Wednesday’s Theme Music

Ashland, southern Oregon – Wednesday, June 10, 2026.

Warmer today. 56 F now but looking for 80 degrees as sunshine stretches across a clear blue sky.

Papi did his morning laps. I did the same. We meet, a Venn diagram of habit, wants, and needs, then go back to our respective circles.

Gina plies us with news about a hundred things happening. House inspections, furniture removal, cleaners, realtor. Prescriptions for Mom ordered — not yet ready, come back at 3:30! Commenting that she’s sweaty and tired. Informing us that Mom hasn’t said a word about the house. Saw the listing on Zillow but never spoke about it. Instead talks of the assisted living place.

After Gina’s demands at Heritage Grove, they cleaned Mom’s floor yesterday. Gina orders Mom, “Track it. They better do it once a week. Tell me if they don’t.”

Outside of those twenty texts, it’s quiet.

Trump and Iran are heating up their war. Trump makes continued assertions: the war is over. We have won. They have nothing. We are all powerful. I am a great negotiator. I want peace.

But retaliation is the order of the day: they hit us, we hit back — harder. Playground mentality — or mobster?

Your Trump Quote of the Day:

Iran will ‘pay the price’ for daring to fight back after Trump attacked them. The word sounds like lines out of a movie like “Red Dawn”. The movie was about high-schoolers fighting back after the Soviet Union (along with Cuba and Nicaragua) invade a small town in Colorado. 1980s fare. Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, other young actors.

In an ironic aside, the movie’s background is that NATO was dissolved, which encouraged the invasion, an interesting point, given Trump’s position on NATO

According to Wikipedia, “Red Dawn” began life as a little anti-war movie but MGM wanted a teenage Rambo style approach. The Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, helped refine the script.

Just for the record, because the record does matter, the war is 102 days and counting. Trump originally said it would be over in four to five weeks: 45 days. Since then, he’s also said it’s almost over 37 times. And counting.

In other news, US annual inflation hit its highest level in three years.

Though unfunded, work continues on the Epstein ballroom. All of the Epstein files have not been released.

Today’s morning mental music stream inhabitant is “Invincible.” I’m referring to the 1985 song Pat Benatar performed to commercial success.

Sample Lyrics:

This shattered dream you cannot justify.
We’re gonna scream until we’re satisfied.
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?
We can’t afford to be innocent
stand up and face the enemy.
It’s a do or die situation – we will be invincible.
And with the power of conviction there is no sacrifice.
It’s a do or die situation – we will be invincible.

I hope for your sake that your day goes well.

Got my coffee. Here we go again.

Cheers

Sunday’s Theme Music – Alright

Ashland, southern Oregon — Sunday, June 7, 2026.

Terribly deep blue sky is out there, reflecting the front capping the valley. Clear and sunny, the temperatures are hovering in the mid 50s F but are on their way up to 70.

I’ve been running into friends who have ‘heard the news’ about my bladder cancer. They get the look and posture of concern. Ask how I am, offer to do things for me, all those things that we do. I love the support but dislike the attention.

Of course, it’s more than me. Most of my friends have lost friends and family to cancer of different kinds. They carry that weight.

Mom’s house is still being cleaned out. Gina sent a photo of Mom’s empty closet. Mom’s closet was always tight with clothes but impeccably organized. She had a thing with hangers, using different types of hangers for different materials and needs, a process born from years of life, routines, plans.

Habitat for Humanity is closed to donations in that area. Gina is paying Goodwill to come, take the furniture out, haul it away. The sales of some other furniture, purses, Corning Ware, fans, and electronics will cover those costs. The clothes are being given to various area charities. The irony is that the cost is about $600, which is almost as much as Mom paid for that furniture twenty years ago.

To have a life reduced to dollars and cents.

I have thoughts on Trump today, gleaned from new articles, but I’m running late. My wife arose early to continue cleaning the refrigerator. I couldn’t stand by and not help. It’s all done now, and yes, looks great and was worthwhile to do.

The music in today’s morning mental music stream is “I’m Alright”. Kenny Loggins wrote and performed it. The song was used as the theme music for “Caddyshack”, a movie with Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield, Michael O’Keefe, Ted Knight, and Chevy Chase that came out in 1980. It also starred a groundhog.

We were stationed in Japan shortly after that. Home video players were just hitting the market. We bought one and would go down and buy bootleg recordings of movies like “Caddyshack”. Then the USO at the base main gate opened a video rental business where we could rent videos for a dollar. Pause to reflect, that was over forty years ago. Where did the time go?

