Blue Wave

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She watched him and smiled as he looked at his phone, turned pale, and quickly left the room.  The text on his phone said there was a Democratic sweep of both congressional chambers in the 2026 midterms.  This was like winning the lottery for him, because it would grant Democrats full control over investigations, judicial blocks, and allow potential impeachment proceedings.  Having a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate would allow Democrats to chair every congressional committee, where they could issue subpoenas and launch high-profile investigations.  A Democratic Senate could refuse to confirm judicial and executive appointments.  The Democrats ran on a campaign of making life more affordable for the American citizens and now they will have to act on making reforms.  Since Congress controls federal funding, and the House and Senate majorities can block or claw back appropriations, restrict how money is spent, or refuse to pass new funding bills for mass deportation programs.  A majority allows Democrats to launch congressional investigations, subpoena DHS and ICE officials, and hold public hearings on agency conduct.  Lawmakers could pass statutory guardrails, such as the proposed “Alex Pretti Act” aiming to eliminate qualified immunity for federal immigration agents, though enactment would still face a potential presidential veto.

The president also holds veto power on the tariffs that he initiated, but Democrats would be able to frustrate and constrain the administration’s agenda.  They could scrutinize or block funding for specific trade enforcement or implementation programs.  Many items that they are looking to change will probably go nowhere, as Republicans want higher defense spending, while Democrats want to reverse cuts to Medicaid in the administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill.  Given the increasingly confrontational nature of fiscal negotiations in recent years, neither side may be willing to concede much ground, so nothing will likely be done to lower the US federal debt which is now above $40 trillion.  The war in Iran would probably continue until we get a new president that isn’t, so pig headed.  The Democrats would have significant power to block, investigate, and challenge President Trump’s White House ballroom and triumphal arch projects.  He wanted real change and although things will be improving now what he is really looking for is a future Democratic president and a Democratic majority in Congress so they could pass legislation or direct federal agencies to remove Donald Trump’s name from federal property, buildings, or honors, provided they have the legal authority over those assets.

Written for Fandango’s Story Starter #266.

Nationwide Sensation

The maneki-neko, or Japanese “beckoning cat”, originated as a clay figurine in Tokyo (then called Edo) during the late Edo period (1603–1868).  A famous legend from Tokyo’s Gōtoku-ji Temple tells of a starving monk who shared his food with his pet cat.  During a sudden storm, a wealthy feudal lord named Ii Naotaka took shelter near the temple and saw the cat waving him inside.  Lightning struck the tree the lord had just left, saving his life.  Grateful, he became the temple’s patron.  Today, the temple attracts tourists from all over Japan and the world.  Another Edo lore credits an impoverished elderly woman in 1852 who had to abandon her cat.  The cat appeared in her dream and told her to make dolls in its image.  She crafted clay Imado ware figurines made from local terra-cotta, and sold them at the shrine gates, and escaped poverty.  Renowned artist Hiroshige Utagawa drew these cats in an 1852 woodblock print, the oldest known record of the fortune cat.

The beckoning cat is also known as lucky cat or welcome cat, and it is internationally recognizable with its raised paw that symbolizes wealth, good fortune, and welcoming customers worldwide into businesses.  These statues are often placed near entrances or cash registers to bring success.  Since the original beckoning cats wore a collar with a small bell around their necks to bring good luck.  The population of domesticated cats was relatively small at this time, some cats were kept on leashes to keep them close, rather than letting them run wild.  As Japan’s economy grew and shifted during later periods, the focus of the talisman turned more toward material wealth.  The neck bells were eventually replaced or supplemented by a paw holding a koban (a large oval gold coin from the Edo period) to symbolize financial fortune.  The cat came to represent material rather than emotional happiness.  In the 1950s, the cat’s head became as big as the body and eyes became widely opened.  Meowth is a Pokémon character inspired by the Japanese beckoning cat, and it features a prominent gold coin embedded right in its forehead.  Although there are no restrictions on the kind of cat that can be represented with the maneki-neko statue, the calico Japanese Bobtail is the most traditionally accurate and common breed.

