Tag: thinking

Frieda’s Wandering Thoughts

I’ve been using a secret weapon to amuse me the last few weeks. Two, actually. Both are throwbacks for me.

Tim Dowling is an American living in the UK. He writes a column for the Guardian. I find them hilarious. I used to regularly read him. Then The Neurons dropped him out of the rotation. I never noticed.

I regularly read news in the Guardian. I like their coverage of U.S. news. So, while reading an article a few weeks ago, I saw a reference to the latest Tim Dowling column. Clicking on that, I resumed reading him, catching up on his past columns by reading one everyday.

He’s sixty years old. Married, with three sons. They have just moved out. He also has a dog, cat, and tortoise. He plays in a band and deprecates his playing. Being an animal lover and very fond of cats, I enjoy the tales relating to his household animals the most. Today, I read his column from September of 2023.

Tim Dowling: we’re moving bedrooms – before the cat kills me

My other secret vice — Well, it’s not my only vice. I have a large list of secret vices. It depends on whose morality is used to judge me.

But this vice is watching an old British science fiction show called Red Dwarf. I recently re-discovered it playing on a live TV channel on Prime.

I began watching that show in the early 1990s. I was assigned to Onizuka Air Station then in the San Jose-San Francisco Bay Area. KQED introduced me to Red Dwarf during their science fiction fund-raising marathons.

Red Dwarf is an interstellar mining ship. It’s principally manned by Lister, Rimmer, the Cat, and Kryden. Dave Lister is the last human alive. He was in stasis as punishment for having a cat onboard the Red Dwarf. He stayed in stasis for 3,000,000 years while the radiation levels declined to safe levels.

That was needed because Arnold Rimmer had an accident. The accident resulted in a radiation link that killed all the crew members except Dave Lister. Because Lister was in stasis.

Rimmer and Lister were roomates and worked together. They do not get along. But the computer, Holly, brought Rimmer back as a holograph as a companion for Lister so Lister doesn’t go insane.

Lister isn’t happy about Holly’s decision.

The Cat is a direct descendent of the cat behind Lister’s punishment. Cats have evolved into a sort of human cat variation. He’s a vain, vapid, and selfish character who intensely dislikes Rimmer and is often Lister’s ally.

All manner of science fiction action happens to the Red Dwarf crew. Others species are encountered. Time travel happens. The mail catches up with them. Rimmer believes in order and is ambitious but inept. Lister likes to party but is intelligent and lazy. They plot against one another. Nanobots stage a revolt. All males, they are hungry for female interactions.

Yes, it’s silly. Full of all gaps, contradictions, and plot holes. But it’s fun. Watching it returns me for a bit to when I was thirty years younger and the future looked brighter.

You gotta do something to get through these days, right?

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Munda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Yes, here we go again.

Anyone remember President George Dubya Bush’s war on Iraq?

He wanted to attack it and was looking for a reason. Polls show the public divided about it. Administration officials like Colin Powell said that Iraq wasn’t a threat.

Then we had 9/11.

The Bush Administration was quick to try to connect 9/11 and Iraq, and then began painting pictures of fictional ‘weapons of mass destruction’. They worked hard to sell the need to invade Iraq because of the imminent threat Saddam Hussein posed. Intelligence was cherry picked. The press got involved. Stories were planted by journalists favorable to the administration. Then the administration would quote those newspapers and stories to convince people that even the ‘liberal mainstream press agreed’ that war was needed.

Any of this sound in any way familiar? It should. It was a marketing campaign. The Trusk Regime is doing something similar. Floating the idea. See what sticks. Repeating it, repeating it, repeating it so people become familiar to it. As using military force gains traction as an idea to ‘keep America safe’, the logic behind it becomes twisted. Intel will get cherry picked or made up completely. People not really paying attention to WTF is going on will begin agreeing, “Yes, we need to do this. We need to use military force against this growing threat.”

