Tag: memes

Mood: Monday and Song Challenge: Day 4


Morning Guitar Painting
oil on canvas, date unknown
©Elaine Fleck, USA

Riley, date and photographer unknown

From my earliest years, I liked the Beatles, as I like many artists and bands, but because of Riley’s talent for playing their songs on guitar and piano/keyboards, I learned to love the Beatles. I could listen to him play either instrument for as long as he’d let me, or until my parents made him leave. =) (And with that memory, let me note that today is my late mother’s birthday, and Riley was one of the few boys I knew who she kept liking through the decades.)

No matter how many songs Riley played, there would always be one for me, every time, on guitar. Though in this photo, he’s performing on keyboards, my mind will always go to that one song, one guitar, one boy. Any time this song (and a few other songs special to both of us) comes up in my Instagram feed, whether or not those are accounts I follow, I think of it as a message and leave a four-character comment on the post that’s meant to convey, Yes, my friend, I’m thinking of you, too. Riley’s birthday is in four days. How I’d love to be able to say those words in person or even on the phone. I will never stop missing him or appreciating everything we did and said and felt and wrote and listened to in all those years of friendship. I will love him always.

Today’s challenge is “a song that reminds you of someone.”

Button Sunday with Song Challenge: Day 3


In honor of today’s song challenge, what song reminds you of summertime?

Bet you thought I’d choose a Beach Boys song, but no, here’s a deep dive from Mungo Jerry in 1970. You’d have to work hard to feel unhappy when this came over your transistor radio.

Challenges yet to come.

Song Challenge: Day 2

Delta and Anime are waiting for a call from the 1980s.

An ear worm has been on my mind for a few days, since I used the music on an Instagram post with that photo and caption. From 1982, when phone calls were still a dime, I bring you Tommy Tutone.

Here are all 30 days of challenges if you want to play along somewhere or in my comments with a song title containing numbers.

Song Challenge: Day 1

Think I’ll try this here this month (I’m not active enough on social media to do it elsewhere). Here’s a list, because I can’t possibly pick one. All of these songs are available for listening on YouTube or most of your favorite online music sources. Do you have a favorite song–or MANY–with colors in the title?

Baby Blue–Beach Boys
Behind Blue Eyes–The Who
Big Yellow Taxi–Joni Mitchell
Black Magic Woman–Santana
Blackbird–Beatles
Blue Bayou–Roy Orbison
Brown Eyed Girl–Van Morrison
Deacon Blue–Steely Dan
Gold Dust Woman–Fleetwood Mac
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road–Elton John
Heart of Gold–Neil Young
Little Red Corvette–Prince
Li’l Red Ridin’ Hood–Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs
Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress–Hollies
Mellow Yellow–Donovan
Nights In White Satin–Moody Blues
Orange Crush–REM
Pacific Ocean Blue–Dennis Wilson
Paint It Black–Rolling Stones
Purple Rain–Prince
Sister Golden Hair–America
Tangled Up in Blue–Bob Dylan
Yellow–Coldplay
Yellow Submarine–Beatles

I customized my own meme

A lottery meme goes around from time to time, usually showing a room full of cats or dogs. I often have a room full of dogs and I’m NOT rich, so I decided to make my own version. My whole life, whenever anyone asked, What out-there thing would you do if you won the lottery?,” it’s always been this. (Sure, I hope I’d do good, too, but honestly, if I’m going to win millions, I want SOMETHING for me.)


I could get used to a chauffeur very quickly.

come up with your own

I’m going to advise you to find your own quote about laughter. There are about a million of them encouraging you to do it for your good health and state of mind, and these are times when laughing is hard. I was glad for today’s idol challenge:

Because an Instagram friend recently posted this photo:


September 2 — Laughing cropped photo ©Ed Roach

Thinking about the effects of climate change courtesy of Hurricane Ida on the country, and the effects of yet another Texas law stripping rights from women and the poor, does not keep me from thinking about COVID. I haven’t verified the numbers in the below captures, but they are thought provoking and also nothing to laugh about.

I guess today’s household task to keep me too busy to freak out will be making Tom’s bathroom clean like mine. And I have one disk left in the Feel Flows collection to listen to.

Thirty days hath September…

Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November
All the rest have thirty-one
Excepting February alone
And that has twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year

I can never remember any line but the first one of that little poem that was meant to teach the number of days in each calendar month. I’d rather cut out a day of August and give it to September, especially this year, but nobody asked me. So I’ll celebrate the thirty days of September in my own way.

I have four newly revised, full novels in the saga and 140ish pages of the next one. I’m thinking of slashing a bunch from those 140 pages and revising/rewriting. With that in mind, I decided to take a brief writing break, because August writing was intense and challenging.

I’ve made some daily goals to give me structure until I write again:

  • Do at least one housekeeping task per day.
  • Listen to music, not as background, but for the music alone.
  • Do one of the things that allows my brain the freedom to think about my fiction writing (coloring, sewing, petting a dog or four, creating art, contemplating, or writing poetry/lyrics).

Today, I cleaned my bathroom. That’s some exciting material right there, I know. Thank your lucky stars I’m not giving you details about last night’s palmetto bug adventure.


I’m still listening to the Feel Flows CD box set. I did that while coloring today, and I was moved to tears by 4:47 minutes of an alternate version of a song I already love. I guess I must be a multitasker, because music + coloring = a breakthrough idea on that fifth book. SCORE!

Sometimes when I post about the Beach Boys, whether it’s their music, their history, or their drummer, I feel like I need to issue a disclaimer. I’ll put one at the bottom of this post to amuse myself.

Someone I know only via a social media site who’s a big Eddie Van Halen fan is doing a “30 Days Idol Challenge” in EVH’s honor. I don’t know if I can find a photo for all of these categories for my muse Dennis Wilson, but I can enjoy the heck out of trying. If I know the photographer, I’ll give credit. If you are the photographer, please tell me so I can credit you!


September 1 — In sunglasses cropped photo ©Ed Roach, 1980

Disclaimer: Unless you are a member of the Beach Boys, or have traveled or recorded with the band, or personally know members of the band, or are related to a member of the band, or you are married to me, or you are my lifelong friend since the age of twelve, or you are a sibling or cousin who handed over your Beach Boys records to my care, carefully consider what you might say to me. Do not tell me “facts” about the band. I’m likely aware of them, true and false. Do not talk about the bad things connected to the band, e.g., mental illness, addiction, untimely death, a fraudulent therapist, or a certain psychopathic cult leader. I’m fully educated about how these impacted the lives of band members, and they aren’t fun for me to talk about though you’re certainly entitled to find them tantalizing on your own time. Do not tell me what years of their music are superior to other years unless you are a music critic with a by-line in a reputable publication or you did several years of research to write an authorized book about one of the band members. Do not perpetuate the contrived myth that the Beach Boys and the Beatles resented or competed with each other. That applies to some of their fans, not their musicians (a single Beach Boys member’s rambling speech at a recognition ceremony notwithstanding). There are two current versions of the Beach Boys: the band that tours under the name, and the band that Brian Wilson and Al Jardine, among others, work and perform with. If you don’t know which of these two bands has my loyalty and owns my heart, do you even know me?

Tense

I got upsetting news today, and it’s taken the wind right out of my sails. I’m sure I won’t be stranded here for long. It’s not my nature. But I don’t have the emotional stamina to come up with a blog post.

I did have a breakthrough in a chapter today. That’s something positive. So here’s a writer/English teacher joke.