Tag: Information

Munda’s Theme Music

A silky blue sky weaves hope and optimism in Ashlandia. A gorgeous spring day is being promised. 63 F now, ‘they’ tell us it feels like 71 F. I agree with them. Plentiful sunshine, as ‘they’ say. 73 F is the predicted high.

This is Munda, March 24, 2025. I dig this kind of sunshine. Especially after months of rain and clouds and the kind of chilly weather that makes me feel older than I am.

The cat is also quite pleased, I think. He zooms around furniture and through rooms. “Sun recharge your batteries?” I ask. He stops, sits, stares. Classic 3s floofhavior. After three seconds of this, he sticks a rear leg out and washes its underside. I begin for the kitchen. He pauses the washing to gift me with a scrutinizing stare. “You’ll get yours,” I say, because I know that whereismyfood look.

In the kitchen, I’m doing my morning things. Gotta move faster today. Leaving to do Food & Friends deliveries at 10 AM. Everything must be slightly accelerated. Nanoseconds must be shaved away from routines. I don’t feel like shaving time off today. I’m not a Formula 1 driver doing qualifying laps.

I give Papi his first feeding. That’s misleading. He’s already eaten from kibble bowls several times. This is a wet food offering. Eyes bright, he chirps at me as I lower the food bowl toward him. “Yes, you love me now,” I say. His purr vibrates the floor.

Time is flying. I eat. Make coffee. Drink same. Clean and dress. Examine my lower limbs for swelling and find none, knock on wood. My compression socks are easily drawn over my feet and up my legs. I’m becoming very proficient getting them on. It’s the other end, taking them off, that’s the challenge. I might have made a mistake by turning down the doffing stick. I reassure myself that not using the doffing stick gives my wrists, fingers, and hands a needed workout. My self is as suspicious about that as a cat might be.

We hit the Senior Center for the food pickup and schedule. Cars surround the center. Parking is limited. “That’s a bad sign,” my wife declares. “The food must not be ready.”

I’m resigned to wait. “Go check.”

She returns with the first load of food within a minute, surprising us. We’re off and running with a minimum wait.

“Only ten stops today,” she says.

“Ten stops. I remember when we had twice that.” Yes, people have disappeared from the list. We usually don’t know what happens to them. They’re Schrödinger’s elderly people. That’s a miserably depressing thought for such a sunny, bright day.

Today’s morning mental music stream inhabitant is the Pat Benatar offering, “Invincible”. Released in 1985, it was quite a hit at that time and stays on classic rock stations as an offering for the elderly still feasting on the past. The Neurons called it up today to support the April 5 Hands Off actions rising. Annie commented on a post, “I just read that the April 5 coalition includes at least 83 organizations, among them the Communications Workers of America and the Service Employees International Union. It’s gonna be big!!”

We need big energy to combat the Trusk Regime and GOTP. We need the energy of “Invincible”. Written by Simon Climie and Holly Knight, the song was made for the movie The Legend of Billie Jean.

[Chorus]
We can’t afford to be innocent
Stand up and face the enemy
It’s a do-or-die situation
We will be invincible

[Verse 2]
This shattered dream you cannot justify
We’re gonna scream until we’re satisfied

[Pre-Chorus]
What are we running for?
We’ve got the right to be angry
What are we running for?
When there’s nowhere we can run to anymore

h/t to Genius.com

It could be that I’m overwrought by the Trusk situation in the United States.

Hope your day satisfies you in some meaningful ways. I’m writing and then planning long-delayed chores. I’ve always blamed the weather. Now that the weather has improved, my excuses are gone.

Here’s the music video. Cheers

2

A Powerful Piece

Call A Spade, A Spade

Jill Dennison shared Steven Dundas’ column about Hitler and Trump. One of the most striking sections for me:

In the case of the Germans, at least in the early 1930s, even his common followers had little reason to believe that Hitler would follow through on his most extreme statements, even Jews. On 2 February 1933, a leading German Jewish newspaper editorial wrote:

“We do not subscribe to the view that Mr. Hitler and his friends, now finally in possession of the power they have so long desired, will implement the proposals circulating in [Nazi newspapers]; they will not suddenly deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos, nor subject them to the jealous and murderous impulses of the mob. They cannot do this because a number of crucial factors hold powers in check…and they clearly do not want to go down that road. When one acts as a European power, the whole atmosphere tends towards ethical reflection upon one’s better self and away from revisiting one’s earlier oppositional posture.”

