Fogday’s Theme Music
Mood: Indeafoggable
We landed on Sunday, December 8, 2024, or maybe it landed on us.
Light rain graced us most of yesterday. We’ve been rewarded with a chilly, damp 38 degree F morning with silvery-gray fog as thick as my breakfast oatmeal, and I like my oats thick. No worries, as they tell us the valley’s high temperature will crack the low forties.
Papi the ginger blade is driving us nuts with this weather. My wife claims that he expects me to change the weather for him, and is disappointed that I haven’t. But rain, wind, fog, chilly weather, he keeps going out one door and returning to the other to tattoo his message to us, “Let me in.”
My wife and I watched the University of Oregon Ducks take on Penn State’s Nittany Lions yesterday. I lived in Pennsylvania for a decade plus when I was a child and have live in Oregon for months short of twenty years, and have family living in Pennsylvania, so there’s a flimsy personal attachment to the game. This is football, BTW, where the Ducks are undefeated and nationally ranked #1, while Penn State wore the #3 ranking and one loss. The game was the Big 10 Championship. The Ducks won but I’m amused how often I heard that they ‘held on to win’ as Penn State, seven points down, was trying to drive the field in the last two minutes and score a touchdown and get a point after (or two) to win. My preference for how it should be stated was that Penn State lost.
My wife had two questions about the game; what is a Nittany Lion, and why is Oregon’s team called the Ducks? Well, my wikipedia researched revealed that a Nittany Lion is made up, based on eastern U.S. mountain lions and a local geographic feature, Nittany Mountain. As for the Ducks, they were originally the Webfoots. These were fishermen who became Revolutionary War heroes who settled in the Williamette Valley. As ducks have webbed feet, some writers began referring to the Webfoots as ducks. The name was eventually changed.
I read a summary of the highlights and statements emerging from Drumpf’s ‘first network interview’ since he won the election. First, it’s wearingly to read this and think that anything he says is worth its weight in air. I mean, he has a history. Second, he sounds like he’s still disconnected from reality. In example, he still plans his mass deportation plans because, “You have no choice. First of all, they’re costing us a fortune. But we’re starting with the criminals and we’ve got to do it. And then we’re starting with others, and we’re going to see how it goes.” But economists tell us otherwise, that illegal immigrants do not cost us as much as he claims and actually add to the economy. Likewise, stats and studes show most illegal immigrants are not criminals and are less likely to commit crimes [1] [2] [3]. Doesn’t matter in Drumpf world. Likewise, he still insists on “Drill, baby, drill,” to increase oil production and drop prices, even though U.S. oil production is at record levels and oil prices are dropping due to a global lack of demand. But dinosaurs like Drumpf — and his MAGA GOP — cling to disproven and outmoded ideas.
We’re attending a holiday concert today. I was making the bed and thinking about what I would wear when The Neurons began playing “Secret Agent Man” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark chillin’). Naturally for me, it was the Johnny Rivers version of the song, which we had in our household on a 45 RPM record when I was still a singleton. I know and like the guitar oriented song. But hearing it in my head this morning, my reaction was, WTF? Where did that come from? I asked Les Neurons, what brought this on? They said nothing. I thought of what I’m writing in my fiction, and it’s not at all related. I’m reading several books but none of them mentioned secret agents. Now, I am watching “The Agency”, “The Diplomat”, and “The Day of the Jackal”. Maybe their combined weight slipped into the liminal cracks and stirred memory of the song out of its slumber in its grey cell nest. I was surprised, as other songs and ideas had been stirring in the mmms, but here we are.
Let’s get positive and move forward. I’ve moved forward with my morning coffee and feel better for the effort. Here’s the music. Cheers
Saterday’s Theme Music
Mood: Saterbabbling
It’s fun to hear inflections and dialects as folks address the days. Someone the other night sounded like there were saying ‘Saterday’ instead of ‘Saturday’. I mentioned it to my wife. She frowned and asked, “Is this a difference?” To me, yes, I heard a difference but I could be crazy.
Well, it’s Saterday, December 7, 2024, the anniversay of a day which will live in infamy, as they say. I wonder if younger people are still taught about the attack on Pearl Harbor? Or do they just pick up knowledge about it from books, movies, and TV?
A white brick of a sky overlays our valley. Sunshine is trying to chisel through but it’s a listless effort. We’re cooking along at 36 F now, ready to storm up to 49 F. The threat of light rain is dangling over us. Not bad as far as an autumn winter day goes.
