Tag: pop

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Hallooo. Today is Tuesday, October 5, 2021. High, marbled clouds, threadbare white in major stretches, strung out over pale blues, color the sky. Sunrise barely crept into it. Giving us light but we’ve yet to see the true sun behind all of that. Came in early. 7:12 AM. But the blinds were drawn so the house was dark. Already missing that early morning light lift. Sunrise will come 6:48 PM. Temps are now at 60 F, will hit 70 F. Boy, you should see the shimmering maples showing off their dark wine coats. So lovely, but the black walnut trees counter with majestic bright yellows. Easy to get drunk on these displays.

We had a surprise reveal this week. We’re going to a local Halloween concert at the month’s end. “Sleepy Hollow ” theme. Indoors. The organization behind it has set up the orchestra and audience to be socially distanced. Audience members will wear masks the entire time. They will also be seated in pods. You can buy tickets together and sit together. Six feet between pods. And show proof of vaccination before being admitted. All band members are vaccinated, too. We have friends in the band, so we want to see them perform and support them. Although we have some trepidation, we’re going to risk it. Asked a friend if she wants to go as part of our pod.

No. She does not want to go. She went and stayed with friends in San Diego for ten days. Just returned a week ago. Didn’t mask at all doing that time. Won’t wear a mask again. she declares. Disturbing on many levels. But she’s come back and seems okay. Yet. She may be carrying but asymptomatic. She’s 82. Husband is 89. Has all manner of respiratory and health problems. Both are vaccinated but her decision and attitude surprise me. Although…hate mentioning this, but she voted for DJT. Twice.

Ah, well. We’ll continue masking and will avoid contact with them. They’re still our friends. It’s a tough balance to maintain.

To the music! John Lennon’s “(Just Like) Starting Over” (1980) is buzzing through the morning’s mental music stream. I like its do-wop aspect. Came to me because so many things we do, it’s like, here we go again. Almost feels like we’re starting over. Starting over with advantages gleaned through maturing and surviving, experiencing life, and having some financial security. But, starting over because of the energy requirements to do things. Take cleaning the house. Please. It gets dirty. Not significantly — no. Despite my wife’s declarations that, “This house is filthy,” because she views the world through polarized lenses that don’t allow for any gray, the house is never filthy. Mildly dusty, maybe. Some dirty dishes soaking in the sink sometimes. But all clothes put away. And everything tidy and orderly.

Yet, when I go in and clean the kitchen, it feels like starting over. Everything must be done again. Like starting over. It is, isn’t it? It all must be cleaned anew. The bed must be made again. Litter boxes cleaned. Car washed. Yard work done. Furniture dusted and polished. These are my things, in the main. We both load the dishwasher. Empty it. She does the hardwood floors and laundry. We both fold and put it away. We both vacuum.

Okay, now that I’ve explained our delineation of chores, are you ready for a pop quiz? No? Good, because I’m not ready to do one, either. Have none prepared.

Let’s get on with it. Stay positive as best that you can. Know it’s hard. Some days, it’s like starting over. Again. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed. Get the vaxxes and boosters. Sing and dance. Here’s the music. Where’s my coffee? Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

A riddle to begin: what is always new, different, and the same? Here we are now — Monday again. New day, different day, same day.

Yes, it’s Monday, October 4, 2021 — ten four. Do you understand? A soft-spoken, lethargic sunrise came into my life this AM at 7:10. Sun flight, where we spin away again, will come at 6:58 PM. AQI is one again — fresh air. Temperature is now 56 F but monsieur is expecting something in the upper seventies range, perhaps. Once again, it’s a pale, mottled sky, white with faint gray dimples and dips. What’s it portend? The weather gods might know.

An excellent walk was had yesterday. 77 F when I set out. Full sunshine that hills and trees blocked out quickly as I went upslope, temperatures dipping four, five degrees. Sometimes a light wind visited as I passed digesting deer, pondering cats, busy squirrels and birds, and dog-walkers with their animals. Four miles was done. Finished as the sun stood up and declared with a yawn and a stretch, “Well, I’m calling it a day.”

