Tag: shootings

Mundaz Theme Music

Today is Munda, December 15, 2025. Sixteen days remain in 2025. It’ll be a memorable year for historians.

Clouds capped Ashlandia’s sky. Rain is s’posed to be headin’ our way. 38 degrees F now, we may see fifty.

Peace and grace took more hits this weekend. Murderers struck in Australia and Brown University. There were absolutely more murders and shootings than these two this weekend. These two were the ones which seized attention because of their planned cruelty. They seem like an extension of the mindset which put DJ Trump into the building formerly known as the White House for a second term. Part of a sad world where war and killing equals peace and justice. Same as it ever was, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

Then we came to the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife. Stabbed to death by their son. That kind of news bankrupts my soul, especially on top of the shootings.

Today’s music is a Velvet Underground offering called, “What Goes On”. I didn’t know of it when it first came out in ’68. Learned of it a few years later. Just fascinated me. It was the beat, the guitar, the organ, the drum, the lyrics and vocals. “One minute born, one minute doomed. One minute up, one minute down. What goes on in your mind?”

Today’s presence in the morning mental music stream was jogged when I questioned the poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, later known as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”. We heard it recited with some humorous music accompaniment at a holiday concert yesterday. St. Nick was covered with soot coming down the chimney. I commented that he must have been filthy by the night’s end. My wife said, “No, he’d be cleaned by Christmas magic.” Which lead to my observation that Christmas Magic would be a good name for a dry-cleaning service. Which precipitated the wonder, “What goes on in your mind.”

Musing around dream gyrations and yesterday and other things, the comment returned to me. The Neurons caught it and the song came on.

Stay warm and safe, wherever you are. Hope peace and grace do a quick cameo for the cameras. Coffee has me going again. Oh, it’s raining, first precipitation of December. And off we go. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Mood: angrified

8 AM. My wife has left for her exercise class, Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) is talking to me about breakfast, sunshine is streaming in through the windows, and I need to pee. Time to rise and stalk coffee, I decide.

I step onto the back patio with the cats. Papi is chatting up a storm. Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) is more reserved. Sunshine baths us but smoke lingers in the air. Not as bad as yesterday. The air worsened yesterday as the sun arced over the sky. The air quality plummeted, skating through 190. Forests and mountains disappeared behind the smoky curtain. Fortunately, the curtain rose lost night for a while and we had a night of relatively fresh air. Looks like it’s getting pulled down again.

This is Monday, September 9, 2024.

It’s just under 60 F right now. We expect a high of about 92 F.

BTW, the MAGA answer to wildfires and its smoke pollution is to cut down all the forests. Short-sighted as hell, but that’s them: intellectually bankrupt.

I have “Good Thing” from Fine Young Cannibals ringing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark hazy). It’s because I was singing to that 1989 melody with a word substitution. “Good air, where have you gone,” was my lament.

I shifted from good air to good things as the song played. Good things like the efficient post office and delivery systems we knew for a while. Good things like safe schools.

Which triggered reflections on Vance’s comments about school shootings being a way of life because schools are soft targets, which are attractive to a ‘psycho’, as he delicately phrased it.

“And again, as a parent, do I want my school to have additional security? No, of course I don’t,” he concluded. “I don’t want my kids to go to school in a place where they feel like they’ve got to have additional security. But that is increasingly the reality that we live in.”

Vance’s memory is not impressive. People have been killed in churches. Most people passing a church will note the lack of security. And a Pittsburgh syngagogue was found to be a soft target. Malls and shopping centers are soft targets. Grocery stores. Paint stores, hardware stores.

Remember the shooting from a hotel room in Las Vegas? So a concert is a soft target.

What about the college campuses? They’ve been shown to be soft targets.

Police officers being ambushed are not soft targets, yet we read about that numerous times a year.

I remember that several work places, post offices, and a McDonald’s restaurant have been a soft target through the years.

Beyond them, we had vigilante types like Kyle Rittenhouser out looking for targets, or Trayvon Martin’s killer, who thought the kid going for skittles was a threat.

And let’s not overlooked the people shooting others knocking on their door because they’re afraid, a fear the GOP actively stokes to harvest votes. Or the man who shot a woman because he thought she was part of a scam.

As long as you dance around the obvious and pretend it’s something else, nothing will get done and the problem won’t be fixed. And the problem is America’s worsening gun culture.

Congress sort of addressed it for themselves: they’re made themselves a hard target, surrounded by security forces, a place where guns are not permitted.

Funny how that works.

Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. Coffee has broached my system. Here’s the music video. Cheers



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Mooday’s Theme Music

Today’s weather – 30 F, clear skies, rain drying on the ground, clouds circling the valley on the horizons — feels like mid-March. This is Mooday, Apil 17, 2023.

The sun is ‘climbing’ into the sky. Isn’t that a fascinating perception, that the sun is rising into the sky as a matter of the planet’s spin, tilt, and flight around the sun? Went out to see meteors last night but, rain. Clouds. No go.

My house weather system says it’s 37 F out there. Papi galloped in after being in for twenty minutes, wet paws sending him sliding and spinning. He’s no Aryton Senna. Weather spies warn Ashandia to expect more rain today, just showers. Sunrise was 0627 and sunset will be at 1954. Highs will crowd the mid-fifties by teatime and then drop as rain showers take over.

News today continues to focus mainly on the SCOTUS and the abortion pill, and the military ‘leak’ of classified info. Many decry this leak and suggest, shake things up. Change how classified is handled. Based on how many leaks? We had several more mass shootings over the weekend. Thoughts and prayers are being offered for actual loss of life by the pro-life party behind the abortion issues. Surely thoughts and prayers can work for the classified leak.

Weather inspired The Neurons today, coming up with “The Sound of Winter” by Bush (2011 – looked it up) in the morning mental music stream. The line is, “Hold on to yourself, it’s like the sound of winter,” which makes The Neurons ask, “What?”

Stay pos. Enjoy the sunshine as it comes until it becomes too much. So we, my beer friends and I, mused as we watched a snow squall flashed through followed by sunshine and then a rain shower. “Wait,” we told each other. “Probably by next month, it’ll be hot as hell and we’ll be wishing for rain.” Yeah, ‘cuz we’re like that.

I got coffee and music. Here’s the tune. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Tuesday’s note has been plucked, time for us to get up and f —

Yes, it’s Tuesday, January 17, 2023, for those scoring at home. Sunrise here was a minute later and the setting part will be a minute or two later. Slow change is taking place. It’s not really change, of course, except if you look at it with a very narrow aperture. That’s how I view many things taking place in the world today. They’re not really changes, they’re shift back to what they were, following an old orbit of thought. But the orbit will keep going and then we’ll again see the orbit’s other side.

Of course, it’s not exactly the same today as it was last year at this time of year. Nor is it the same as ten or a hundred years ago, despite what it seems. Small, but permanent shifts are found by studying the underlying details affecting the planet’s orbit. In the case of Earth’s days, we know its rotation is slowing. We know the average temperature is climbing, oxygen levels are dropping, and we know these temperature and oxygen results are being affected by human activity. We know days will become longer with the slower rotation and hotter with the slowing rotation. We know the sun is slowly cooling. We know our orbit is decaying and days will grow hotter as we edge toward the sun. We know that methane gases and diminishing glaciers will affect these outcomes. And some of us apparently know that the Earth is flat, and we’re kept from knowing the full truth about it by evil forces who don’t want us to know the truth for their own gain.

We also know that today is 3 degrees Celsius at the mo’, but it’ll climb to 48 degrees Fahrenheit here in Ashlandia. Sunshine has kicked into a satisfactory blaze. Actually, we know that the sun blazes along the same way all the time but clouds, axis tilts, weather pressure, and the Earth’s orbit defines our daily experience. We chose to express it along traditional lines that keep us at the center.

Conversing with Mom remains concerning. She prefers texting over talking on the phone. Her responses are about her many medical problems — heart, lungs, back, eyes, teeth, digestion, balance — upcoming appointments, and what is hurting where and what’s been tried and failed. Tres depressing to continue witnessing her decline and her fight against it. She wants to be there for her grandchildren, but her quality of life continues sliding down a hill, and it’s getting steeper.

After reading of more political contentions, more shootings and deaths, more murders and protests, The Neurons dialed up Elvis Costello and the Attractions’ 1978 cover of “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding” in the morning mental music stream. I enjoy his vocal style for this, but the song also display a pop sound from an earlier era. It’s upbeat tempo is a pleasant salve for rising depression and frustration.

Hope you have a grand day and you make it your way, and I’m not talking about McDonald’s, either. Stay positive. Yes, I dropped the negative test aspect of my daily encouragement to me and you. You’ll probably test negative one of these days but if you the right luck and medical assistance, there’s a hopeful chance you’ll emerged with your health intact.

Okay, I need coffee. Here’s Elvis and the band. Cheers

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