A beckoning cat with both paws raised symbolizes protection, happiness, and an all-around invitation for both wealth and good relationships for a home or business.  It is a double blessing, combining the power of both single-paw gestures, beckoning financial wealth (right paw) and welcoming customers, friends, or family (left paw).  It is frequently viewed as a powerful guardian amulet that shields a household or a business space from negative energy.  In some traditional Japanese folklore, raising both paws is humorously interpreted as “surrendering”, “throwing up one’s hands”, or being overly greedy (“asking for too much” luck at once).

Written for Melissa’s Flash Fiction Challenge #396.

Captivating Focal Points

The specific pose that this model chose tilting her chin down against her chest while looking upward at the camera with her eyes is known as “The Look”, and it was made famous by actress Lauren Bacall, who originally did it to stop her trembling from nerves, but it became iconic because it creates an instantly magnetic, enigmatic, and intense look.  During her screen tests for her 1944 debut film To Have and Have Not, a 19-year-old Bacall was so nervous that her head and hands trembled.  Tucking her chin down against her chest helped steady her head and stop the shaking on camera.  Director Howard Hawks saw that the pose created a powerful, sultry, and magnetic expression, and Warner Bros. officially turned it into her signature trademark.  Lauren Bacall developed her “chin down, eyes up” signature look as a deliberate technique she practiced sharpening her jawline, intensify her gaze, and create the cool, controlled persona that made her un-forgettable on screen.

Looking up through the brow line naturally makes the eyes appear larger and more focused.  Tilting the head downward makes a neutral face look more dominant and aggressive because it creates an optical illusion that mimics a frowning facial expression.  Psychological studies on portrait framing show that tilting the head downward tricks the brain into seeing the brow line more pronounced, slightly V-shaped angle, making the subject seem more dominate.  From a technical photography perspective, tipping the chin down and away from the camera serves to sharpen the jawline, elongate the neck, and catch shadow lines more dramatically under the cheekbones.  The tilt of the head, the line of the jaw, and the curve of the arm create dynamic diagonal lines.  Diagonal lines are naturally more engaging to the human eye than flat, horizontal lines.  By turning her eyes sharply up and to the right, the model breaks the symmetry of a standard headshot, forcing the viewer’s eyes to follow her gaze and wonder what has captured her attention just outside the frame, or maybe this is just a quick glance across a crowded bar where Fandango or Nancy will write a noir story about, which they are both very good at.

The light comes strongly from one side, leaving the other half of the face and hair partially in deep shadow, and this was probably used to create a sense of depth and mystery.  The striking difference between the bright skin tones and the pure black of the turtleneck sweater makes the subject’s face stand out immediately.  Having her hand placed below her neck frames the lower half of her face, drawing closer attention to her facial expression, which could be described as guarded, contemplative, and intensely focused, because she isn’t smiling.  Her expression carries a quiet gravity that feels deeply personal rather than performative.  The sharp focus of the camera on her eyes depicting the crisp definition of her eyebrows creates a strong, direct connection with the viewer.  The way her hair is tucked behind her right ear allows the viewer to focus on her ear piercings.  This cluster of small, bright metal piercings adds a modern, detailed texture that breaks up the smooth gradients of the skin and hair.

Written for Sadje at Keep It Alive What Do You See #360.

