Tag: Information

Sunda’s Theme Music

Mood: Sunupbeatgetic

I got a sunshine on a cloudy day.

This is Sunda, December 29, 2024. Yes, we have sunshine. Been a few days since its lights tickled our eyes. Poured last night, prompting a flood advisory for our county, although our town was spared. Lifting and breaking up this morning, the clouds are permitted full view of the low mountains around us. Yes, they’re all still there. 43 F now, a high of 43 F and light rain showers are expected today. This is a welcome change from yesterday, where the air became smeary with fog, mist, and rain.

Papi the ginger blade, aka Butter Butt and the floof previously known as Meep, has been shedding a lot this year. He’s always liked to pretend that he’s a wild animal tolerating domestic pleasures, so he spends time outside even though it’s been sheeting rain. Drives us nuts because we want him in and safe, but he’s perfected the noises and activities that drive us to the precipice of sanity. Reaching it, we give in with a shout and let him out. We’re trying to figure out if there’s reason to his heavy shed load. Is it because it’s not as cold as it usually gets? Does it have to do with the heavier rain load than usual? We don’t know. I plan to inquire about their cats’ shedding from others locally who live with cats.

An energetic, upbeat mood has a grip on my psyche today. I’ve avoided news so far to sustain the mood. It’s fired by a dream about a blues concert that transformed into an erotic dream as a woman seduced. Woo hoo. Good to have one of those every now and again. BTW, I took a kazoo with me to the blues concert and played it.

Weird confluence of music in the morning mental music stream (Trademark flourishing). First came Cher with “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”. Sonny Bono wrote the song and it was released in 1966. Whatever convoluted reasons The Neurons had for bringing this song up weren’t being peeled back.

Just as I finished puzzling over that, The Neurons introduced Peter Gabriel with “Sledgehammer” from 1986. Like, “Huuuhhhh? Why is that in my head?” The Neurons remained mute on their reasoning. Musing between the two songs, I was leaning toward Cher’s.

Then, walking about, doing morning exercises, I was contemplating where my foot is hurting. Nothing from the ankle where I had my surgery hurt. No, it was hurting proximal to the lateral metatarsals on the right side, what we often call the little toe or the pinky toe, really, phalanges three, four, and five. They dislike bending down post surgery. CBD topical cream working in concert with Salon Pas heating pads alleviate some of the pain and stiffness. The stiffness is more problematic than the pain, and I realize that it’s the cause of my antalgic limp. Just one of those things to work through.

Anyway, from that course of thinking arose The Police with “King of Pain” from 1983. The connection is that where they sing, “That’s my soul up there” in the background chorus, I used to believe they sang, “That’s my source of pain,” in a classic mondegreen goof.

That’s my morning. Coffee has hit the spot. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Sa’day’s Wandering Political Thoughts

It’s a gloooommmy glooommmy day here. All rain and descending swirling fog. We’re getting less of it up by my home but the weather down toward the valley floor is icky yuck wet, as a meteorologist would say.

Daily Kos delivered a bright ray through the gloom. Furious Democratic Rep COMPLETELY NUKES Trump’s “Modern McCarthyism” They’re talking about Rep. Melanie Stansbury, NM-D, and her magnificent comments about JD Vance’s bill. As Rep. Stansbury highlights, the bill essentially creates a blacklist of who can’t work for the Federal government, based on their perceived loyalty to PINO-elect Trump.

“Welcome to the new House Committee on Un-American Affairs and the new McCarthyism,” she said. “We have arrived here today with this bill.”

The bill has the support of the Heritage Foundation — the conservative think tank behind the notorious Project 2025 policy plan — which issued a letter of support, Stansbury noted.

Led by Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation, supported by Trump and his MAGA base, the United States is goose-stepping back into less free, less democratic times. We’ve been led down this path before. The attached video (same one from Daily Kos) has part of Edward R. Murrow’s editorial about McCarthyism in it.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

We can substitute Trump or MAGA or Project 2025 or the Heritage Foundation or the GOP for ‘Senator McCarthy’. The policies they pursue and the campaigns they use fit McCarthy’s brand of divisiveness, political repression, and fear-mongering.

Good to know that individuals like Rep. Stansbury has our backs.

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Floofstruse

Floofstruse (floofinition) – An animal who is difficult to comprehend, predict, or understand. Origins: December 1, 2024, Ashlandia, Oregon, USA.

In Use: “Even after ten years of living with Corky, he was a floofstruse enigma, alternatively loving, sweet, and friendly, and then sullen, remote, and sad.”

In Use: “Bob always told others that Lucy was floofstruse, usually happy, sweet, and playful, but then another side emerged, and she became Lucifer.”

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Sa’day’s Wandering Thoughts

A common casual question being posed as people meet is, “Are you ready for the new year?”

