‘Crazy frog’ is a mondetext. A mondegreen is ‘a word or phrase that results from a mishearing especially of something recited or sung’. (h/t Merram-Webster). I figure that a mondetext would be a mishearing by an app when creating a text message, especially homophones. In this case, I was speaking into my phone, texting my sister when my wife behind me said, “It’s freezing fog outside.” The app turned that ino crazy frog. It’s our new household phrase for 2025.
Frida, January 17, 2025, has commenced in Ashlandia with crazy frog at 32 degrees F. A stagnant air advisory is in effect. When the fog burns off or moves away, it’ll be cloudy, sunny day that will make the thermometer sing at 46 F at its highest.
Alexa tells me that the Supreme Court ruled that TikTok is a goner. That’s business in ‘Merica.
Since mondegreens were introduced as a topic, The Neurons have awakened and put one of my favorites into the morning mental music stream. “Alive and Kicking” was released by Simple Minds in 1985. When it came out, my wife and I were out for a drive when it hit the radio. After a moment, she asks, “Are they singin, ‘I like the chicken’?” If you wanna check out other mondegreens, here’s a short list of some well-known mishearings.
Closing with hope that you have a strong day. Coffee and I have come together in a good way once again. Here’s the Simple Minds video. Sing along with it: “I like the chicken.” Cheers
A floof’s song pierced my dream. The reckoning of life commenced. Rolling free of my warm, comfy nest, I thrust my self out into the day. Blinds were drawn so I could see.
Fog. A good thick stew of it.
27 degrees F. Ice and frost was slathered over everything visible in existence outside of my window.
This is Monday, January 13, 2025. Yes, it is Monday the 13th. Just like the movie. And TV series. Based on the novel.
Lest my spirits get too high from these devs, I shifted gears and jumped into digital media to see how great the world is faring. After that morale post, I fed the floofs again and gave them treats. Then I turned to here.
Sam Moore passed away this month. Like others, He was part of my life’s tapestry of sound as part of the duo, Sam and Dave. “Soul Man”, recorded and released by them in 1967, was an early favorite song. Another of those tunes with easy lyrics to learn and repeat, with a jaunty, changing rhythm, and mesmerizing vocals flitting between highs and lows, the kind of stuff that inspires attempts to emulate it while pretending to be on a stage, cheered on by an audience of billions. Those memories induced The Neurons to put “Soul Man” into the morning mental music stream (Trademark past due). Very memorable to me from the song was the shout out, “Play it, Steve,” as Steve Cropper played guitar. Cropper was also the guitarist on the later Blues Brothers’s cover, and they repeated that call out, to my delight.
Let’s get positive and do what we can to seize the day. I’ve seized the coffee; now it’s seizing me. Here’s the music. And off we go, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.
We use ‘mink’ blankets on our beds for warmth during the winter. These are fuzzy polyester creations. One is royal blue; the other a bland beige. Cats usually love them, going into kneading, purring — and sometimes drooling — ecstasy. Thing abut these two blankets is that my wife and I bought them in Korea in 1983. $20 each. Forty-two years old, the blankets remain in excellent condition.
I think that they remain one of the best buys of our lifetime.
Rolling out of bed and ambulating down the hall, I checked the windows where my eyes met a wall of fog. Inspiration seizing me, I reversed course and dropped my head back into its indentation on my pillow. A floof’s unending breakfast song forced a reassessment of my moment after an indeterminant amount of additional Zzzs. I rolled back out of my warm coccoon of sheets and blankets and gave it the old Ashlandia try once more.
This is Saturday. January 11. 2025.
Yarp, fog socks us in. 37 F, air stagnation advisory, high of 42 expected, sunshine is being offered if we can slip fog’s tenacious grasp. Then it might be a pretty day.
Or not. As the barista related to me yesterday morning, “I was on the phone with my room mate and she said, ‘Oh, it’s a pretty day. Think I’ll go outside and do something.’ Then, five minutes later, it was foggy and pouring rain.” Yep, and it didn’t stop until daylight no longer let us in on what was going on outside.
The state of fog has fog-themed music energizing The Neurons. But some of ’em were hooked on an earlier thought about breakfast. Shuffling around, The Neurons pulled up Breakfast in America. Released in 1979, the album gained a life in my music rotation. See, this was back in an era when I bought music albums. Through tech’s evolution, the media shifted. Vinyl, tape, CD, whatev, we hooked the album up with the appropriate device and played the album. By then, I was 23 and made enough money that I could drop $8 on a new album now and again. Put it in perspective, gasoline was less than a dollar a gallon and a cup of coffee was usually less than two. Also, phone service was waaaayyyy cheaper and we didn’t have the net. We in the U.S. had cable and paid less than ten a month for basic.
