Jill Dennison posted some wonderful toons on her site. I have to share them. I will note my favorites. You should check them out and see which ones talk to you. Cheers
Toons!
Munda’s Theme Music
Munda, July 7, 2025, has broken clear and relatively cool, hosting blue sky and 76 F temperature. Expectations for th afternoon heat have been lowered; some say we’ll kiss 100 F, others claim we’ll peak in the mid 90s.
Keeping a weather eye on the global fire situations. With so many large fires going at it on multiple continents, smoke and air pollution becomes a problem for us. Of course, the Texas flash floods disaster remains the headline story. Among the headlines are reminders of shortsighted decisions, like, Officials Feared Flood Risk to Youth Camps but Rejected Warning System. Costs were cited as the reason why an improved system wasn’t installed; they lost out on a million dollar grant a few years ago. Meanwhile, Texas spent $2,300,000,000 on their ‘border wall’ and several more billion on border security. Speaks well for a ‘pro-life’ state where fear and racism won again over practical matters. Those are Texans’ choices, a reflection of their political worries and priorities. It’s a sad state and it’s questionable, with the cuts to the National Weather Service under Trump, whether appropriate alarm would have been given.
In unrelated news, U.S. measles cases reach 33-year record high as outbreaks spread.
The United States has reached its highest annual measles case tally in 33 years, hitting at least 1,277 confirmed cases across 38 states and the District of Columbia.
The milestone marks a public health reversal in defeating a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable disease as the anti-vaccine movement gains strength.
Way to go, Trump, way to go.
I’ve been calling our local healthcare providing, Asante, to establish arrangements for the needed gallbladder ultrasound. The net: 5 calls, 25 minutes on hold, and never spoke with a human. That doesn’t do much to reassure me that the system is working.
Today’s music is a 1985 hit for Eric Clapton, “Forever Man”. The Neurons didn’t establish a concrete reason for its use in the morning mental music stream.
Breakfast has been consumed. Off to get involved with the day. Have a better one. Cheers
A Hybrid Dream
I called this one a hybrid dream. My ‘anxiety dreams’ often circle around my long-ago military career. Now my psyche has folded some of my civilian occupations into the mix.
This one began with me working with programmers. While they were busy on the daily stuff required for the present, I was focused on a transition planned for several years down the road. We were installing a new ‘smart’ support system. I was creating test scenarios. At one point, I stopped for a break and overheard someone say that the implementation date would be 2032.
2032. My spirit sagged. I’m going to be forced to wait that long for results?
The dream shifted. Now I’m at work in a military command post as I did for years. I’m working alone in the facility, monitoring different systems. While going back to get supplies, I notice a light blue telephone frame room door ajar. After another second, gathering someone is in there, I head back to the console area to call the security police.
The console is a mess. Phones aren’t where I expected them to be. I can’t find a hotline to the SPs. What the hell, there aren’t any hotlines to anywhere. What kind of command post is this? A dream twist causes me to get distracted. I begin cleaning and organizing the command post, cursing it as I do. What the hell is wrong with this organization that they let it get like this?
Going past the blue frame room door, I realized that I’d forgotten about the person in there. Now I see a woman leave that room. Past her is a cot, chair, clothing, and a small camping table. She’s living in there! Now, using a radio, I notify the security police.
They immediately arrive and take her into custody. Then I realize, I’m out of the console area, and I’m locked out. The console area is never supposed to be unmanned. What is wrong with me?
I hasten to get myself back inside. A person who works for me, a female, is just entering, so she let’s me in I hurry to the console. She accompanies me. We’re chatting, and then I remember and tell her, “I’m behind. I didn’t do my shift checklist, inventory the communications security gear, update the log.”
She says, “Wow, you are behind.”
I begin doing those things. Unlocking and opening the communications security safe, house to all the code books and crypto, I find food inside. “What the hell?”
Taking the food out, I stack it neatly. It comes to me that someone else stored the food there but I don’t know their intention. It looks like candy for Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Easter. I organize it and start giving it away.
Dream end.
A Shopping Dream
Kind of weird for me to be dreaming about shopping IMO but my dream mind has its reasons, I guess.
My wife and I were at this largest outdoor plaza surrounded by stores. Going by the shadows and the purpling sky, it’s late in the day. Lot of people there but no familiars. We’re going around with a little silver metal shopping basket. There’s some kind of background crises happening that keeps distracting us. She wants to go see what’s going on, but I insist that we need to finish shopping. I rationalize in the dream that if things are going to get worse, finishing the shopping is important now because we might not be able to later.