I watched and listened to folks in the coffee shop. Yes, spying on them, listening to them. Most commonly when they’re asked this question, shrugs are given. Sometimes someone will say, “Not really.” I’ve not any any who say, “Yes.” I don’t answer yes, myself. I’m part of that not really congingent.

We all agree, ready or not, here it comes.

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Sa’day’s Theme Music

Mood: Grrrrumpy

It’s raining again. Alexa notified me at 8 PM (or 2000 hours if you prefer) that it was going to start raining near me, starting around 12 AM and going intermittently until 8 PM. About 1.3 inches of rain was expected.

I was listening to the rain hitting the roof, pinging off the vents, splattering the windows, and asked, “Is it raining now?”

“Rain is expected to start at 9:30 PM.”

“Alexa, feedback. It’s 8 PM and it’s raining now.”

Rainy, gray, it’s warmish again, 50 F with a high of 52 F suggested and a low of 46 F. The gray light slanting in through the windows does nada to brighten my mood. Fog swirls around mountain pines and peaks. Dark and pretty in a tragic “Wuthering Heights” sort of fashion.

A perusal of news headlines has me opimistic for 2025. (Yes, that was snark.) Things like the costs of owning and driving a car are jumping. This was a California story. The average price paid for a new car was over $47K. Now it’s jumped to over $52K. And insurance is climbing as well. Again, it’s California, but what happens in California usually ripples out. And, this is before any PINO Trump tariffs are issued.

Then a jolly story covered how the Alum Rock school district is closing or consolidating schools. Oh, boy, let me quit reading that.

Another story told me eggs, already pricy, are going up because of the bird flu. And a related news article informed me that animals were dying from being infected with the bird flu from eating tainted meat.

Next came a recounting that those anti-vaxxing efforts in Louisana are having an effect. Louisana is seeing cases of the flu climb. Surprised? No. They’re one of two states in a ‘Very High ILI’ category. The other state is…Oregon.

What? My state. WTF? Chasing that down, I learn, gosh, vaccinations for COVID-19, RSV, and the flu are trailing data from last year, which was already trailing data from the year before. So the flu, etc., are up.

Grrrrrreat. Yes, that is sarcasm.

I got out of the news before I turned to the national and international scenes. Mood was cratered enough, thanks.

The Neurons already had music picked out and going in the morning mental music stream (Trademark sagging). “Forty Days and Forty Nights” is a 1956 blues number by Muddy Waters. The Neurons had it in my head solely on the line, “Sun shinin’ all day long, but the rain keep falling down.” Yes, it hasn’t been forty solid days if I judge on empirical evidence; it just feels like it to the wife, me, and others who engage in conversations about the weather. The ground is saturated. Rivers and creeks are up. Flooding is possible. On the possy side, our drought seems over for our part of Oregon. Other parts of the state remain abnormally dry.

Could be worse, I remind myself. We are not snowbound, etc.

The Forty Days version I selected was a Steppenwolf cover. Mom bought me the album, Steppnwolf 7, for Christmas in 1970, when the song and I were both fourteen. It has sentimenal attachments to me, see.

Okay, coffee and I have worked out an arrangement for this morning whereby I’ll brew it and pour it into my mouth and swallow. Seems like I’m doing all the work here, but I benefit from it. I don’t think coffee gets anything except perhaps some emotional satisfaction from helping me through the day. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Vagafloof

Vagafloof (floofinition) – An animal who enjoys wandering. Origins: 15th century Middle Floofish.

In Use: “As much as he cringed from what could happen to Turbo, Patrick accepted that his pet was a vagfloof, familiar to all of the neighbors in a radius of several blocks.”

In Use: “Although now a fair-weather floof, Mouse (a misnomer if ever there was one) was a vagafloof in the house, visiting Carol while she worked in the office, and periodically checking on all rooms and activities thoughout the day.”

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Frida’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Vagabond Scholar’s jon-swift-roundup for 2024 took me to perrspectives.com’s roundup:

Trump’s Top 10 Broken Promises on the Economy

This is an excellent summary of Trump’s promises before his first messed-up term. Then, as now, Trump belched out grandiose promises and grandly failed to meet any of them. Yes, those of us paying attention knew that going into 2024. Reading it in an orderly, fact-loaded page is a sort of emotional and intellectual comfort food for me. Kind of thing needed as we slouch toward Trump’s second term.

Of course, reading the summary also triggers my anger at Trump voters, minions, and enablers. They’re either so awfully cognitively impaired that you wonder who is dressing them, deliberately obtuse because the truth is an ugly, scary critter to them, or know that Trump speaks shit but delight in the chaos he generates, or finally (looking at you Musk, RFK Jr, any Kushner, and Vivek), are just base, greedy opportunists who care about nothing except making themselves more money at the expense of others.