So you’d take your new album home and play and listen to it while cleaning the house, washing and waxing the car, making and eating meals, and other activities. Happened with sufficient frequency that the songs came to be known in order. Every note and nuance was etched into The Neurons’ aural wetware. Today, they began playing the album for me in my morning mental music stream (Trademark droppy).
First song up is a guitar & keyboard-driven offering to Hollywood, “Gone Hollywood”. Supertramp wasn’t happy about the place at first. Complaints about life and Hollywood interspersed with moody sax playing. Real picker-up with lyrics like, “Ain’t nothing new in my life today. Ain’t nothing true, it’s all gone away.”
But the self-pity fades after the guitar solo and musical bridge. A more upbeat mood takes over. “I’m the talk of the boulevard. So keep your chin up boy, forget the pain, I know you’ll make it if you try again. There’s no use quitting when the world is waiting for you.”
Then there’s the rest of the album. Several hits on there. “The Logical Song.” “Goodbye Stranger.” “Take the Long Way Home.” Yeah, you might know those, if you’re of a certain age and musical preference, or if you drove around with the automobile’s music turned to pop stations in the 1980s.
The fog hasn’t let up but coffee and I made a pact, and it’s going to carry me through the trough of the day. Be good, be real. Here’s the music, and off we go, into the wild gray yonder.
Welcome to Thursday, Jan 9, 2025. We started out with the weather duplicating yesterday’s Ashlandia presentation. Sunshine lit up the bare trees, highlighting some frost, conveying a late fall scene. Walking through the house, I was thinking about how nice it was to experience early morning sunshine again. Temperature was 43 F, etc. But within an hour, fog was stealing the sun away from us and hiding out the blue sky. I thought, man, what kind of game is nature playing with us?
That thought triggered The Neurons. Within a few sips of java, The Neurons had Queen performing “Play the Game” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark late). Released in 1980, I remember listening to this song for the first time with two cousins in San Antonio. Both younger than me, both are deceased. One, a slender blonde guy, from a heart attack without warning at 43. The other, a slender dark-hair person who sparkled with wit and kindness, from cancer at 64. Sobering morning thoughts.
On the heels of those sobering thoughts were worries about the folks of southern California. Being in the Pacific Northwest, many who live in this town have California connections. Friends and family live down there. They work down there as musicians, nurses, doctors, teachers, and professors. So worry over the California fire scene is rampant up here.
The fog has lifted again up here. It still swirls around down in the lower elevations. It’s always interesting to go a mile into, traveling down a thousand feet in elevation to see how different the weather is.
I forgot to mention that I received the Christmas cards my parents had mailed me from San Antonio, Texas, and Pittsburgh, PA. The cards came in the Jan. 6 mail delivery. That DeJoy has really done wonders for the US Postal Service.
Coffee and I have struck a bargaining agreement. On my end, I’ll heat the water and put the ingredients together. On their part, the coffee will navigate my body and boost my energy. Here we go, on into 2025. Enjoy the music. Cheers
Man, it’s a gorgeous day outside my windows. My first look was south and west. Blue sky. A few clouds and contrails. Sunshine. Appeared to be a late fall day. A litle deceiving as further gazing brought out frost speckling the bare earth and laying on roofs. Temp was 30 F. High of 51 could be. After looking out that side and inhaling sunshine, I headed for the back windows and a view to the east and south. Still sunny. Woo hoo.
Amazed and amused how the MSM addressed PINO-elect Trump’s Monday comments. These were regarding the possible invasion of other countries. Adding states like Panama, Canada, and Greenland. No doubt he (DJT) loves the attention he gets from saying such garbage. It also distracts from the real business taking place. Like he’s the Wizard of Trump, faking people out, insisting, pay no attention to the man behind the curtains. But a CNN article summarized Trump’s comments as — paraphrasing — different from presidents of both parties in the last few decades. Yeah, NS; you’d need to go back in history for a point where the POTUS was talking about taking land from other countries. I guess they felt a need to make a sober and unbiased statement about it.
