Munda’s Theme Music

A silky blue sky weaves hope and optimism in Ashlandia. A gorgeous spring day is being promised. 63 F now, ‘they’ tell us it feels like 71 F. I agree with them. Plentiful sunshine, as ‘they’ say. 73 F is the predicted high.

This is Munda, March 24, 2025. I dig this kind of sunshine. Especially after months of rain and clouds and the kind of chilly weather that makes me feel older than I am.

The cat is also quite pleased, I think. He zooms around furniture and through rooms. “Sun recharge your batteries?” I ask. He stops, sits, stares. Classic 3s floofhavior. After three seconds of this, he sticks a rear leg out and washes its underside. I begin for the kitchen. He pauses the washing to gift me with a scrutinizing stare. “You’ll get yours,” I say, because I know that whereismyfood look.

In the kitchen, I’m doing my morning things. Gotta move faster today. Leaving to do Food & Friends deliveries at 10 AM. Everything must be slightly accelerated. Nanoseconds must be shaved away from routines. I don’t feel like shaving time off today. I’m not a Formula 1 driver doing qualifying laps.

I give Papi his first feeding. That’s misleading. He’s already eaten from kibble bowls several times. This is a wet food offering. Eyes bright, he chirps at me as I lower the food bowl toward him. “Yes, you love me now,” I say. His purr vibrates the floor.

Time is flying. I eat. Make coffee. Drink same. Clean and dress. Examine my lower limbs for swelling and find none, knock on wood. My compression socks are easily drawn over my feet and up my legs. I’m becoming very proficient getting them on. It’s the other end, taking them off, that’s the challenge. I might have made a mistake by turning down the doffing stick. I reassure myself that not using the doffing stick gives my wrists, fingers, and hands a needed workout. My self is as suspicious about that as a cat might be.

We hit the Senior Center for the food pickup and schedule. Cars surround the center. Parking is limited. “That’s a bad sign,” my wife declares. “The food must not be ready.”

I’m resigned to wait. “Go check.”

She returns with the first load of food within a minute, surprising us. We’re off and running with a minimum wait.

“Only ten stops today,” she says.

“Ten stops. I remember when we had twice that.” Yes, people have disappeared from the list. We usually don’t know what happens to them. They’re Schrödinger’s elderly people. That’s a miserably depressing thought for such a sunny, bright day.

Today’s morning mental music stream inhabitant is the Pat Benatar offering, “Invincible”. Released in 1985, it was quite a hit at that time and stays on classic rock stations as an offering for the elderly still feasting on the past. The Neurons called it up today to support the April 5 Hands Off actions rising. Annie commented on a post, “I just read that the April 5 coalition includes at least 83 organizations, among them the Communications Workers of America and the Service Employees International Union. It’s gonna be big!!”

We need big energy to combat the Trusk Regime and GOTP. We need the energy of “Invincible”. Written by Simon Climie and Holly Knight, the song was made for the movie The Legend of Billie Jean.

[Chorus]
We can’t afford to be innocent
Stand up and face the enemy
It’s a do-or-die situation
We will be invincible

[Verse 2]
This shattered dream you cannot justify
We’re gonna scream until we’re satisfied

[Pre-Chorus]
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

h/t to Genius.com

It could be that I’m overwrought by the Trusk situation in the United States.

Hope your day satisfies you in some meaningful ways. I’m writing and then planning long-delayed chores. I’ve always blamed the weather. Now that the weather has improved, my excuses are gone.

Here’s the music video. Cheers

March 24, 2025 2

Thurzda’s Wandering Thoughts

I often wear a hat. Not in the house, except sometimes to bed, but that’s another night’s tale. The hat is a wide-brimmed green Tilley. A dozen pins decorates it.

When I checked in for my medical appointment yesterday, the young guy doing my intake looked at my hat and grinned.

“I was just admiring your pins.”

I replied, “That’s my flair.”

His grin grew wider. “You can never have too much flair.”

I answered, “No, but I think I need to speak to you about your flair.”

Laughter answered me. “I know. I gotta work on that.”

We both nodded. It was all an unspoken reference to Office Space from 1999. I figured the kid I was speaking to is about 29 years old, five or take, you know. But just a child when the movie came out.

I feel like we’re part of a secret tribe. The tribe of flare.

February 20, 2025 0

Thurzda’s Theme Music

They say it’s partly sunny in Ashlandia’s valley today Thurzda, Feb. 20, 2025, but I find if fully sunny. The clouds hanging around are rice-paper thin. Wandering aimlessly as a cloud, they break up as easily whipped cream in hot chocolate. 43 F right now, the temperature-measuring thingy is expected to test the fifties before the sun begins its wind down.

