The Time-Travel Device Dream

I’d noted before that Papi, my ginger-flavored housefloof, picks 6:37 AM to demand — again — to be let out. This is true plus or minus a minute each time. I meantion ‘again’ because he’s usually been in and out three of four times by then.

Now 6:37 probably isn’t early to many. It used to be non-early to me. Military, I worked shifts on and off for fifteen years. Day shifts often started between 6 AM and 7 AM at most locations, depending on our mission, so rising early was regular. My Space Command days, though, I was a superintendent and then the QAF advisor and made my hours. I always chose to be in by 7 AM, and I carried that forward after retirement, when I began work for a corporation.

All that’s dream background. In the dream, I decide to investigate whether it was true that Papi always wanted out at that time, and further, what the orange wonder did when he went out then. So, there I am, peering down on the world, zeroing in on my house, through the roof to my bedroom. Here comes Papi. I check the time and confirm it. He just goes outside, sits and washes, looks around, nothing special. Good, that’s one day but I need to check more.

Someone else there tells me, “You want to use our time machine?” I never see the others but I know that three are present.

I reply, “You have a time machine?”

“Yes, we use to go back and find the truth of what happened so that it can be properly documented.”

Yes, I’m floored. “Sure, I’d like to use that.”

I can see the other’s hands and arms at this point. All are wearing white gloves and a black coat. They give me a small black box, rectangular, maybe four inches by two inches by one. Blue numbers are on its front. I see labels for months, time, year. “Just put in the particulars which you want and it’ll take you there. You can’t interact at all but you can observe.”

Doing as directed, my instructors realize that I’m going back one day at a time and explain how I can do it more efficiently by using a little scroll control to the side. I can designated how I want to scroll, by year, day, hour, etc. So I play with it, confirming that Papi has been asking to be let out at that hour and minute for some time.

I finish with that exploration and give it back. “This is really useful,” I say. “It’d be great if I could go back and see what happened during other times, with other people.”

“Oh, you can do that,” one answers. “You can use it whenever you want. Just let us know.”

Dream end

February 6, 2023 0

Saturday’s Theme Music

The wind of change is blowing outside my window. It’s probably just circulation caused by atmospheric pressures.

It’s Saturday, if you’re still keeping tabs, February 4, 2023. Ashlandia’s first sun viewing came around 7:21 this morning. Hard to pinpoint it with the obfuscating clouds gathering. Looks like rain but the air temp is a comfy 48 F with a high of 54 F being dealt to us. The world’s inevitable turning will bring sunset to us at 5:29 this evening.

The matter of change is still on my mind after a series of fascinating dreams. Well, they fascinated me. Anyway, Bob Dylan is singing in the morning mental music stream but so is Buffalo Springfield. The latter’s song is “For What It’s Worth”. Written back in the mid-sixties in response to riots in Los Angeles, CA, it’s often used as an anti-war song. But the song was about hippies and change, with the old guard deciding to crack down. A curfew was established. Any child under the age of 21 was not allowed out in that area of rioting.

There’s a lot to unload from all those basics. First on my mind was that those under 21 were restricted, not being treated as adults, in a time when eighteen-year-olds were being drafted for Vietnam. Seems like a bit of hypocrisy, doesn’t it? That sort of hypocrisy still circulates, with people in the military not authorized to buy alcohol in some states because they’re too young. Not too young to be armed and trained to kill and defend everyone else, but certainly too young to buy alcohol. Likewise, young women in some states can be raped and forced to give birth. They’re too young to marry and age is often cited as a reason for denying young people choices and rights, and yet, these girls are expected to have children.

Today’s theme music gravitates toward more recent events, the collapse of the USSR. “Wing of Change” by the Scorpions was written in response to what they were witnessing. Some thought the Berlin Wall would never come down, and that the United States and Soviet Union would locked in a nuclear standoff until one of them pulled the trigger. Now here we are, thirty years later, wondering if Russia, born from the rubble of the USSR, will be the nation to launch nukes.

