It’s raining this weekend. I like a nice, solid rain, which is what we’ve received. Brew some coffee and chill with relaxing rain sounds. I shouldn’t be surprised that a song about rain entered the mental stream yesterday. That it was Bob Dylan and “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35″ surprised me.
I was finishing up shaving and such when I thought out of nowhere, what’s Bob Dylan’s real name? I came up with Zimmerman but took a few more seconds to remember Robert. And then the song began.
I used this song as theme music back in October, 2017. Its mocking, rambunctious nature always entertains me. The song came out in 1966. I was ten, so the song passed under my radar. But when I became aware of it a few years later, I thought, yeah, this is about getting high. After doing a paper for a pop culture class years later, I appreciated the play on words, how people are throwing stones at others for imagined slights.
Pretty appropriate for these years, in which stones are slung for every damn thing, right? Have a good one. Wear your mask. Enjoy life.
Several times a month, a song or fragment hits my auditory stream and lingers. Some call this an earworm. I call it an annoyance.
Once in a while, I post those as my theme music to get them out of my head. It seems to work. Sometimes, though, the stuck song isn’t deserving of being the day’s theme music.
That’s the case today. This song isn’t the theme song, but I’m sharing it with you. It’s from a famous movie, so you might now it.
Yes, it’s “The Thermos Song” by Steve Martin from The Jerk (1979).
I don’t want it for today’s theme music.
As The Jerk came out in 1979, I started thinking about that year. While placing myself in that moment, my mind had a perverse idea, introducing The Smashing Pumpkins’ song, “1979”, from 1996, in my head. Oh, that brain, what a rascal.
It’s been over a year since I used “1979” for a theme song. (Yeah, I looked it up.) Why not, I thought. 1979 was a simpler time for me. Not for others, of course. As we slide over the time spectrum, time and life, and their impact on us, shift. Sometimes things skip off his like a stone skimming across a still pond. Other days, news whacks us like an asteroid taking the Yucatan Peninsula.
For me, though, best memories are not the ugly ones, but the sweet ones where I remember laughing with friends, getting ready to go out, and generally worrying about things other than drought, war, pandemics, politics, and climate change. It was like a day of freedom from stress.
Not all people have such stress-free days, but I’ve had some. Some of them were back in 1979. Mind you, that wasn’t a stress-free era. We still lived under the threat of nuclear war. Mr. Jimmy Carter was POTUS, and the Iran Hostage crises was the story of the day. But besides all that, I went to the movie theater with my cousins and wife in San Antonio to watch a movie called The Jerk.
My buddy, Bob Hoesch, sent an email out to his beer-drinking buddies last night. Liking it, I received his permission to share.
If any single image can sum up the tenor of an era, I would suggest this as a legacy photograph for the Trump Era.
Yes, that’s Don the Don, hawking Goya foods on the Resolute Desk in the oval office, because the owner of that company had just publicly praised him.
I didn’t know this until now, the Resolute Desk has been in the White House since it was gifted to the United States by Britain, during the tenure of Rutherford Hayes. FDR had it modified to accommodate his wheelchair while he ran WWII. The name comes from the decommissioned British warship HMS Resolute, whose lumber was used to make the desk.
Trump’s innovation was to use the desk to promote canned foods to the Mexican-American community. He should be remembered for that, as the most openly transactional national politician we’ve ever had.
“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.” — John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty (1977)
It’s a cold, wet, chilly, dull, day. Yeah, I know that cold and chilly seem redundant. I think the day calls for it.
Like, where is the sun? Out there somewhere, I surmise from ambient lighting. Just not breaking through. Not warming us up.
We’ve been wanting rain, so complaints are moot. We’ve been enjoying an October and November warm spell. I like that expression, ‘warm spell’. It was in the low seventies here last week, down into the mid forties at night with, as Alexa puts it, “a lot of sunshine throughout the day”.
Of course, we needed rain and wanted rain. Actually need snow to build up our Cascades snowpack. The snowpack is our summer water supply.