Yep. We still see newspapers, Democrats, Republicans, etc., striving to downplay Trump’s intentions, just as the same was done with Hitler.

Read the whole piece. Share it widely. Maybe it will awaken more people and get them to start thinking, before it’s too late.

1

Sunda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

I’ve been busy tracking the PINO Trusk administration’s actions. It’s like tracking a hurricane as it roars toward humanity. Oh no, where is it going to hit next? Hope those folks will be okay. Shame about those Trump voters who thought he cared about them. Hope they’re okay despite their vote. Because they’re other humans, right? They are human, right? I have that right, don’t I? I guess it could’ve been bot voters who won the day for Trump. Wouldn’t put it past DOGE and the GOTP at all. But that’s a conspiracy for another day.

Right now, I’m wondering about the tipping point. When will Hurricane Trusk cause enough damage that the majority of American citizens will come together in one voice and finally shout, “Enough, you fuckers! Stop it right now.”

That tipping point moment is predicated on multiple vectors and variables, so it’s a hard prediction. My original call was April of 2025. That’s what I told friends back at the beginning of January. I thought, hey, inflation, high prices, the contempt with which Trump treats history, minorities, and women; emptied shelves caused by trade wars, parks going to crap, and the air and water starting to stink; tourism swiftly cratering, rising unemployment, flopping tax revenues, threats against Medicare and Social Security, and people would be mighty miffed by April.

I don’t know ’bout April any longer. There’s a mass of individuals out there quite willing to endure those things. Mostly, I think, it’s because they don’t want to admit how fucking wrong they were about Trump. That they’ve been tricked, had, conned. Also because some of them are so underwater in the MAGA swamp that they won’t fully get what’s going on. Part of that will be because the right wingosphere will feed the MAGAts what they want, which is GREAT NEWS about HOW GREAT TRUMP IS, regardless of the truth. We’ve seen it before. Lot of them believe that Trump built an impenetrable wall across our southern border. Doesn’t explain why they worry about ‘illegals’ now, but then, that’s their thinking level.

If I had more energy, I’d propose a national betting pool. We could all pick a date and bet that is the tipping day. But that would be a messy thing to figure out, especially with PINO Trusk and his regime dicking with the numbers.

Maybe I’ll do it on another day. After I’d had a few glasses of beer. It seems like a beery thing to do.

3

Goldilocks

Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite type of weather?
View all responses

I’ve become a sunshine person. It wasn’t always like this. When I was young, I’d go out in weather that had others questioning my sanity. As I grabbed coats, shoes, whatever was needed, people would eye me with aghast expressions. “You’re going out in that?”

“Sure,” I’d answer, “it’s just a little rain.” Even if was a monsoon. Rain, snow, sleet, wind, nothing kept me in. Not even thunder and lightning. “Just going for a walk.”

I loved pitting myself against the elements. Felt like a hero out of a 19th century novel, just a rugged individual surviving against the elements. I thought myself quite heroic. Especially when I knew there was somewhere safe, warm, and secure to retreat to when I had my fill of being heroic.

Different these days. “Where’s the sun?” I ask. I search all of the sky, even though I know where it’s supposed to be. I know where east is. I know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. I know those directions. Still, I sweep the sky in search of the sun, in case it got off its leash.

I don’t usually get an answer to my question about the sun’s location. Others always think it rhetorical. Probably because everyone knows where the sun is going. Not like it’s a wandering cat.

I used to be more indifferent to the sun. Now, I’m very picky. I don’t want it too bright, too hot, or too much. I have become Goldilocks sampling the three bears’ stuff.