Something’s Out There

Nena is the stage name of German singer Gabriele Susanne Kerner and the name of the popular 1980s pop-rock band she fronted.  The group achieved massive international fame in 1983 with their anti-war protest song ‘99 Luftballons’ and its English version, ‘99 Red Balloons’, which went to #1 on the UK Singles Chart and went to #2 in the US on the Billboard Hot 100.  This song was released on a 1984 compilation album which was composed of tracks released on their two previous albums, and the English-language version that they made for this song did not chart in the US.  Nena was formed in 1981 in West Berlin, when vocalist Gabriele Susanne Kerner, and her drummer boyfriend Rolf Brendel.  They moved there because their previous band’s (The Stripes who performed in English) record label, CBS, offered Nena (Spanish nickname for “little girl”) a new recording contract under the condition that she relocate to Berlin and start making music with German lyrics.  There they assembled the other members of the band, adding and keyboardist Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, guitarist Carlo Karges and bassist Jürgen Dehmel to complete the lineup.  The band wrote all of their songs themselves, and every member contributed to the songwriting pool, typically working in pairs.  Carlo Karges wrote the lyrics for this, and Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen composed the synth-heavy music.

While at a June 1982 concert by the Rolling Stones in West Berlin, Carlo Karges noticed that balloons were being released.  He watched them move toward the horizon, shifting and changing shapes like strange spacecraft, while thinking about what might happen if they floated over the Berlin Wall to East Berlin.  I didn’t include the German lyrics for this song, although I have only heard it sung in German, so this song was always difficult for me to understand.  In the song, Nena and the listener buy 99 red balloons in a shop and let them go, for fun.  These balloons show up on military radar as unidentified objects and both sides scramble planes and go to full alert to counteract a perceived nuclear attack, when it was just a bunch of harmless balloons.  I know about the Cold War, but this song relates the dreams of the German people that were lost after World War II.  The 99 balloons represent the many dreams each person had.  At the end of the song, Nena just wants to prove that the German people did have dreams by finding just one balloon.  She does find this one balloon, a dream, and lets it go.

You and I in a little toy shop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got
Set them free at the break of dawn
‘Til one by one they were gone
Back at base bugs in the software
Flash the message: “something’s out there!”
Floating in the summer sky
Ninety-nine red balloons go by

Ninety-nine red balloons
Floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, it’s red alert
There’s something here from somewhere else
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky

Where ninety-nine red balloons go by
Ninety-nine Decision Street
Ninety-nine ministers meet
To worry, worry, super scurry
Call the troops out in a hurry
This is what we’ve waited for
This is it, boys, this is war
The president is on the line
As ninety-nine red balloons go by

Ninety-nine knights of the air
Ride super high-tech jet fighters
Everyone’s a Super Hero
Everyone’s a Captain Kirk
With orders to identify
To clarify and classify
Scramble in the summer sky
Ninety-nine red balloons go by

As ninety-nine red balloons go by
Ninety-nine dreams I have had
In every one a red balloon
It’s all over and I’m standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
And here is a red balloon
I think of you, and let it go

Written for Song Lyric Sunday where the theme is to find a song that relates to civil rights, oppression, protest, revolution or social change.

Power Dynamics and the Human Struggle for Equality and Justice

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I have come to a point where it has become too much trouble for me to continue hosting my weekly Thursday Inspiration and Friday Faithfuls challenges and this is mostly driven by lack of participation in these challenges, but also a profound distain of people ignoring my posts.  I will continue to host Song Lyric Sunday, as many people seem to enjoy this.  On September 27, 622, the Prophet Muhammad completed the Hegira sometimes spelled (Hijrah), which was a flight from Mecca to Medina, and this historic migration constituted a turning point in the history of humanity.  This was not just a geographic move, but a radical social and political revolution against oppression.  Twelve years after he received his first divine revelation from God, he was faced with an assassination plot by the ruling powerful merchant Quraysh tribe in Mecca, because his strict message of monotheism challenged their polytheistic traditions, and threatened their political dominance and lucrative economic interests.  The Arab tribes of Aws and Khazraj in Medina, which was then called Yathrib were exhausted from years of civil war, so they needed a trusted leader to bring peace.  They sent representatives to meet with Muhammad and took the “Pledge of Aqaba,” promising to protect him as they would protect their own families.  He accepted this invitation to settle in Medina, and Muhammad arranged for his followers to slip away to Medina in small groups before making the journey himself.  The ruling Quraysh tribe subjected early Muslims to economic boycotts, social isolation, torture, and assassination plots, making this flight a direct response to severe human rights violations and the denial of freedom of belief.  The flight allowed the Prophet (PBUH) “Peace Be Upon Him” and his early followers to escape oppression and establish a secure base to practice their faith freely and have a new avenue for the message of Islam to flourish.  Prophet Muhammad looked back at Mecca the city where he was born with deep love when he departed.

