A Lennon-esque Sunday Rain (Sunday Song Series)

Week #29 of our Sunday Song Series features Paul McCartney sitting in with Foo Fighters… performing as their guest drummer on Sunday Rain… a track from FF’s 9th album, Concrete and Gold (released on 9/15/17).

Methinks Sir Paul may’ve contributed a wee bit more… perhaps “wee” being an understatement? But…. more about that in a sec or two…

Naturally… my still being a mere mortal… I’m not entirely sure how any of this would all “work out”… or even if it would “work out” at all… BUT…

Had John Lennon been peering Earthward during Sunday Rain’s recording session(s), would he be resting in peace or feeling PO’d? This song certainly does resemble his own, Imagine album era composition, How Do You Sleep.

Originally, that very song title had done double duty as [1] the opening lyrical salvo for Lennon’s ongoing feud with McCartney and [2] as a wake up call / critique re songwriter Paul’s pop hits (which oft featured subject matter lacking substance / hard hitting social commentary). HOWEVER, if Paul had wound up borrowing from How Do You Sleep to influence Sunday Rain, How Do You Sleep could also refer to [3] How Do You Sleep having ripped off How Do You Sleep? Having just exhausted myself typing How Do You Sleep so excessively, my own sleep should be instantaneous the very next time my head hits the pillow.

Just to be clear, here… who really knows whether McCartney OR the Foo Fighters are responsible? OR both? OR… had this been totally unintentional… neither?

But, whatever the case may be… one does wonder how John’s widow, Yoko Ono, who still relentlessly guards over her former husband’s intellectual property, is feeling? How Does she Sleep knowing that either inadvertent or intentional copyright infringement has occurred? Or does she know at all?

My cursory web searches, which assign songwriting credits of Sunday Rain to David Grohl, Nathan Mendel, Pat Smear, Rami Jaffee, Oliver Hawkins, Christopher Shiflett… with nary a mention of John Lennon… do suggest that answer is NOPE.

So… will our Sunday Song Series continue? My answer is YEP!

Let’s all meet back here in seven days…

 

 

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“Monday Morning” Mueller Mulling

 

Even though it’s the weekend, it’s never too late for some Monday Morning Quarterbacking. Hence… the slew of BIG Qs…

• If the fake prez really is not guilty of collusion, why the need for his repeated secret meetings with Vladimir Putin? More specifically…

• WTF went down in Buenos Aires, Argentina during the Nov 30 – Dec 1, 2018 G-20 summit?

For the sake of completeness… the only others present during that on-the-sly, tête-à-tête were Trump’s alienated wife, Melania, and Putin’s untrustworthy translator.

For the sake of emphasis… that meant absolutely NO American translator / note-taker had been present.

• Why would anyone who fancies himself both a savvy businessman and (in his own trumpeted words) “a very stable genius” ever be soft in the head enough to implicitly trust Putin’s translator?

• How could he even verify that words / thoughts… both Putin’s and his own… were being accurately and completely communicated?

• Minus an American translator, how do we even know the fake prez was always keeping America’s… indeed, the entire free world’s… best interests in mind?

The mere thought of such a sketchy get-together does beg even more follow up Qs…

• Amongst that foursome, was Melania the only American in the room?

• Were we to ask the fake prez to provide an Honest-to-God, rundown re all that had transpired, would he conveniently invoke “executive priviledge” to stonewall us?

SIDEBAR: True, for national security reasons a prez… wise or otherwise… cannot always disclose everything to the general public. Even so, that does not mean that Congress should be kept in the dark, too! It’s not called Congressional Oversight for nothing! And that’s an American fact-of-life totally foreign to the fake prez… something he simply cannot begin to wrap his warped, autocratic mind around!

• Would an innocent person… ANY INNOCENT PERSON… ever need to act so furtively?

• Of course, considering his past performances… what fact checking has easily exposed to be his pathologically lying… why would we even bother to ask him in the first place?

• Even more worrisome… is he even capable of recalling much of anything, anyway?

Safe to say, Putin is the only one who is in full possession of his faculties and who knows WTF actually happened during their Buenos Aires chat. It goes without saying, he’ll forever remain tight-lipped.

Ergo… all that’s left for us is mere conjecture…

• Perhaps Bad Vlad and the fake prez were just letting their hair down and would both be too embarrassed to ever admit that all they did was tell fart jokes? Maybe even strip off their shirts to make farting noises with their armpits?

OR…

• As long as we’re on the subject of frivolity, perhaps their rendezvous had merely revolved around a silly proposition… i.e., the fake prez’s pathetic sales pitch to erect yet another gawdy, golden, phallic symbol Trump Tower to loom over and cheapen the Russian skyline?

