Tag: 2006

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Today’s wind music is a head-banging offering of fast guitar riffs, thrumming bass, and shrieking Deep Purple concert vocals. Christmas trees were on the curbs to be picked up. Not any more. Wind rolls them into the street like holiday tumbleweeds. A few trees have been downed, and branches have surrendered.

It’s warm, though, for January 4, 2023, 40 degrees with a forecasted high of 13 degrees C. Sunshine and clouds have been doing moves since the sun’s 7:40 valley appearance. (“It’s a valley sun, a valley sun, oh my my, fer sure fer sure, it’s a valley sun and there ain’t no cure.”) The planet’s rotation will spirit the sun’s presence from us at 4:52 PM. Rain is on the way, the radar says.

I was musing about time and changes and the shifts I’ve seen in my lifetime. Some of them were the changes witnessed in other individuals, or the organic growth of new norms and mores that accompanied technology’s growth. A few thoughts went along fault lines of how I see myself as changed, and what I can’t see about myself that’s changed.

After staying quiet over this for a while, The Neurons began the 2006 song by Staind, “Everything Changes”, in the morning mental music stream. The song came out a year after our move from the SF bay area to Ashland, a huge shift of demographics and density. It was also ten years after my military retirement, and the year that IBM bought ISS. All of those were large changes for me. 2006 was a year of huge changes and recognition and adjustments to previous changes. So this song kindled thoughts about what was once the way and the plans which had been made, and how all of it tilted and rolled. That’s life for some of us. Others plot it out and follow their life like sheet music.

Stay positive, test negative. Adjust and change as needed to thrive. Speaking of thriving, I’d do much better with coffee in me. Here’s Staind. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Heard a loud crash reverberate through the night last night. Shook the windows and threw me out of my chair. Investigation revealed that Wednesday, August 3, 2022, had arrived.

Sunrise was at 6:06 this morning, a sketching of faint pastels relieving night’s fading grays. Our temperature pumped up to 21 C from a start of 65 F, with a high of 97 F in sight for today. Skies are clear except for charcoal scratchings brought on by smoke. The McKinney Fire still burns, still less than one percent contained, unlined, but rain slowed its spread. Other fires have sprung up and are being dealt with. We were fortunate that with all the lightning strikes of the last 24 hours, we were spared, knock on wood. Sunset was a bold, lingering red splash yesterday and I think we’ll have the same today at 8:28 PM.

I was watching my ginger sweetness do a dash. He’s a cat who loves to dash about doing good. As I teased him, “Why are you running from place to place,” The Neurons said, “Oh, we know this song.” That’s how I came to have “Saving Grace” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (2006) in the morning mental music stream. I enjoy the song’s purer rock sensibilities, which is something I think that Petty always brought to his music. His was a simple approach.

Stay positive, try to be cheerful, test negative, have a nip of coffee. Don’t mind if I do. Here’s the music with the late Petty recorded live. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Sunshine prevails today. Tuesday’s sky can be described as mostly sunny or mostly cloudy. Both seem correct. While sunshine washes over everything in the valley, large clouds brood like waiting bears, shadowing large swaths of land.

Yes, it’s May 3, 2022. Our high is gonna be 64 F, they say, about ten degrees higher than it is at the mo’. The sunrise cometh at 6:01AM. The other end of the daylight session ends at 8:13 PM. Tomorrow, the weather ‘they’ say, we’ll see 79 F.

After a series of dark, messy, and splashy dreams, the neurons summoned a Nine Inch Nails song. Released in 2006, “Every Day Is Exactly the Same”, some of the lyrics go, “Every day is exactly the same.” Which sometimes is how my life feels, outside of writing. Feeding cats and taking care of them, house and yard work, the eternally aggravating question of “What’s for dinner,” dressing and eating, reading news, doing errands, reading books. Yet, in many ways, that’s how it was when working and in the military, too. The world is built on bureaucracies and routines. Sometimes, though, that tedium gets me. It’s funny, but I know this song because one of the QA guys who worked for me when I managed a tech support group introduced it to me. He no longer worked for me by that time, but sent me an email after the song came out, telling me about it, and mentioning, “It reminded me of what you used to say.” I still laugh about that.

Stay positive — yeah, who am I to talk? Test negative, etc. Here we go, music and coffee. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

5:35 AM swept by.

The sun didn’t show.

The FIC (Floof-in-charge) gave that a whiskery frown. They’d been on the job for over six centuries. The sunrising thingy had a rhythm they’d notice after a few years on the job. Maybe they’d missed something on the schedule. Consulting it, they confirmed Sunday, June 6, 2021…

Nothing scheduled. Sunrise, 5:35 AM.

