Tag: politics

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.

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Monday’s Theme Music

I was reading a news article about SoCal high school students – the boy’s water polo team – singing a NAZI song while saluting. That brought to mind the Santayana comments and quotes about history and the past and repeating it because the lessons aren’t learned. We see it as a trend around the world through decreases in environmental protections, compassion, and social injustice while nationalism, isolationism, and white supremacy movements increase. The social actions that took us to the development and use of the first atomic bomb is alive and thriving again. Meanwhile, the environmental protections developed to clean our air and water are being stripped away. It sucks.

Of course, flipping all those over to look at it from other angles. Corporations’ loyalty are usually with shareholders, increasing profits, and improving executive compensation – because they want the best. Many decry regulations because they stand in the way of profits or burden efforts with time and expense. Whole swaths of population struggle with changes and mourn for a different time, beguiled by rosy stories of how it use to be, or are hateful, selfish, and greedy people whose primary concern is for themselves.

Naturally, Steely Dan’s song, “Do It Again” (1972) arose to the occasion. Their song is about personal miscues and problems but the lesson remains the same as for a nation, society, or civilization: if you don’t learn, you’re going to do it again. As they sing in the song, “Wheel turning round and around.”

Then, I think, where do I sit on the spectrum of history, lamenting the swing back while listening to fifty-year-old music? Naturally, I must laugh at the aging fool on his computer…

 

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FloofAnon

FloofAnon (floofinition) – anonymous secret organization whose members believe that housepets are either secret government spies tracking their movement, aliens who have arrived to take over Earth, or that pets are part of a liberal plot to destroy their lives by distracting them from reality. Such members also often believe that animals should have no rights because they’re dumb and lack emotions.

In use: “Per the information she read at FloofAnon, she constantly watched the house across the street through monitors connected to cameras (bought at Costco, just five hundred dollars for eight outdoor cameras, what a buy!), noting the comings and goings of the cats and dogs, and logging them on her blog, Floofwatch.”

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

John Mayer sang about his frustrations with the world and the pace of change, and the difficulty associated with it, back in 2006 in a song called “Waiting On the World to Change”.

Now if we had the power
To bring our neighbors home from war
They would’ve never missed a Christmas
No more ribbons on their door
And when you trust your television
What you get is what you got
Cause when they own the information, oh
They can bend it all they want

That’s why we’re waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
It’s not that we don’t care
We just know that the fight ain’t fair
So we keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change

Now if we had the power
To bring our neighbors home from war
They would’ve never missed a Christmas
No more ribbons on their door
And when you trust your television
What you get is what you got
Cause when they own the information, oh
They can bend it all they want

That’s why we’re waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
It’s not that we don’t care
We just know that the fight ain’t fair
So we keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change

Read more: John Mayer – Waiting On The World To Change Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Pretty well sums up my frustrations as well.

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Began streaming this 1970 song yesterday afternoon during my après-writing walk-about. “For united we stand, divided we fall, and if our backs should ever be against the wall, we’ll be together, together, you and I.”

Although I often get down (trigger a background streaming of Kool & The Gang performing “Jungle Boogie” (1973)) by world events, especially with the rise of white supremacy and a growing impression that large segments of America’s population are concerned about only themselves, leading to a de facto policy of screw everyone else, and the Earth, too, singing “United We Stand” by Brotherhood of Man (1970) lifted my spirits.

Listen. Sing along. Hope.

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Sorry, today’s song is a downer. Reading about recent White House statements, trends in different states, and education in America, my mind began streaming Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” (1979).

We don’t need no education. We just need walls. Walls will save us all.

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TGIF

It’s been a week, hasn’t it? Peggy Lipton, Doris Day, and Tim Conway all passed away this week.

Losing stars isn’t anything new. Although I didn’t know them, they were part of the magic that we thought we had going for us after World War II. They helped us cope as the shit started happening. McCarthyism and the red scare. Korea. JFK’s assassination. Demonstrations and riots. Gulf of Tonkin incident. RFK and MLK’s assassinations. Vietnam. University of Texas shootings. USS Pueblo. Kent State. Watergate. Recessions and energy crises. Iran-Contra scandals. Iran hostages. John Lennon’s murder. Attempted assassination on Ronald Reagan. KAL 007 shot down. Beirut Barracks bombing. Challenger disaster. Operation Just Cause. Desert Storm. Oklahoma City bombing. Monica Lewinsky. Move On. Columbine. Hanging chads. Enron. 9/11. Hurricane Katrina. Virginia Tech University shootings. Housing bubble burst. Global banking meltdown. Umpqua Community College shootings. Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. Global warming. Isla Vista, 2014 shootings. Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Wildfires. Sutherland Springs Church shootings. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings. Sante Fe High School shooting. Las Vegas shooting. Thousand Oaks shooting. Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting. Measles outbreak. College cheating scandal.

And that’s all just a small bit of America’s piece of it. To think of what’s happened in the rest of the world during those years is numbing.

Now, Conway, Lipton, and Day gone. What a week.

Thank God it’s Friday.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

After reading some news last night and this morning, my anger spilled over. “You must be evil,” I said in my head to several of the articles’ principals, evil for how their minds work, evil for their indifference about what their actions do to the world or other creatures, evil for their willingness to rationalize murdering and victimizing.

From that came, quite deliberately, Chris Rea’s 1989 song, “You Must Be Evil”.

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music will not be for everyone. I’ll be surprised if anyone likes it, because that’s King Crimson’s nature.

The song, “21st Century Schizoid Man” (1969) was once said to be dedicated to Spiro T. Agnew.

I was biased against Agnew because my eighth grade civics teacher talked at great lengths about him, and didn’t like him at all. She particularly didn’t like how he attacked the press and its coverage of him. You might remember Agnew if you study twentieth century American politics or lived through the times. Agnew was Nixon’s first Veep until he was indicted and resigned after a criminal investigation into Maryland corruption. Whether the song is dedicated to Spiro T. “Ted” Agnew,  the song’s lyrics are few but memorable. Here’s a sample for you.

Cat’s foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia’s poison door
Twenty first century schizoid man

h/t azlyrics.com

I’m thinking of this song today because I feel a little bit like a twenty-first century schzoid man on some days. Not today, particularly, but you know, some days.

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