Well, honestly, I think Trump was swept in on a toxic melange of all of those things. We’re already hearing about voting remorse, infighting, and exclamations of surprise and disappointment, and he’s not even in office. We’re also witnessing some crowing about how he’s already changing the economy and the world, with people acting like he’s already in office.

The latest infighting erupting is about tech right’s desire for more H1B visas. They cite a need for these because Americans are ‘too retarded’ for the work they need. The charge for these is being lead by those billionaires of bullshit, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

“If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win,” Musk wrote on X.

“I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning,” Musk wrote in another post on Thursday. “Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct.”

Ramaswamy, a first-generation US citizen whose parents immigrated from India, concurred with Musk while defending companies that look outside the US for labor, arguing tech companies hire engineers who were born outside the US or born to American immigrants because “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” citing portrayals of smart students in TV sitcoms “Boy Meets World,” “Saved By The Bell” and “Family Matters” as evidence.

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG,” he wrote on Thursday. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

Over in deep MAGAland, the reaction was predictably WTF angry. Isn’t the whole thesis of Make America Great Again predicated on Americans being the greatest but undermined by those pesky immigrants, immigrants are who not as great as Americans, who — reminder — are the greatest? Immigrants who are stealing ‘Merican jobs? And here are two MINOs — MAGAs in Name Only, Musk and Ramaswamy, calling for more immigrants.

And so the MAGA base that took Trump to power already begins eating itself and falling apart.

And PINO-elect Trump is not even in office yet.

Brace yourself: 2025 is going to be a wild, wild ride.

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Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts

Strangest thing happened today. My big ol’ black and white cat, Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah), came up to me and said, “Me-ow.”

He surprised me. Tucker normally says, “Mrrew.” Or, “Rrow.” “Mrph.” “Mruph.” Things like that. Meow? Never. It was like hearing a dog say, “Hello.” Or a deer offering, “Good afternoon.”

Me-ow. It was so clear. So distinct. You could have knocked me over with a paw.

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Floofdulum

Floofdulum (floofinition) – An animal which swings back and forth between two or more activities, locations, or activities. Origins: From Flooftin, circa 1659.

In Use: “Many pet floofs become floofdulums as they age, rotating between eating and sleeping, eating and sleeping.”

In Use: “Crystal was a staunch floofdulum, sleeping in bed with her people at night, moving to the sunny living room in the morning, and then joining her people on the sofa in the evening.”

In Use: “Wanting to eat everything available, Sir Bear became a floofdulum, dashing between food bowls in search of every last bite.”

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Munday’s Wandering Political Thoughts

PINO*-elect Trump is calling for buying Greenland. What a goofball. Certainly fun to read about him for the crazy factor. It’s like, what will that crazy monkey say next?

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote in a statement announcing that he chose Ken Howery to serve as ambassador to Denmark.

Sidebar: I think that Buying Greenland and Other Insanity would be an excellent title for Trump’s biography. Feel free to use it.

Back to PINO-elect Trump’s idea. My first question is, has Denmark said that Greenland is for sale? Sure that’s not important to Trump. He likes taking things. Remember, he’s the one who suggest that all he has to do to get a woman is “grab her by the pussy.”

Trump: “Yeah, that’s her, with the gold. I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. I just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

Unidentified man: “Whatever you want.”

Trump: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Next question, of course, if he is going to instead pay for it, what is the price? Third in line to ponder is what is PINO-elect Trump’s plan to pay for it? He’s planning to cut taxes and raise tariffs on imported goods, which are both projected to cut revenue. While he’s doing that, he’s going to reduce the deficit, and mass deport millions of people.

I’m guessing that Trump will have to raise the money for buying Greenland in some extraneous ways. Maybe sell some of his bought billionaires on eBay. Putin would probably buy them. Or Trump will do a car wash or bake sale. Can you see a WH car wash? Ten thousand dollars a car. He’ll have the Secret Service do the washing. A bake sale spun right could bring in some cash. First, Trump buys or steals (or calls for them to be donated!) a bunch of baked goods. Then Trump can take a bite of each baked good and sell it for a grand per. “Real Food Certified to have been bitten by PINO Donald J. Trump.” Film him biting each cookie and signing a certificate of biting it. Post it to X. He could sell them for $299 a bite.

I’m sure that whatever he does to raise money to buy Greenland, it’ll be the “greatest and most beautiful thing ever”. Right?

Oh, wait, I know. He can collect and bottle his piss and sell it to raise the money. That’d probably bring in a lot of money. Supporters are sure to buy his bottled piss. I mean, look at how many keep buying his shit.

*PINO: President in name only.

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