OR were there far more serious issues…

• The translator’s whispered in the ear, not so friendly reminder… i.e., how Putin still (allegedly) possesses a suitable for blackmailing video focusing upon Russian “climate change”… or stated less euphemistically… showers of the “golden” variety?

OR…

• Putin flagrantly offering his services to screw around with America’s 2020 elections… i.e., just to insure a second term for his comrade / autocratic protégé?

Ant to that end… THE END…

• Putin’s revealing his plot to strong-arm Robert Mueller until he’d cave… i.e., agree to water down his report?

 

 

 

2 March 24ths for the Virtual MemoryBook

 

Sixteen years ago, March 24th fell on a Monday… the day my nearly 90-year-old mother fell and fractured her femur… the final, full 24 hour day she lived in her home of 42 years.

Within mere minutes of my summoning an ambulance, we both could hear the approaching siren’s Doppler shift… the increase in volume. Once parked out front, the flashing red lights began casting their surreal, subdivision-wide strobe effect.

The EMTs did what they do best… rapidly evaluated and prepped their patient. As the midnight hour neared, they wheeled Mom out on a gurney, I locked up, started up my backed into the garage car, idled the engine in the lower driveway and awaited to join them on our ride to the local, nearby hospital. Even at normal highway speeds, our ETA would be five minutes, tops. At the stroke of midnight, we were on our way.

Since I knew sirens could easily, overly stress out my mother, I had requested they not use them unless the situation became a life or death matter. I was so relieved that her condition permitted them to heed my heads up.

Long sigh… within a week of successful surgery to repair her fractured leg, pneumonia had set in. Her advanced years and one year earlier heart attack all conspired to make her chances for rallying slim to none.

Mom’s ambulance ride, eventually, turned out to be a one way trip. Her Earthly Home left behind, the sequence of her rapidly changing forwarding addresses had become… Nursing Home… Funeral Home… Eternal Home.

This past Sunday, the 24th, from my own perspective, I could not help but dwell upon Mom’s final 24 hours in her home… the home I wound up inheriting. By early evening, I had wound up falling asleep on the living room sofa. But… oddly enough… with this day’s final five minutes rapidly ticking down… I had awoken… instantly cognizant of that timing’s significance. I threw open the front door and made my exit into the still of the night…standing on the dimly street lit porch… my eyes panning the entire neighborhood… my mind time tripping to that not so distant past.

At the stroke of midnight… just as I was about to turn to go back inside… I could hardly believe my own eyes. An ambulance was driving on by… traveling along the very same highway… in the same southerly direction… at the posted speed limit… no flashing reds… no siren…

And while there would’ve been no reason to be following them in my car this time… I did follow them with my eyes. And once they were no longer in sight… my gaze averted upwards… to the heavens…

 

 

 

Do U-2 Have a Sunday Story 2 Share? (Sunday Song Series)

Week #28 of our Sunday Song Series features U-2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday… the reality based, gory story a.k.a. “The Troubles” (Irish: Na Trioblóidí). As for all that went down on that ill-fated day, you can opt to read the in-depth backstory and/or settle for my following (overly simplistic) synopsis…

The Protestant government, known for discriminating against Catholics, oft deployed British troops and paramilitary forces whenever their inter-communal rancor spilled over into the streets. Yet, in spite of the demonstrations having been non-violent on that particular Sunday, the bristling with adrenaline / testosterone soldiers NEEDLESSLY opened fire to slaughter UNARMED civil rights activists, bystanders and even children.

Such bloodshed is eerily similar to 1970’s May 4th National Guard killing and maiming of Kent State University students protesting the Vietnam War and its Commander-In-Chief… one Richard (Tricky Dicky) Nixon… the prez who had been every bit the crook he said he wasn’t… and more. I remember this carnage so vividly because [1] the victims / fatalities had been cut down at such a young age (barely two years older than I had been) and [2] this was the very event which I credit with permanently politicizing me leftward.

It’s safe to say that you, my readers, wherever you hail from within our vast, violence prone world, have your own similar stories to tell and if you’d like to share your own insights, there’s plenty of room for you to express yourselves within the comment section below.

For me, it was… still is… difficult to accept how Kent State could’ve ever, possibly, gone down in my homeland when we SUPPOSEDLY had… still have… [1] the U.S. Constitution’s 1st Amendment and [2] The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 to protect us from such military perpetrated massacres… be they on Sunday or any other day. To e.g. their detailed terms… respectively…

“Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

And…

The use of the U.S. Army to aid civil officials in enforcing the law or suppressing civil disorder is prohibited unless expressly ordered to do so by the president.