Hope your weekend is going well and is full of more happy peaks than low valleys.

Cheers

Friday’s Theme Music

Ashland, southern Oregon — Friday, June 5, 2026.

Blue sky, cool air, and sunshine marks the valley. We’re at 59 F and expect a high of the upper seventies.

In Mom’s world, it’s been quiet on her health. No feedback from her visit to the hospital ER and the tests they ran. On the housing side of it, there’s a good offer on Mom’s house. I voted to take it, but they have opted to wait and see if more come in. The offer expires tomorrow night.

Read some good news for Australia. Their Cockroach King has been arrested. The US Cockroach King remains in the White House.

In depressing US news, the Roberts Court ruled Alabama can use its new Congressional map. A lower court found it racial. But the Roberts Court, hiding behind the shadow docket, said, “It’s good,” without bothering to sign their opinion. This is the John Roberts’ legacy.

Trump’s legacy is war, lies, and fake news. News reports are bubbling over the job reports. Based on economic factors and indicators, economists were expected another bad one. Gosh, somehow the Trump appointee managed to find ‘good’ numbers.

No, the numbers aren’t sterling. I expect them to be revised downward in a few months or exposed as fake. That’s in keeping with Trump’s preaching. He’s always shouting fake news, fake news while lying about what’s happening or planned.

He lied and promised no new wars, claimed the war was over, and we won, and yet, the war goes on. So, no, I don’t believe anything come out of the Trump administration.

I don’t have a Trump Quote of the Day available. Instead, I offer this image of Trump celebrating Pride Month.

The Epstein ballroom remains under construction. Trump’s war on Iran is closing on 100 days. The national debt is still growing, as is the national deficit.

I got a song stuck in my morning mental music stream: “Nothing Gonna Stop Us Now”. The song, from 1987, was performed by Starship. It’s the theme song to the move, “Mannequin”. I have never seen it.

I don’t know why The Neurons planted it in my morning stream. I was doing my dream recall routine and the song started. It doesn’t seem to be specifically related to any part of any dream, though. Hope you enjoy it.

Enjoy your first June Friday! Hope peace, happiness, and joy fill it.

Cheers

Saturday’s Theme Music — Back in time

Ashland, southern Oregon — Saturday, May 16, 2026.

Clouds block the sunshine and dirty the blue sky. Our weather temperatures continue their slow backward slide. Today’s high will be 58 F. Fed by wind gusts, it’s currently a chilly 46 F.

Papi the ginger wonder isn’t happy. He’d like to be outside but, wind. Wind is his enemy. He sat for a bit, feet all together, tail wrapped around him, motionless except for ear flicks. That lasted three or four minutes before he was back inside, washing himself and recovering.

Our weather is better than other places in the US, where a May spring snowstorm is complicating plans.

What did Trump’s visit to China do for the nation. We won’t know for a while. Trump has made some claims about what China agreed to do. We’ll see how much of them are true, and which are just hot air. Remember, Trump has made vows and claims before that carried nothing but his air:

Trump also likes claiming he got 80,000,000 votes. He didn’t. Officially, Trump took about 77.3 million votes in 2024, beating Vice President Harris by about 2.3 million votes. Trump is confusing himself with President Joe Biden, who took over 80,000,000 votes, soundly beating Trump.

Make no mistake, Trump and his MAGA base are trying to take the United States backwards. In the latest move during the Trump Golden Age of Ignorance, Knox County, Kentucky, schools are removing the historic novel “Roots” by Alex Haley. It’s truly a WTF period for many of us.

Your Trump Quote for the Day:

With Trump’s reactionary thinking dragging us backwards and the weather losing its summer luster, The Neurons plugged “Back In Time” into the morning mental music stream. The 1985 song was performed by Huey Lewis and the News and featured in the movie, “Back to the Future”. Seems right for the day, except the time I want to go back to is before Trump ever ran for office in 2015.

I hope your weekend is progressing well and you keep moving forward in good ways.

I’m moving forward with my coffee.

Cheers

Monday’s Theme Music – Hope

Ashland, southern Oregon — Monday, May 4, 2026.

It’s cloudy this morning but it’s not a solid mass. Sunshine washes through to warm us. It’s 55 F but we expect a high in the mid to upper 70s, and thunderstorms. We experienced a high of 80 yesterday before thunderstorms cooled us in the mid-afternoon hours.

Trump’s thin ego and weak position has been on display all weekend, beginning on Friday night. Heather Cox Richardson summarized Trump’s frenzied Friday night texts in her May 3, 2026, edition of “Letters from An American”.

