Tag: steely dan

Saturday’s Theme Music

Ashlandia’s sprummer continues. Yesterday’s report can be recycled for today’s status — 64 F now, heading for the mid 80s, sunshine, blue sky, maybe thunderstorms will visit later.

Tucker, my wonderfloof, cracked me up in bed this morning. I was dozing, going through the dreams, when he joined me. After he prodded my hand, I shifted my position and petted him. I was on my side. He reached out and tapped my unengaged left arm. I moved it. He tapped, I moved, again, again, until I brought my arm down by him. Then he laid his head down on it. What a character.

Also on the cat front, 11:30 PM hits. My wife has retired and I haven’t seen the cats for a while. I open the front door to let in some cool air and the cats. Both cats and the air duly enter. Feels so good, I also open the back door to maximize the cool air’s access to our warm house — about 78 F inside. Then I go about doing some tidying, brush my teeth, so on.

I come out of the bath to find Tucker by his food pool, turned, looking at the slider. The screen is closed but the door is open. He just sitting there, looking. I go over, glance out. Nothing. But Tucker is freaking me out. I’m going all Suzanne inside, worrying about cougars, bears, people sneaking around the back yard.

I decide to go close the other door. As I do, I find Papi sitting in the living room, fifteen feet from the open door, watching it. Now I’m really troubled. Picking up the flashlight, I turn on the back lights, and turn the flashlight on. I step out, closing the door behind me, and listened. That’s when I saw it. Nothing. No critters or people. I went along the sides of the house. Zilch. Listened. Nada. WTH?

I go back inside. Papi is where he was. I close the door. Tail down and curled up between his legs, he skulks closer toward it, leaning forward with his nose, stopping when he’s five feet away. Then he backs up and sits. Still freaked, I close the front door.

Don’t know what was going on in the cats’ heads. Maybe they were just screwing with me. I think floofs like to do that to people.

Today’s music emerges from the cat incident and The Neurons thinking about mind games and mind control. They emerged with Steely Dan’s 1980 song, “Time Out of Mind”. Mark Knopfler does guitar work on this and weaves interesting notes around the main threads. I had a metallic brown Pontiac Firebird. Bought brand new just a few months before. Living in San Antonio, TX, assigned to Randolph AFB. I remember playing this album on the car’s tape deck as my cousins and I headed for Austin. Both of those cousins have passed away so I’m happy to play this memory.

Stay pos. Take over Saturday like you’re the dragon, master/mistress — whatever works for your pronoun — of the realm. The coffee drinking has commenced. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Ordinarily, I love this time of year. The air smells fresh after the winter scrub and temperatures are moderate. Blooms crack out of the ground and raise their heads, unfolding their colors. We’re still waiting for most of that. We’re on winter/spring seasaw, and winter has the better of spring on most days. High and low temperatures are ten to twelve degrees (F) below normal for this period. It’s 37 F now. Clouds are positioning on the western horizon.

Earth’s orbit still brings some reasons to rejoice, like sunshine. This time of year, it floods the master BR through the massive slider on the eastern side. Out in the dining room, sunshine steals in through the dining room southern windows and grows bolder. Back in the MBR, the sunshine fills the room and then slides south into the living room’s eastern windows. Finally rising above the trees and mountains, sunshine fills the living room’s eastern and southern windows, along with the dining room’s windows. Fabulous.

The blinds are raised. The floofs absolutely adore finding those huge stretches of sunshine. We have mixed flooring — bare hardwood, rugs, and then carpets. The floofs find their warmth intoxicating. They settle in spots. Synchronized grooming commences. Then, naps.

Today is March 31, 2023, March’s last day, and Friday. Winter storm watches and advisories are up for Ashlandia from tonight at 11 PM through Sunday night. Saturday through Tuesday calls for snow and rain. Up to 24 inches of accumulation, depending on your elevation and location. I think we’ll see some snow around my Ashlandia hood, but not much.

Watching and reading the political news in wake of the Nashville murders of six people and the D.C. debt ceiling talks and Jordan’s performance at his committee hearings, The Neurons punched up a 1972 Steely Dan song, “Only A Fool Would Say That”. Echoes my comments about what I was hearing and reading: only a fool would say that.

Stay pos., and enjoy whatever you can. I’m enjoying waffles and coffee, watching the floofs sleep in sunshine, and the build-up to shifting into the writing day. Kind of like getting ready for a championship game, with less commentary and commercials.

Have a better one. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Not snowing. But snow in its piles and layers across lawns, trees, and just about everything but the street still dominates the mind’s intake.

Thirty degrees F. Soft grays infused with whites blanket the sky. Creamy blues enhance the edges above the snowed in evergreens and low mountains.

Today is December 29, 2021. Wednesday. Today, tomorrow, and the day after, and we’re done with 2021. Can stick it in the garage with the other years.

Sunrise crept in more like it was fog than it was sunshine at 7:39 AM. Sunset cometh at 4:47 PM. Sunset is slowly ratcheting back. Sunrise has hit a pause. More daylight is in the offering, if the clouds will let it in.

A 1972 Steely Dan song, “Dirty Work”, is floating on the morning mental music stream. Came into the stream last night as I cleaned the cats’ litter box, harvesting the potatoes. I don’t think much more needs said about that connection.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vaccine and boosts when you can. Here’s the music. There’s my coffee. It’s like a moment of Zen. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

If this is Friday, then this must be September 17, 2021. At least I hope so. Otherwise I have one of them wrong. Then I’d need to ponder the whys of screwing up the date and/or missing time. Hate when that happens. Was it a worm hole? Alien abduction? Overfamiliarity with beer or wine?