Use your search engines and the net’s ability to store and recall information to check the polls and reporting of the period before the invasion of Iraq. The pattern was clear then; it’s clear now. Part of the sell back then was how easy such a military adventure would be for a power like the United States. Remember them telling us how short the war would be? How they mocked people who pointed out there wasn’t an exit strategy? Recall, they told us the war would pay for itself.

Trump wants to attack places. Maybe Greenland. Maybe Canada. Perhaps somewhere else. Putting the nation on a war footing will improve his popularity and strengthen his hold. Because if we’re ‘at war’, then criticizing or challenging him can be called out as detrimental to the war effort. Look back at how popular Dubya became for a while. And that was done without AI and bots. Ponder how effectively bots and AI can be used to sell a war on social media these days. Think of DOGE and Elon Reeve Musk’s potential role.

Yemen was a trial balloon to let his military advisors and senior officials a taste of it. More will come.

Tick, tick, tick.

2

Saturda’s Theme Music

The world is full of colors. Pinks, yellow, and greens win the eye. Must be spring in Ashlandia. Temp is 45 F, however, it feels like 60, if you stand just the right way. ‘They’ say it’ll be 55 F today as our high but left out how it will feel. Will it rain? Yes! Maybe! It’s Saturda, March 29, 2025, so who knows? I will dress for dry and rainy weather. Yeah, it’ll be a dorkish sight.

Papi the ginger blade, known locally as Butter Butt, doensn’t seem upset with us any longer. Could be because we bribed him with chumley and other treats. I don’t think he forgot. He seems to have a long memory about things. It could be that he’s trying to mislead me into thinking he’s forgotten and forgiven, and then raise floofhem some night when we really need sleep. That sort of cunning planning feels like his style.

I surfed through a wild dream last night. Whole thing was just a series of flash epiphanies in dark night. I was telling myself that star energy runs through us, firing the little nuclear responses in our cells that generate our life energy. We die when the star energy can no longer feed our cells. Star energy comes through our chakras into our corporeal beings, and so on. Time is something we made up, and we have it all wrong. Everything is happening at once. No past, no future. Time was created so we could think in a more orderly manner but we’ve taken it too fair. Now it’s our straitjacket.

There was much, much more. Such as there is only one universe, and the idea that we treat our bodies wrong by trying to heal it when we should be reversing things. Dream me didn’t explain how that was supposed to be accomplished.

I awoke really hot. There are different kinds of hot for us as humans. Drinking a hot beverage feels one way. Sex hot, sun hot, fever hot, sports hot which incudes dripping sweat, furnace hot, which dries us out, desert hot, are all different. If you think about these hots, you notice how each feels unique, and our bodies respond differently to each. Well, the hot felt when I awoke from this dream was wholly different from any of those hot experience. Perhaps that’s all only me. I’ve never discussed the different sort of hots I feel with others

Anyway, I awoke feeling a different manner of hot. Then I headed for the bathroom to pee.

Der Neurons have sprung “Star Man” by Davide Bowie on the morning mental music stream. This was from Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era. Released in 1972, I don’t hear it often on the radio in ‘Merica. But I personally enjoy its message of hope being delivered by a Starman to Earth’s youth. I went with the Top of the Pops video performance. Even though the song is being mimed, it awakened and impressed many more people to the talent named Bowie.

Coffee is reassuring me once again. Time to play through. Hope your day is remarkable for you in many good ways. Peace out.

2

Frieda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

I read a headline out to the my wife.

Why the American consumer is fed up

“That’s CNN,” I add for her. “I know why I’m fed up but I want to see if CNN knows why I’m fed up.”

This is an Analysis by Harry Enten. I don’t recall the name. Doesn’t mean much for me. I may have read Harry Enten’s work before but didn’t realize it. I’m often ignorant in that way.

Harry Enten began, ‘Americans just feel like they can’t catch a financial break. You know the feeling. You go to the grocery store, you look at the prices and you want to channel your inner Vince Lombardi: “What the (heck) is going on out here?”’

I read that to my wife and subject her to my opinion. “He’s a little wrong on that. I know what the heck is going on. It’s inflation, protecting profits, supply and demand, tariffs, among other things.” Yes, I’m in a quarrelsome mood. That often takes place as I read the news in 2025.