  • This great uniter called Rep. Jeffries ‘low-IQ’ and a thug
  • Trump continued his pattern of spreading fake information, showing an AI-generated image of Jeffries holding a bat
  • Likewise, Trump showed an image of him and some of cabinet desecrating the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a national monument
  • Trump added a text showing his worry about the mid-term elections; in his mind, they’re going to be stolen

Trump also makes the fake claim that Democrats destroyed the US after the 2020 elections. History shows otherwise. BTW, gas was a lot cheaper back in President Biden’s days, wasn’t it?

Trump was promising to release the Epstein files, and still hasn’t released them all.

And we also weren’t at war.

Your Trump Quotes of the Day:

Hope is my theme today, though. Last night, I watched a documentary on Netflix about the making of the song, “We Are the World”. The documentary came out two years ago. Here is the Wikipedia summary of the song:

We Are the World” is a charity single recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa in 1985. It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy Jones for the album We Are the World to raise money for the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia. With sales in excess of 20 million physical copies, it is the eighth-best-selling single of all time.

Documentary trailer:

It’s the hopeful nature of the endeavor that made me decide to play the song today. The song was made at a time when there was a lot of hand-wringing as people asked, “We can we do?” It reminds me of now, as so many watch Trump stagger through the world, destroying the nation, peace, and the environment. Come together, focus, and work against him and his reactionary, destructive policies.

The documentary was full of some fascinating moments. Diana Ross took her music to Daryl Hall and asked him to sign it for her because she was his biggest fan. Watching those singers cope with the notes, wording, and situation fired my amazement about how capable and accomplished they are. They were also often star struck by the others in the room.

One of the most hilarious pieces came from an anecdote related Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles talking together. Both are blind. Ray commented that he needed the restroom. Stevie said, “Oh, I’ll show you where it is.” Stevie then led Ray away, leading someone to crack, “The blind are really leading the blind here.”

Hope you have a great day. I’m off to do Food & Friends deliveries with my wife.

Cheers

Four Microdreams

I had a series of flash microdreams last night.

In the first, I was editing/revising my manuscript, Unfocused. I awoke confused whether I’d been awake or asleep. Falling back asleep, I experienced the novel as a movie.

Another microdream slipped in. I reached for a green glass tumbler which had water in it. When I tasted it, it was coffee, but it stayed clear.

A man asked me to marry him. Then I thought it was me asking him. Then I thought, I’m both men.

Then I ate a chocolate chip muffin from a tray. Finishing it, I wanted more.

End

Sunday’s Theme Music

Sunday, February 8, 2026.

I watch Papi cat trotting over the lawn, skinnying between raindrops. I say something about the weather at the door. He snaps a meow back, letting his tail and whiskers talk about his disapproval.

45 F, sunshine doesn’t have a chance against this rain and fog, so 48 is the expected high. Settling into his favorite chair, Papi has assumed the napping position. I think it’s worthy of emulation.

But a brunch engagement with a dozen friends at a farmhouse is in our near future, followed by attendance at “Spotlight on Aretha Franklin” at the Camelot Theater. We joked about going to see the documentary, “Melania”, which ended in derisive laughter.

I expect political conversations during brunch. All leaned decisively Democrat and progressive and disapprove of ICE, Trump, and Project 2025. I’m sure ICE at the Super Bowl, to be played today down in Santa Clara, California, will be among our topics.

Anyway, I’m rushing this morning, having just helped with the preparing of a cheese and fruit tray that we’re contributing to brunch, so my comments are short.

A song, “Golden”, has trapped The Neurons, and they’re feeding it into my morning mental music stream. “Golden”, a K-pop hit featured in an animated movie about demon hunters, has been in heavy circulation in a few radio stations. Suddenly The Neurons are very aware of it and keep it alive in my head. So, help, I must share it with others to free myself. Enjoy this video of
EJAE, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami — Huntrix — performing “Golden”.

I hope you’re safe, warm, and healthy, and stay so, maybe with a visit from peace and grace to boost your spirits.

See you on the other side of the day. Cheers

Wenzdaz Theme Music

Greetings to my fellow humans and coffee ants. It’s Wenzda! Humpda! December 17 2025.

Ashlandians find ourselves in warmer weather with less fog. We’re hanging at about 40 degrees F. Light gray clouds with low bellies soldier past sunlit dark green evergreens. The clouds tear and break as they meet the trees. Another slice of sky features darker clouds mingling with bright blue sky. All shines with a rainy sheen, waiting to dry off. Today’s high will strike 47 F, ‘they’ say. We’re unsure they’ll be correct.