But I’m a ranter (which reminds me of the ol’ Dr. Pepper commercial, “I’m a ranter, he’s a ranter, she’s a ranter, wouldn’t you like to be a ranter, too?”). With that done, naturally, my head turned to music. What music speaks to me from this weather and this rant?
Why, the Rascals with their 1968 song, “People Got to Be Free”. Yeah, that makes total sense. Who else do you think of when all the leaves are brown and the sky is gray, right?
I think the Rascals song arrived via a Venn splice in my mental stream, where dreams, current events, and music came together. One dream featured a 1968 Camaro. I had one, once, pushing the nostalgia buttons. That may’ve called the song up on the mental shuffle.
Politically speaking, the song fits the times.
You should see, what a lovely, lovely world this would be If everyone learned to live together It seems to me such an easy, easy thing this would be Why can’t you and me learn to love one another All the world over, so easy to see People everywhere just wanna be free I can’t understand it, so simple to me People everywhere just got to be free Ah, ah, yeah . . . ah, ah, yeah If there’s a man who is down and needs a helping hand All it takes is you to understand and to see him through Seems to me, we got to solve it individually And I’ll do unto you what you do to me
These are, of course, socialist thoughts that progressives like me push, that so many others fear. Helping others? Everyone equal and free? Why, how barbaric.
Have you read this far? Then, thanks. Have a good one. And wear a mask, please. For all of us. Merry Christmas.
Sorry, but it’s sort of a quasi-politically inspired song again. (Wow, such a wishy-washy caveat and apology.) There’s also a writing angle.
Thinking about not just Trump but about life in general summoned John Mellencamp’s 1987 song, “Paper in Fire” to mind. I was thinking about aspirations and permanency and how often what people do amount to nothing or disappear like…well, like paper in fire.
And the days of vanity Went on forever And he saw his days burn up Like paper in fire
Trump comes into this because of the vanity angle. He couldn’t govern and lead by getting legislation probably passed and put into place as law. Part of this was that he didn’t want to share glory. He wanted to be the one who was seen to originate the idea, to demonstrate his smarts. As he couldn’t, he instead used executive orders or chose not to enforce laws. Many of the executive orders meant almost nothing except to signal his desire, but others of them actively circumvented due process.
Much of what Trump seemed to be to appeal to his base. He loved their adoration. His actions and words were a reflection of that vanity.
Of course, Joe Biden intends to countermand Trump with more executive orders. This ends up in a cycle that creates a stronger executive branch to the detriment of the other branches, breaking the system of checks and balances. It becomes more dysfunctional and less stable and sustainable.
Of course, part of all this is the existential logjam that’s taking place in Congress. Democrats in the House pass bills, with partisan votes, but Republican McConnell in the Senate won’t bring them forward for action.
Beyond that, many of our individual dreams are like paper in fire. We diligently pursue them but they often come to little or no fruition, disappearing after we stop like paper in fire.
Sounds like it might be unhappy thinking. It’s not. We had our first snow dust this morning. Peering out at the cold scene with coffee in hand prompted reflection. Besides Trump and the US government, I also considered my characters and their motivations and dreams. They’re mostly in survivor or service roles even as unusual and unique issues impact them. In many ways, while they affect what happens in their world, their names will disappear like paper in fire.
So, there it is. Good rock tune with an Appalachian musical vibe. Hope you enjoy it and that you’re having a good one. Wear a mask, please. Cheers
Today’s theme music is “Unbelievable” by EMF from 1990. This song has always sounded like an INXS product. That’s not a bad thing at all. I think “Unbelievable” still has the beat to get people out of their seats.
“Unbelievable” was an easy choice for me. Checking on election updates for the presidency in the U.S., unbelievable is a word that springs to mind multiple times. Unbelievable that the election hasn’t been called, that it’s so tight. Unbelievable, too, the efforts that ConDon is making to stop every vote from being counted. And probably staggeringly unbelievable, former Vice President Joe Biden set a new record for most votes received by a presidential candidate. It’s over 70 million, and they’re still counting. Yet, he might lose.