“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (1969) by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, inhabits the morning’s mental music stream. The song has always captivated me. Guitar variations; the lyrics, pitches, harmony, tempo changes, its personal nature as an attempt by the songwriter, Stephen Stills, to capture and explain what he’s feeling. Here’s a live version; a little rougher than the studio-produced gem, but honest. Plus, I always like seeing performers as they looked when they made their music.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax & booster. Enjoy your Monday and October. Coffee time. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Sunday, Sunday. Another day older and deeper in debt. Perhaps, for some. My friend was giving me grief the other day. I told him that we don’t know what happens when we die. He replied, “When you’re dead, you’re dead. That’s it. Over and done.” He’s older. An older space industry engineer. I answered with reminders. What we didn’t know about existence fifty years ago. Hundred years ago, a thousand. How our knowledge improves — or we think it does — as our species matures. Develops new tools. New manners of perception. Wasn’t out to convince him. Just amused by his certainty. His response resonates with my beliefs about reality: we don’t know much about it and eat it in very small bites.

Today is Sunday, October 3, 2021. A fall month in the north. Spring month in the south. Someone posted a quote from Kierkegaard and his preference for fall. Here, paraphrasing: “In the spring, you look down at the ground. In the fall, you look up at the sky.” I look up in either but I grok what he’s saying.

Sunset will come at 6:49 PM. Sunshine splashed through our autumn blue sky at 7:10 AM. The trees are changing, and I do love the explosion of yellow, gold, and reds among the greens. For temperatures, we’re expecting a high of around 80 F. No rain. Light breeze. AQI of 1, again. Glorious walking day. I shall indulge.

The morning mental music stream has Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters playing “Walk” (2011) today. Came about while walking yesterday. Perfect in so many dimensions of air, sights, sounds, and temperature, the cap on a day that went well for me. So I pushed to walk hard, fast, far, and back. While out there, I was chuckling. Between smoke, heat, and COVID-19 concerns, walking like this was limited in 2021. Nice to be able to do it again.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, get the vax and booster. Sing a song, laugh, read…whatever. Have a good day. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Saturday falls on us like a time-released drug. So much to do! Or not to do. Depends on your point of view. I speak of Saturday but for some, Saturday comes on a Wednesday. That’s how their work or school week flows.

Today is October 2, 2021. October 4, 1974 is when I enlisted in the USAF, so back on October 2, 1974, I was readying myself to leave. First airplane flight; until then, it’d been buses or cars. Now here was the big jet, carrying me across the country to Texas. My girlfriend, who became my wife a year later, was more nervous than me. I was just going away. My childhood would officially end. Eighteen years old, a few months removed from high school graduation, I was ready.

Sunrise today was at 7:09 AM. Sunset will arrive at 6:51 PM. Temperatures again, cool this morning, 50 F, will rise into the seventies. The world keeps on turning.

With that, I go to the mental music stream, where Fleetwood Mac is performing “World Turning” from 1975. I heard it when I was on leave, readying myself to go on my first overseas tour, fifteen months without my wife. We’ve done a lot together since then. Have had many disagreements. Separated with plans to end it. But here we are, still together. World keeps turning. Shit happens but the world keeps turning. Probably sums up my general approach to existence.

I like this live recording (love that paradox of modern terminology) of the song. Had not heard this version before now. It works.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax and boosters. Also get coffee. That’s where I’m going. Peace out.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Someone used a palette knife to spread white from horizon to horizon over our heads. A few dabs and streaks of black and dark blue were blended in to prompt wonder, will it rain?

It’s Friday, October 1, 2021. Time to turn the page on your calendar. Hold on while I do mine.

It’s also World Smile Day. Let’s give them something to smile about. Sunrise shuffled in at 7:08 AM. It’ll shuffle out as the world turns at about 6:53 PM. While here, warmth that’ll rise all the way to 76 F will be experienced. For now, it’s 56. Air is clear, though, with an AQI of…1. Huzzah!

With all this talk of smiling on the net — did you know that today is World Smile Day? — the morning mental music stream is pulling in songs that feature smiles and smiling as part of its lyrics. After a bit, I thought “Cult of Personality” (1988) fits the need. After all, we’re still suffering in the shadow of a cult of personality here in ‘Murica, where an ex-POTUS’s lies and general BS continues to pollute the political realm and freeze meaningful movement in multiple areas. I posted this Living Colour song back in 2017 as the theme song. I highlighted these lyrics from the song back then:

I sell the things you need to be
I’m the smiling face on your TV
I’m the cult of personality
I exploit you, still you love me
I tell you one and one makes three

They still fit.

