Sunday’s Theme Music — Goner
Ashland, southern Oregon. Sunday, September 13, 2026.
Autumn is moving in like it owns the place. Summer looks like a goner. It’s 60 F right now, and feels chillier than that. Rain fell this morning. Sunshine has arrived but today’s high is projected to be an anemic 70 F.
Mom’s story goes on. She and I spoke briefly Friday and Saturday. I called again today but she didn’t answer. She seems like she’s in a good mood. Her voice is soft and weak. Long periods of silence dominate as she catches her breath or pauses to remember what she was saying. She often becomes bitter and angry, complaining about her daughters, her room, and problems that she has.
I’ve been a little harsh and angry with my sisters. Ali commented on a previous post saying that she thought my sisters were being strict.
Ali is right. This is exactly what I told my sisters to act months ago. They are acting in everyone’s best interest, limiting contact with Mom, using just one of us as a front.
I have the best relationship with Mom, so it falls to me to the messenger. I’m a little emotionally fatigued by the role. It’s stacking on top of other things happening in life.
That’s how it goes. Life doesn’t take time outs.
Reading the digital news today, it’s easy at this point to write Trump off as a goner. His popularity is falling but most prices and the overall cost of living is not. Some prescription drug prices fell but not nearly as many as he claims.
Oil prices are not falling as Trump’s Iran War continues.
Some records are falling, such as the Atlantic hurricanes record. This is the longest period on record, 103 days since the season began, without a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. El Nino is being blamed.
I’ve always liked the word goner. I heard it mournfully declared of people in many western movies when I was a child. Things like, “Looks like Clem is a goner,” was part of the dialogue.
So I’m practicing saying it about Trump. “Looks like Trump is a goner.” I could be speaking of him politically, metaphorically, or about his popularity. “Looks like Trump is a goner” works in all three areas.
Thinking about Trump being a goner brought the song into my morning mental music stream. “Goner” is a melancholy twenty one pilots song which was released in 2015. The song has simple lyrics and a straightforward structure.
Sample Lyrics
I’m a goner, somebody catch my breath
I’m a goner, somebody catch my breath
I wanna be known by you
I wanna be known by you
I’m a goner, somebody catch my breath
I’m a goner, somebody catch my breath
I wanna be known by you
I wanna be known by you
h/t to Genius.com
May good times and good health fill your hours today and tonight, and on in an unbroken string of days, weeks, and months.
Cheers
The Negotiations
Grandma and her granddaughter came into the coffee shop. They’re lovely regulars.
Today, the granddaughter declared, “I want ice cream.”
Grandma said, “No, you can’t have ice cream for lunch.”
“I want ice cream.”
“How ’bout chicken noodle soup?”
The granddaughter pouted. “I want chocolate ice cream.”
“How ’bout if you eat chicken noodle soup first and then you can have a little ice cream?”
“I will have chicken noodle soup and then chocolate ice cream,” the little girl agreed.
They moved to the counter and ordered the soup.
The barista said, “I’m sorry, we’re out of the soup.”
Grandma was amazed. “You’re out of the soup?”
“How ’bout a piece of pizza focaccia bread for lunch?” the barista suggested.
As grandma and her granddaughter agreed, the barista said, “Oh, no. We’re out of focaccia pizza, too.”
“You’re out of the pizza thing, too?” Grandma was amazed.
A breakfast burrito was suggested as a compromise.
No ice cream was ever ordered.
Yet.
Saturday’s Theme Music — Traitors
Ashland, southern Oregon. Saturday, September 12, 2026.
Sunny today, but also cloudy. Today’s high is expected to strike the low seventies. It’s 66 F now.
Rain is expected after five PM. That has me on a schedule. I cleaned half our gutters on Tuesday, then went for beers with friends Wednesday, blew off finishing the gutters on Thursday, and went shopping with my wife on Friday. So, I must finish dragging the ladder around today. Not difficult or challenging. I just prefer reading and writing.
I’m preparing for the next spinoff of “The Walking Dead” franchise: Mitch Returns. I’m certain there will be little action, lot of pathetic platitudes about greatness, and applause. They’ll continue to ignore the double standard that Mitch, working for We the People, took several months off work, something working Americans can rarely do.
Many believe that we saw a lot of evidence that Trump is falling apart. Trump has been a slow train wreck for the last twenty years, but those MAGAzens are wrecks themselves, falling apart. They happily follow a leader falling apart.
JD Vance has been stepping up, making more speeches, trying to stir confidence in him, positioning himself to be Trump’s successor. JD Vance might as well be a zombie, given his uninspiring demeanor and lackluster speaking skills. He’s not a thinker or orator, but he’s a damn good liar, willing to make things up as needed to gain power.