Of course, if you’re talking about invading other countries, you know, just for the sake of that other country and, you know, freedom and democracy, or regime change, you don’t need to go so far. And just like true Republicans of the last few decades, they’re eager to look at other countries — say, the UK — and declare how that country needs to be changed while ignoring the shit conditions their policies build at home. Their vision is often shaped by greed, so it’s frequently myopic and narrow. They are very good at Orwell-speak though, and doubletalk, so they can’t be discounted. And, with a third of the country voting them in and a third not voting at all, well, hell, they feel a mandate to do whatever they want has been achieved.
Good news on the social media front. Women can now be called household objects on Meta platforms. I’m sure that will advance the causes of freedom of speech and democracy. Yep, that was snark.
The sunny weather has inspired today’s theme music. Live local, right? So looking out those windows and seeing sunshine, The Neurons adopted a cheerful attitude and put “On the Sunny Side of the Street” into the morning mental music stream (Trademark warming). Mom played versions of the song by several while I was a child. I became familiar with versions by L. Armstrong, T. Dorset, D. Day, and Nat King Cole, among others. I checked out several versions online and stayed with Satchmo on The Ed Sullivan Show. Hope you found it favorable as your day’s theme music. I find it a song that’s amenable to lyric variations. Fer instance, I used to sing, “Life can be so sweet with a cat sitting on your feet.” That was inspired by our cat, who liked to sit on our feet. Strange girl but ever so sweet.
Coffee and I ground out an agreement in the kitchen. Here’s the music, and away we go. Have a good Wezda, Jan 8, 2025. Cheers
Good morning to you on this Grenday, January 5, 2025. It’s a foggy-cloudy-sunny-raining day out there. Eastern sunshine is narrowly prevailing, giving us a grey Sunday, or Grenday. Currently, we’re sitting at 42 F in our valley with a high of 51 F possible. All this is an improvement over yesterday. It saw us have a few minutes of sunshine. Hours of subsequent cold rain turned it into a gloomfest.
So today is better! Not better than places which are warm and sunshiny, but better than places smothered in ice and snow, wrecked with winds and burdened by freezing temperatures. Yes, definitely better than them.
A bright spot is that snow has accumulated in the mountains in southern Oregon. Our snowpack is at 164% of normal. That’s good news for the summer, as we depend on that slow melting ice to keep our cisterns, reservoirs, streams, and rivers filled during the long hot months when rain is rarely experienced. And it’s good to have the ground soaked again against another drought striking up. The wet ground and vegetation is a significant buffer against wildfires starting and spreading. So, it’s all good news, as long as it can be sustained for another month. That puts me at a point of grimacing agains the rain and mildly chilly temperatures with its gloom, and cheering for it for what it brings us.
Today’s song is an upbeat one. Last time — only time — that I shared it on here was when the lovely Quinn was diagnosed with lymphoma and living out his final month. Such a sweetheart, but that’s how life treats us all, regardless of how we live or our merits and debits. Unlike then, the cats are not to blame for the song’s morning mental music stream (Trademark spinning) residency. Jimmy Eat World came out with “The Middle” in 2001. Written when the band had been dropped by their first record company, it’s an upbeat rocker with some affirming lyrics.
Hey Don’t write yourself off yet It’s only in your head you feel left out or looked down on Just try your best Try everything you can And don’t you worry what they tell themselves when you’re away
It just takes some time Little girl, you’re in the middle of the ride Everything, everything will be just fine Everything, everything will be alright, alright
Today, the song emerged after I witnessed the clouds moving out, letting the sunshine wax bright.
Coffee and I have achieved cofftente. It’s kind of like detente but it’s not. Here’s the music. Hope an awesome day carries you through to tomorrow. Cheers
It’s the fourth day of the year, Jan 4, 2025. Satrda. 38 degrees F. Cloudy. Blue sky has been banished. The meek, subservient sun does little to warm and light us. We’re prepped for another day of rain with a high of 48 F. But, corresponding with my sister in Plum, PA, it’s not bad. They received a few issues of snow yesterday and then dealt with a snow squall. Monday is forecasted to be a heavy and cold snowy day for her. She’s worrying about patients canceling and travel issues. So, rainy and gloomy will suffice.
Today’s music is “Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers. Came out in 1968. I was twelve. The song became a hit and was rotated on all the regular pop stations heard on transistor radios and car radios. With all that exposure, I remember it well. Don’t know why it’s in my morning mental music stream (Trademark old). I slept heavily last night after feeling pretty gloomy yesterday evening. Didn’t have any cat visitations that I know of. No wind or wife disrupted my Zzzs. No need for visiting the bathroom during the night, and nothing amiss with my foot and ankle broke into my sleep. Only one dream floats around my noggin, and tambourines aren’t featured. The song just rose up as I went about opening blinds on another dull day, feeding cats, and making breakfast and coffee.