Change is fascinating. It doesn’t follow neat lines and can often feel chaotic. Some people, whether it’s drugs, abortion rights, or using nukes and gun rights, view life and change through a tremendously narrow lens. Little change is welcomed in their world.

Anyway, that’s the song which The Neurons introduced as today’s theme music, “Wind of Change” by the Scorpions from 1991 to observe the fall of the U.S.S.R. and the ‘Iron Curtain’. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the band changed their lyrics in concert.

“To sing ‘Wind of Change’ as we have always sung it, that’s not something I could imagine any more,” vocalist Klaus Meine told Die Zeit. “It simply isn’t right to romanticize Russia.”

When performing “Wind Of Change” during Scorpions’ 2022 tour, Meine sings:

Now listen to my heart
It says Ukraine
Waiting for the wind to change

Stay positive and make the most of your Saturday. I’m beginning with coffee, black, fresh, and hot. Here’s the music. Cheers

February 4, 2023 0

December 29, 2022 2

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Bellowing, “I am here,” November stomped in. Rain fell. Temperatures fell. Snow flurries fell.

Sun rise came at 7:44, but with November’s presence, the sun became a meek shadow of itself. It’s 2 degrees C now but we expect a slow battle to 48 F before the sun surrenders to the situation at 6:05 PM. With no sunlight and tenuous daylight, we’re forced, for the first time in months, to turn on houselights to see in the morning.

Clarification is needed. The two baths, one lit by a window and a solar tube, and the other illuminated by a skylight, often needs a light turned on in the morning. So, frequently, does the kitchen outside of the summer months. Situated in the west facing side — yeah, ‘the front’ would be the technical expression — the kitchen’s western window doesn’t catch any morning sunlight, either. Not in the autumn, winter, and early spring. Those rooms typically need a light turned on, as does the laundry room. Windowless, it’s in the house’s middle.

But the office, with its huge windows, doesn’t usually need added houselights. Even though it’s also on the western side, it’s just drop the blinds and let in the daylight. Not today, friends, not today. The lights are on even in the office.

This is Tuesday, November 1, 2022. Change the calendar’s page and say good-bye to October. You might catch 2023 peeking around a corner. Give her a wave if you do. She’s coming. It wouldn’t hurt to be chummy with her when she arrives.

BTW, a winter storm warning is out, snow above 5,000 feet. Chain and snow tire season has landed.

Rain songs from multiple decades deluge the morning mental music stream. But the cold wins. Many songs oriented around the cold exist but The Neurons fell back on a Tom Petty favorite, “Out in the Cold”, from 1991. They’re moved that way by memory. 1991’s start find me stationed in Germany, ending a four-year duty as part of a covert intelligence unit. February, I arrived in the SF Bay area, out in Sunnyvale, California, and my new and final duty assignment at Onizuka Air Station. It was pouring freakin’ rain that day, the end of a drought that’d been plaguing the area. It was also cold, and that was the year in which Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had a hit with this song. It’s a rocking band. Love Mike’s shredding on lead guitar.

I’ve used this song back in June, 2021. A cool morning, I wrote, and rainy. I had three cats then. They were out there with me as I enjoyed the rain and a cup of coffee. Two stayed out while the other went back inside with me.

1991 was also when the first Gulf War was going on. Remember that?

Stay positive, test negative, drink a warm beverage if it’s a cold day, stay cool if it’s a hot one for you. That’s what was always interesting about my travels, finding the new weather of the new location after touching down. The weather announced, “You are here.”

The coffee is also here, hot, black, and ready. Here’s the tune. Cheers

November 1, 2022 3

Sunday’s Wandering Thought

He was tired of fake news. They claimed that no one had done a moonwalk since 1972. He knew that was bull. He saw Michael Jackson moonwalk on televsion in 1983.

August 28, 2022 1

Tuesday’s Theme Music

This is it, May’s last day. It will not be extended.

Yes, welcome to Tuesday, May 31, 2022. Back to work if you were off for the Memorial Day in the U.S.

