Tag: politics

Friday Frittering

It’s me, so I’m going to whine first

  1. Arm continues improving. Strength, mobility, and flexibility in my fingers is returning. Improvement has been accelerating. Hoorah. Return to the doc in ten days.
  2. Fiction writing is sloooowww. Did nine thousand words in fifteen days. That should’ve been done in less than five days, easy. Such a whiner, right? Yes, it’s my nature. I let it out, and then affirm, but, hey, you’re writing. It’s something. Be an optimist, not a pessimist.
  3. By nature, I’m a pessimist and an optimist. I complain and release it, then address it to overcome it. Mostly. It’s all a sliding spectrum with moving targets every day. The thing I’ve recognized in myself is that while I go dark, I also return to the light.
  4. I enjoy eavesdropping on my wife’s exercise class. An in-person Family Y class in origins, it went to Zoom after social distancing went live in Ashland, Oregon. Mary is the instructor. She began the class in 1975. Held Mon-Wed-Fri mornings, it’s very popular. Going online has allowed people who moved away to come back and re-fire friendships. Attendees from D.C., Portland, Idaho, Florida, and California are now regulars…again. Such a positive thing, a testament to community and friendship.
  5. A beautiful night favored the area last night, wonderful for meteor spotting, except…cat. Two of the felines often accompany me as I go into the yard and check the sky. The house panther, though, kept winding around my legs and talking. Made it hard to move and focus, especially while craning my head back. I love my cats but sometimes, they’re a little much.
  6. The ginger boy (Papi, aka Meep) apparently had a misadventure yesterday evening. Gone for hours, he returned subdued and disheveled. I checked for wounds and found none. He, a young cat who usually prowls the night, stayed in last night. All night.
  7. Love this political ad. “Enough is Enough is Enough!” Vote Proud.

So, got my coffee, baby. Time to write like crazy at least one…more…time.

0

Friday’s Theme Music

My political ire is rising with the latest trumpshit. First is the jump out the gate questioning whether Kamela Harris is eligible to be POTUS. If you haven’t read the ‘opinion piece’ in Newsweek…don’t. Such garbage. Be a while before my respect for Newsweek returns.

That was just starter fluid for my anger. What’s going on with Trump and the GOP the destruction of voting rights is first class authoritarian play. Further infuriating me is the GOP obstacles arising by sabotaging the USPS. We as a nation have worked to find improvements in the USPS and how the mail is handled and delivered. Here comes the GOP, breaking the fucking system so they can undermine democracy to remain in power. It’s a scorched earth plan for victory. Sickening, sickening, sickening.

As it’s happened in the past whenever a political party dirties a nation, enablers turn their heads so they don’t see. In this instance, they’re burying themselves in misinformation.

Eventually, Trump, the GOP, and their users will follow the natural course to crash and burn. By then, judging from their current activities, the destruction they’ve wrought will be huge. Then people will stand and cry with shock, “Who knew?” 

That’s happened every damn time. Then they’ll shed croc tears and protest their innocence, “I didn’t know.”

All that at last takes me to a 2006 Pink song, “Who Knew”. Frothy and poppy in melody, it carries dark lyrics about things happening that’s not noticed until you awaken to events after it’s all over, when nothing can be done. Pink sang,

I took your words and I believed
In everything you said to me
Yeah-huh, that’s right

When someone said count your blessings now
‘Fore they’re long gone
I guess I just didn’t know how
I was all wrong
They knew better, still you said forever
And ever, who knew?

h/t to Genius.com

That’s where Trump supporters and enablers stand. They believe his lies, and that of his administration, rationalizing his morality as good, twisting logic and facts to fit their spin , and will profess to believe until it all comes crashing down. Then, when the air is filthy again, climate change is crushing our society, and the number of people starving and dying swells, they’ll whine, “Who knew?”

Yeah, that’s right.

2

Friday’s Theme Music

Every once in a while during my life, I encountered a person (or group) that so infuriate me, that I think, “You know…if I had the means…”

Know what I’m talking about? Right, getting a gun and putting them down because the world would be better without them. Maybe planting a little C4. It seems so easy on TV.

But I’m not that kind, except sometimes in my writing. Still, the wistfulness of sometimes solving a problem ala “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” as AC/DC proposed back in ’76 seizes me, ya know?

Yeah.

2

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Today brought a 1995 song from Collective Soul.