Sunrise was a pleasant gentle rise of an orange glow. Orange because of the smoke effect. Came at 6:53 AM. We expect sunrise at 7:17 PM. Today’s high will be eighty-ish F. Air quality is Moderate to Unhealthy, fluxing around 97 to 110 so far this AM. A wind can change it all. Rains are forecast for later today — probably won’t come in until night — with more rain and much cooler temperatures — like upper sixties/low seventies — at our house. Can you say Fall?

A mellow song has fluttered into the morning’s mental music stream. Came about while feeding the cats. First I was singing them an actual cartoon theme song. Don’t know if you’re familiar with Underdog. I was singing that song but with lyrics contorted as “Thundercat”, an homage to the black and white streak that Tucker Cat, aka Thundercat, made as he thundered around. You know, “Speedy claws, meows of thunder, fighting all who sleep and slumber. Thundercat, Thundecat.” Once that song was purged, I went on with Steely Dan and “FM (No Static at All)” from 1978. Instead of singing the original lyrics, I sang, “Worry the kibble Mamma, form a breakfast line. Kick off your velvet claws, it’s eating time.” Yeah, makes as much sense as the original lyrics.

Worry the bottle Mamma, it’s grapefruit wine
Kick off your high heel sneakers, it’s party time
The girls don’t seem to care what’s on
As long as they play till dawn
Nothin’ but blues and Elvis
And somebody else’s favorite song

Give her some funked up music, she treats you nice
Feed her some hungry reggae, she’ll love you twice
The girls don’t seem to care tonight
As long as the mood is right

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Time to drink coffee. Remember, stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Let’s be careful out there. (From Hill Street Blues). Here’s the muzak. Cheers

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Today’s Theme Music

Most people eventually come to a yield sign on their personal roads that causes them to say to themselves, “Hey, I’ve grown old.”

For me, it’s always funny and sad, a dark humor time where you laugh at the inevitably and sadness. Part of the epiphany sometimes comes with or from chatting with young people or watching media aimed at them; you each vaguely know something of the other’s slice of culture but it’s otherwise a little bizarre. You each can’t believe what they don’t know.

I always thought that Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen” captures some of that bewilderment and amusement. A song from 1980, it came to me today as a response to a look from my wife. I made a throwaway comment as we passed in the dining room. She, busy with her thoughts, graced me with a befuddled grace that made me laugh. Though the wife is but one year younger, my brain brought out the Steely Dan line, “She thinks I’m crazy but I’m just growing old.”

It’s really neither, craziness or growing old. I had my writing head on. The world spins a little differently from a writer’s perspective. Events are oddly wired (well, wired in ways writers and other artists see that remains opaque to the rest) and the world’s tilt is canted in a different way.

Anyway. To the music. It’s a little mellow, soft rock with a jazz infusion. Give it a listen.

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Steely Floof

Steely Floof (floofinition) – An American floof rock (flock) duo who synthesized influences from many diverse musical styles to create an enduring pop-rock sound.

In use: “Active in the 1970s, Steely Floof’s hits like “Black Floofday”, “Ricky Don’t Lose that Floofie”, and “FM (No Kitties at All)” were frequently played on FM radio stations.”

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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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Black Friday’s Theme Music

Black Friday began a few weeks ago. I received word on a Tuesday when a mailer arrived announcing that every Friday was Black Friday was Black Friday. Others didn’t start Black Friday until Wednesday or Thursday, but many vowed to continue it until January 1, with one chain declaring that every day is Black Friday.

For some reason, all this Black Friday chatter delivered Steely Dan performing “Black Friday” (1975) to my theme song stream. Steely Dan’s version of the day is much different than the buying extravaganza of this year. Steely Dan’s song relates more to the Black Fridays of financial and social collapse.

Think of Black Friday as you will.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Closing out 2017, I figure it’s a good time to listen to some old music.

Funny to think of this song, “Reeling in the Years,” as old music. This song was released in 1972, when I was just sixteen. It remains fresh sounding to me. Yet, I know how different it sounds, and I know that Steely Dan broke up long ago, then got back together, and then Walter Becker died. The band’s symmetry is a perfect illustration of how life passes for most of us, with triumphs and struggles, but ultimately, somehow becoming finalized with our deaths. That’s life, in all its glory, cruelty, and normalcy.

Ironic to listen to “Reeling in the Years,” though, knowing one of them no longer reels in the years. I always wonder, is death really that much worse than living? Maybe something else goes on with the energy that is us as the body moulders and fades.

Yes, those left behind find it painful. It’s a hard path to follow, because when others die, we’re forced onto new paths. Some of the paths have only a sight variation, depending on how close we were to the deceased. But sometimes, it’s like we’ve fallen off a cliff and have to pick ourselves up and learn to walk again.

Sorry, off-topic. Let’s get more upbeat. Here’s “Reeling in the Years.”

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Another song was lined up for today’s theme music but the streaming cortex bumped into shuffle.

Stumbling and mumbling through dream fragments scudding across my thinking, the routines of feeding cats, pondering cold therapy, and contemplating breakfast and rain, a wash of first world self-pity swept me. Out of the melange of thoughts emerged an old familiar:

“Yeah, you go back, Jack, do it again – wheel turning around and around. You go back, Jack, do it again.”

Yep, let’s go back, Jack, and do it again. Let’s do it all again. Here’s Steely Dan with ‘Do It Again’ from 1972. Maybe it’ll alleviate some first world rainy Tuesday blues.

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