We’ve returned to cloudy and warm weather today. Woke up to 59 F after the sun kicked in its light at 5:38 AM. The flip end of the sun’s presence comes at 8:40 PM today. Before then, we expect to see temperatures of 77 F. Yardwork has kept us busy as the rains encouraged everything to “grow, grow, grow”, leaving us with an unkempt landscape. Great seeing the bees abuzzing around the backyard’s weeds. It’s a weed zone, where we let weeds proliferate. The bees love it.

Today’s song emerged from conversations with friends and relatives about the state of the world and the state of the nation, and where we’re going. Thinking about that and change and direction, the neurons pulled up Roxy Music from 1982 and a song called “More Than This”.

I could feel at the time
There was no way of knowing
Fallen leaves in the night
Who can say where they’re blowing
As free as the wind
And hopefully learning
Why the sea on the tide
Has no way of turning
More than this – there is nothing
More than this – tell me one thing
More than this – there is nothing
It was fun for a while
There was no way of knowing
Like a dream in the night
Who can say where we’re going

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Yes, who can say where we’re going? There’s always some indications but then shifts arrive. Something dramatic is pulled off. A galvanizing speech is made. A moderating influence is found, a new hope delivered. Who can say? History is full of downs and ups. Fingers crossed that we find something that pulls us from the brink and takes us into a new direction.

Stay positive, test negative, etc. I know, it’s a difficult challenge in the current news cycle. Still…try. And now, I will drink the magic elixir, coffee, and draw new hope and energy from it. Here’s the music. Cheers

May 31, 2022 0

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Typical Tuesday for late April. Sun and clouds are pugilistic about who will rule the sky. The clouds were here first, they said, pointing out that the sun didn’t get there until 6:14 AM. “That’s the point,” the sun replied. “I’m only going to be here until 8:04 today while you clouds are coming and going as you please. Shouldn’t I have the sky while I’m here.” They were still arguing when the seasons came in and started putting in their points.

It’s April 26, 2022. Just five more shopping days until May 1!

I have the song “Mother” by Danzig (1988) circling the morning mental music stream. I was watching the new season of “Russian Doll” on Netflix, and they used the song. Well, the neurons reacted by saying, “I haven’t heard this in so long,” and latching onto it like a kitten taking a nipple. So here I am.

The song was a protest to labeling music for content and made a big splash when it arrived. As many noted, the labels warning children that there was sex and violence, or drugs mentioned in the song, prompted more interest in the music. As many told me later, “I didn’t even know “She Bop” by Cyndi Lauper was about masturbation.” All of that was part of a larger anti-pornography movement. Now, of course, we have the web, which casts a whole different kind of shadow over the world.

Stay positive, test negative, follow the CDC advice, etc. Here’s the music. A cup of coffee is summoning me to the other room. Cheers

April 26, 2022 0

Rewriting History

In the Smithsonian Magazine’s excerpt of Narrative Tension, Inc.. From the forthcoming book Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past by Richard Cohen to be published by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission, Richard Cohen writes this:

‘Around the same time, between 1934 and 1936, the Politburo, or policy-making body, of the Russian Communist Party focused on national history textbooks, and Stalin set scholars to writing a new standard history. The state became the nation’s only publisher. Orwell had it right in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the Records Department is charged with rewriting the past to fit whomever Oceania is currently fighting. The ruling party of Big Brother “could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.”’

He is writing about the old U.S.S.R., the Soviet Union, and how Putin’s Russia draws from the lessons learned from Lenin and Stalin about rewriting history to control the narrative.

I can’t help but think of the United States. GOP led legislatures in several states are fighting hard to rewrite history or ignore it, battling against teaching critical race theory, solidly misrepresenting it as they do. Alabama passed HB 312 earlier in 2022, 65 to 32. Pushed through by Republicans, the bill bans teachers from broaching subjects that Republicans find divisive, like ideas that the United States is now or was ever racist.

