Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Haunted this morning by the Killers’ 2004 song, “Somebody Told Me”.
Basically, talking ’bout/thinking ’bout the current political environment in the U.S., I concluded with sour cynicism, anything goes in a place like this. And that led to The Killers’ song.
I especially always enjoyed the lines, “Somebody told me, you had a boyfriend, who looked like a girlfriend that I had in February of last year.” It never fails to amuse me.
Cat number two was the first encountered. He began the dance.
Number two is number one in his eyes. We don’t know what he calls himself. We call him Boo. Sometimes he answers to that.
Seeing me slack-jawed with fading dreams moving zombie-esque from bedroom through hall, Boo said, “Mrr.” Mrr, I think, means, “About time,” “Feed me,” “Good morning,” or “Hello.”
He was in a sitting position. Standing, he began singing, “You can go this way, you can go that way.” Thinking he knew which way, he shifted his body that direction to inhibit my passage and bend my will to his.
Feigning left, I slipped right. One cat passed. Not liking it, Boo sang out.
Cat number two, referred to as Tucker (but as adept at ignoring his name as Boo) was sitting just beyond Boo. Responding to Boo’s talking, Tucker said, “I got him.” Standing, he said, “You can go this way, you can go that way,” and moved to cut me off.
A deftly executed double feint was executed by me, an impressive move by a sleep-lusting, coffee-hungering moving catatonic human, though not easily. Tucker is a wily veteran and countered each movement, singing on as he did, “You can go this way, you can go that way, you can go this way, you can go that way.”
This is why Fatboy Slim’s 2001 song, “Weapon of Choice”, is today’s theme music. Naturally, I’ve spooled up the Christopher Walken dance version. It’s a little fun, a repeat, but worthwhile.
Here’s the music. Wear your masks, please.
Chose “Better Man” by Pearl Jam (1994) as today’s theme music. While it’s focused on a woman’s predicament, the song is all about rationalizing decisions and choices. As we approach election day, what better song to summarize the challenge? Many who voted for Trump in 2016 because they couldn’t support Hillary Clinton for POTUS. That most of the reasons that she couldn’t be trusted were outright bullshit, they went with the flow.
Four years later, lot of them seriously claim they still support Trump. That’s why “Better Man” is dedicated to them.
“She lies and says she’s in love with him
Can’t find a better man
She dreams in color, she dreams in red
Can’t find a better man
She lies and says she still loves him
Can’t find a better man“
h/t to Genius.com
Simple song for today, an old one. Aren’t all the good ones now old? Yeah, some new stuff is good. Depends on my mood.
Today my mood found me thinking about friends and some shit they’ve endured. It seems like Albert King’s melody, “Born Under A Bad Sign”, was written just for them. I won’t go into their details. You probably know some people who just can’t seem to catch that break, or maybe it’s you who can relate.
Great song, made even better when Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughn, two greats, perform it together in Canada in 1983. Sit back, enjoy some blues, and let your energy fly.
Feeling…morose.
Think it’s something that might be going around, like around the world, affecting our hopes and dreams, our plans and efforts.
Yeah.
Drifting through the morning routines, “Feel Good Inc” by the Gorillaz (2005) puddled around my thoughts. I came into the middle of the song, as I often do.
hey just have to go ’cause they don’t know wack
So all you fill the streets it’s appealing to see
You wont get out the county, ‘cos you’re bad and free
You’ve got a new horizon It’s ephemeral style.
A melancholy town where we never smile.
And all I wanna hear is my message beep.
My dreams, they’ve got to kiss, because I don’t get sleep, no.
Windmill, Windmill for the land.
Turn forever hand in hand
Take it all in on your stride
It is ticking, falling down
Love forever love is free
Let’s turn forever you and me
Windmill, windmill for the land
Is everybody in?
Laughing gas these hazmats, fast cats
h/t to Metrolyrics.com
It’s another feline inspiration today. Laying in bed, a cat had wedged himself between my arm and my ribs and was purring like mad. As I gradually awakened and stroked him into a higher purring gear, I chuckled to myself and muttered soto voce, “A cat is what I got.”