Today’s morning mental music stream inhabitant is “traitor”. Olivia Rodrigo wrote and sings the song, which came out in 2021. Her song is about dating a guy who insists he wasn’t cheating on her but after they broke up, he was dating the ‘other woman’ within two weeks.
Sample Lyrics
And ain’t it funny? All the twisted games
All the questions you used to avoid
And that’s what we have with Trump, the GOP, and MAGAzens, for me: “All the questions you avoid.”
They’re traitors to principles, truth, and facts. Ain’t it funny how they ignore the money that Trump is making, and how he ‘jokes’ about cheating, just like he joked about other things, which he then turned around and did.
May your day be one that finds you refreshed and satisfied when you look back.
Cheers
The Toilets Dream
Last night’s dream was a masterclass in chaos. Had a lot of fecal matter, too.
Backing up a little, I was again in the military, running some operations center. They’d been having issues there and I arrived to fix them. Which I immediately started doing, explaining it to the young airmen there. They began to understand what I was doing.
Weird thing was, the operations center wasn’t the classic secure and windowless, vaultlike facility where I usually worked during my military career. No, this place was part of some kind of large and busy convention center. People were coming and going. Loud, it was getting busier.
After arriving and doing some things at the ops center, I drifted out and changed clothes. Well, I basically took off everything except my underwear. Then I decided to go back to work to ensure everything was okay. To do that, I donned a short, furry pink robe that barely covered my rear end. Wearing only it and my undies, off I went to work.
Musicians were finishing a conference in the ops center, something which was entirely aligned with what I expected. Although they didn’t have instruments, I knew they were musicians, holding a meeting in the ops center conference room. I talked with them a bit, asking about how it had gone, small talk.
Others were impatiently waiting to use the conference room. I rushed around to get it ready for them but so many people were going in and out that I struggled to get anything done. Part of my cleaning was to check the commodes.
The first was out on a busy floor’s center. On carpet. No walls, no way to have privacy.
Which didn’t surprise me. Getting to the toile, I found – OMG, it was completely full with feces!
I was disgusted and angry. What was wrong with people that they kept using it when it obviously not working? How did they even do it? They would have had to squat over the toilet to avoid the piled crap.
I had no idea how to clean it out; there was no water, no way to use a plunger. I would need to shovel that shit out first. I was going to find someone else to do that, and that was an issue for later.
There was another toilet availab. I rushed to check it, confirm it was okay, and tell everyone to use it. But guess what? It, too, was stopped up. It at least had water and wasn’t as full but as soon as I put a plunger in, feces-filled water slopped out.
Nuts. Filling conspicuous in my short pink robe and bare white legs, I decided to go change before trying to fix this mess. Along the way, I ran into my superiors and gave them an update on the twin messes. Then I went on to change.
Dream end
An Aston Martin Dream
Young again, middle-aged, I was with my wife and others in this place with blue carpets. I don’t know why the others were present, but I was there to see a doctor. The doctor, young, White female, with, with short, dark hair, briefly saw me.
“You need surgery,” she said, indicating my neck. “We’ll do it today.”
That pleased me although I was surprised that my neck was to be operated on. I waited for the my scheduled time to arrive. I noticed the others began dressing up. My wife emerged wearing a dark suit with a white shirt. From overheard snippets, I realized that everyone else was waiting for surgery as well.
I was taken back; I’d not seen the doctor examine any of them. As people came out dressed up, the doctor began telling people when she would see them. Hastily I dressed like the rest, in a black suit with a white shirt and tie, but laughed at it as I did, thinking, this is silly.
Then – poof – the surgery was completed. I didn’t notice a thing but I knew it was done. It’d been so quick and simple, it was completed in an eyeblink.
I encountered my sister-in-law. She and I went off to await everyone else finishing off. I began helping some children drawing with crayons. I ended up with crayon on my white cuffs. While wondering how I was going to clean those off, my SIL showed up with a similar problem. I then took a paper towel and blotted the colors off. I shared what I was doing with her and she started doing the same.
We talked while we did that. I asked when she was going home and how long it would take her. Then I remembered that she lived in Florida. No, she answered with surprise. “I live just an hour and a half away. I’m taking my boyfriend’s train him.”
I hadn’t met her boyfriend but I knew of him. My wife arrived. She and I talked with my SIL and my wife and I announced that we would go get my SIL and her boyfriend some food for their trip home. We went out and bought very large sandwiches with French fries. We ate while we were there.
Then we rushed back to give them their food. They were already gone. We looked down the track to see a three-car train pulling away, which amused me and my wife.