Cycling through news stories I read up on police officers illegally selling guns. Not just a few but in twenty-three states. They’re usually senior law enforcement personnel. Leading by example.
Then there was the gem about using private school vouchers to pay for horseback riding lessons. Marvelous. *snark*
Finally, the GOP is creeping out with earnest statements about cutting social security. Do recall how they insisted that President Biden was lying when he mentioned they had those plans? Classic bait and switch GOP, luring MAGA supporters in with one lie and then giving them something else.
Looking forward to when MAGA awakens to how they’re being screwed.
BTW, I shared the CBS news story about the police illegally selling guns on my Facebook feed. It’s something I rarely do these days but I thought peopl should know this is happening. FB removed it. Said it ‘violated their community standards’. Which, using the transitive property, means that truthful news stories violate Facebook’s standards. They called it ‘spam’; yes, the truth is spam for FB. Sounds kinda Orwellian. That’s the bottom line for that sinking enterprise.
Reading of the election results and other things being ‘explained’, I couldn’t help but think that a lot of it is just babbling. Pundit babbling for the most part, with some strategists thrown in for flavoring. Responding, The Neurons plugged “Psychobabble” by the Alan Parsons Project into the morning mental music stream (Trademark unravelling). The song’s last line seems fitting: “I don’t care, it’s all psychobabble rap.”
Let’s get positive, lean forward and move forward. Coffee has been re-introduced to my biosystem. All systems are go. Here’s the music.
Cheers
Friday’s Wandering Political Thoughts
So…someone murdered the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
I don’t applaud it. Violence doesn’t resolve anything. It generally incites more and greater violence. How is that helpful?
But I understand it. I understand the person’s frustration, even though I don’t know their particulars. The murdered man, Brian Thompson, led a healthcare corporation. Tales of despair and frustration circulate about the sick and injured lamenting how they’re treated by those corporations. Brian Thompson’s company had installed AI to help them deny benefits. For those companies, denying claims is how they protect their bottom line, decrease costs, increase profits, push up stock prices, and gain greater wealth. The killer inscribed on a found round, “Deny, defend, depose,” words well known to too many people dealing with the healthcare industry.
My bottom line is, I’m sorry he was murdered. But also, he reaped what he sowed. And, I’m not surprised. I’ve read and heard multiple people vent anger, despair, and frustration with those companies. As a recent example, Anthem BCBS announced in November a controversial decision about paying for anesthesia. It angered anesthesiologists enough that they issued statements decrying what they perceived as a money grab. Last week, in the wake of the shooting. Anthem BCBS announced they’d reversed the new policy.
The shooting wasn’t a complete surprise. In America, where a gun culture prevails and disagreements come to a head with people deciding to shoot others to resolve matters, it was simply a matter of time before something like this happened.
Thoughts and prayers, you know? Sigh.
Thursday’s Theme Music
Mood: Decemberspect
It’s December 5, 2024. Thursday. Someone has taken a roller brush and painted the sky with thin smoky gray and white. It’s poor mixing, with tendrils of the gray sometimes thickened into a rich vein. Patching blue shows through. I take an eastern blister of white as the sun.
Morose is the word for that scene. It’s 38 F locally, 40 to 42 in other town zones. We’ll see high temperatures in the low to mid fifties.
First, happy birthday to my little sister. Point of order, she is a grandmother. Mom’s life disrupted sis’s life but sis survived and reformed herself as an intelligent, caring, forthright individual. She’s a strong person and I admire her for so many facets of who she is.
I read Jan Ressenger’s post, “Trump’s Threatened Immigration Deportations Would Traumatize Students and Disrupt Public Schools”, this morning. She writes about the impact on children and school systems, and how school systems step up to help their studencts embroiled in the mess. As one superintendent summarized it, ‘We went into kind of a Mom and Dad mode and just cared for kids.’
Our fear-based right wing so disappoints me. Many of our right-wingers profess to be good Christians. Naturally, I ponder what our nation’s founders would think of the right wing’s myopic attacks on immigrants. Yes, what would Jesus do? Ho, ho, ho, merry Christmas. The right wing is slowly emerging as a darkly evil and inhumane force.
Away from that. WhenI looked out and spied the mostly white sky, the morning mental music stream (Trademark seceded) churned with “White Wedding” by Billy Idol. The Neurons thought, white, and went with it.