I like a good warm sunshine. Not enough for sweat these days. Used to be — but you know. I don’t want to sweat. I want to be warm, with enough sunshine that wearing sunglasses make sense. Not that it really matters to me: I’m almost always wearing sunglasses outside. Sometimes I wear them inside.

“Why don’t you take off your sunglasses?” my wife will say. “You’re inside now.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look ridiculous.”

I shrug. I’m used to that.

5

Floofnacious

Floofnacious (floofinition) – An animal’s strong trait or ability to hold on, persist, or cling to things. Origins: Floofin, 400 BCE.

In Use: “Papi demonstrated an unexpected floofnacious knack for evading Michael when the latter tried to administer the cat’s morning medicines.”

In Use: “Rocky never said a word, but his floofnacious staring at Brenda always won him treats to make him go away.”

In Use: “The cat’s original name was Corey but after the little mogie grabbed a piece of pizza and refused to release it, he was renamed Floofnacious C, after the rock duo, Tenacious D, but also out of respect for his holdontoitiness.”

0

Sunda’s Theme Music

It’s a bleak and featureless Sunda morning. Like winter and spring both decided not to show up. The sun complained, “If you guys aren’t in, I’m not either.”

The gray feels like a weight pressing down. I wonder what the weather was like when Robbie Robertson wrote “The Weight” for The Band.

It’s three quarters through March, 22 of 2025. 46 F now, the weather ‘they’ are trying to sell me on mostly sunny skies and a high of 66 F. I’ve gone past skeptical about that. Then I read that we’re hitting the seventies for Monday through Wednesday here. My heart harbors doubt. Do they mean the 1970s? With Trump still in office, there’s a reasonable question about the reference.

Papi the ginger blade is energetic today. I make a critical mistake. After feeding him breakfast, I give him his blood pressure medicine in some Churro. He loves that stuff and this is our regular process. But stupid me, I think, I’ll do two things at once. Give him his BP med in the Churro and while he’s eating that, I’ll rub his thyroid medication in his ear. That last is something that must be done twice a day.

Except my nose is a little snoggy. I hear myself breathing through it. In and out like a wheezy, broken machine. Were it a machine, I’d think, I need to replace that thing. It’s beyond fixing.

Doing Papi’s morning meds is not a favorite activity for me. Tucker was on the same regimen. He lasted a year. Papi began it the same month when Tucker passed. Lot of burdensome memories organized in this task.

I bend down to administer the thyroid med. Papi hears that breathing. Thinking a bear or something must be after him, he hits reverse like he’s a Corvette in a police chase and speeds through my legs. I bend over double, trying to grab him while saying, “No, stay there, let me do this, please, Papi. Papi..”

He darts away. I get the gooey white medicine on me. That’s toxic to humans. Cursing, I take off the used finger cap, dump it, and wash off my hand.

Papi has settled by the back door. He did not eat his Churri with his heart medicine. He’s eyeing me the way a quarterback is looking at a defensive end just before the ball is snapped. He is thinking, “Is he coming after me? How do I get away?”

I carry out the Churri bowl like a peace offering. Papi gallops up, all purrs, and bends his head to the task. I back away to give him space.

Papi takes two licks of his Churri and speeds off again. WTF? The Neurons ask. There is no answer.

Okay, I’ll go to the other med. We’re on the clock. This stuff is s’posed to be given every twelve hours. I don a new little finger cap. Put new med on it. Head for Papi.

“Mrr,” Papi says. Watching me, we begin a ballet. I move forward. He moves right. I go right. He backs up and heads left, then turns and prances around the coffee table, saying, “Mrr,” as he does. He looks yearningly at the back door. He wants out. I’ll try to trick him. Heading to the door, I unlock it. Opens it. Papi darts up and skids to a halt. “Mrr.” He knows this trick. Smarter than me, he doesn’t budge when I open the door and brightly declare, “Do you want to go out?”

Papi shies back into the room. I close the door. Verbally cajoling him has worked in the past. That’s the past. Papi’s not having it this morning. He keeps circling me, telling me, “Mrr.” I keep explaining that he knows that I need to give him this med. It’s not that bad. We do it everyday.

