. Out of school and work at last, and free to play.” Nipping on that song’s heels comes a familiar favorite, “Black Friday” by Steely Dan.

Yes, Friday is on my mind. Instead of those songs, though, The Neurons re-introduce me to “Slide” by the Goo Goo Dolls. Released two or three lifetimes ago, which can be calculated as 1998, it’s another song in the catalogue created as I commuted to and from home to shop and work in the SF Bay Area and peninsula at the end of the last century. Why that song, I query The Neurons. It’s about a pregnant girl and her boyfriend debating choices about what to do. Jimmy Neuron answers, “It’s just those words, I’ll do anything ever dreamed to be complete, or something like that.” Oh, I answer. Oh. It’s about the dreams and the quests, huh? I see.

Test negative and stay positive, or as The Neurons call it, negapos. So be negapos. Sorry, that’s the coffee. It’s taken over The Neurons. Here’s the music. Hope you own Friday and it doesn’t end up owning you.

Cheers


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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Gonna be a hundred F here today, they tell us. I’m doubtful. Rum Creek smoke fills the air, making it unhealthy to breath, but it also blocks the sun and cools the air. I don’t think it’ll go over 95, 96 F today. It’s now 20 C.

After much discussion among replay officials, they’ve concluded that this is Tuesday, August 30, 2022. When I typed that 3-0, The Neurons said, “That ain’t right, is it?” But the replay officials say it’s so, so let’s move on, and play ball. First down.

Happy sunshine sneaked over the eastern mountains and winked through the leaves at 6:34 AM and will take its light and heat and stalk off, probably in a deep red glow, given this smoke, at 7:48 PM. The sun’s light comes through different windows now as the Earth’s relationship with the sun shifts via orbital mechanics. The eastern windows see less sunshine as the sun treks into our southern sky. By the time winter has arrived, we won’t see sunshine through most of the eastern windows.

I’d like to pause to mention folks in Mississippi, coping with their flooding, along with Pakistan. Here’s a call out, too, for the people around the Rum Creek fire here in Oregon, and for those enduring power outages from storms in the U.S. Midwest and South. Send positive energies to these people and places if you can, however you manifest it.

Music – that’s why we’re here, innit? – in the morning mental music stream is “You Only Get What You Give” by the New Radicals, circa 1998. The Neurons, putting their whimsy in the display case, plunked the song into the M3S after I struggled to remember a dream. The dream keeps poking its head out but whenever I shout — mentally or figuratively, right? — “There it is”, the dream ducks out of sight. Maddening. Perhaps after I’ve had coffee…

Better go get some. Duty calls. Stay posi, test negy, and so on. Here’s the music. Sing along if you know it. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Blinding sunshine crashed through today’s window early on, piercing the hazy cloud layer with mocking ease. That happened at 6:18 AM. Temperature was in the forties then, now they’re at 52, and we’re expecting a day of sunshine with a few clouds, and a high of 66, 67, F, before sunset at 8:01 PM.

Welcome to April the 23rd, Saturday, 2022.

I have “Love Me Two Times” by the Doors in the morning mental music stream. It’s coexisting alongside a second song.

My neurons started playing their version of “Name That Tune” with me the other day. They said, “Remember this song?” Then two notes or part of a word would flash among them. “No, I don’t remember that,” I answered. “I need more.” Begrudgingly, they gave another word here, a sound there. I would try to focus and recall, but the song wouldn’t come to me. DKAY, but when something like that happens, i.e., I’m trying to remember a place, event, name, person, song, and it doesn’t come, it’s like small piece of hell. “Why can’t I remember that?” I ask myself. It was almost there, then, whisked away by malicious forces once more.

This went on about three days before I caught enough of the words to go, “Wait,” and hit the net in search of. The song is “Sleep the Clock Around” by Belle & Sebastian. I’d heard it several years ago on the American version of “The Killing” and looked it up. It’s a fascinating duet to me.

Whew. Glad that’s out of my system. Stay positive, test negative, and you know, right? You’ve lived through 2020, 2021, and 2022’s first quarter.

Got my coffee. Here’s the song. Enjoy.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

I’ve done it! I reached Saturday!

It’s good to set goals. You feel so good when you achieve them. Making it to Saturday was a modest but important one. It kept me going through the other days, which were sometimes sucky.

