Fridaz Theme Music

Hey, good morning, sunshine. It’s Frida, December 26, 2025. After a rainy night, the clouds shuffled aside and sunlight broke in on us. We were warned that snow might fall in the night. Peerings out the window provide no visuals that snow was encountered in our area.

My system says it’s 41 F outside. The net claims 38 F with light rain. Alexa claims 41 and cloudy. SOU marks it as 44 F. We’re basically in agreement, then, in a six degree range. That range makes sense. SOU is lower down and about a mile away. The location is subject to being foggy. If fog doesn’t show, it’s subject to being sunny. Projected highs aren’t far off with the given range as 43 to 46 degrees F.

We’re settling into the post-Christmas groove. I find this an odd period. People are coming down from the holiday high of eating, giving, and receiving. Schools are closed, as are some businesses. Others are forced to trudge back to work. It’s a Frida but lacks a Frida vibe.

Next week brings the New Year. My cynical side asks, “How many other nations can the Trump Regime attack before the year’s end? How many more people can this administration kill and displace?” Being a peace president isn’t easy, you know. That’s why Trump wanted a department of war, so he could push for peace. He’s going to threaten, bomb, bully, or kill everyone into peaceful. It’s ‘do as I say or else’ diplomacy. Which is also is political tactic, and his negotiating stance. It’s all ‘do as I say or else’.

The ‘or else’ side of things is diminishing. Everyone has the measure of Trump’s blustering. He can’t do much economically. That’s largely because he severely damaged the United States’ economic power by breaking trade agreements, and levying tariffs. That leaves Trump with the greater danger for the rest of us, to employing the power of the U.S. military, which is still potent.

With that in mind, thinking over 2025 and looking ahead to 2026, The Neurons came up with the Grateful Dead song, “Casey Jones”. “Trouble ahead, trouble behind.” Yep, Trump is driving us toward a no-win, no-way-out situation of isolation.

By the way, what does everyone think about Trump bombing another place at about the same time that the DOJ found a million more Epstein Files? That seems like suspicious serendipity to me. I can imagine a conversation inside the place formerly known as the White House:

Trump’s minions: “We’re going to announce that Justice just discovered one million more Epstein files.”

Trump: “Whatever.”

TM: “We’re also announcing we’re releasing them.”

Trump: “Bomb someone. Quick.”

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, Christmas brunch was at at friend’s house, and a Czech student was present. She’s from a small village. Her school there covered elementary school through ninth grade and had only 117 students. After hearing her version of Christmas celebrations in her village, with baby Jesus delivering presents, I asked the net for more info. I learned that Martin Luther had encouraged this idea to help move people toward Christianity.

I also ended up looking up Sinterklaas. I’d mentioned that figure as another interesting Christmas variation. They all claimed to have never heard of Sinterklaas, so I had to look him up just to reassure myself that I wasn’t nuts.

I hope your holidays were and are pleasant for you. Hope, too, that whatever troubles 2025 brought to you drop away and that 2026 is less problematic and troublesome for all of us. Fingers crossed. At least we’re going to be seeing longer periods of daylight up north now, having crossed the solstice boundary.

Got my coffee. Here we go again. Cheers

Thirstdaz Theme Music

Rain, clouds, cool temperatures, and colorful leaves. It is indeed autumn in Ashlandia. 51 F now, 62 F on the way. This is Thirstda, October 2, 2025.

Gonna be a busy day for me. Slew of health and dental appointments scheduled. All were scheduled through different agencies back in June and July.

Remember when Donald J. Trump lied to everyone about Project 2025 while running for POTUS in 2024?

“I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it,” he wrote, describing attempts to tie him to the proposal as “pure disinformation.”

He wrote in another post, “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”

Trump’s Past ‘Project 2025’ Remarks Resurface as He Touts Conservative Plan

Now he’s loving and embracing that ‘absolutely ridiculous and abysmal’ things. That’s Trump, con man and liar to the core, as many of us knew. That’s one of three areas where he keeps exceeding expectations during his term: lying. The second area would be making up things, and the third is bragging about himself. In all other areas, he’s an absolute failure and disaster.

But of course Trump lied about his relationship with Project 2025 during the 2024 elections. Its flat-out regressive plans were massively unpopular with voters in polls. Trump couldn’t stand that. He knew that without lying, such as his lies about immigrants eating pets, he would never be elected.

Speaking of Trump’s lies, Daily Beast has an update.

Trump Shamelessly Blames His Enemies for Carnage He’s About to Order

“Well, there could be firings, and that’s their fault, and it also could be other things,” Trump told OANN’s Daniel Baldwin. “We could cut projects that they wanted, favorite projects, and they’d be permanently cut.”

So Trumpian! So TACO! MAGA will swallow it whole, because that’s what they do. Low and under-informed voters will dully go along with that thinking because they don’t pay much attention and still don’t get what a greedy and selfish con man and liar Trump is. But the world knows. You know, and I know. Just as we know that the Epstein file is wealthy with the many terrible things Trump did as Epstein’s BFF, which is why Trump fights the release of the files and the truth that’s on display in them.