A sick cat & personal medical appointments has frayed my routines. Accomodating both — cat (Tucker, the still-handsome black and white floof whose name is pronounced Tuck-ah) and my med appointments are high priorities. So are my twice-daily rituals of self-massaging my bod using the techniques taught me to stimulate my lymphatic system. The wraps and self-massaging seem to be working. My left limb/foot is stabilized and doesn’t swell during the day. I have very minor swelling on the right side, mostly focused on the 3-4-5 toes. As for Tucker, he’s on antibiotics, so we’ll see where it goes. His nocturnal issues diced my sleep into bite-sized chunks, so I was late rolling out of bed. Anyway, the efforts involved in these things cut into my reading/writing/posting/surface hours, and I’m the crankier for it. I know, I am such a whiner.

Today’s song is another odd choice for The Neurons. I have “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” from the 1984 movie, Footloose, with Kevin Bacon. Deniece Williams sings the song,

Folks, this thing was released over 40 years ago. The movie never thrilled my sensibilities but I had plenty o’ younger friends who enjoyed it. Those who liked it were mostly feminine and enticed by Bacon and his dancing. The movie begat several hit songs which seemed perpetually on the radio of the time. Why it’s in my morning mental music stream is beyond my reasoning skills. The Neurons often have their way with me and rarely devote elucidation about it. It’s okay, though, as I’m pleased to not have songs associated with the 2025 PINO Trusk Shitstorm in my head.

Coffee and I made a handshake agreement and I’m gulping like it’s going out of style. Hope you have a solid day. Cheers

February 20, 2025 0

A Race Car Dream

I was a young man. And I was at some kind of car race where I was to be a participant. Several emerging factors swirled and fell and rose. Nobody was expecting me. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I then confirmed, gosh, I am in this race.

Employing strange dream logic, the race was sometimes played as a card game with a board track. Other times, it seemed like a slot car setup, but then it was sometimes full-sized race cars. I’d seamlessly skip between those motifs but the dream itself was mostly centered on race control where I’d check the time sheets, find out where I was on the track, and learn my position. The people populating race control were all tall, older, and white. Most seemed British. I never saw any of the cars so I can’t comment on their colors or livery. But I would identify them. Like I told some once that another driver was piloting a Porsche 917 and another was driving a P3 Ferrari. Someone else was wheeling the Silk Cut Jaguar XJ9.

I swapped cars. I don’t know what I was driving but I suddenly announced, grinning, “I’m driving a Ford GT.” This is a car which won LeMans and the world championship in the mid 1960s and helped seduce me as a racing fan when I was nine. I didn’t specify which variant I was driving.

I learned that I’d qualified fourth but some bureaucratic snafu shuffled me to the pack’s tail end. That didn’t bother me; I shrugged it off with a grin. I was confident that I would win, as I’d qualified fourth with minimal effort. Now, recalling, I actually did have one segment where I was in the car, on the track, during the race, passing clusters of other cars. I then left the car, blink, and was back at race control to check my standing. They didn’t know who I was. I was certain I was leading but they dismissed it. I was told that I’d done something incorrectly and my laps hadn’t been counted. I didn’t know I was supposed to do that, I protested, but that wasn’t their issue.

None of that fazed me. Grinning, I told them, “But I have all these chits.” The chits were small red paper rectangles, like the old-time ticket stubs given at movies in decades past. I received them every time I completed a lap. As I told them about the chits, I held up a fistful of them. Expressing astonishment, they counted the chits and announced that I was in the lead.

I met the news with a happy grin and readied myself to keep racing. Dream end.

I enjoyed discovering this footage of the 1966 LeMans race featuring the Ford GTs. Nice to hear the voices of Bruce McLaren, Dan Gurney, Denis Hulme, etc., and see them. Of course, the staged Ford 1-2-3 finish was made famous in the movie Ford vs. Ferrari, where Ken Miles (played by Christian Bale) was first across the finish line but was deemed not to be the winner because another car started further back, so it covered more distance.

December 17, 2024 0

Monday’s Theme Music

Mood: Mundanemondaymoaning

Wind and clouds dominate Ashlandia’s Monday morning, where it’s 38 degrees F. Blue sky and sunshine have worked their way into the scene. At least the rain has stopped. Snow tops ranges and trees located over 3500 feet, offering us some wintry scenery. December 16, 2024, winter solstice is rushing our way.

We went south into higher elevations yesterday. Up there in elevation, down there on the road, the snow accumulaiton over 3,000 feet looked like six to eight inches. This was eight miles from our place, a twelve minute drive. My wife and I agreed, it was nice to visit the snow and admire the beauty of the white dusting the tall pines over the craggy white-topped mountains bathed in sunshine and backlit with blue sky, but leaving that icy scene behind was also nice.

Over in Europe, governments are losing votes of confidence. France already went; now Germany has joined them. Just to lift my spirits (please note the sarcasm), I read a NYTimes opinion piece, “A Mild Defense of Lara Trump”.