“December” is about endings and breaks from what’s going on. For Ed Roland, the songwriter, it’s about parting with the band’s manager. Pour moi, I pull the sarcastic and bitter sense of weariness from the sound: it’s done. Let’s end this, and this is just the polarized, argumentative state of the United States. I went to see Trump and the disastrous GOP reign end. The sooner that comes, the happier I’ll be.

On to the music.

0

Thursday’s Theme Music

I dreamed a black man in black clothes came by and fixed my arm. He was upbeat about it all.

Thinking that over, I opened my eyes and checked the time: 6:01. Not needing to get up and wanting more sleep, I told myself, I’ll just close my eyes for a moment.

My mind answered, “I close my eyes, only for a moment, then the moment’s gone.” Then the rest of the classic rock tune, “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas (1978), swelled in my head.

It’s a good choice as theme music goes. We’re battling over rights, equality, facts and science, trying to preserve our lives, planets, and society while coping with COVID, all to a cacophony of bullshit from the WH. Sometimes I feel like we’re warring nests of ants. Then, looking at the stars, I remember that we’re stardust, born on a cosmic wind.

2

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Blame Paul Krugman for today’s song.

I was reading his post about zombies. You’d conclude, then, that today’s music features music by or about zombies.

Nope.

Krugman addressed Republicans et al who won’t or can’t change their thinking about unemployment compensation, the social safety net, and the economy despite decades of validated data that the Republicans are wrong. I then widened my scope of thought to include civil rights and equality. Voting rights. Police force and violence. Eventually my aperture narrowed to change.

Raise your hand if you’re convinced change is easy. For most, it isn’t. Change messes with psychology and comfort zones, habits and vices, and the way it’s always been versus the way we’d like it to be. Trump and his followers are already demonstrated that they’re mired in tar pits; they can’t and won’t change.

All this brought me to songs about trying to change. There are numerous musical releases about seasons and change. I went with Tracy Chapman’s 1988 song, “Fast Car”.

0

Monday’s Theme Music

A conversational tic, “Do you know what I mean,” triggered recollection of the Lee Michaels 1968 song. Know what I mean?

It fits for today as topic lines are starkly drawn. Voting by mail can’t work, they say, but I did it throughout my military career and since moving to Oregon in 2005, so I think it works, know what I mean?

Trump couldn’t come up with shit for the pandemic, but he eagerly sends geared paramilitary Feds to cities led by Dems, know what I mean?

Pro baseball started playing in bubbles in the U.S. and now they’re canceling games because players have tested positive, know what I mean?

COVID-19 deaths are taking place, and positive cases are rising, they canceled the in person Republican convention but still want to open businesses and send children to school, you know what I mean?

0

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Read a QAnon post yesterday about how JFK Jr’s secret son could be Donald Trump, Jr. JFK Jr isn’t dead; secretly still alive, he escaped the assassination attempt that was the plane crash which purportedly killed him.

In response, I thought of “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da“, a 1980 song by The Police about simple words and logic that ties you up.

Poets, priests, and politicians
Have words to thank for their positions
Words that scream for your submission
And no one’s jamming their transmission
Because when their eloquence escapes you
Their logic ties you up and rapes you

De do do do, de da da da
Is all I want to say to you
De do do do, de da da da
Their innocence will pull me through
De do do do, de da da da
Is all I want to say to you
De do do do, de da da da
They’re meaningless and all that’s true

h/t to Genius.com

 

0

Tuesday’s Theme Music

As the coronavirus, economy, and politics dominate the days in negative ways, I thought of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush performing Peter Gabriel’s quiet and hopeful “Don’t Give Up” (1986).

The song is about struggle, trying, getting beaten, and trying again.

Though I saw it all around
Never thought that I could be affected
Thought that we’d be last to go
It is so strange the way things turn
Drove the night toward my home
The place that I was born, on the lakeside
As daylight broke, I saw the earth
The trees had burned down to the ground

Don’t give up, you still have us
Don’t give up, we don’t need much of anything
Don’t give up, ’cause somewhere there’s a place where we belong

Rest your head, you worry too much
It’s going to be alright
When times get rough, you can fall back on us
Don’t give up, please don’t give up
Got to walk out of here, I can’t take any more
Gonna stand on that bridge, keep my eyes down below
Whatever may come and whatever may go
That river’s flowing, that river’s flowing

h/t to Genius.com

Thought it fit today’s mood well.

 

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