Unbelievable, no?
More personal reasons for unbelievable are there, but I’ll spare you and keep it short (if you’ve read this far). (Yo, as if you can’t just skip all the text and go right to the music, right?)
Tucker Carlson has a problem with disappearing papers. From NY Mag Intelligencer:
On Wednesday night’s show, Tucker Carlson reported that his team had acquired incriminating documents. However, they sent them from Washington to Los Angeles, and the documents disappeared. And they neglected to make any copies. So now the only copy of the documents that would nail the probable next president of the United States are gone:
Few believe poor Tucker. He’s being mocked to hell and back.
I understand, though. I’ve been there.
I was taking university classes with the University of Maryland (go, Terps!) around my schedule when I was stationed with the Air Force at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, back in the eighties. My wife and I lived with two cats in a tiny place off base outside of one of the gates.
Finishing a paper, I put it on the bookcase by the door so it’d be there when I departed and I was less likely to forget it. This was pre-computer days. I’d pounded out the paper on my used government IBM Selectric II typewriter. Our cat, Jade, jumped up on the bookcase and puked on the paper. Gross as was, there was no way I could turn that in. I thought about bagging it for evidence but laughed that off.
Abashed, I reported what happened to my professor and asked for another day. Dismayed, he said, “Well, I’ve heard that before, or variations, but I never expected to hear it from you. Well, okay, I’ll give it a day.” It really pissed me off that he clearly didn’t believe me, but he gave me the day.
I’m a pop child, you know? Born in ’56 in the United States in a lower middle-class household and living mostly in suburbs, I grew up as television and radio matured. When Mom cleaned house, she turned on her records and sang with them. Throughout the years, I heard her with Patsy Cline, Pat Boone, Johnny Cash and Johnny Rivers, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Chubby Checkers, Louis Armstrong, Tammy Lynette, Ray Charles, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Steisand, the Ink Spots and Four Platters, to list the ones that jump casually to mind.
Then there was big sis. Two years older than moi, she started listening to the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits, Simon and Garfunkel, and Grand Funk Railroad. Boys, interested in this attractive young woman and usually a year or two older than her, brought more music in, like the Spencer Davis Group, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and David Bowie.
The radio was always on in the car, and I received small transistor radios from Japan as birthday gifts. AM radio gave me some bubble gum pop like the Osmonds, the Archies, and the Jackson Five, along with Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, Don McLean, Steppenwolf, and the Temptations. We had the Bee Gees, the Rolling Stones, and The Who. Television brought along Ricky Nelson, the Monkees, and all manner of performers via variety shows like Ed Sullivan,Hullabaloo and American Bandstand. Movies got into it. Friends introduced me to Sly and the Family Stone and Three Dog Night.
I explored on my own as I aged, discovering Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Cream, ZZ Top, Mountain, Captain Beefheart, the Moody Blues, early Electric Light Orchestra before they became ELO. More performers came onto the scene, like Elton John.
That’s just a little taste. Music was everywhere then, as it is now, always on, part of the foreground and the background, part of the scene, a topic of conversation. All of this is just on the pop and rock side. Beyond it there was country and western, soul, rhythms and blues, and the blues, and all the offshoots and variations. Beyond the United States were vast seas of music to be found in other countries and continents. Concerts gave us destination. Dancing gave us dates.
Music enriched existence. Oddly, all this came from a 1977 Paul Simon song, “Slip Slidin’ Away”. Time has fled through the year. Whether it’s because the days are less structured or because the usual placeholders of American culture have been disrupted, it seems like time has accelerated. Here it is, already more than halfway through the tenth month of the year. Just two more months and ten days to 2020 remains before we’re kissing it’s ass good-bye and saying hello to 2021.