The analysis continues.

“Worst of all, it feels like it’s only going to get worse. There’s a very good reason for that: Americans may, in a way, get taxed more when they go to buy things – more than they have for a long period of time.

“No matter what some people will tell you, tariffs are, in fact, taxes. When you combine the potential tariff rates that the Trump administration could impose on us, the consumer, with the inflation that raged out of control coming out of the pandemic, it feels like things have gotten away from us.”

That earns an eye roll from me. “Yes, no kidding.”

“Take a look at a recent report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. It estimates that under President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs, the effective tariff rate will be 8% in 2025. That’s so high that it would go off the page if you were charting tariff rates over the last 55 years.”

“Yes, but those are facts and history. Trump deals in prejudices and myths,” I tell my suffering wife.

She relates a story abut Wall Street. “This says that men working on Wall Street are happy with life under Trump because they’re free to sexualize women again.”

I grunt dismay and keep reading the CNN analysis. Prices are going to go up. Yes, no kidding. I read aloud, “Keep in mind that an estimated 25% to 30% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck.” Right, I know.

Of course, what I’m doing is validating my opinions. Experts tell us that’s one reason why politics are so divisive these days. While I’m reading this, people reading Red State read nothing about prices and tariffs. They’re busy writing up Trump’s glory, how great his cabinet is doing, and demonizing Democrats. Their targets these days are Fetterman, Pelosi, and Walz.

I finish the CNN article and resume my doomscrolling. Arctic ice has shrunk to a springtime record low but don’t you dare talk about climate change. Non-U.S. citizen Elon Reeve Musk is trying to buy votes in Wisconsin. Ohio is further narrowing what can be discussed in classrooms. Looks like it’s gonna be another quarrelsome day.

More coffee, please.

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Twosda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Out in Texas, they’re busy building a nanny state. Cos words are scawy! Sex is scawy! Books! Scawy! Freedom to read bad! Censorship is good!

They’re trying to take a quantum leap back to another era, where sex is hidden and all the men are virile and heterosexual and women are pristine and pure. You know, like it never was, except in fiction.

Texas lawmakers advance bill that makes it a crime for teachers to assign “Catcher in the Rye”

Currently, if someone is charged with providing sexually explicit content to a child, they can argue that the content was provided in pursuit of a scientific, educational, or governmental purpose. SB 412 and HB 267 would remove this affirmative defense. This defense exists because, while some people provide explicit content to children to harm them, books that include sexual content have long been a valuable component of secondary education. Many classic works of literature, including “The Odyssey,” “Catcher in the Rye,” “Brave New World,” and “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” have sexually explicit scenes.

Under SB 412, which the Texas Senate voted to advance last week and now awaits approval by the House, teachers and librarians would no longer be able to argue that sexually explicit content can serve an educational purpose. Only law enforcement officials and judges would be exempted under the new law. SB 412 also leaves in place an exception if the adult providing the sexually explicit content is married to the child, which is legal in Texas, with a judge’s approval, if the child is at least 16 years old.

George Orwell would be proud of these ‘modern’ Texans. Set up the cameras! Thy must, in order to ensure no one is circumventing a law and providing ‘dirty’ material to children who are only seventeen. Unless they’re married. Children can be married in Texas. So a child can be married and then be expected to have sex and raise a child but until that point, knowing about sex in literature is verboten.

Man, that is one fucked up state, thanks to the uptight, fucked-up Republicans guiding them. Might as well go ahead and start calling it the Nanny Star State.

2

Two Teachers

Daily writing prompt
Who was your most influential teacher? Why?
View all responses

Funny to me that this is a prompt today, as I was remembering these two teachers this morning before I went online. The pair of teachers were my favorites and most influential. One was encountered in sixth grade while the other taught me two years later.