He finally decides, okay, here I came. Purring, he edges up to my leg. I slowly bend. Holding gently onto his back, I thank him for indulging me and gently rub the medicine into his inner ear.

Released, he bolts to the back door and releases a plaintive cry. I get what he’s saying. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Time to go out.” I open the door. He’s like a fast wind blowing out. Halfway across the patio, tail up, he turns around, sits, and stares at me. I can’t read that expression. Telling him the usual precautions whenever he’s out, I close the door. Whole thing has taken thirty minutes. I feel like it’s been ninety, ninety five minutes. Back in the office, I take a long gulp of cooling coffee.

Here’s The Weight by The Band. If you read this far, you know why it’s in my morning mental music stream.

I type up this post. Papi comes back in. I set the Churri with his meds down in a different room. He eats it up.

I come back into the office and set. Papi joins me and purrs as I scratch his head and chin.

I need more coffee. Cheers

0

Two Teachers

Daily writing prompt
Who was your most influential teacher? Why?
View all responses

Funny to me that this is a prompt today, as I was remembering these two teachers this morning before I went online. The pair of teachers were my favorites and most influential. One was encountered in sixth grade while the other taught me two years later.

First, each encouraged me to think harder and try harder. Through their support, I gained self-confidence. Both introduced me to new areas of literature. My sixth-grade teacher, Mrs Forsythe (who was previously Mrs Fogle) read aloud to the class every afternoon. One book she read to us was Flowers for Algernon. Noticing how much I enjoyed it, she took the time to suggest other books and authors to me. From this came my infatuation with science fiction and fantasy, and a lifelong love affair with reading.

Mrs Rubenstein, in the eight grade, taught me to read the news and actually think about what was being said about events of the era. This was during Nixon’s first term. The United States was still fighting in Vietnam. The intense Cold War with the USSR was one facet of worry for us, but many other wars raged, and students were protesting the world’s direction across the United States.

Both of these teachers fired an intense interest in events beyond the end of my nose. I hope that everyone has at least one teacher like them in their lives. I was fortunate to have two. There were several others for me who opened my mind as well, but these two women were very special in my development.

I will never forget them and the debts I owe them.

3

Frieda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Well, gosh darn if another of PINO Trusk’s cabinet members didn’t speak and stun me with his out-of-touch arrogance and stupidity. The honor today goes to Howard Lutnick.

When Howard Lutnick was ‘nominated’ — we use that loosely here, given how the GOTP is rubberstamping everything that PINO Trusk does — for Commerce Secretary, his disclosures showed he had over $806,000,000 in assets. His estimated net worth is $1.5 billion.

Why is this important?

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says his mother-in-law wouldn’t complain if her Social Security check didn’t arrive this month

As the staff cuts at the Social Security Administration leave monthly benefit payments to tens of millions of Americans up in the air — alarming former SSA leaders on both sides of the aisle — Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, doesn’t think you should be complaining if your check doesn’t show up.

“Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month — my mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain. She just wouldn’t,” Lutnick told All-In Podcast hosts David Friedberg and Chamath Palihapitiya on Thursday. “She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month.”

Yes, I’m sure Howard Lutnick’s MIL is very dependent on her social security check to make ends meet. I mean, her daughter is married to a billionaire. Poor darling is probably living hand to mouth – not.

It’s a little bit of a different story for most senior Americans. They don’t have billionaires in the family.

Two-Thirds of Seniors Rely on Social Security for More Than Half Their Income

When the Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley estimated that the program is “the difference between dignity and poverty” for about half of seniors in a May 2024 press release, he may have needed a fact check. The sentiment was right, but the estimate was low: 67 percent of seniors said they rely on Social Security for more than half their income in TSCL’s 2024 Retirement Survey (Figure 1).

Among the survey’s more than 3,000 respondents, 27 percent said their entire income came from Social Security. An additional 20 percent depended on the program for between 76 percent and 99 percent of their income, while another 20 percent depended on it for between 51 percent and 75 percent of their total earnings.

The rest of Lutnick’s comments:

“She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining,” the billionaire businessman said.

