Sunday’s Theme Music
Mood: Rainchilledflecting
Sunday came in with little sunshine, but it’s been creeping taller, brighter, warmer through a sluggish morning. Its September 15, 2024 and about 61 degrees F. That’s about three off from an anticipated high of 64 F. Rain, thunderstorms, and sunshine will be trading places throughout the day. It’s aggravating our tentative plans to go to the Japanese Gardens for an organized moon watching thingy about 7:30 this evening. Like, will it be raining? Or too much cloud cover to take in the moon? Can’t decide now. It’ll be an event time decision.
I’ve been watching and enjoying Slow Horses on Apple TV. Based on a series of novels by Mick Herron, the series is about Slough House and MI5 rejects exiled to deadend jobs for various failures and character flaws. I’d watched the first two seasons about a year ago but decided to watch them again and then go on with two more seasons. The show is rich with characters. Gary Oldman plays a terrific character, Jackson Lamb, a cynical, obnoxious, and brooding burned-out spy. He drinks, he smokes, he eats poorly, and he insults. By the third season, everyone is telling him that he stinks.
Our other main individual is River Cartwright, an impulsive spy who wants to be a hero but often sabotages himself with his behavior and thinking. Ironically, he starts out looking suave as a spy and slowly shifts until he begins to resemble Lamb. My favorite, though, is Louisa Guy, played by Rosalind Eleazar. Her depths, grief, and stoicism intrigue me, and I want to know more about her. She’s not infrequently a surprising hero.
Besides them, we have Kristin Scott-Thomas playing Diana Taverner, the poised, intelligent, and mildly amused organization climber. Her main frustration is often brought on by Lamb and his Slough House exiles.
My wife has become sucked into it. She told me yesterday that she read that Slow Horses is currently the most popular show on television or something like that. I think it’s deserving of that. I’ve finished three seasons and I’m ready for season four. As I often do when I find a television or movies series which I enjoy, I plan to read the novels.
Today’s music is “Walk Away” by Kelly Clarkson. It’s playing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark charred) because of a floof incident, also known as a floofcident. Papi, the ginger blade, rounded a corner and encountered Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah), the aging black and white bruiser. Some lowly muttered threats emerged over this apparent transgression. Having witnessed the entire event, I’m not sure how their pride or territory was affected. Maybe it’s spillover from some previous encounter. Or it could be moods exacerbated by the changing weather. Who knows with floofs? Hard to read as husbands.
So, watching the incident, I said, “It’s okay, boys, there’s no reason to fight, just walk away, Papi.” The Neurons heard that and it was mental clickbait to call up the 2006 song out of the memory channels and put it in the morning stream.
Be strong, stay positive, and vote blue in 2024. Here’s the music video. Coffee and I are doing our tango. Cheers
Tuesday’s Political Thoughts
Trump’s latest is — hold up.
This is Donald J. Trump. Felon. Just to verify who I’m writing about. He’s the Republican nominee for President of the United States in 2024. One-time POTUS, elected back in 2016, he failed to hold onto the office in 2020, but he refuses to go away.
Trump’s latest declaration is that children are getting sex change operations at school. Going in as one sex, coming home as another.
“Kamala supports states being able to take minor children and perform sex change operations, take them away from their parents, perform sex change operations, and send them back home,” Trump said in a Mosinee, Wisconsin speech.
That’s one of the greatest most out of touch things I’ve heard of him saying. Crazier than his speculation about getting killed by sharks versus being electrocuted if your electric boat sank.
Crazier than his declaration that Mexico will pay for a border wall. Crazier than his lies that wasn’t what he said.
Crazier than windmills causing cancer.
Crazier than his recounting of how the American military took the airports during the American Revolutionary war.
Crazier than his idea that raking forests may help prevent forest fires.
Crazier than his assertion that he actually won the 2020 election, even though he also admits that he lost it. Crazier than his assertion that he has ‘every right’ to interfere in the election results. Crazier than his declaration that he’d been dictator on day one. Crazier than his insistence he knows nothing about Project 2025, despite the evidence of him bragging about it.
Do you realize how crazy and out of touch this latest is? Schools don’t have the money to buy school supplies, and he thinks they have enough money for surgical operations?
C’mon, man. Where are the operating rooms? Are teachers doing this surgery or are they hiring surgeons on the sly? Maybe he thinks the surgeons are volunteers, right?
Seriously, though, this is the best the GOP has to offer the nation, the world, and themselves, a man claiming without any evidence that children are being operated on in schools?
That party has lost its way.
Vote blue in 2024. Please, please, please. Are you seriously willing to accept a person who makes such baseless claims?
If so, I have an airport to sell you. It’s secret, though, at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Trump goes there all the time. You’ll love it.