Pulling out the cosmo communicator, they called up to the regional system overseer. “This is the Ashland FIC. We were supposed to have a sunrise at 5:35.” They were looking around as they were talking. No sunlight. Not even false dawn. The birds were muttering about it. Bears, cats, and nocturnal animals milled around, wondering what was going on.

“What’s the problem?” the overseer said in their nasally voice.

“There’s no sunrise.” The FIC then wondered. “Did the sun rise everywhere else on schedule?” It seemed implausible that it was an Ashland-only issue, but equally amazing that it’d happened elsewhere and went unreported.

“Shit,” the overseer said. “The sun didn’t rise anywhere. Shit!”

The line went dead. The FIC looked at the cosmic communicator. A fox came up. “What’s going on? Where’s the sun?” A couple crows joined him, nodding their heads in agreement. “We have things to do,” the crows said.

“It’s coming,” the FIC mumbled, calling the overseer back.

“What?” the overseer asked. “Kind of busy now. If this isn’t an emergency — “

“I know, I’m the one — what’s going on with the sun?”

“Oh, yeah, you. We’re going to roll the day back. The sun was, um, indisposed this morning, so, um, ah, anyway, let everyone know, we’re rolling back time so that sunrise commences on schedule. They won’t notice a thing. Tell them to just be patient.”

A few seconds later, the FIC looked up as the sun swept past the eastern horizon at 5:35 AM. Right on schedule.

They snorted. Sure. Hopefully, all would go well when the sun was due to set at 8:44 PM, but they weren’t going to hold their breath.

“Through Glass” by Stone Sour (2006) is playing through my head. Something about how some days feel like forever. Ever notice that? Happened a lot when I was a child. Look at the clock, waiting for it to advance, wondering if it was possible that time stopped, or was it just the clock?

Anyway, here’s the music. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Todays sunrise in Ashland, OR, was 7:40 AM. Sunset is 5:04 PM. A light gray overcast sky keeps the sunshine at bay. The temperature is 42 degrees F but a high of 56 is projected, along with light rain.

Today’s theme music is “Animal I Have Become” by Three Days Grace, 2006. I chose the music on behalf of the United States and the nation that it’s become. Torn by division, rhetoric and activity turns more violent and urgent. As blacks have been killed by police, people took to the streets to protest the deaths. Many of them were senseless, but officers were exonerated. Several particularly infuriating people, like Breonna Taylor, unarmed, in bed, innocent of everything but being black, killed by police in their zest to ‘serve and protect’. There was also George Floyd, killed by an officer who was busy serving and protecting, by kneeling on his neck until he died while his fellow officers, serving and protecting, looked on. This was apparently for a report of a crime of passing a counterfeit twenty dollar bill. Numbingly, those are just two examples that fueled the anger and protests that swept the nation on behalf of justice in 2020.

Meanwhile, on the right, they got busy protesting those protests, screaming in response, “Blue Lives Matter”. That blue lives really didn’t matter to them became apparent (as if we weren’t sure) as Trump supporters, who are quite right wing, conservative, and white supremacists, battled with the police in support of a coup attempt, beating many police officers, killing one. On the right, they believe that the 2020 election was stolen by ‘the left’. They think that there was all sorts of fraud, uncounted ballots, and thrice counted ballots that helped propel Biden to his landslide (in Trump’s words, as Biden won the EC by the same number as Trump did in 2016). Trump himself, and GOP cohorts, continue feeding this lie. They insist that evidence exists.

This evidence has never been shown.

On the right, they claim the evidence will be shown, and we’ll all change our tune. What’s keeping them from showing this evidence anywhere is the response given by the rest of us.

One note that has everyone (outside of the people who believe that the 2020 election as stolen) shaking their heads, is why would this all-powerful election-stealing apparatus only steal the presidential election? Why would they not steal the Senate and House? Why wouldn’t they also steal the state elections? They use the same ballots. Apparently, though, while the right believes this election-stealing apparatus is all-powerful, it’s not powerful enough to steal those elections. Yeah, SMFH.

With Trump impeached again, Trump unwilling to concede, little change to police policies and practices, and FBI reports that the right have violent plans to change the results of the 2020 election, “Animal I Have Become”, a song about a man struggling with drug addiction, seems right.

On a WordPress note, they appeared to have fixed some issues, in my experience. The site published properly yesterday. Of course, today when I went to post, I couldn’t bring up a page. Took three tries, and the whole ‘post/block’ sidebar had vanished and needed to be called up.

Stay positive, test negative, moderate your drinking, and wear pants (and a mask) when appropriate. Cheers

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Proceeding

I thought I was further along in the novel-in-progress — well, in the story — than I am. I was at a juncture, though, where I was undecided what to do. Normally, I overanalyze a while, take a walk, make some coffee, and then write. I did kind-of the same this time, writing it in my head until I reached a point where I said, “Nope, that’s not how it goes.” Eventually, I found how it goes, and punched on.