Stay positive. Test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters. Here’s the music. Enjoy your day. Smile.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

It’s a soft Thursday morning, here in Ashland, Oregon. Blue skies hug the low mountains of changing colors. Cool air — 48 F — hugs our bodies. We expect it to reach the upper seventies today. Looking forward to it.

It’s September 30, 2021. I go through the old rhyme, “Thirty days has September,” confirming, this is the final September day, turning to look at the calendar in confirmation. Yes, September’s last day. It’s hectic in some places: the quarter’s last day. The last day of FY2021 in some realms. Spend the money, get the orders, book ’em, Dano, because the books are going to close. Such an artificial construct, but a critical element of book-keeping, accounting, sales, taxes, and profits and losses.

Sunrise was later yet, an effect felt in the house. Sunrise didn’t arrive until 7:07 AM. Lights were required for activities in different rooms, a dispiriting acknowledgement that the hours of daylight are drawing down. It’s my preference to get up to bright morning sun, like the sun we get in the summer mornings. But I like the fall’s ambiance and temperatures. Its occasional rain. It’s a friendlier season than summer, who can become quite brutal. Sunset will be at 6:54 PM. Too early for my taste, but wait: it’ll be earlier yet tomorrow, and so on, until we ‘fall back’ with our clocks. That takes place November 7 in the U.S. this year.

Today’s theme song arose from reading. I read a NY Times article yesterday evening ‘When the Times Book Review Panned the Classics’. What other doesn’t like reading how critics trashed great books and novelists? One of the books trashed was Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. That’s also the title of a 1983 Jackson Browne song from an album I enjoyed, Lawyers in Love. My ever waiting mental music stream jumped onto the connection and played it in my head. I thought I’d played it for you.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and vax, if your body can handle it. Some people’s underlying conditions won’t react well to the COVID-19 vaccine. Do it if you can.

Here’s the music. Enjoy.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Hello, all you hep cats. Today is Wednesday, September 29, 2021. A sluggish sunrise sifted apricot hues over the valley at 7:06 AM. Sunset will be at 6:56 PM. Clear skies triumph. Temperatures sank to 42 F overnight but have climbed into the fifties at this point. We expect a high of seventy or higher today.

On a side note, wouldn’t it be amusing and chaotic if the cultural climate, politics, and technology reflected the temperature? Thinking of the US, of course. That’s what I know. With the temperature in the 50s, I look out to see 1950 Chevies, Cadillacs, and Fords go by. People are dressed for the year. The net has gone down because it doesn’t exist. Neither does this computer. In fact, it won’t reach a temperature for me to have a laptop at hand. We’d reach the seventies today. Bellbottoms would abound.

I have a friend who uses the expression Hell’s bells quite often. This amuses me. I’d heard the expression often as a child by older adults, like Grandpa Paul. So I associate the expression to them. The friend who employs it isn’t as old as Grandpa — he would have been 130 years old at this point — and is only fifteen years older than me. But fifteen years older makes him eighty! You have to laugh at it, right? Anyway, in the context of thinking of him, I began using Hell’s bells to curse at some point of the day when something happened. Naturally, my mental music stream picked up on it and replied, “Playing ‘Hell’s Bells’ by AC/DC.” So now I have the song stuck in the stream. To be sure, it’s actually only the opening that’s stuck: my mind keep replying the song until the first chorus of “Hell’s bells” is sung. Then it starts again. Yes, I’m in a broken mental music stream loop. I keep hitting myself, hoping to jar it into normalcy. Ain’t working.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get vaccines and boosters. Here’s the song. Check out the video and how young AC/DC members look. Reflect on your own life and youth. Enjoy. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

We call this stormy Tuesday but Monday’s just as bad. We also call it September 28, 2021. With dark, dramatic lighting, we call it, “The Final Tuesday”. It’s here for you, and it’s not about basketball.

Rained part of the night. Trailed off into a lazy gray sunrise at 7:04 AM. Sunset is due at 6:58 PM. Chilly. Had the heat come on this morning. Low was 42 F. Expect a high of 66 F. It is fall. Time for fall treats. Pumpkin pie.

A skunk fight interrupted our deep sleep. When I say a fight, t’weren’t any sounds associated with it. Just an intense smell. Like a dirty dozen pack of skunks entered the house and let loose on us. The air purifier was pressed into service. Fiful sleep returned after an hour plus, unusual for me, known as he-who-falls-asleep. An early telephone call interrupted it. I rolled out and into a lumbering run, wondering, “Who is it, what is it,” etc. Turned out to be the solar system installer. New inverter has arrived. Can he send his team over with it this afternoon?