Fair enough. But before anyone gets super sniffy about Lara Trump’s fitness for high office, I feel I should remind everyone of Tommy Tuberville.

Honestly. Whether defending white supremacists or blockading hundreds of military promotions for months, the gentleman from Alabama has not exactly covered himself in glory. And when it comes to sycophancy, it’s hard to imagine Ms. Trump would be much more pliant than Mr. Tuberville, who recently declared that it is not Republican senators’ job to vet Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks. So much for “advice and consent.”

But no need to dogpile Mr. Tuberville. When it comes to jelly-spined Trump toadies, he is not alone in the Senate. Josh Hawley? Ron Johnson? Mike Lee? In so many ways, the coin has already been devalued.

Yes, let’s start a cheer *snark*: Lara Trump is not the worse senator in a chamber full of crappy voter decisions. That’ll cheer us up.

The Neurons surprise me by introducing with a poem learned in high school. William Wadsworth, of course, because that’s who I mostly learned in that era. Syliva Plath, Edna St. Vincent Millay, ts elliott, Billy Collins and others came later.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

That’s all I wanted to remember: ‘The world is too much with us, getting and spending’, and ‘for this, for everything, we are out of tune.’

That’s my feeling today. I’m an guitar set aside, gathering dust in a closet. My strings and frets are worn, and I feel out of tune.

Despair not, for Der Neurons immediately introduced a song to the morning mental music stream (Trademark sagging) to address my feelings.

I’m singing this note cause it fits in well with the chords I’m playing.

I can’t pretend there’s any meaning hidden in the things I’m saying.

But I’m in tune.

Right in tune.

Yes, it’s the Who, one of the bands of my youth, coming through with “Getting in Tune” from 1971 and their epic album, Who’s Next? The present is just an echo of the past, isn’t it?

Ah, maybe I just have a case of the Mondays. I offer this Office Space clip for elucidation.

Let’s get on with this. Coffee, stat! Here we go. First, the music. Cheers

December 16, 2024 0

October 4, 2024 0

Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts

I have a nephew who is starting at the University of Pittsburgh this fall. He auditioned for the band as a trumpet player and was accepted, so he’s already moved into his dorm room so he can attend band camp. Yes, I am pleased and excited on his behalf, and I’m very proud of him.

Today, we found out that one of our friends here in Ashlandia has a niece starting college. Know where this is going? Yes, she’s attending the University of Pittsburgh. And she plays the trumpet. And she’s in the band. And she’s moved into her dorm room already because she’s attending band camp.

It’s like six degrees of separation all over again. Do you know the movie?

August 14, 2024 0

Sunday’s Theme Music

Mood: Motionvated

Another day in Ashlandia, where the night temperatures are hanging round the fifties and the daytime highs take us to the upper eighties. Like today, we’re looking at 89 F. Air is clear, too for the time being. That can change with a wind shift. With so many fires, and several fast exploding across the landscape, I expect our air quality to dip.

As for the date, it’s Sunday, July 28, 2024. Almost time to put the month to bed.

Cats are okay. Wife is doing fine. I’m doing well. Olympics are dominating the news cycle. Trump snuck back in there with more of his anti- whatever stupidity. The man is anti so many things. The latest turn confirms that the guy who wants to be dictator on day one (ha, ha, remember that laugher) is also assuring Christians that if he wins, they won’t need to vote again. Ha, ha, so funny – not. It’s not a joke to his MAGA supporters; they say he tells it like it, that he speaks for them. So there it is, the MAGA GOP is against democracy. It’s been a growing trend in the GOP for the last quarter century.

Now it’s their brand.

Gotta song stuck in my head. I heard “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” on the radio yesterday, and it just excited The Neurons. Apparently enthralled by it, The Neurons have been playing the 1985 John Parr almost non-stop in the morning mental music stream (Trademark in motion). Sometimes they also include vignettes from the movie which featured the song, St. Elmo’s Fire. A Brat Pack film, I’ve never seen it. As several of the actors were also in The Breakfast Club, snippets out of that film also circulate in my head.

As far as the phenom known as St. Elmo’s fire, I’ve only seen it in museums and films. It fascinates me.

Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. Keep democracy in America. I’ve had coffee. Now a little more is on the menu. Here’s the music. Feel free to sing along. My Neurons do. Cheers

July 28, 2024 0

Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

On a whim, I looked up an old film, Kelly’s Heroes. A tale of American soldiers in WWII and their efforts to steal NAZI gold from a French bank behind German lines, it starred Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Carroll O’Connor, and Donald Sutherland, with several other names in supporting roles. While it was released in 1970, it was based on a Guiness Book of World Records entry on ‘the greatest train robbery’ in history. The 1984 book, Nazi Gold — The Sensational Story of the World’s Greatest Robbery — and the Greatest Criminal Cover-Up by Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting, tells the whole story.

I never knew. And now I do.