Ignoring facts or history that is painful or inconvenient has become the GOP standard. It’s been going on in Texas for over twenty years. The Texas textbook controversy erupted as Republicans attempt to color the United States in white, Republican, Christan hues. Trump leans hard on this idea of changing history to fit his needs, denying that he fairly lost the election in 2020, accusing everyone he can of voter fraud, lying, and cheating, without offering evidence. Officials and lawyers working on his behalf have had their cases and lawsuits rejected as lacking merit in courts across the United States. The most prominent cases of voter fraud involve Republican and Trump lackeys being caught while illegally voting or tampering with the process. Search the net for proof of this. Of course, deep Trumplicans hold that anyone saying or printing anything except their version of the truth is guilty of spreading false news.

This is all supported by ‘Evangelicals’, a group that holds the world is only six to ten thousand years old, depending upon which group you hear. They ignore all evidence and facts to the contrary. Listening to such would distort their reality.

This operating process of distorting reality and twisting and denying history is just like Russia and the old U.S.S.R. It’s sad but not surprising that several Republicans are admonishing the world for not embracing Russia’s excuses and lies as the truth for why they invaded Ukraine. Why, paraphrasing their thinking, Russia is only destroying Ukranian cities and killing Ukrainians to protect them. Doesn’t that sound like thinking right out of 1984?

And the one excusing Putin and Russia most of all? That would be the dear GOP leader, Donald J. Trump.

The GOP has become a shallow party, bereft of principles, and desperate to remain meaningful. The only way they can now make history is by pretending what has happened — and is happening, in the case of climate change, and LGBTQ rights and equality — didn’t happen. Deny, deny, deny.

It’s been a long, sickening fall to watch for the party begun by President Lincoln.

March 27, 2022 13

Jab Boost – Day 2

My wife and I received a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine booster shot on Tuesday. It little affected us that day.

Day 2 was different.

It’s nice to have retrospect. We were both experiencing pain and stiffness in our shot arms (left for both) by the end of day 1. Both of us were heavily hydrating but I was constantly drying out. By day 2, I noticed a drop in energy level, dry and burning eyes — seriously, I kept splashing my face and added drops to my eyes twice — and diminished concentration. Writing, where I’m juggling twenty sharp objects in my brain, was a flawed and troubled endeavor. She, though, had it worse. Her energy level went off a cliff and nausea rolled up on her. She took several baths to address a general assortment of aches and napped for almost five hours in late afternoon. Her appetite was done, although taste and smell weren’t affected.

My energy levels have jumped back up today, though I did spend an extra hour in bed this morning. The jab site remains stiff and sore but I’ve applied a topical CBD cream to it, which helps tremendously. My wife remained in bed longer. She reports her eyes are tired but she feels a lot better.

So, small matters for us. Nothing significant, and certainly worth enduring if the vaccine and boost reduces our chances of being severely impacted by COVID-19. Must say, though, watching Dopesick on Hulu did little for our moods. Born in the fifties, we remember different corporations being exposed for lying to protect profits and image throughout our lifetimes, like Ford, the Pinto, and exploding gas tanks. We also recall times when government malfeasance, through individuals betraying their public trust to enrich their situations, was exposed. Remember how doctors were paid to say that cigarette smoking wasn’t bad for you? Ha, ha, what kidders! Do you remember Enron? What about Love Canal? Should we discuss the Dupont C8 scandal? Other scandals involving real estate and financial markets of more recent memory rise through my consciousness when we talk about companies lying and government oversight failures.

So here comes Dopesick. Based on Beth Macy’s nonfiction book about the opioid crises in the U.S. with sharp focus on the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma, the limited series shows how an FDA cog manipulated a warning label that claimed Oxycontin was non-addictive, and then the battles by doctors, patients, families, communities, and the DEA to get the FDA to admit they fucked up and find accountability for Purdue and the Sacklers. Well, the Sacklers escaped prosecution and stepped away with tens of billions of dollars from the swath of death and destruction they spearheaded. The company went bankrupt and no longer exists. They’re paying out billions to states to help deal with the opioid crises but it’s a shitshow.

So, I do understand why some people are skeptical of the vaccine, FDA, and the corporations behind it. There’s been sufficient lying and failures for many to wonder.