Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Anticipedged

It’s Tuesday, September 10, 2024. The national elections are 56 days away. Vice President Kamala Harris and felon Donald Trump will debate policies and positions tonight to sway undecided voters. I expect Donald Trump to lie…a lot. I expect him to act like a little and put on an entertaining act for his base. He is all low-style and little substance. I don’t expect him to say anything about Project 2025; if he does, he’ll probably deny having anything to do with it.

I expect Kamala Harris to be well-spoken, intelligent, and upbeat.

We’ll see what happens. Kinda holding my breath. The Harris – Walz campaign has demonstrated a lot of positive energy IMO. My wife and friends are also pretty stoked. But the media casts the race as being a dead heat. While we scratch our heads and ask WTF, we wonder what people are seeing and thinking in the nation’s other regions.

Second point to that, I thought President Biden was going to be strong at his debate with Trump. Instead, President Biden’s performance ended with him stepping aside for Veep Harris a few weeks. Not a bad move in the end, but the debate night performance undermined my confidence about my perceptions and thinking. So I’m leery about tonight.

It’s 62 degrees F outside of my Ashlandia home. Today’s high will be a comfortable 83 F. The air is fresher again today, with little hint of smoke. I’ve watched people walking — with and without dogs, alone and in pairs — and runners, taking advantage of the temperature and clean air. Airnow.gov pegs the air quality for Ashlandia overall at 52, just above ‘good’. Purpleair shows the air quality is 33 down the street and 75 up the street. We’ll see how it flows.

We’re pretty excited at my house. Rain is in the forecast for tomorrow. Rain, with a high in the 60s. Giddyup.

I’m anxious about the elections. I tell myself I need patience and to be positive. The Neurons responded this morning by springing the 1989 Guns N’ Roses “Patience” on the morning mental music stream (Trademark worn). Yes, a little patience to get through this is mo def needed for this era. I’m a person who struggles to be patient at times. That’s what led to me into taking transcendental meditation instructions in the Philippines in the mid 1970s. That helped a great deal, as does my continued meditation, but impatience still gets the better of me too often.

Gotta go close the windows. Smoke smells are curling in and congestion is rising in my nose and sinuses. Purpleair has the reading at 129 up the street.

Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. Coffee is being sucked down. Here is the music video. Cheers

Sunday’s Theme Music

Welcome to Sunday, September 26, 2021. Sunshine folded through a starling’s egg blue sky at 7:01 AM. Twelve hours and one minute later, the sun will roll back out today. Our air quality is good after slipping into the moderate zone yesterday. Temperatures are wonderful, a low of 52 F overnight and a high about 79 this afternoon. No wind, no rain. Rain is anticipated tomorrow. It feels like a perfect day. After the summer’s smokiness, we’re all loving it. I think fall is becoming my favorite season, mostly because summers have become so miserable: hot (frequently over 100 F), dry, smoky.

Talking politics this morning with our houseguest. She’s as progressive as us, but she has some staunch conservative sisters. So she experiences frustration. We ended up talking about the anti-vaxxing movement in Florida. They are adamant against vaccinations with multiple reasons given. Some claim ther — and elsewhere — COVID-19 is overblown. A hoax. No worse than the flu. You’ve probably heard these things. Second, they don’t trust the vaccine. Unsure of long-term effects of the vaccine. Or, it’s the mark of the beast. Nevermind that the long-term effects of COVID-19 are growing rapidly clearer. Survivors aren’t always left without problems. But while doubting the science and decrying the vaccines, they’re eager for the monoclonal antibody treatment for anyone who gets COVID-19 because they’re not vaccinated against it. The bizarre logic quilt is dizzying. Dismaying.

So, we agreed, we need patience. After that, “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses from 1989. The song doesn’t apply to this situation. No. This power ballad is about a rocky relationship between a man and a woman. But its weary undertones fit well for this political era, the virus, national divisiveness, and the struggle to find the political will to achieve cohesive action. So it fits IMO.

Stay positive. Yes, it can be hard. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed, and get the vax, and boosters when available. Have some coffee. Hope you have an enjoyable day. Cheers

“Barks N’ Meowsies”

“Barks N’ Meowsies” (floofinition) – American hard-floof band heralding from Floof Angeles (F.A.).

In use: “Led by lead singer Axl Bark and guitarist Claws, Barks N’ Meowsies (often shortened to BNM) released their first album, Tearing Up the Toilet Paper in 1990, which included hit single songs, “Floof City” and “Fur Child O’ Mine”.”

Monday’s Theme Music

A power ballad is today’s choice, slipping into the stream as I awoke to the sound of rain in the night and thought, November rain.

Sometimes you need some time on your own.

Here’s the Guns n’ Roses song, “November Rain”, 1992.

Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s music choice is another of those, “Out, damn spot,” selections; a song is stuck in my head and must be dislodged by being shared with others.