I returned to bed to suck up more zzzs. But my thinking had conjured a Macklemore & Ryan song into my head. “Can’t Hold Us”. 2011. Spun up from these second-stanza lyrics:

Return of the Mack, get up!
What it is, what it does, what it is, what it isn’t.
Looking for a better way to get up out of bed
Instead of getting on the Internet and checking a new hit me.

Admittedly, I know these lyrics mostly because I’ve looked them up after querying myself, “What are they saying?” Macklemore and Lewis rap so fast. Common among rappers, though. It’s all about quick speech. Quick minds. I’m just too slow. Ray Dalton’s singing is a welcome break on the song for me.

It’s fascinating how you become adjusted to circumstances like smells. I’d been up for a few hours. Thought, oh, good, the skunk odor has dissipated. Then I went outside to experience the world. When I returned inside, the skunk’s smell lanced through me, fresh and sharp. Windows were opened. Furnace turned off. Purifier turned on.

Stay positive. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed. Get the vax. Enjoy the music. Have more coffee. You know I am. Here’s the tune. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Greetings from Mars. Ha, just kidding. Still on Earth, so far as I know. This might be a Matrix situation though. Or I could be part of a Sims existence. I will always think I know, even if I don’t.

Today is Monday, September 27, 2021. It lightly rained this morning. Made for a glorious burst of dawn apricots and gold between clouds at 7:03 AM. Sunset is less than twelve hours away: 1901. We’ve passed the tipping point. The night will gain time over the daylight until we reach that next stage, the longest night, in December.

Till then, party! Well, no. Just live. If that includes party, well, that’s often good. Today’s temperatures will flutter from their current level, about 60 F, to about 68, maybe 69. Maybe 70. Brooding clouds are suggesting, “Ain’t gonna happen.” And the sun is saying, “Fuck it, I’m chillin’ today.”

Cat moment inspired today’s music. (Why, that’s never happened before, hasit?) In bed this AM. Had just returned from feeding several beasties. Wasn’t ready to rise and shine. Wasn’t even ready to just rise. As I was sinking back into slumberland, Tucker wandered up with a purr offer. He then tucked his paw under my nose, brought his nose up close, and stared at me in the face. “Hello,” I said. His purr went hyper. From that, “Hello, I Love You” by the Doors (1968) crashed into the Monday morning mental music stream.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, get the vax and boosters as needed, and live a good life. Here’s the music. Ima getting coffee. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Welcome to Sunday, September 26, 2021. Sunshine folded through a starling’s egg blue sky at 7:01 AM. Twelve hours and one minute later, the sun will roll back out today. Our air quality is good after slipping into the moderate zone yesterday. Temperatures are wonderful, a low of 52 F overnight and a high about 79 this afternoon. No wind, no rain. Rain is anticipated tomorrow. It feels like a perfect day. After the summer’s smokiness, we’re all loving it. I think fall is becoming my favorite season, mostly because summers have become so miserable: hot (frequently over 100 F), dry, smoky.

Talking politics this morning with our houseguest. She’s as progressive as us, but she has some staunch conservative sisters. So she experiences frustration. We ended up talking about the anti-vaxxing movement in Florida. They are adamant against vaccinations with multiple reasons given. Some claim ther — and elsewhere — COVID-19 is overblown. A hoax. No worse than the flu. You’ve probably heard these things. Second, they don’t trust the vaccine. Unsure of long-term effects of the vaccine. Or, it’s the mark of the beast. Nevermind that the long-term effects of COVID-19 are growing rapidly clearer. Survivors aren’t always left without problems. But while doubting the science and decrying the vaccines, they’re eager for the monoclonal antibody treatment for anyone who gets COVID-19 because they’re not vaccinated against it. The bizarre logic quilt is dizzying. Dismaying.

So, we agreed, we need patience. After that, “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses from 1989. The song doesn’t apply to this situation. No. This power ballad is about a rocky relationship between a man and a woman. But its weary undertones fit well for this political era, the virus, national divisiveness, and the struggle to find the political will to achieve cohesive action. So it fits IMO.

Stay positive. Yes, it can be hard. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed, and get the vax, and boosters when available. Have some coffee. Hope you have an enjoyable day. Cheers

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