First, each encouraged me to think harder and try harder. Through their support, I gained self-confidence. Both introduced me to new areas of literature. My sixth-grade teacher, Mrs Forsythe (who was previously Mrs Fogle) read aloud to the class every afternoon. One book she read to us was Flowers for Algernon. Noticing how much I enjoyed it, she took the time to suggest other books and authors to me. From this came my infatuation with science fiction and fantasy, and a lifelong love affair with reading.

Mrs Rubenstein, in the eight grade, taught me to read the news and actually think about what was being said about events of the era. This was during Nixon’s first term. The United States was still fighting in Vietnam. The intense Cold War with the USSR was one facet of worry for us, but many other wars raged, and students were protesting the world’s direction across the United States.

Both of these teachers fired an intense interest in events beyond the end of my nose. I hope that everyone has at least one teacher like them in their lives. I was fortunate to have two. There were several others for me who opened my mind as well, but these two women were very special in my development.

I will never forget them and the debts I owe them.

3

Wenzda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

I do not consider Trump to be POTUS.

Yes, Donald Trump won the 2024 elections. He was inaugurated. But in his actions since then, he has demonstrated he has no interest in being a president as mandated and restricted by the U.S. Constitution. Railing against rulings against him, he advocates removing or impeaching judges. Ignoring that Congress established certain functions, he is dismantling them and inactivating them without any input from Congress. He is President In Name Only: PINO.

I call him PINO Trusk, as the office now embodies the worse of Donald Trump — the lying, cheating, lawlessness many of us expected from this shallow, unprincipled narcissist — and the lawless, reckless, ignorant avarice of Elon Reeve Musk. Between the two, the ideals of our nation are being undermined; our history is being subverted; our lives are being destroyed.

Jamelle Bouie expresses it well.

Trump Has Gone From Unconstitutional to Anti-Constitutional

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Twosda’s Wandering Thoughts

I went to the store yesterday. AAA batteries were on sale at a good price. My modern life depends on AAA batteries. At my house, they’re employed in flashlights, remote controls, and the medical devices I use to monitor my health. I don’t run out of AAA batteries often but when I do, I end up having to hustle to a store and pay whatever pain to get them. It’s not much but my wife and I are deeply ingrained frugal beings. We like sales.

So I hit the battery display. Problem is, I saw the sale in a flyer at a glance. I didn’t drink in details like the brand. I thought that the store would make it evident.

There I stood, gazing at the racks of batteries. Have you shopped for batteries lately? There’s an amazing variety among sizes, intentions, brands, etc. It’s almost as bad as shopping for cereal, cough medicine, and ice cream. The offerings can be overwhelming.

As I considered it all, a store employee popped up. “Need any help finding anything?”

“Yes, I’m looking for AAA batteries on sale. Supposed to be a 16 or 18 pack on sale.”

“Hmmm.” He leaned in to help, pointing out different batteries. About the only other detail I’d noted besides the batteries’ size was the package size and the price. So I kept responding, “No, it’s not a four pack. No, it’s triple A. No, they were a less than eight dollars.”

Hope waning, I suggested, “I’ll just go to the front of the store and check the flyer.”

Suddenly, the store clerk pointed at a sign at the top of the display case. There was the info on the battery sale.

I laughed. “I can’t believe I didn’t see that. Thanks.”

He laughed. “You know what’s bad? I put that sign up there yesterday.”

“One of those days, huh?”

He grinned. “More like one of those weeks.”

“I hear that.”

As we both laughed, I took my batteries and we parted ways.

0

The Writing Moment

I finished my writing session yesterday and headed off to shop with my wife.

Well, that’s the story. In truth, I continued writing in my head. I’d been editing the novel in progress. After finishing for the day, my mind stayed on tht treadmill. Sentences to add came to me as I studied cat food offerings, strolled along bulk offerings, selected green onions.

I made mental notes to myself. Remember this and that. Would it hold?

Settling in today, I remembered that I’d continue writing in my head. Were they still there?

Yes, they all returned. I pressed into the manuscript to make the changes. Even as I did, I reflected, would I really know if I remembered them all, or is that just another trick of mind?

That’s how writing often seems to be to me: a trick of the mind.

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