The song emerged during last night’s dream quagmire. Can’t call it a dream true stream last night. From my memories, the dream streams all torrented down pipes that burst, releasing the dreams into a big sloshy mess. So, boom, here’s a twentieth century Guns n’ Roses Sunday offering, “You Could Be Mine”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0USm2TE7eNU

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music is well known, and came about from playing with our ginger cat, Papi, aka, Meep. Meep was his original name, given for this sweet, strained version of meow that he had when we first met him.

Happy as he is about ninety percent of the time, he was in a frisky, rambunctious mood. We began one of our favorite games, hide and chase. As the game progressed, I first streamed “Run Through the Jungle” by CCR, sometimes singing parts of it to Papi, but as Papi quit playing to roll around and get some belly rubs, the music switched to “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns n’ Roses (1987).

A powerful, hard rock song with what seems like some serious, mocking lyrics, the song stayed with me, shoving other songs out of my head as I walked to begin my writing session.

Welcome to the jungle
We’ve got fun ‘n’ games
We got everything you want
Honey, we know the names
We are the people that can find
Whatever you may need
If you got the money, honey
We got your disease

h/t to AZLyrics.com

 

Wednesday’s Theme Music

I’m stuck in a sour war mood, which prompts recall of my military days.

This song, “Civil War” by Guns n’ Roses, came out two years before I retired from the U.S. Air Force. I retired because the military personnel powers-that-be wanted to move me to a new duty station. I was first offered a position with Air Force Space Command’s Inspector General team. A prestigious position, it would mean a lot of traveling, but it would take me to places that I’ve always wanted to see. Although I was keen, my wife was weary of me being away all the time.* So they instead wanted to send me to manage a missile site command post in the northern boonies. No, thanks.

It’s curious. We stood ready for war, but we didn’t want war, right? That’s what we told ourselves. But we spend all of our time and money preparing for war. That leaves us little prepared for anything else. This trend has gotten way out of hand since I retired in 1995. More and more resources are turned toward preparing for war and fighting war; less goes to social nets, education, infrastructure, etc. And we’re constantly being told that preparing to fight and going to war is what must be done to keep us safe, but as we do so, we’re fighting to save a collapsing nation.

Guns n’ Roses’ lyrics sums it up better than I do.

Look at your young men fighting
Look at your women crying
Look at your young men dying
The way they’ve always done before

Look at the hate we’re breeding
Look at the fear we’re feeding
Look at the lives we’re leading
The way we’ve always done before

h/t AZLyrics.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSHDWpwXfbo

 

* Ironic side note: I retired from the Air Force, and became a customer service/sales operations manager for a medical device startup. Two years later, the company offered me an associate marketing product manager position, and I ended up on the road visiting hospitals, doctors, and trade shows…

 

 

 

Friday’s Theme Music

After another night of peculiar dreams that ended with Boomtown Rats singing “I Don’t Like Mondays”(hello, it’s Friday), and streaming some Brian Seltzer, “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” arrived in the stream. I had the dubious enjoyment of Bob Dylan’s original version alternating with the Guns n’ Roses cover. Clapton’s reggae version slipped in there a few times, as did the a recording of Tom Petty singing it with Bob Dylan.

Although I prefer Bob’s original song, the Guns n’ Roses’ cover (1990) dominated today, so I went with it. Had to have a shot of coffee before I stopped feeling like I was knocking on heaven’s door.

Cheers

Thursday’s Theme Music

Once again, a dream contributed the theme music’s selection. The dream is too scattered to remember. It had a lot of candles, blowing trees, thunder, dark clouds, running and shouting, reminding me of some drug-induced psychedelic adventure, sort of Alice in Wonderland is blended with Bladerunner. 

The dream was difficult to remember, reminding me in my efforts of web pages that won’t correctly load, incomplete and chaotic, but done at a frenetic pace. The pace brought “Welcome to the Jungle”, G N’ R, into my stream as I examined what was remembered.

I was stationed and living in Germany when “Welcome to the Jungle” (1987) was released. We worked in an old, brick, two-storied building right by the flightline. Photographs of the building with German zeppelins docked next to it were on the building’s walls. I found one of the photographs on line and posted it here. That’s the little building, under the zeppelin’s tail.

RM Zeppelin

I worked upstairs in a vault. My small ops center served as the control point for the vault. Beyond my ops center was the crew briefing room and our intelligence section. As there were no windows and things like radios weren’t permitted in the vault, we all went into the other three upstairs offices when there was down time. Several of us came together and bought a boom box so we could play music and hear the news. Guns N’ Roses was a hard rock staple of the time, getting boomed into the upstairs hallway while we pursued our mission.

I still have the boom box.

 

Today’s Theme Music

Staying with a simple theme – it’s a cold morning but the rain has passed me by…for the mo’. All this brings to mind the ‘Sweet Child of Mine’. It was Guns N’ Roses only #1 hit in America and a rousing tune for a cold morn.

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