Last week we had Withdrawing, Moving Away, or Separating where the theme was to find a song that mentions abandoning, departing, deserting, exiting, leaving, resigning, or retiring.  This week the theme is to find a song that relates to civil rights, oppression, protest, revolution or social change.  Take some time to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this music challenge, and even better, read as many of them as you can as you will probably find many enjoyable songs and it is quite possible that you will learn a thing or two.  Share your music with others and post a video, try do some research and let everyone know something about the song that you post.  Tell everyone why you like the song, whether it was a hit, or what you think the song is about.  Show the lyrics, let’s all listen to our favorite songs and explore some new music.  Try to find a song that fits the theme, then write your post and create a pingback, or you can just place your link in the comments section.

Suggestions
• If the song you select does not meet the criteria, then please explain why you chose this song.
• It would be good if you could post the lyrics to the song of your choice, as this is helpful for the people that want to follow along with the music.  Warning: Bloggers make posts at their own risk, and since song lyrics are copyrighted, you may be asked to take them down from your post if you don’t have permission.  It is highly unlikely estates or artists will sue regular people (although it has happened) especially if the bloggers that do this are not making money from their site, but an artist or a publisher can ask you to remove the lyrics from your post.  I am not a lawyer and there are no rules for Song Lyric Sunday, as we are all here to have fun and hopefully get to listen to some good music.
• Please try to include the songwriter(s) – it’s a good idea to give credit where credit is due. It would also be a good idea to give credit to the singer and the band associated with your song.
• Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be, but please try not to include too many videos as that just makes it take longer for me to look at all of the other posts.
• Link to the YouTube video, or you can pull it into your post, so others can listen to the song.
• Read at least one other person’s blog, so we can all share new and fantastic music and create amazing new blogging friends in the process.
• Feel free to suggest future prompts.  Have fun and enjoy the music.

This week I will be writing about the Nena song ‘99 Luftballons’, and next week, I will be writing about the song ‘Feel Like a Stranger’ by the Grateful Dead.  The upcoming prompts will be:
October 4, 2026 – Song written or performed by someone who was born in the month of October
October 11, 2026 – Song that mentions girls
October 18, 2026 – Song about fishing, a mariner, sailing, seafaring, or ships
October 25, 2026 – Song about the American West, or one that mentions cowboys, a sheriff, an outlaw, horses, cactus, or tumbleweeds

Social Approval

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I started my blog with the intention of making the world a better place (maybe just a tiny improvement nothing drastic like fixing a hole in the ocean, or absurd to mock anyone trying to find a clever riddle where there is none), and I never considered building an audience.  The world has many problems, and I have some unique skills and experiences which I thought I could use to help people see things more clearly.  I follow other bloggers and read their posts and make comments, but when they don’t reciprocate by reading or liking my posts, it is upsetting.  I write for my own benefit, and I will keep writing even if nobody reads, likes or comments any of my posts, as this frees my creativity from the pressure of external validation.  I am trying to let go of the views, likes and comments that I am not getting, because this makes my writing become a purer therapeutic outlet, a tool for clarifying my own thoughts, and a personal record of me.  By detaching myself from social approval, my writing has become deeper, and I enjoy the topics I have selected to engage in, but I think I am driving my audience even further away from me.  My creative autonomy has outpaced my audience’s current expectations, but I am OK with that, because I realize that I am unique.  I know that my choice of topics is chasing some of my readers away, but I will survive because I am going to keep on swimming from one topic to the next.  My grandmother always said to me, “They broke the mold when you were created.”