Today’s theme music comes straight out of thinking and reading about news, coupled with my busy day. As all the plans and appointments were regurgitated through my thoughts, The Neurons bounced up with a Grateful Dead song. Here’s “Touch of Grey”, with its chorus, “I will get by. I will survive.” Perfect song for the growing Trumpswamp.

Well, still waiting for peace and grace to pop back into our lives. Till then, I’ll coffee up and work on getting by. Hope you get by and survive, too. Cheers

Wednesday’s Theme Music

My mischievous Neurons have been busy as a DJ this morning. “Jamie’s Crying” (Van Halen) was first up. Then, “Running with the Devil”. Next, Zucchero with “Diavolo In Me”. Then INX, “Devil Inside”. What the what? I’ve settled now on Grateful Dead with “The Devil Is A Friend of Mine” from 1970.

I don’t know what inspired The Neurons. I recall one short dream and two movie style dreams but nothing else happened at night or yesterday which would make me consciously think, “Say, some music about the devil would sound good right now.” Weird.

Get out your Wednesday best. It’s December 28, 2022. Are you counting down the days or hours until 2023. I’m seeing a lot of posts online about things to do to make your 2023 better. Seems like many think 2022 wasn’t a good year. It had its ebbs and flows for me. These things kept re-balancing the year. I’d say it turned out neither horrible or terrific for me. After all the transactions and their results are tallied, I had an average year. Hope yours was excellent.

Sunshine came in like a cat doing a royal stroll at 7:39, dragging light and warmth with it. We’re 37 degrees F at the moment and expect (drum roll) a 48 F high and maybe some rain. Sunlight will ditch us with its setting at 4:46 this evening.

I hear from weather postings that the wind and rainstorm which we had, product of an atmospheric river, is moving east and causing others issues. Good luck to them.

Stay positive and test negative. I do believe my coffee is ready for a close encounter of the drinking kind. Here’s the Dead. Cheers

Friday’s Theme Music

“The trouble with you is the trouble with me,” I thought. I was dealing with a cat (“You don’t want THAT food? What is it that you want, because I don’t understand”), but it applies to life partners, politics…yeah.

With that line of lyrics, hello, “Casey Jones”. The 1970 Grateful Dead song jumped head first into my thinking stream.

Not a bad song for the day. While it’s a song about a train engineer high on cocaine with a train coming toward him on the wrong track, I always see it as a metaphor, modern warnings to all of us. Watch what you’re doing, give it some thought. Be alert because the potential for trouble remains all around us.

Walking, of course, requires a lot more vigilance than the drives are employing. This seems especially true with weather shifts. Weather shifts change energy; drivers, feeling it, become distracted. Just my theory, but I see it all the time, you know? Lot of anecdotal evidence.

With COVID-19 also traveling person to person, nation to nation and town to town, it’s a good time to be aware of that threat and mitigating steps you can employ.

Saturday’s Theme Music

As many people who I’ve met that loooove the Grateful Dead, I’ve met an equal amount who said, “I just don’t get them.”

It’s like food, movies, sex, and literature, innit? One person’s favorite does nothing for someone else.

I’m a fan of them, and saw them twice in concert before Jerry Garcia passed away. Both concerts featured long jam sessions, and one concert featured a couple having sex on the floor in the back of the hall.

This song, “Touch of Grey”, was released in 1987, and was part of the concert I saw in Germany. The song was okay to me back then, but as grown in my appreciation as I’ve aged and acquired a touch of grey. I will get by, I will survive is a good refrain to sing to yourself when shit happens.

I enjoy this video. I thought it a perfect Grateful Dead vehicle.

Today’s Theme Music

“Driving that train, high on cocaine. Casey Jones, you’d better watch your speed. Trouble ahead, trouble behind, and you know that notion just crossed my mind.”

Those were the words I was singing one day while passing through Mom’d living room. She was busy cleaning. Mom did – and does – have a spotless house. I was fourteen or fifteen, with long hair that irritated Mom and Dad, and a faint mustache and goatee that annoyed my school and coaches. Mom said, “What are you singing?”

I stopped and grew still, as children often do when suddenly challenged by an adult about something that seems obvious. “Singing “Casey Jones.””

“But what were you singing?”

“I don’t know.”

Yes, claim amnesia whenever possible. Mom didn’t look happy but, after waiting for follow-up questions, I discreetly scurried away. Later, I concluded, it must have been the cocaine part, right? I chuckled about that.

Mom and Dad were divorced, and still later, while at Dad’s place, I was walking through his living room, singing…you know it.

“What are you singing?” he asked.

Having been through this questioning and being older, I skipped ahead to the lyrics instead of providing the title. After hearing them, he shook his head. Smiling, I moved on.

Here it is, as performed by the Grateful Dead, “Casey Jones,” from nineteen seventy.

 

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