Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s song is a natural for the times. I started to add, IMO – in my opinion – but isn’t that redundant? This is my post, so it should be my opinion. Yet, I took the time to writesplain that to you.

Ten Years After released “I’d Love to Change the World” in 1971 as a response to the violence, protests, emerging counter-culture, resistant establishment, and war. Gosh, does any of that have any echos in today’s world? Naw, probably just me.

Like most of TYA’s offerings, the song features some powerful Alvin Lee guitar work, which is always good to hear. Beyond the rock essence of guitar and dream, these lyrics, and how they’re presented in the song, plaintive, accepting, and reflective, spoke to me as a fifteen-year-old when the song came out, but still talks to me as a sixty-three-year-old.

I’d love to change the world

But I don’t know what to do.

So I’ll leave it up to you.

I think most of us want to change the world. We also know what to do, but it’s an embattled, relentless, and exhausting process. It seems more so in the Internet era, where lies and bullshit gains instant traction and never seems to die, like the Terminator rising again and again.

So I’ll leave it up to you.

August 20, 2019 0

Saturday’s Theme Music

You ever been asked, “You have too much time on your hands?”

When I worked, the answer was sometimes, “Yep.” Work was so segregated and encapsulated into specific roles and tasks that if I did mine fast, which I frequently did, I’d end up waiting for others with nothing to do. Exasperating. I often spent that time by reading company or government periodicals. Whether that was the military or corporate side, that helped me broaden my outlook, which was always a benefit.

Since I quit working to write full time, I never feel like I have too much time on my hands. My response is more likely to be an incredulous spewing of coffee, beer, or wine, followed by, “Are you kidding me?”

Someone asked yesterday. I didn’t spew – that was just in there for comic effect – but I did laugh and reply, “No.” Thinking about his question later brought up the 1981 Styx song, “Too Much Time on My Hands”. It’d been released just before my wife and I arrived for a four-year military assignment at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan. We quite enjoyed that assignment. Thanks to the interesting culture, wonderful friends, educational opportunities, and the ocean, we never felt like we had too much time on our hands.

August 17, 2019 0

Tuesday’s Theme Music

“More Than A Feeling” (Boston, 1976) is a song about memories and regrets. Yeah, mistakes? I’ve made a few.

After a pleasant writing session yesterday, I drifted through plans and my personal history, which took me into this song.

So many people have come and gone
Their faces fade as the years go by
Yet I still recall as I wander on
As clear as the sun in the summer sky

h/t AZLyrics.com

I was twenty years old when this song came out and stationed with the U.S. Air Force in the Philippines. Whenever this song was played at parties, someone inevitably requested, “Turn it up.” Dos, someone usually played the air guitar. Trey, several people would sing along. It’s that kind of song, a poignant rocker.

August 6, 2019 0

Fourteen

A beard and mustache like smudges on the face

long and thick brown hair pinned up to play baseball

faded bell-bottom blue jeans with a large hole in the rear

and no undies underneath

white high-top canvas shoes

hand-painted fluorescent orange

a worn white tee-shirt with a green marijuana leaf in the center of the chest

under by a torn military fatigue shirt signed by everyone met

worn open like a jacket

quoting Asimov, Clapton, Kirk, and Clemente

reading Leary, Chekov, Dumas, Tolkien, Heller, and Knowles

listening to the Stones, Humble Pie, Cream, Jimi, Janis, and Bob

dancing to Sly, Chicago, Three Dog Night, and EW&F

runnin’, walkin’ and bikin’ to go anywhere and everywhere

through any weather and across any terrain

That’s the fourteen-year-old that I remember.

August 5, 2019 0

The First Time

Oh, I remember the first time. Dad had taken us children out. It was just the four of us. Mom was working. When we reached home, we discovered that Dad didn’t have the key, and the door was locked. This was pre-cell phone days, back when phones were big, clumsy things a headset as large as a small child’s head, and a rotary dial.

Dad reconnoitered to find a way in and then started talking about going to one of the neighbors’ houses to call Mom. We hadn’t lived there long, and didn’t know the neighbors.

I had a more pressing issue; I had to pee. Dad pointed to a bush and said, “Just go behind a bush.”

I was shocked. Pee outside? What are we animals. But when a boy hasta go, a boy hasta go.

Yep, I remember the first time.

July 31, 2019 5

The Joke

“There’s a Dairy Queen. Want to go there for dessert?”

“Okay.” She sounded pleased.

He’d been joking but he made the right turn, found parking, and they went inside. It’d been a long time since they’d been in a DQ, and the menu was different from those days, requiring a study of offering, ingredients, and calories. Finally choices were made. “Do most people take a long time like I did?” he asked the young cashier.

She smiled. “Yes, most do.”