Get positive, be strong, have coffee. Coffee and I just renewed our vows once again. Keeps our relationship fresh. Here’s the music.
Cheers
Pulling Threads
10:45 AM today. My wife and I were in the home office, chatting about news. Both of our phones interrupted with multiple chimes and dings. As we both reached for them, she wondered, “What in the world is that noise,” and I said at the same times, “Something has happened, because we’re both getting alerts.”
A USGS Shakealert had been issued. Roughly, ‘Major earthquake detected. Duck and cover. Hold on.’
We’d not felt anything. My wife leaped up and looked out the window. I flipped into search mode on my computer. Email? Nothing. Nextdoor? Nothing.
We turned on the television and searched local news channels and went onto the local radio and television online news sites. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Facebook had a thread. Someone showed the alert and said, “Do anyone else get this message? Did anyone feel anything?”
Comments began coming in. Where people were, what they’d felt.
I went to the USGS Shakealert site. It was there that I learned about a 7.2 magnitude earthquake off the NorCal coast at 10:44 AM. Aftershocks were felt in some parts of southern Oregon and northern California. A tsunami warning was issued for that affected coastline.
So now we wait to see what happens. We’re not near the affected regions. Fingers crossed, and hopes and prayers.
Woundsday’s Theme Music
Mood: Reinvigorated
It’s Woundsday, December 4, 2024. The stagnant air seemed to have shifted a little, as the chill has abated. Although Ashlandia is claimed to be foggy, my perch’s view was fog free. Sunshine enriched blue skies took the vision field from end to end. Now, 11 AM, my personal weather sys says it’s 46 F outside. Alexa claimed it’ll be 67 F today but I don’t trust it. Other forecasts say 57 F today, which seems reasonable.
It’s Woundsday because I’ve been busy this morning licking my wound. Eww. Gross. Figuratively licking my wounds. The wound is the surgery site to repair my ankle. Much better today, thanks. Now I’m practicing my walk, trying to rid myself of my limp, regain some grace, and speed up my stride.
We’ve been following several news stories. One is that another Trump nominee has withdrawn. I’m not celebrating as I’m sure he’ll find a horrid replacement. My wife then regaled me with a few Buzzfeed anecdotes about people realizing what their support of Trump means to what goes on in their world. Trump nominees are surprising them. Examples include a business women who was planning equipment purchases being taught what the tariffs will do. Then there are parents with a child in Headstart just learning that Trump intends to shut down Headstart and now wonder what will happen to their child. In other words, they’re gettin’ woke by their vote.
Also following a story in Pennsylvania about a woman who fell into a sinkhole while looking for her cat in Tuesday morning’s cold, dark hours. I’m from that area and have family still living in the region, so it’s one of those six degrees of separation things. I hope they find her alive and well but I’m sadly doubtful at this point.
Today’s music in the morning mental music stream (Trademark okay) is “Feelin’ Alright”. I posted this song back in 2016. I wrote then: “I’d only recently learned that Dave Mason wrote this song. I knew that Traffic had performed it, but in my heart, this song always belonged to Joe Cocker. Whichever group or performer does it, the song always lifts me up. I loved it when he sang it in concert.” Still standing with that declaration. It’s my song for Woundsday because I’m going to have beers with my friends tonight. It’s our usual Wednesday setup. I haven’t attended for seven weeks. Haven’t had a beer in that period, too. I did have wine and rum with mulled cider on T-Day, though. Beyond that, I’m walking well and experiencing minimal discomfort and pain.
I woke from a dream this morning and remembered open lines from a Dylan Thomas poem.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The dream had been about reinventing myself and reinventing the world, so I can understand the connection with the poem. It’s one of my top five poems.
Hope you have a superb Wednesday, and the days beyond today are also superb as we count down the last of 2024. Coffee and I have rekindled our relationship once again. We’re good to the last drop. Here’s the music. Cheers
Twosday’s Wandering Political Thoughts
It started with a conversation about President Biden pardoning his son. My wife said, “I was fine with that but I’m angry, too. He took care of his family but why didn’t he do more to stop Trump?”
She remains very angry about the election. Understanding that she holds onto anger, I don’t expect her to be over it for another twelve to fourteen years. Even then, she won’t ‘be over it’. A lifelong feminist, she already sees men encouraged to be bigger assholes when it comes to how women are treated in the United States.