I enjoyed this video. Such a black and white throwback, including a sexist commercial for ‘Neet’ hair removal cream. Look how young Dick Clark appears. Check out the clothes and dancing. Trippy.
Coffee and I are doing our daily two-step. Hope your weather and fates are kind to you wherever you are. Here’s the music. Cheers
This is it, 2024’s final day. Twosday, December 31. Seems ordinary in every way when I just look out the window.
Winter has descended. Our temperature is muscling to 30 F. The high will be 42 F. Sun shimmers through fog’s pearly teeth. Frost crisps grass blades into white shoestrings. No snow or rain falling. While walking in late afternoon yesterday, though, I looked across the valley. A fog line huddled against the mountains at about three thousand feet. Above the fog, a snowy mountain ridge turned apricot by the setting sun stood sentry. Now that, I thought, looks cold.
My Neurons took to quizzing me as I took care of brekkie duties, asking me who starred in different televsion shows and movies. Yes, I agree, it’s an odd thing to be doing. Then they pivoted, “Okay, who sang the ‘Friends’ theme music?” Easy peasy, the Rembrandts, right? “Now name the Supreme Court Justices, smart guy,” The Neurons returned. Before coffee? I protested. That’s hardly fair.
Today’s music was brought in by The Neurons when my wife and I were driving home from a shopping expedition yesterday. The radio played Luke Combs’s version of Tracy Chapman’s song, “Fast Car”. My wife commented that it revitalized her sales, especially after the Grammies, when Combs and Chapman performed the song together. We then talked about how good her first album was. That resulted in The Neurons installing another song from the album, “For My Lover”, in the morning mental music stream (Trademark tariff protected).
Coffee is now approaching The Neurons with a peace offering. Yes, it’s caffeine. Usually sufficiently mollifies The Neurons into being more companionable. Hope your final day of 2024 is memorable for you in good ways. Here’s the music. Cheers
G’ mornin’, peeps of the online written word. It’s 2024’s final Monday, December 20, 2024. To celebrate, my other and I will go out for brekkie after she returns from her exercise class. Then we’ll do some groc shopping. Breakfast will be had at Crackin & Stackin in downtown Medford, I think.
It’s 33 F outside. Sunshine and clouds war again. Blue sky wins as the sun prevails. The ground is wet but drying for the moment after a few days of rain on a heavier scale and flooding in other parts of the county. No rain is forecast for the next two days. Today’s high will be 43 F.
I experienced vigorous, positive dreams last night and that’s put me in a solidly upbeat mood. Seeing sunshine reinforced it. Also contributing is that my foot/ankle are happier, and I had a lengthy solid if interesting writing outing yesterday.
Spoke with Mom on the phone last night. Says she’s feelin’ tired. Not surprising. Holidays always sap. Like many, it pushes her out of her comfortable returns. Now at 89, with several major health issues as part of her history, her energy is low, and every day is a new exploration of something in her body contending for attention. Her other, Frank, is doing great, she said. He’ll be 95 next month.
However, one of my younger sisters now has the flu. She is the Trumper who has had COVID three times. Believe she vaccinated before but she reportedly has underlying lung issues. She won’t tell anyone deets so we rumble about what it is. Her husband, a year younger than moi, went through open heart surgery a few years ago and is now dealing with kidney stones.
One of my other younger sister’s boyfriend lost his brother. But 66 years old, the man had a stroke and then a heart attack. Home alone while his wife was away visiting family in another state for the holidays, he was found on the kitchen floor after a day. Rushed to the hospital, he was pronounced dead and was removed from life support. He passed away yesterday morning.
Meanwhile, the boyfriend himself went into the hospital Friday for some scans after he complained about feeling ill and not breathing right. Turns out that he was experiencing congestive heart failure a 56 years old, astonishing us all. He’s 56 and is a regular runner. Those who saw him on Christmas thought he looked healthy and fit. It’s the way of life, I guess.
All that news and subsequent thinking gave permissions to The Neurons to introduce Joni Mitchell into the morning mental music stream (Trademark aging) with “The Circle Game”. A simple song, very poetic.
Coffee downed, here we go, putting another Monday into the books. Have the best you can, right? Don’t know how the next day will change your expectations.
Michael Seidel, writer 