We then needed to go deliver a package. I jumped into my car, a gorgeous and expensive Aston Martin roadster, green, with a white interior. I raced down the highway at very high speeds, overtaking many cars. Then, seeing a line of cars breaking, I slowed down and moved left.
Good thing I did, I told myself, as we overtook a long line of cars and trucks pulling travel trailers. They were stopped. I worried that we wouldn’t be able to mail my package.
Then I pulled up to a booth. Jumping out of the car with my package, I told him what I was doing. He was short, solemn, round Black guy. He listened and worked as I apologized for the state of my package and for not having it correctly prepared.
He shrugged that off, saying something like, “No problem.” I thought the packaging needed to be replaced. He consulted with a co-worker. They agree, it just needed a new clear plastic bag. He put that on, then grinned and told me, all down.
I laughed, surprised at how easy it went. Returning to my car, I prepared to drive away.
Dream end.
Thursday’s Theme Music — Stroking
Ashland, southern Oregon. Thursday, September 10, 2026.
Heat is in the air again today. Sunshine sluices down between scattered clouds. 83 degrees F as of now, we’re looking for a high that’s ten degrees more.
I’m trying to negotiate a peace between Mom and one of my sisters. I’ve written before about my younger sister, Gina. She put in a lot of work helping Mom over the years. Gina’s husband, Pat, was right beside her.
When Mom’s partner, Frank, died at 95 last October, Mom was put into a bad situation. Given her needs and medical challenges, she couldn’t live alone in her home. Gina and Pat took it upon themselves to make space for Mom in their home, and tried including Mom in their activities.
It turned out to be a six-month experiment which became progressively worse. By the time Mom was taken to a hospital in February, Mom was accusing Pat of spying on her, stealing her things, and hurting her. We knew from security cameras that none of it was true.
Mom ended up being in an assisted living facility after that. Pat’s feelings were hurt. He was upset, which upset Gina. Since that time, Gina has slowly cut off communications with Mom.
Labor used to be special for our family as we all prepared food and came together to celebrate. I wrote Mom on Labor Day. She was pretty sad and miserable, reporting that she’d not heard anything from any of her daughters. She knew a celebration was going on but nobody included her.
I passed that on to Gina. Gina replied, “If Mom apologizes to Pat for all those mean things she accused him of, I’ll welcome her back to our gatherings.”
I sent that on to Mom two days ago.
I’ve not heard anything back.
Trumpapalooza kicked off last night. As anticipated, it’s about how wonderful Trump thinks he is, the almost open acknowledgement that things aren’t going well in our nation, and Trump’s desperate attempt to win the election by bribing voters. In other words, it’s more Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL!, an attempt to distract voters from what’s really happening.
Beyond all that, the event is about stroking Trump’s ego. He thinks he’s great, and all others need to bow down to him. If everyone was as great as him, we’d have a great nation is his basic message.
Yes, Trumpapalooza was short on logic, facts, and truth, depending on your point of view. If you want the national and international order disrupted, Trump is doing a great job. If you want a nation based on democratic principles and freedom and equality for all, he’s driving hard away from those principles. Either way, he’s having fun, golfing on the taxpayers’ dime, sending out ridiculous little AI-generated images and videos trying to convey himself as great, blustering at other nations and people with threats if they don’t do what he wants.
Your Trumpapalooza Quote of the Day:
After all that, I ended up with “The Stroke” by Billy Squier in my morning mental music stream.
“The Stroke” came out in 1981. The song is about the music business and the need for bands to stroke music exec egos while the execs must stroke the artists’ egos. Everyone is stroke someone to keep it all going.
Sample Lyrics
Better listen now
They said it ain’t no joke
Don’t let your conscience fail ya
Just do the stroke
Don’t ya take no chances
Keep your eye on top
Do your fancy dances
You can’t stop, you just
Stroke me, stroke me
(Stroke, stroke)
Stroke me, stroke me
(Stroke, stroke)
And that’s pretty much Trump. He does his silly dance and his fancy ‘word weave’. The rest of us know the weave as lie upon lie upon lie, but for Trump, it’s the dance.
May this day reward you with patience, happiness, and good health.
Cheers
Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts
A woman and a young boy stood near me in the coffee shop. Appearing to be about ten years old, he was occupied with a phone.
Smiling, the woman asked him, “Are you playing Pokemon?”
The boy briskly nodded.
She patted his shoulder. “Your mother used to love to play Pokemon. She played all the time.”
The kid looked up at her like she’d changed into a flying creature.
I laughed to myself, kind of amazed to think that children who used to play Pokemon now have children playing Pokemon. It’s been around that long.
But it’s the thing really to think of your children having children or grandchildren. Just another measurement of how life advances.
Michael Seidel, writer 