So, we shop — for pet food. I get cans and bags of food. Quite amazing what fits into that little silver metal basket I’m carrying. It’s like a TARDIS. News then comes that whatever was happening that was worrying everyone is done, finished, kaput. Crises averted, everyone else is now shopping, but we’re done.
People strolling by are peeking into my basket to see what I have. When they do see it, they’re very impressed, especially with the bags of cat food. “Where did you find it?” They asked. “How much did you pay?”
I explain that I got it on sale and it was very inexpensive. They begin responding, “I was just there, and there were sold out,” and, “That was a bargain. You got a great deal.”
My wife and I are pleased, of course, because we were able to buy what we needed before it was gone, at a reduced price, one that others envy.
Dream end.
The Dad & I Dream
Don’t know my age when it started. Seemed like I was a young adult.
Dad and I were sharing a smallish but modern apartment. A winter storm howled outside, snow pummeling the world in unending shovelfuls. A general sense of disturbing chaos reigned.
I had a few cats. I was trying to feed them but they were running around, attacking each other, hiding. In the midst of this, in the living room by the stereo, I discovered a large window was broken. I stopped to check on it, inspecting it, confirming, because it was hard to tell, yes, a panel is gone. You’d think that’d be easy to see with snow falling, cold weather, a murdering wind, but it required earnest consideration of it for me to figure it out in the dream.
Yes, the window was broken. Several panes were missing or shattered, laying in pieces in a growing snowdrift. The cats tried to get out. As I lunged to pull them back, they retreated on their own, discouraged by the storm. Confusion seemed to paralyze me.
Dad came in, talking about a need to go somewhere, to get food, I think. Impatiently, he told me to hurry up. I was grabbing a cat, checking on the cats, looking at the broken windows. Concern over the stereo getting ruined rose up, so I moved components. Dad shouted at me to come on. I locked the cats in another room and followed Dad out. As we went, I was telling him, “Dad, there’s something you should know, there’s a window broken in the living room.”
It felt like it took some repetition of telling him this before what I was saying sank in. Then, he responded in alarm, “You should have told me this before.”
Next thing I knew, we were going back home because he was worried, and I was defensively trying to tell him that I’d been checking out the window, and I tried telling him but he wasn’t listening.
Then we were in the living room. The heater was running, hot air coming out of vents but snow dusted the floor and crusted the sofa, table, and chairs. Many things were turned over. Things were missing. The stereo and television were gone. We realized people had broken in; we realized, looking out the window, it was teenagers. They were running away with our stuff.
Dad said with bitter disappointment, “You didn’t do anything. You knew this had happened, and you didn’t do anything. Why didn’t you do anything?”
I was an adult now, and shocked. He was right; why didn’t I do something? Why didn’t I take action? I could have called someone to repair the window, or put up boards. I could have done something, but I didn’t.
Dream end.
A Traveling Dream
I’d met some people on the road. We were going in the same direction, so we traveled together. I was about my current age, it seemed. It was a dark night. We were in a car that felt and seemed like a Jeep but I was sitting the back and another person sat behind me. This was a woman. The ride was rough and we bounced around a great deal.
I seemed to know the woman behind me slightly more than the rest. She said, “You seem like you’re very stressed.”
Laughing, I replied, “That’s an optical illusion.”
Saying, “Let me give you a massage,” she began massaging my shoulders and neck.
It felt so good. After a minute, I told her that. She leaned forward, pressing herself against my back, comforting me. Warmth flowed from her into me. I leaned back into it and turned my head. I wanted to kiss her but stopped myself.
Then she and I were walking together in an airport. She said something about her flight being changed. I reminisced about how I used to travel so frequently, I was often upgraded and never bumped because my travels were a priority. She said, “I bet your travels used to be a high priority, especially the ones in the military.” I shrugged that off because I couldn’t say that was true. Priority was always a complicated matrix in those days.
I was looking at our clothes. Very tall and my age, she was dressed in a light grey suit. I was in a charcoal gray suit. It was an unusual style, almost pseudo-military, and very wrinkled. I said something about needing to upgrade my suit or at least iron it.
We reached the gates. My flight was already boarding, so we hugged and said good-bye. The agent took my ticket and waved me in.
Dream end
Sunday’s Wandering Thought
Governor Abbott of Texas said after the Robb Elementary School shooting that guns weren’t the problem, mental health was the problem. But he’d just cut two hundred eleven million dollars to the state’s mental health budget to build a wall to keep them safe.
There was something wrong in the governor’s logic, but he’d not had enough coffee to figure it out. He didn’t know if he’d ever have enough coffee to deal with that logic.
Michael Seidel, writer 