Today is December 18, 2021. The sun popped in, spreading sunshine like butter on hot pancakes, at 7:34 AM. A hazy shade of winter is overlaid on the blue. The snowmess of Wednesday and Thursday leaves no local trace except for tales. Current temp is 32 F and a high of 50 F is being dangled in front of our faces.

“Given to Fly” by Pearl Jam (1998) is flying through the morning mental music stream. It’s one of those songs that starts softly but when I used to hear it on the car FM, I’d end up, pressing the volume button to up as the song rushed through the middle.

These were the words that opened the window for PJ to sail through:

He floated back down cause he wanted to share
His key to the locks on the chains he saw everywhere
But first he was stripped and then he was stabbed by faceless men
Well, fuckers, he still stands

h/t to Genius.com

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters. I have a new goal: coffee, here I come. And here’s the music. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Hear ye, hear ye, Saturday, October 16, 2021, is underway. Let the games begin.

Sunrise spanked us at 7:25 this morning in the valley. Warmer air dominates today. It’s already 56 and we expect a high of 79 degrees F. Should be a glorious autumn day before sunset takes place at 6:28 PM. Our air quality is stellar at a clear and fresh 10 as rain and cooler air helps us in the fight against wildfires. Containment is increasing. We take a breath of relief that another season has been survived. It has its costs, though, as wildfires destruction in 2021 in the U.S. is expected to cost between 70 and 90 billion dollars, along with lives lost.

I found myself walking around in circles this AM. Catering to cats, you know. Fickle felines. Want in, want out, want that food, this food, no, pet me, pet me, pet me, let’s go play! I did the feeding, a little ear and chin scratching, and then attempted to deal with my essentials — food and coffee. When all settled down I chuckled at hearing a song by Soul Coughing called “Circles” circling the morning mental music stream. The song was released in 1998. I probably wouldn’t be familiar with it but I had a friend and co-worker, Saba, who knew it. She’d already introduced me to the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Violent Femmes. Now, on a lunch run where she was driving, she called up “Circles” and introduced me to Coughing Soul.

So, here’s to Saba and her wonderful influence. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get a vax if you can. Enjoy the music while I ensure the dark deliciousness served as coffee. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Monday already! Again! Seems like it was just Monday last week. As Steve Miller sang, “Time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking, into the future.” Which, isn’t really what happens, but close enough. Speaking of, do the young understand what the elderly (ahem, like me, which we called established) know what is meant by a ticking clock?

Today is July 26, 2021, July’s final Monday. Not much significant for it in my life. Garbage day. Put the can out so it can be emptied tomorrow. Going to the library to pick up some books on hold. To the credit union for money. Store, for groceries. Coffee shop, for coffee. Sunrise was at just before 6 AM, 5:58 AM. Sunset will happen at 8:37 PM, whether it’s witnessed or not. Today’s weather calls for smoky air but clear skies, with a high of about 100.

Dreams are driving my theme music today. I dreamed of Dad for two nights in a row. The second prompted the Everclear song, “Father of Mine” (1998) to loop through me head. My father wasn’t a Deadbeat Dad. Mom had a lot of issues with him. He was in the military and overseas or in other states most of my young life. I was born in 1956; Mom and Dad divorced in 1961. His role was then reduced. He returned to my life in 1971, after returning from his assignment in Germany. Things were rough at home for me. Dad let me come live with him, which I did until graduating high school in 1974. Then I was gone. Dad remarried twice, and had one other long relationship. He has been a good father to all of those children. But, to me and my sisters, he was MIA. Now he’s trying to make up for it by calling. But it’s hard to rewire the past after sixty-five years.

There were good times. He taught me to play baseball. Gave me my first glove and bat. Bought me fishing gear and took me fishing. Gave me my first car, a forest green 1965 Mercury Comet sedan with a 289 V8. Helped me buy a car, a Porsche, a few years later. Introduced me to my wife through his best friend.

Here’s the music. Stay positive. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed. Get the vax. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Good morning. It’s Wednesday, April 7, 2021. Already into the fourth month. Just eight months to go in 2021, if you’re doing time.

Haven’t had my coffee yet. Thoughts remain low and slow. Something about sunrise at 6:44 and sunset at 7:43. Be over thirteen hours of sunshine today. Temp is 52 F. We expect to kick into the seventies.

“Thank U” by Alanis Morissette outta 1998. I find it an introspective song, fitting today’s introspective moodiness. Edged with a tinture of restlessness, there’s a sense that I’d like to break out of my daily mold. First, though, I must have my daily coffee…

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax. Cheers

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