His wife said, “We used to go to the Dairy Queen when we were dating. Not this one, but I mean, another Dairy Queen. It was the only place around.”

“That was literally almost fifty years ago,” he said. He and his wife laughed.

The cashier smiled. “Your orders will be up in a moment.”

July 31, 2019 0

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Today’s music started with a simple response to a weary situation. I thought, “Take me home,” and my stream kicked in with the Stevie Nicks song, “Stand Back” (1983). So, here we are.

July 31, 2019 2

A Bit in the System

I was reflecting on my Air Force command and control past today.

We’d begun moving into the small computer age back in the early 1980s. The Air Force — and the Defense Department — were being cautious. Locally, we realized that much of the repetitive, manual entries we did on logs, messages, and grease boards, along with the phone calls used to relay information, could be done via computers. We began visualizing and flow-charting the entire process. Military Airlift Command (MAC), which had operational control over us, said, no. Don’t. Stop.

At my next assignment, with Tactical Air Command (TAC), a young major had begun computerizing the mission flows. He was manually doing it himself. Watching him, I began asking questions about why he wasn’t doing this and that, which led to me taking over what he was doing. He and I had a lot of fun working on that. Five years and two assignments later, I was in Europe with a small flying unit. They had begun using computers to do some of the stuff I’d wanted to do. As soon as I saw it, I maneuvered to get involved.

They were happy as hell to let me. Controlled by the J-4 and J-5 Directorates of JCS, with input and oversight from the National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO) and NSA, USAFE didn’t care what I did. Locally, several officers were being advised that small computers were the future and were starting to take computer programming classes, but most weren’t familiar with them, so the commander and DO told me, “Go for it.”

So I did. By the time that I left four years later, other offices in my unit had enlisted my help, as did other units on base, asking me to share all the stuff I’d done with my small computers to automate and correlate information. My trend to incorporate computers continued with my next assignments with Space Command.

This all came to mind via “60 Minutes” and Crucible last night. “60 Minutes” featured a segment on Artificial Intelligent (AI). Crucible, a James Rollins thriller that I’m reading, features Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) as part of the plot. I ended up thinking back to the MAC days and how and what robots could do. With scenes from WarGames flashing through my head, I visualized all those messages, reports, and phone calls associated with mission profiles, aircraft configurations and repairs, and mission execution, and how computers and robots could augment or replace humans.

It’s intriguing to think about. After a twenty years-plus career, I’ve been out of the military for over twenty years. They may have come to grips with many of the ideas I considered and the inherent obstacles.

Somehow, I doubt it. The military has always lagged behind for much of that, preferring to spend their annual funds to modernize weapon systems, if possible. You never know, though; those in charge have now grown up with computers as part of the digital age. My thinking would probably amuse them because they’ve gone so far past that. Oh, to be a bit in the system and overhear what’s going on.

Well, actually, I guess that’s what I was: a bit in the system.

July 15, 2019 0

Beneath the Surface

Heat, humidity, and the long day induced weariness. Sitting on a bench in city hall’s shadow, he looked across the plaza. The crowds were thinning. Most of the holiday action was drifting into the restaurants or up into the park proper.

A middle-aged blonde woman danced with a child on the plaza stones. Each was dressed in purple and white clothes, and laughed, twirling their clothes as they spun around.

Deeply inhaling to swallow sad memories, he smiled. Sean’s passing had ripped his marriage apart. After the divorce, he’d remarried, but he’d never had another child. There’d been two, but both were gone. Sean was the end. He missed the laughter and movement that a child brought to a scene.

###

“Dance, mommy, dance,” Laurel shouted. Laughing, Melany recalled her childhood dance lessons and pretended to be a ballerina. After applauding, Laurel mimicked her movements.

Melany caught a glimpse of the man on the edge of her vision. Sitting on a bench, he looked like he might be drunk. She didn’t like the way he stared at them, like a predator.

Pretending she was out of breath, she collected Laurel. “Come on, honey. We’d better go find the others and get something to eat. Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?”

“Yes, I am hungry.” Laurel took her hand and began marching away with giant steps. “Come on, walk like this.”

Giving the man one final dirty look over her shoulder, Melany followed her daughter to safety as the man finally looked away.

July 14, 2019 4

Sunday’s Theme Music

Ah, 5150, the album that ignited the Van Halen wars: who is better, David Lee Roth, or Sammy Hagar?

I didn’t care. 5150 (1986) was a rockin’ album. I listened to it enough that when I hear song from it even in me head, the rest of the album continues in sequence.

Of course, I always mess around with lyrics, and that’s how “Why Can’t This Be Love” entered my mental stream. I was looking for something to eat. While plucking at some melon pieces and thinking about what to have for lunch, I asked myself, “Why can’t this be lunch?”