Of course, that presidential wiggle room is the real kick in the ass. Voluntary compliance with such laws presumes a mentally sound, unbeholden, genuinely patriotic American president is parking his butt behind the Oval Office desk.

And such a characterization (most assuredly) had neither been applicable to Tricky Dicky (then) nor to the fake prez (now).

The stark reality, here, is that back in 2016, my own homeland’s foolish voters elected [1] a vacuous, vane, vile, vulgar, volatile and violence fomenting, vengeance seeking autocrat who sucks up to Vladimir Putin and [2] regards ALL liberal activism to be a personal affront worthy of his meted out punishment.

To punish people who peaceably assemble to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, would he ever bark out his shoot to kill marching orders to the troops he commands?

Well now… seeing how he already has troops stationed along the American / Mexican border… at the very least… he’s half way there. Furthermore, with the vast majority of that man-child’s actual adult advisors (who once-upon-a-time had kept him in check) now having been flung from his admin’s constantly revolving door, what he’ll do next will depend solely upon whether or not his narcissism will continue to distract him.

We can only hope that U-2 or some other song composer(s) will never need to pen new, Americanized verses for Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Let’s all meet up back here for our next Sunday Song… hopefully a selection that’ll prove a bit more pleasant… seven days from now!

 

 

 

 

The Antithesis of Society ~ 1 Quick Limerick #075

 

How to thwart the mass murdering creatures?
The dolt prez sez he’d arm our schoolteachers!
The butchers? The bakers?
The candle stick makers?
And our Pope? Rabbis? Priests? Clerics? Preachers?

Limerick lines 3 and 4 ATTRIBUTION

The irony here…

• While… to the best of my knowledge… arming theologians is not yet part of the fake prez’s preposterous game plan, the operative word is YET. Yep, nothing enforces, “Thou Shalt Not Kill” better than a pistol packing Pope, right?  (←btw that’s sarcasm)

• The notion of fighting fire power with fire power is idiotic. A nearly 100% armed to the teeth society could not even act as a deterrent towards mass murderers… a.k.a. terrorists. Considering how these gun nuts oft are suicidal and depending on first responders… in this case vigilantes… to shoot them, this might even cause an upsurge in terrorist attacks.

• The number of incidents of innocent bystanders accidentally getting caught up in the daily, ubiquitous crossfire and expiring would be staggering.

• The resultant Wild West, bullets flying anarchy would be the antithesis of society.

 

 

RU Hung Over? Hang Out Here! ~ Sunday Song Series

Our Sunday Song Series continues… this week featuring Kris Kristofferson’s Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down. This singer/songwriter’s picturesque storytelling lyrics focus upon the unfocused… i.e., the hungover, who’ve been haunted by liquid spirits / perhaps other substances and now find themselves ruefully ministering (<- forgive the wordplay… it IS Sunday) to the debilitating aftereffects.

Under such circumstances, it’s easy to see how dulcet tones could come in handy… and considering the voices of this vid’s dynamic duo, we’ve hit the jackpot! This particular duet is so apropos, too, seeing how Johnny Cash’s cover has been credited with making Kristofferson’s tune a Billboard Country Music chart topper.

To discover where our next Sunday Song journey will take us, let’s meet up back here seven days from now…

 

 

 

Johnnie ’n’ Jack ’n’ Jim ~ 1 Quick Limerick #074

 

We Dems deplore Don’s despotic regime,
Yet know impeachment is only a dream,
But why cry in our beer?
With three wise men so near?
Ol’ Johnnie Walker™ – Jack Daniels™ – Jim Beam™! *

 

*However… we must sober up in time for Election Day 2020… to make damned sure we deny that entire un-American regime a second term… maybe even introduce deposed Donny to ol’ Johnnie, Jack and Jim?

 

 

IQ Must Be Able To Override AI

Soooo… is the Boeing 737 Max 8 fightworthy?

I can only get a small sense of the horror and exasperation, which any jet flight crew must experience whenever a major malfunction occurs… especially one where an alleged advance… a.k.a. Artificial Intelligence (AI)… flat-out fails to live up to the inventors’ / programmers’ hype… and… worse yet… might even precipitate and exacerbate a problem.

Albeit a different form of transportation, four long decades ago, I experienced similar horror and exasperation.

It all began on a sunshiny summer afternoon. All the sudden, I discovered that my barely one year off the dealership’s new car lot, 1972 Chevy Nova was cruising along at 45 mph / 72 kph and still building up speed… all this occurring with my foot totally off the accelerator pedal!

Fighting off that sinking, sickening, surreal, this cannot possibly be happening feeling… I had to rapidly [1] assess a situation that I had never, before, trained for in any of my driver education classes, [2] come up with my own “by the seat of the pants” game plan to regain control and… above all else… [3] prevent the injury and/or death of other motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians. And let’s not forget saving my own life, either.