“Anybody who’s been in the payment system and the processes, who knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen, because whoever screams is the one stealing,” he said. “Because my mother-in-law’s not calling, come on, your mother, 80-year-olds, 90-year-olds, they trust the government.”

How dare you, Mister Lutnick. I’ll tell you now, I’m 68. I’m drawing my social security, you know, the system which I paid into since I began working when I was sixteen years old. If my check didn’t show up in my account, I would be calling to see what’s going on and why it wasn’t paid. And it’s not because I’m a fraudster. How dare you suggest it. You may work with fraudsters because you are part of PINO Trusk’s administration. It seems like you, as Donald Trump does, might be projecting by claiming people who would call about their social security are fraudsters. We’re not like you, asshole.

One more point to my disgust with your claim, Mister Lutnick. I would have trusted the government to fix it and make it right until January 20, 2025. On that day, my faith in our government became seriously strained. I have no faith in PINO Trusk; I have less faith in DOGE. And my faith in you has precipitously dimmed.

Wonder how long it’ll take before the Trusk Regime claims Lutnick was ‘taken out of context’ or that he’s being victimized by the mainstream media, basically because they reported exactly what he said?

2

So Easy

Daily writing prompt
What do you wish you could do more every day?
View all responses

This is such an easy question to answer. I wish I could write more every day. Yes, fill my cup with coffee and let me write without end. I’m talking about fiction writing. Novels and such. I really enjoy writing fiction.

I also wish I could eat more every day. I’m limited in my eating by obscure factors like sodium in foods, gaining weight, and staying healthy. So I’m restricted in how much I can eat every day. It’s a shame, too, because there are many foods which I really enjoy and would like to eat more every day. Like, right now, I could really go for a piece of pie. Blueberry. With ice cream.

Of course, I’d also like to socialize more every day. I’m writing, and that’s not a social activity, speaking for myself, of course, so that limits how much time I have to socialize. A few more hours of socializing every day would be good for me, I think. So I wish that I could socialize more every day.

Spending more time reading is also something I’d wish to be able to do more every day. I love reading, and there are so many awesome writers out there. So many great novels, books, essays, and articles to read. While I’m at it, I also wish to study more every day. I would love to be able to spend time deeply studying art, architecture, and history, along with literature and quantum mechanics.

Then again, if I could, I wish I could spend more time with my wife every day. She’s an intelligent person and a lot of fun.

Another wish I’d have is to be able to visit with my family more every day. They live in other parts of the country, so it takes time and money to visit them, and doing so interrupts my other wishes. But if we had a teleporter, I could probably make it work.

While I’m thinking about it, I also wish I could travel more. I’ve done some traveling, mostly around the United States, Far East, some northern Africa, and Europe. I’ve rarely been south of the equator, so I’d like to visit ruins and cultures in the southern latitutes. I wish I could travel more every day and go to places like Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and Antarctica. I’ve also always wanted to visit Sri Lanka.

I also wish I could time travel more every day. I’ve learned through hard experience that time travel has a lot of perks but man, when you screw it up, it’s downright hard to fix. There’s a lot of things I need to apologize to the world about which has happened because of my botched time traveling. I feel really guilty about it, too, but if I can just find the time — ha, sorry about that, that pun wasn’t planned — I wish I could time travel more every day.

Since I’m confessing, I’d also wish to be able to see the future more every day. You know, predict things. But time travel has screwed that up, too, as has my dimension clones. If it wasn’t for them bouncing between dimensions, I’d have a much better life and would be way better at seeing the future. I think we all would. But, anyway…

Other than that brief list, there’s nothing I wish to do more every day. Oh, except exercise. And paint. I painted a great deal when I was young but not so much as an adult. I wish I could paint more every day.

Oh, and go fishing.

Other than those few things, there’s nothing.

Oh, except sleeping. I really wish I could sleep more every day.

But that’s all.

Except, I wish I could just relax and do nothing more every day. Because I really am lazy at heart.

And that’s it. There is no more.

Well, except for a few DIY projects around the house. I wish I had time to do more DIY every day.

And that’s all.

I think.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