Tag: first world blues

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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Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts

It’s first world blues time again.

Emails slide into my inbox. Netflix, Amazon — sorry, Prime — Hulu, et al urge me to watch shows I’ve already seen. ‘Based on my history’, they recommend shows nothing at all like the ones that I’ve watched. In fact, looking at their recommendations, they’re throwing everything against the wall to see what clings to my mind. Netflix urges, ‘We think you’ll love these” and shows me “Paul vs. Tyson”. I have never watched boxing, wrestling, or fighting anywhere, so WTF?

They’re so bogus. Little of what any of them from Apple to Amazon offer reflect my watching patterns. If they did, they’d be zeroing in on darkly comedic/quirky British, Australian, and Scandinavian shows. Encountering these weak, pathetic recommendations jars my brain. They’re pretending to be caring and involved with me and my viewing habits when they clearly lack all insights. In fact, when they do this, a deep glower spreads across my mien. They’re wasting my time and mocking my intelligence. A vow to not watch anything they offer begins to burn deep inside my brain.

Not just streaming services doing this to me but they’re the worse. Amazon recommends ‘Picks just for you’. Sounds so sweet. Like they went about picking flowers and arranging them. “Here, a bouquet pour tu.” They show me pots and pans collections. Frying pans. Kate Spade purses. Like, WTF? I’ve never shopped those on Amazon or anywhere online.

They all must have me confused with another Michael.

1

Fresh WP Frustrations

I don’t know, maybe WP has reached a limit on tags for me. Maybe it’s my ‘puter. Could be a technology curse, I suppose.

When I go to add ‘new tags’, WordPress burps. My cursor is bounced out of the box, and the new tag vanishes. Perplexing. I don’t experience this on other web sites.

Then again, my system was just updated last night. You know how updates sometimes go sideways with small matters.

My work-around was to save the draft, swing over to the iPad mini, and edit the post to add the tags in Jetpack.

Just more first world blues.

11

The Facebook Duality

I shared one of my posts to Facebook the other day. I often used to do so, inviting friends and family to ‘see what I’m up to’.

Facebook informed me that it had been blocked as spam. It was the second time in as many months that they labeled one of my posts as spam, claiming something like, I was posting it or sharing it just to get likes.

The nerve.

This happened to be a Floofinition, one of my silly pursuits. Of course I was posting it on Facebook for likes. Why does Facebook think people post on their social media accounts? Likes is one of many reasons for sharing things on Facebook, but they used to encourage me to do just that.

I protested their unilateral condemnation of my post, but my protest is limited in scope to their pre-canned reasons for doing so. And those are flawed and incomplete. It assumes a set of paradigms which frankly just displays how fucking lost thy are. And after I completed that, I thought, I never heard anything back from them about that one last month.

No, you never do. They reach out like some hidden Gods, do their thing, and then watch us like we’re ants running around after their anthill is damaged.

That pissed me off.

The clincher came the next day. It was like, “Michael, here’s a memory of something you posted before! Share it to remind others.” So sweet. So friendly.

And yeah, it was one of my floofinitions. Like the one they condemned as spam and removed for being posted to get likes.

Well, fuck you, Facebook. I’m done with you and your capricious two-faced arrogance. They are already a repository of right-wing memes and misinformation, so they were treading on my last nerve before. I know, they’re quivering back at Meta headquarters, wailing that they’ve alienated me and lost my support. “Oh, boo hoo. We lost Michael. Woe is us.”

That’s okay. It makes me feel better. Just as their community used to do. It’s like they say, the more things change, the more they go to shit.

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UPS Mail Innovations

It’s a grip-worthy day for me. We ordered a packaged. 28 August. It was shipped via UPS Mail Innovactions the next day, or maybe the one after that.

UPS said we’d receive it by September 3. That didn’t happen. Package was in Fife, Washington. Transferred to the USPS. Because this is Mail Innovations.

The package arrived at Fife, WA, on September 3. An update said, your package will be delivered on September 6 by 7 PM.

Didn’t happen. I went to the UPS said, tracked the package — still in Fife, WA, on September 3, the shipment that stood still — and used the assistant link they provided me.

It was not useful. Said the tracking number which UPS provided me is not a UPS tracking number. Well, I saw exactly where the gap began. My number is for UPS Mail Interventions, I mean, Mail Innovations. UPS and its virtual assistance is not set up to assist with that innovation.

Sigh. More first world blues.

0

Minor Tech Rant

I logged into my wife’s email account to help her sort an issue.

Correction: I tried to log into her email.

They — Hotmail, or whatever mastermind now behind it — wanted to send me a code to my wife’s second email address to log into the Hotmail.