That line quickly morphed along the 1996 Sublime tune, “What I Got”. So here it is.
Van Halen is on my mind today.
Why not, right? He’s on many people’s mind. Eddie Van Halen, an amazing musician who focused on guitars, passed away this week. He was sixty-five, one year older than me.
He’s a contemporary, then. But he’s that contemporary who took the dreams and applied hard work and persistence, added to a huge well of talent, and made the big time.
Van Halen the group broke onto the radio music world where I resided in 1977. By then, I was twenty-one. Eddie was twenty-two. His songs — because, let’s face it, Eddie Van Halen was the primary force in that group, the largest defining difference with what he did with a guitar — spread across the AM and FM bandwidths, into MTV and movies, and across our world and lives.
It’s not a great reveal that Van Halen has provided the theme music for many days. Technology will keep Van Halen fresh and available to us, even if Eddie has passed away. Of all the songs available, I chose “Right Now” from 1992.
Candlebox’s 1993 tune, “Far Away”, is with me today. I’m in a reflective mood, so the song fits. It’s all about the growing distance between friends.
The song came out in 1993. I was in the military then, stationed at Onizuka Air Base, Sunnyvale, California, right off of highway 101. I worked in a building called the Blue Cube. I’ve been thinking about all the people I worked with there. I’m friends with some on Facebook, and we keep up with one another. Others have veered far right politically, so we’ve distanced ourselves from each other. A few have died. Others have fallen off the map. None, that I know, live in the same place, i.e., Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, etc. All have left that area.
Life is poignant with change, isn’t it? Let me sip my coffee, look out the window (the smoke is back; air quality has been hazardous for the last three days), and speculate.
Cheers
Today’s song is an earworm. The infection came from a television show.
But the song, “I Knew You Were Trouble” by Taylor Swift (2012) fits if you’re a cat owner. (Owner is used as a convenience; I don’t own them – they own me.) It’s easy to watch one cat walk in, eyeing another as the other scopes them out, and think of this song. The cats don’t telegraph their intentions to me, but to one another, many things are being said. But I think, this looks like trouble. Then comes the chorus, “Trouble, trouble, trouble.”
Then the cats start talking to one another. Yeah, don’t tell me that cats meow to humans and not one another. These cats talk to one another. I hear them muttering as I half-awaken, “Get away from me. If you don’t get away from me, I’m telling the ape man.” Maybe it’s all just theater for me.
It’s the second time that I’ve used this song. The previous time was in an incoherent post about Monday back in 2019. I don’t think I’d had any coffee when I wrote it, because it’s all over the place. It also associates this song with cats.
Cats and trouble; how’d they get this rep?
Anyway, here’s the song.
1978.
This song seemed everywhere for a while, but it’s one of those that’s been put on the bottom of the pile. It doesn’t seem to get much air play these days. Did its mix of acoustic and electric guitars not age well?
“Fooling Yourself (Angry Young Man)” by Styx rose through my mind’s layers as I read political news from the right about how great Trump is. Absolutely everything, from this young man’s point of view, was brilliant. Trump, to him, is powerful and intelligent, returning the United States to a position of international prestige and influence.
COVID-19? Why, that’s overhyped, as Trump just proved, in the young (his claim – I don’t know how old he is, just his claims) right-winger’s mind. No worse than the flu and already going away. No, the greatest threat to America comes from “libtards” and their willingness to give everything away (he believes “Obama destroyed America and the economy”). Further, Trump’s recent sickness was really just a cover for him to rise up and finally vanquish the Dems and “libtards”.
Okay.
So, yes, reading him, I thought, “You are really fooling yourself.” I can’t say that he’s under a rock; no, he’s fooling himself with his conviction that everything on the “lamestream media” is fake news. I don’t understand how they — these right-wingers who insist everything is fake news — receives the real news. That’s an opaque process. So, I reiterate, he’s fooling himself.
Which brings me back to Styx’s 1978 song, “Fooling Yourself (Angry Young Man)” from their album, The Grand Illusion. For my part, I think Trump’s claims about what he’s done is just grand illusion. Maybe it’s just me fooling myself.
Michael Seidel, writer 