Trust me… for a panicking, inexperienced teenage driver, formulating such a plan can be easier said than done. My intitial inclination was to deem myself expendable and litterly ditch my vehicle. Fortunately, my self-preservation kicked in as did the realization that the light traffic volume was buying me both space and time for a less drastic, dramatic solution.

And in spite of the fact that my plan B left me worried that I’d damage the automatic transmission by shifting gears to Neutral at this speed… that became my plan… one that eventually allowed me to safely apply the brakes… to coast off towards the highway’s shoulder and come to a halt.

Of course, compared to a jet, I had only been dealing with lower velocity and forward, left and right maneuvers. A flight crew’s reality is much tougher… multiple hundreds of mph/kph plus the 
up and down of the Z axis… hopefully more up than down… and down only when that becomes desirable.

The fake prez did Tweet on this subject…

Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are…. …needed, and the complexity creates danger. All of this for great cost yet very little gain. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane!

Oddly enough… I find myself in rare… albeit only partial… agreement with him… or whoever the Tweet’s ghostwriter may’ve been. Of course Einstein… born on this very day in 1879 (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AL!) and having died in 1955… would be a lousy choice for any jet’s captain’s seat. But, setting all levity aside…

While I’d never suggest humankind should absolutely abandon artificial intelligence, aircraft systems designers must always [1] ensure that the flight crews are fully educated (write comprehensible instruction manuals / conduct training classes) re these systems and [2] envision the need for a manual override switch to allow the IQ of aviators… whenever deemed necessary… to regain full control over AI. Ultimately… that’s the best way to prevent injury and death.

 

ADDENDUM: Although the following clips feature Sci-Fi’s Star Trek Universe, the Season II episode, The Ultimate Computer did address the urgent need for AI… a.k.a. The M-5 Computer… to be governed by an OFF switch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cindy Stowell’s Incredible Jeopardy Finale

This past week, Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek addressed his fans… the world… re a literal life or death matter… his upcoming war vs. stage IV pancreatic cancer… a battle he is determined to wage and win. To be sure, the immense power of optimism backs the smiling face and stiff upper lip. We’ve even seen it happen before during Cindy Stowell’s appearance as a Jeopardy! contestant. The good karma Trebek accrued for all the compassion he showed her can only act as a potent driving force behind his flat-out conquering of all that ails him.

CommonSenseTom

The Cindy Stowell Story is heartwarming, inspiring and extraordinary. Despite the grim diagnosis of stage four cancer, she auditioned and proved herself fully qualified to appear on Jeopardy. Because she had advised the program’s accommodating staff of her medical condition, they had sped up their normal contestant selection process so she could compete sooner.

Only a few of the show’s producers and host Alex Trebek had known that the time she had left was limited.

Well… Stowell not only competed well but competed while ill.

During one taping, she had been nauseous, feverish and in need of painkillers… those meds slowing down her reaction time, which made signaling in to provide the questions to the answers an even greater challenge.

Even more miraculous, there had been a Jeopardy taping hiatus, which, purely by coincidence, had perfectly jibed with her need for hospitalization… allowing her sufficient time to regain her strength……

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Extreme Unction / Function ~ Sunday Song Series

With our weekly Sunday Songs Series now attaining the one-half year mark, we find singer, songwriter, record producer and music video director Sia… birthname Sia Kate Isobelle Furler… delineating the ways folks may wind up spending their Sundays… in particular, those who’ve opted to overindulge / self-inflict illness.

From the Oh BTW Dept… singer / songwriter Kris Kristofferson, penned his own Sunday titled / themed song, where he hauntingly addresses this “spirited” issue… referring to it as the Sunday Morning Coming Down syndrome. We’ll likely also be giving a listen to his insights… perhaps in as few as seven days from now.

Returning this week’s featured track… a Sia / Samuel Dixon collaboration… they wind up dabbling with what I’ve dubbed Extreme Function. For all intents and purposes, they’re applying the musical and lyrical anointment to those who are nursing hangovers and comparable lingering deleterious after-effects… precipitated by the consumption of whatever abused substances are in play. To help alleviate these “at death’s door” sensations… or lack thereof… they cleverly shift between the dreary minor chords to the chorus’ more upbeat major chords… their way of reassuring “Yeah, it will be OK.”

From the Oh BTW Dept… within the Roman Catholic faith, this actual anointment of the ill and dying is the sacrament formerly known as Extreme Unction… hence the source of my blog title wordplay.

Whether or not you now find yourselves afflicted, I do hope this song has everyone feeling OK this Sunday… and invite all to meet me back here next week for Song #27 of our still going strong Sunday Song Series.