She went on about how she thought President Biden should have started building protections against Trump as soon as it was known Trump won in 2024. Stirring up my inner devil’s advocate, I countered her.
“Why should President Biden do that? Why should he need to fight so hard to prove the economy is doing well? Trump’s conviction was aired, as were the other charges against him. So was his bizarred fucking behavior, like fellatio with a microphone. He’s a disgusting damn individual and he constantly display that. Meanwhile, Biden was fixing many things. Why should he need to beat the drums hard and loud for so many great things accomplished under his administration? Maybe when Trump won, Biden said, ‘Fuck it. If those voters want Trump, a convicted felon and known liar and cheat with no morals or scruples to be president, bring it on. They deserve what they get.'”
I don’t believe for a second that President Biden thought those words. He’s more honorable than that. No, that was all me as a fictional, enraged President Biden. Then again, me as an enraged fictional President Biden would have forced his DOJ to go harder after Trump as part of the big picture; you let anyone get above the law, you’ve lost.
Sure, many are having voter regrets. But I think most of them will take the shit Trump dumps on them, gloss it over, and call it a good thing. There’s just too much willful ignorance for me to conclude otherwise.
Twosday’s Theme Music
Mood: Twosdayized
28 degrees, Twosday come into the valley with sunshine, blue skies, and patchy fog. The day hovers in the liminal folds between autumn and winter, that murky zone called autner. Feels like it could get colder. Feels like clouds could march in and dump snow. But the sunshine claims it might get warmer. In fact, some forecasters insist, as they have on previous days, that today’s high will crack the fifties and stalk the upper edges toward sixty. But the valley’s stagnant air messes with the forecasting process. Yesterday’s high attained 45 F when 56 F was supposed to be the ceiling. So, I’m not planning to see 56 F today.
This stagnant air is weird. A still, windless phenomena, the chill it carries creeps through everything. You dress for much colder air and the house heating works hard because that creeping chill.
Going through the valley yesterday to shop, I saw that a thin line of brown pollution rimmed the more populated western region. Get used to that, I thought. Trump and his clown cabinet will cut regulations. “Business,” they’ll shout, and the sheeple shout, “Yes. Business first.” Business means prosperity, right? Wage increases. Profits. Bull market.
Most of the sheeple fail to understand that the government and economy worked better under Democratic control. Their limited memories don’t pull up the dark, sooty airs the United States experienced in the 1960s and 1970s before the EPA and their pesky regs came out and ordered, “Thou shall not pollute.” Nor do they comprehend the impact on health that it brings, and the reciprical effect on productivity and costs due to worker illness and absences. They don’t think that fucking deep. Or course, it’s hard to do so with Republicans bleating otherwise in a 24/7 cacophony. And it’s hard to remember and think whn your education is being hamstrung with teachings about how Jesus saved the world and climate change is a hoax, and look! Illegals! Trans! Woke! They also believe that wealthy people won’t hoard their wealth but will spread it around like fertilizer and turn everything cash green for everyone.
Yes, they are fucking fools.
Sigh. On to other matters.
We shopped at Costco. It’s been a go-to for us since the early 1990s. Our local Costco was moderately busy on a Monday afternoon. Mostly older shoppers. Ahem. Like us. As we entered and began our prowl, my wife shouted at the milling shoppers, “What about inflation?” She’s still riled up about that. I told her, “Babe, they’ve heard whispers that it’s gonna get worse. This is Doomsday shopping. They’re out here trying to get deals and soothe their troubled minds with food and toys to help them when reality crashes in.”
Being the second day of the workweek, it’s natural that this is called Twosday. Many don’t realize that the first spelling for ‘two’ or 2 was tue. Somehow, as the language and alphabet swelled into its current shape, tue became two. But the day of the week was already cemented in influential calendar makers, so Tuesdays remained.*
* Yes, that was all b.s.
Today’s music came out in 2020, while lockdown was prevalent. Being retired, I don’t work, so the song doesn’t really address me and my grips. But The Neurons called it up because I’ve been muttering to myself, “I need to get back to the coffee shop and get back to work on my writing.” Ding ding ding. The Neurons had a piece of “Work” by Pop Evil in the morning mental music stream (Trademark being worked): “All I do is work!”
Alright, coffee and I have come to an agreement. I will make it and pour it into my watering hole, and it will kick my energy up. Look up, open your eyes, and breathe deep. Time for another Twosday to be vanquished. Here’s the music. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 