While I was doing this, I remembered Stranger Than Fiction, a 2006 movie which I enjoy. The movie, written by Zach Helm, starred Will Ferrell as an IRS employee who begins hearing voices in his head. It turns out that, possibly by quantum entanglement, he’s the main character in a novel that’s being written. The author, Karen Eiffel, is played by Emma Thompson.

I sometimes identify with Karen Eiffel. Scenes show her as the writer contemplating how to proceed. Proceeding in her instance means killing the main character. Her process involves a lot of pensively smoking and walking around while exuding a dark air and snapping at others. In my case, it involved a lot of pensively drinking coffee and walking around while exuding a dark air. So, you know, it’s a weak comparison, because I don’t smoke.

But after all, the movie was fiction.

Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy at least one more time.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme song thinking finds one of the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s melodic songs from earlier this century in my head.

I looked out to check the weather. The rain had abated. Sunshine was making its way in like it could use a cup of coffee, and the temp was stumbling into the upper forties.

Not bad. No snow. I wondered if snow were on the ridges on the valley’s other side. Thinking of snow brought on RHCP’s 2006 song, “Snow (Hey Oh)”. My mind lit on that one chorus.

Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it’s so white as snow
Privately divided by a world so undecided
And there’s nowhere to go
Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it’s so white as snow
Running through the field where all my tracks will be concealed
And there’s nowhere to go

h/t to Genius.com

Music for thought this mid-November day. Have a wondrous day, and wear a mask, please.

Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

My political ire is rising with the latest trumpshit. First is the jump out the gate questioning whether Kamela Harris is eligible to be POTUS. If you haven’t read the ‘opinion piece’ in Newsweek…don’t. Such garbage. Be a while before my respect for Newsweek returns.

That was just starter fluid for my anger. What’s going on with Trump and the GOP the destruction of voting rights is first class authoritarian play. Further infuriating me is the GOP obstacles arising by sabotaging the USPS. We as a nation have worked to find improvements in the USPS and how the mail is handled and delivered. Here comes the GOP, breaking the fucking system so they can undermine democracy to remain in power. It’s a scorched earth plan for victory. Sickening, sickening, sickening.

As it’s happened in the past whenever a political party dirties a nation, enablers turn their heads so they don’t see. In this instance, they’re burying themselves in misinformation.

Eventually, Trump, the GOP, and their users will follow the natural course to crash and burn. By then, judging from their current activities, the destruction they’ve wrought will be huge. Then people will stand and cry with shock, “Who knew?” 

That’s happened every damn time. Then they’ll shed croc tears and protest their innocence, “I didn’t know.”

All that at last takes me to a 2006 Pink song, “Who Knew”. Frothy and poppy in melody, it carries dark lyrics about things happening that’s not noticed until you awaken to events after it’s all over, when nothing can be done. Pink sang,

I took your words and I believed
In everything you said to me
Yeah-huh, that’s right

When someone said count your blessings now
‘Fore they’re long gone
I guess I just didn’t know how
I was all wrong
They knew better, still you said forever
And ever, who knew?

h/t to Genius.com

That’s where Trump supporters and enablers stand. They believe his lies, and that of his administration, rationalizing his morality as good, twisting logic and facts to fit their spin , and will profess to believe until it all comes crashing down. Then, when the air is filthy again, climate change is crushing our society, and the number of people starving and dying swells, they’ll whine, “Who knew?”

Yeah, that’s right.

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Thursday Theme Music

Lovely day — sun drenched, kind of warm air, patches of snow on mountains a few miles away, no clouds — yesterday. Went for beers with my friends (our weekly meeting, which I don’t always attend). We sat out on the deck under thinning sunshine for a few hours. Medical updates for a few were provided, then politics, books, science, and plays (Oregon Shakespeare Festival is beginning) were discussed. For a while, we put troubles and worries aside.

Afterwards, walking home (just under a mile up a long, steady hill), and feeling mellow as the night swallowed the sunset, Ray LaMontagne’s song, “Trouble” (2006). It’s a mellow, bluesy song and fit the day well.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Going through routines, planning my day, and checking the news, Nine Inch Nail’s song, “Everyday Is Exactly the Same” (2006) began streaming. Those initial words, you know?

I believe I can see the future
Cause I repeat the same routine
I think I used to have a purpose
But then again
That might have been a dream
I think I used to have a voice
Now I never make a sound

h/t to AZLyrics.com

I think, OMG, no, that’s too depressing. Searching for an alternative, my stream offered “Clocks” by Coldplay. I thought, No, no, that’s no better, dude. The stream offered “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Stealer Wheels. I think the stream thought itself funny. 

Bah.

 

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