Friday’s Theme Music
Mood: Friliberated
Went out doing chores this morning while it was cool and the air was fresh, so I’m late to posting duties. Bac then it, was in the mid to upper sixties. Now we’re at 77 F. It’s sunny, with a few clouds coiling up from the earth to the troposphere’s upper reaches. Today’s high will probably be about 85, 86 degrees F. Depends on where you’re at in Ashlandia. The air is mostly clear of smoke for now. But the smoke is rising. We’re into the moderate zone. Bleah.
Went and saw a great performance at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Green Show. Forty-five minutes long, the free Green Shows bring in all manner of performers. Last night was a regional favorite, the Rogue Suspects. They put on a superb display of style and ability with their performance of Tina Turner songs. Regaling us with “Private Dancer,” “Nutbush City Limits,” “Missing You,” “Simply the Best,” “Addicted to Love”, “The Bitch is Back,” they finished with an energetic rendition of “Proud Mary”. You ever get the chance to see them, come and do.
Then, my wife and I left the Green Show and headed over to the bandshell in Lithia Park to see the last of the Ashland City Band’s final summer concert. With the air clear and the temperature dipping into the upper seventies, it capped off a terrific evening of music.
Saw that D.J. Trump is asking the courts to postpone sentencing for his conviction until after the elections. Hope that doesn’t happen. Treatment being given to him keeps broadening the idea that he’s part of a class of people above the law, unaccountable for the shit storms they cause, IMO. It’s really screwing up the already strained sense of justice in the United States.
Someone has pointed out that Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation document setting forth the ways conservatives went to twist and malign our nation, wants everyone in a school receiving Federal funding to complete the ASVAB. That’s the test aspect of the military recruiting system. Interesting that public school attendees will be doing that. Easy to paint a scene where students of wealth attending private schools are more and more exempt from military service while impoverished and lower middle-class students enlist and serve. Just part of conservatives pursuing their goals of setting up a nation of have-nots to serve the wealthy and powerful. Meanwhile, the conservatives love pushing the idea that the liberals are the ‘elites’. They are such a duplicitous group these days.
Meanwhile, down in Florida, led by the mini-Trump known as Gov. DeSantis, universities and colleges are removing books and trashing them. Not selling them, donating them, or giving them away; they are sending the books to landfills, throwing them away. What a waste.
Today music remains true to the dance theme. While ruminating on the theme, The Neurons fired up Justin Timberlake with “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” from 2016 in the morning mental music stream (Trademark rising). Technically, it doesn’t meet the standard of having ‘dance’ in its title, except The Neurons kept insisting to me that the title is “Can’t Stop the Feeling! Dance, Dance, Dance.” I called bullshit on them but the song is about dancing, so I gave them another pass. Part of that is just to appease The Neurons, because they’re prone to sulking and pouting, and then quit responding me, which reduces me to an idiot. I already have enough trouble with looking like an idiot, so I gave in to them.
Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue, okay? For extra credit, practice saying, “The first female President of the United States, President Kamala Harris.” Because people need to get used to it.
Coffee is being consumed. Here’s the music. Cheers
The Writing Moment
It’s a bumpy writing ride right now.
The novel in editing, Memories of Why, fishtailed and went sideways. On page 550 of 580. Realizing that it needed work brought me down. This is the manuscript’s rev 6.
Fact is, it’s sloppy at that section and the thinking behind it needs tightened up. A few inconsistencies are evident. I gloss over them, but I hear my reading side saying, “That’s weak. I don’t buy it.” Grumbling about it to myself, I thought, look, put it off, ignore it, the first five hundred pages are good. But I can’t. I know it needs work. I can’t look away from that. I’ll need to mask up, get up the scalpels, and go in there. It’s for the patient’s own good. Yes, I’m mixing things there, aren’t I? LOL. More coffee, stat.
Reflecting on it and my writing process, I realized that this section was written late. I’m a writer who likes writing and editing a great deal. I overwrite, then retreat and revise, smoothing and polishing. As this was written in the late stages, it’s not been subjected to as much revising, smoothing, and polishing. I also suspect that the rest of the ms reads and feels better because of the process, so this section comes off as shabby.
The new novel, Gravity’s Emotions, is going fast. Or so I thought. Started on July 19, I’m on page 120. I thought, that’s pretty fast progress for me. But when I actually crunched the numbers, it’s average.
Thinking about why it seems or feels like it’s going faster, I realize that I’m thinking about it less. Attempting to write in a different manner than usual and utilize a different approach, I told myself to get out of the way, don’t overthink it, and just let the words go. It often feels edgy and terrifying. But I’m pleased with how it’s going, knock on wood.
Writing yesterday, I was so caught up that I realized that I’d gone into overtime. See, we had this thing planned and I was to be home at a certain time, which means, naturally, leaving the coffee shop by a certain time, and there I was, still hammering away when I was supposed to have been gone ten minutes before. But the scene, the scene, I had to finish it. Type faster, I mentally exhorted my fingers. Be more nimble.
It all worked out. The scene was finished and I made it home with time to spare. I’d already begun writing the next scene in my head before finishing that scene, so I now have a firm jumping off point for this morning.
More coffee! Here we go. Rock and write. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 