Yet, we have an open-ended agenda at this point. COVID-19 has disrupted normalcy. The U.S. elections are due. We’re into the thirty-first named storm of the ‘hurricane season’. Climatologists are predicting wilder, more violent, and less predictable weather. With all that’s happening, water and food security for many of the world’s creatures are being jeopardized.
So, you might see why I’m thinking of “Slip Slidin’ Away” might have slipped into my thinking. Opportunities, time, and hope seem to be slip slidin’ away. Some might claim that sanity and peace are, too.
Certainly, it feels to me, probably because where I am in life, the days seem like they’re slip slidin’ away.
Here’s the song. Yeah, it’s a repeat. Used it back in August, 2018. Wear a mask please. And as they once said to the point it became nauseating, have a nice day.
Politics and books took over my bandwidth last week.
Books are such time thieves. Writing them takes time, energy, and attention. With energy, I’m referring to intellectual, emotional, and physical energy. The effort absorbs everything. Don’t know if that’s true for other writers, but this is how it is for me.
Reading books also sucks away time and energy. I read a C.J. Sanson novel last week, Tombland. Tombland isn’t a small novel, registering at eight hundred packed pages. The latest in the Matthew Shardlake series, like the other novels, I was compelled to read, almost as if I’d been cursed. The mystery is relatively thin but that is incidental to the history, period, and characters. His voice is authentic, and the characters are alive and shifting. You feel it all.
But reading that book meant I was doing almost nothing else. It was that consuming. I was also trying to read it to return it to the library. It was due 10/22, but I had other books on hold. My wife also had library books to return (The Plover, and The House in the Cerulean Sea). (She’d read Tombland before me.) So I was pushing to finish to turn the books in, limiting our library visits and its potential COVID-19 exposure. They do a good job at the library, but exposure is exposure, right? Right. After returning Tombland, I returned home and had an email from the library system: they’d extended Tombland for me. Nice of them but unnecessary.
I recommend Tombland.This particular novel swirled around murders in Norfolk in 1549. Somerset was the Lord Protector for the young king. It being England and that era, politics around rights for the common people the Kett Rebellion, differences in the church (Protestants vs. Catholics), power struggles among lords and ladies (including Edward’s sisters), and enclosures – fencing off common land that set aside for animal crazy. All the sinister and cynical conniving among the wealthy to increase their power and wealth, and their attitude toward the lower classes, and the subservience expected from the upper classes strikes amazing similarities to what’s happening in the United States in this century.
Tombland was a fresh reminder of what England endured and how they prevailed and developed as a democracy. Turmoil and bloodshed are occurring in the U.S., but not at the levels seen in England at that time. I want to add, yet. It may come to that.
The monstrous poverty and homelessness of the era also brought out sharp comparisons to here and now in America. It provided rich fodder for heavy thinking.
Of course, reading a book that I enjoy helps inform the novel that I’m writing. Nothing I read made me want to tear up my manuscript (or delete it) or start anew. It did inspire nuances and new flavors to fold into the blend, and of course, fuel up the need to sit down and write.
The skunk and I (and my wife) continue our non-violent confrontation. I don’t want the skunk to go under the house to live; the skunk wants to. I’m not a violent person, and love animals. Watching the skunk (and studying it through the window as it emerges at night) gives more appreciation to who it is. Yet, I know it’s damaging our foundation, insulation, and weather barrier. I empathize with the little critter, though. It’s a tough life out there, and it’s only trying to exist as I’m trying to exist. It certainly has the same rights as me.
I blame some of my sympathy to the skunk to the Netflix documentary, My Octopus Teacher.A wonderful love story, it revealed standard details the octopus and its tough existence. Naturally, after watching it, I transferred the octopus’ struggles to ‘my’ skunk. There is a difference between the octopus and skunk: the octopus isn’t invading ‘my’ territory. Anyone can argue, the skunks were there first, and that I’m the trespasser. I know; that doesn’t make my job dealing with the skunk any easier.
Michael Seidel, writer 