So I filled in the second email account and went to log into it to receive a code to log into the first email account

Voila. The second email account wanted a code to log into it. They wanted to send it to the first email account.

To summarize: to log into one email account, they wanted to send a security code to a second email account but to log into the second email account, I had to log into the first email account to get a code to get into the second email account.

I always knew this was where tech was heading. It’s pretty FUBAR.

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Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts

Just more first world blues, but I’m bummed out by those automatic toilets which flush while I’m still doing my business. Then, when I do finish my biz, it doesn’t flush, forcing me to search for the magic button to make it happen.

I mean, what exactly is that thing sensing when it flushes and doesn’t? Or is it just messing with me?

2

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Mood: oneofthosekindofdaysic

We started this day in Ashlandia, Wednesday, May 1, 2024, at 36 F. Chilly, baby. No clouds besmirched the blue sky. Sunshine stormed in at dawn. Asserting itself like a new young bull, the sunshine and front pushed the temperature up to 53 F. It’s still climbing with an expected final stop at 67 F.

The cats can’t wait until it gets that warm. Both stayed out for a testing period in the early hours but galloped to the house when I opened the door and offered sanctuary. Tucker and Papi are now napping like the house cats they are.

Yeah, my mood is oneofhosekindofdaysic. All first world blues junk. Fitbit crashing itself, losing two days of data. GASP! Stop the presses. Slow-loading pages. Connectivity matters at the coffee shop. OH NO, it’s the end of the world. Little matters like that which chip away at your spirit like water dripping on stone. It’s such a cruel world. How can I possibly enjoy my scone and coffee under these conditions? Yes, that’s 24 karat snark.

Reading news restores some semblance of balance. People killed in tornados and storms. I can’t deter my brain from imagining what their death must have seemed like. The noise and power of the storm followed by some manner of incident which causes their demise. Seems like a lonely and terrifying way to die. Of course, hearing incoming missiles or artillery shells also seems terrifying. Is it worse when a blow just comes with little sound and warning? What about being a child in a school listening to one your classmates picking off your peers as they walk the halls with a semiautomatic weapon? That also seems like it would generate all-consuming terror.

One of my nephews experienced his 18th birthday recently so I was thinking about him. Naturally, The Neurons conjured Alice Cooper to the morning mental music stream (Trademark simmering) with “I’m Eighteen” from 1971. The song came out three years before my eighteenth natal day, so I had a ready-made theme song for the day.

I pondered the differences between what I was like and my life, and my young nephew. A straightforward comparison is hard to generate. Our social mediate in those days was passing notes and writing letters. Information was just beginning to emerge beyond AM/FM radio and the big three national television networks.

But I think both ages embody a sense of chaos and challenges. I think that’s so for every generation, no matter the era. We face the same issues of finding our nature and going forward as adults.

He, from my vantage, is an intelligent, poised, and talented individual. My sis, his Mum, is proud of him, and so am I. I look forward to seeing him soon. I hope he votes this year and casts a blue ballot.

Okay, I’ve boarded the coffee train. Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s the rock video. Stay chill. Cheers

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Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

Caught a commercial on TV. About a doctor and her doctor peers, I guess, and their work in a hospital, and their personal lives and romances. As the female doctor kisses a man, a female voiceover says, “The Universe has a way of making sure we’re where we need to be.”

Well, I call bullshit on that. Bullshit because so many people, including children, live in poverty and food insecurity. Some work several jobs. Some deal with personal darkness or physical, emotional, or menal handicaps. Bullshit for the women denied their choice in America and suffer fear and pain because others decide how they should live and strip control away from them. Bullshit for the people around the world with trying to understand themselves and their minds and bodies — I’m speaking about people who don’t neatly align with a binary world — being denied assistance and support.

What about those innocents in war zones? That where the Universe needs to be as the bombs rip up their lives and kill their families. Naw, I’m calling bullshit on that, too. That’s just the tip of a 2024 existence.

I’m happy that some people wherever around the world finds a happy medium where they are and where the Universe has delivered that gives them a safe and happy life. But I think for most, we live lives where we’re scrambling or helping others scrambling to survive.

Man, television and Hollywood can be full of such bullshit. Yeah, that was a young elderly white American middle-class rant. Just needed to expell it from my system.

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Wednesday’s Wandering Thought

He thought changing browsers had resolved his WordPress issues. Not so. Longer posts still struggled with the autosaving function. It was like Schrödinger’s WordPress. Never knew what was going to happen.

He was in the coffee shop so it could have to do with their bandwidth or his net connection. Whatever it was, there was no fix. Just coping the post onto a doc, break the connection, start again.

Once it went was into the autosaving hang up, there was no saving it.

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