Slop is the word of the year. Hard to argue with that. In this information age, disinformation sown and furthered by AI’s efforts to entertain and uneducate the masses while undermining political will and decision-making owns many media outlets and social platforms.

Some of this is deliberately done. Feeling down? Go shopping! Look at these deals!

Not into shopping? Tune into NASCAR. NBA, NFL, college football, college basketball, hockey, volleyball, oh, boy the Olympics are coming! The world cup!

Eat our new food! Buy our new stuff! Watch our new show! Enjoy our new movie! Don’t like them, then watch the old movies, the old sitcoms, the old dramas, and remember how it used to be. Don’t think. Just sit back and relax. Let us take care of you.

What a way to end the year, mired in slop, wondering WTF is going to happen next year. Will the U.S. wage open war on Venezuela or go all in with Russia against the Ukraine? Trump is all for that. War for peace. “We can only win peace if we’re strong enough to fight for it,” he’ll snarl. And enough Americans are simple enough to eagerly nod agreement. We got all that military power. Shame not to use it, right?

Thinking about slop as the word of the year has The Neurons laughing. “Slop is the word is the word that you heard. It’s got groove, it’s got meaning. Slop is the time, is the place, is the motion. Slop is the way we are feeling.”

The Neurons might be on to something this time.

Anyway, they slotted “Grease” as sung by Frankie Valli in the movie, Grease, in the morning mental music stream. Except we’re singing ‘slop’ instead of ‘grease’.

Okay, coffee is greasing me up. Hope peace and grace break through the slop and make a cameo sometime in 2025’s final days. Here we go again. Cheers

Twozdaz Theme Music

Twozda, November 4, 2025, has pounced on us like a kitten hunting a leaf. 51 F in Ashlandia, rain clouds hide the sun. Rain is expected to visit off and on throughout the day. More leaves are surrendering to time, filling the ground with fading, decaying colors.

Mom continues to be lively back in Pennsylvania, according to sis. Which is thought by all of us to be good. Thought I’d share this photo of her from her 90th birthday. Yes, that’s a kitchen knife in her hand.

Mom, 90 birthday celebration, October, 2025

Today’s music is owed to a dream. This was one of those long, movie-like dreams my mind spins to entertain me while I slip. In this one, I was part of a group of young people. We’d found some books, then realized there was significance to the books, and then, ‘lo, a book was missing. We knew who collected the books, so we thought we’d recreate the journey he took to collect the books. Maybe that would reveal the missing book. We were traveling by train and car mostly, and yes, the travel took us behind the old ‘Iron Curtain’ into previous nations controlled by the Soviet Union. There was romance and comedy along with suspense. It reminded me of the 1980s Dabney Coleman film, Cloak & Dagger.

Anyway, my amused reflection of the dream triggered The Neurons into offering songs about spies in the morning mental music stream. After considering different music, The Neurons concluded that Carly Simon and “Nobody Does It Better” is the best choice.

Dick Cheney died. I was surprised. Thought he’d died in the 1990s. I knew he’d been re-animated to be Veep under Dubya, but I thought that spell wore off once he was removed from office. He was only 84, which also surprised me because he often seemed very old. The tributes will pour in for him. They’ll gloss over what he did to help forge a path to our current mess and speak of his service to the nation. Few will mention how extremely wealthy and powerful he became as part of that service. He did speak out against Trump in the 2024 elections and endorsed Kamela Harris. Just noting that.

Speaking of Trump, the Trump created Epstein Government Shutdown of 2025 rolls on. As someone else predicted, Trump became TACO and yielded somewhat on SNAP. Judges ruled that he must pay it but I think it’s most likely he’s doing it due to voters turning against MAGA politicians who worried about losing their seats, which might lead to the House flipping in 2026. Like others, I think Stephen Miller strongly influences Trump, and that having people die from starvation, even if in red states, is okay with the Regime. Death from starvation will make people more desperate and pliable, is their reasoning. That reasoning then goes, those folks will be willing to work for lower wages and can probably be pressed into service doing jobs that migrant workers used to do. Yes, the Trump Regime is trying to create a class of low-wage slave labor, like we had in ‘the good old days’, and thus help ‘make Amurica great again’. Sickening. Bet Epstein is smirking down on Trump, or up on him, depending on your thoughts about the afterlife.

Breaking News:

Trump Says He’ll Defy Court Order And Won’t Give Out SNAP Benefits

In a Truth Social post, Trump said Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”

There’s the TACO we know! Breaking the law, breaking the law. Not taking responsibility. Blaming someone else, as he always does. And screwing We the People.

Analysis I’ve read said that not paying SNAP will disproportionately affect his beloved MAGA base. Of course, in Trump’s altered reality, SNAP recipients are all scammers, people illegally in the United States, or people on drugs. The Trump Regime dismisses the idea that income-challenged families and individuals, the disabled, and children depend on SNAP. That administration is deliberately, maliciously, and dangerously warped.

Off I go. Hope grace and peace spring out from their hiding places and embrace us all. Till then, I’ll coffee up. Cheers

Twosdaz Theme Music

If that’s the garbage truck, it must be Twozda. Indeed, it’s the garbage truck and Twozda, October 7, 2025. Beautiful 67 F with blue skies forever and sunshine flooding over the trees and mountains. 81 F is in range as today’s top end.

Trump news has me itchy with irritation. With the government shutdown underway, stats and data useful to decision making and trend spotting is MIA. Air traffic controllers and the military are being asked to work without pay. ATC is a stressful job. The military can be as stressful. Working without pay adds to that stress. Financial institutions are helping both segments cope with the loss of income but how sustainable is that? Beyond those areas, home foreclosures under Trump are on the rise. Mortgage rates are high. Insurance costs are soaring and will go yet higher as the costs of replacement materials increase. Local taxes and service fees are increasing to replace revenue losses and the loss of Federal assistance under the Trump Regime. Food prices keep going up. Going into the holiday season in the United States, the vaunted last three months of the year, home to Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanza, and Hannukah, prices of gifts and food are expected to take deep bites out of budgets. Couple that with other factors, and an ugly quagmire is being put into place.

The Trump Regime doesn’t help any of it. As tax revenues fall and farmer suffer from losses because of tariffs, the Trump Regime wants to bail out the farmers hurting from Trump’s destructive tariffs and trade wars. It’s a classic downward spiral. Contributing further, Trump is cutting off renewable energy projects. That takes a chunk out of the economy, as those projects usually contributed to state and city local economic booms. Unemployment will rise. Meanwhile, his moves to instill manufacturing will take time. And if people are unemployed and counting pennies to get buy, who is going to buy the goods that the factories make? He’s killing the market.

Finally, uselessly deploying troops to cities are estimated to cost about twenty million dollars a day per place. Trump thinks that tariffs will replace tax revenues but if people are buying less and less because the cost of everything is rising, WTH does he think is going to buy? Coupled with all of this, the government shutdown and shaky economic and weakening economic forecast will drive higher costs to pay off the Federal deficit, and it has already caused companies to put spending and hiring plans on hold.

It is a fucking mess, and will just get worse. Healthcare premiums are set to soar under the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’. Read that in the mocking tone it deserves. With healthcare premiums increasing, people will cut insurance. More people will get sick but get help less often, usually until it’s dire. This leads to increasing healthcare costs and lower productivity. Lower productivity generates higher costs. All this is historically documented. The Trump Regime refuses to acknowledge those history lessons.

Stack on: tourism is down and will keep going down as Trump’s military presence grows in cities and his ICE agents aggressively attack people. Those are bad optics for tourism, and the soft data tells us that foreign visitors are shunning the United States as a tourist, education, and business destination. Additionally, the Trump assault on universities and colleges are reducing enrollment. That means those institutions will need to cut overhead and personnel. And, again, as Trump cuts Federal funding for government-backed research, activities in those projects will significantly drop or go completely idle. That’s more lost jobs. More lost local revenue. More lost Federal revenue.

It’ll all come crashing down under its own weight. Our questions are, how bad will it get? How long will it take before all these pressures come together to fuse the political will to work against Trump. So far, the GOP is completely MIA in this. This is their mess, but it will crush all except the wealthiest. The wealthiest, like Trump.

Reminder: this is the Epstein shutdown. The fear releasing the files. Releasing the files might generate the political will to move on from Trump. And the GOP is happier with him and they in charge, wrecking the world, than revealing who he is. As if we don’t already know. I guess they fear the validation of who he is, who they worship, and support.

All this stirred The Neurons to play “On the Dark Side” in the morning mental music stream. This song was from a movie called Eddie and the Cruisers, about the life and times of a fake rock band with heavy focus on the tortured soul lead singer, Eddie. The real music is performed by John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band.

Enough venting, enough from the dark side. Hope grace and peace resurfaces for us all and doesn’t hold out too much longer. Time for coffee. Time to write. Here we go, out into the day. Cheers

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