Written for the Great Minds Think’s Friday Challenge, which is hosted by Rohini and Sarah and this week we were asked to write a poem or story about a situation where the best intentions resulted in the worst results.

Reblog Age of Enlightenment

For a time, the rationality of the Enlightenment seemed to hail the final triumph of human reason, where the laws that operated behind the universe would all be known to us and we would be able to create the future we wanted.  The transition from the Enlightenment to Romanticism emerged as a counter-movement viewed as a reaction against the Enlightenment’s core tenets.  While the Enlightenment emphasized reason, logic, scientific empiricism, and the belief that the world could be understood and improved through rational analysis, Romanticism championed intense feelings like awe, terror, and love.  Romantic thinkers viewed the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution as closely linked because the Enlightenment’s focus on strict logic, science, and control over nature directly paved the way for industrial factories, machines, and the destruction of the natural world.  The rapid urbanization and industrialization of the 19th century led to a sense of alienation.  It viewed the natural world as a sublime, spiritual force rather than something to be engineered and exploited.  Romantics felt that the Enlightenment’s focus on reason and science was cold, reductive, and ignored the complexity of human emotion, intuition, and the spiritual experience.  Romantics often idealized nature as a pure, untainted refuge from the “dark satanic mills” of industrial society, contrasting sharply with the Enlightenment’s focus on technological and societal progress.

Romanticism elevated the imagination, freedom, and expression of the solitary artist or rebel.  This movement prioritized the subjective experience, the individual imagination, and the unique genius of the artist.  Romantics argued that truth, meaning, and morality could not be found through math and reason alone, but through deep emotion, intuition, and imagination.  The failure of the French Revolution to deliver on its Enlightenment promises of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” descending instead into the Reign of Terror and eventually Napoleonic imperialism led many thinkers to lose faith in the idea that rational political systems could automatically create a perfect society.  The Romantic thinkers began to feel that the Enlightenment was suffocating them and squeezing the spirit, passion and morality out of existence.  The Romantics felt that the Enlightenment notion that the universe was knowable and controllable was naïve, because the universe is infinite, mysterious and ultimately unknowable.

 

Age of Enlightenment

It’s Hard To Believe

1. Why is Royal Blood considered blue?
This is caused by inbreeding or incest with Blue Meanies.

2. What is a Blue Moon?
Ba-ding-a-dong-ding, it makes you sing.

3. What was the song ‘Blue is the Colour’ about?
Nothing is actually blue it is just the way light reflects off of surfaces and interacts with our eyes and brain.

4. What is meant by blue collar?
This is when you get a sloppy kiss by a goth and you have blue lipstick on your collar.

5. What is a blue bonnet?
It is a vegetable oil spread, not real dairy butter.

6. What did Little Boy Blue play?
He played with a dog named Blue.

7. What changed from brown to blue according to the song?
It was melanin levels due to ageing.

8. Where will you find a Blue Nun?
In a liquor store.

9. Why mustn’t you step on his Blue Suede Shoes?
When you write a song on a potato sack, you don’t want anyone messing up your shoes.

10. What kind of bird has blue feet?
I like all types of boobies, but I am really fond of the Galapagos Blue-Footed Boobies.

Written for Di’s Fibbing Friday.

The Reason Why He is Called a Poet

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Poets will notice small details that other people might miss such as the distinction that lies in her breasts, the outward size and shape as well as the space or hollow created between them.  They will focus on specific, intimate geometry to capture both the physical form and the negative space it creates, often isolating highly localized details, to evoke a sense of deep, focused observation.  By shifting attention to the subtle spaces between things, poetry transforms ordinary physical attributes into a landscape of emotional or aesthetic significance.  I am particularly fond of the E.E. Cummings poem “Between the Breasts”, which was included in a letter that he sent to his friend Scofield Thayer dated October 25, 1916.

between the breasts
of bestial
Marj lie large
men who praise

Marj’s cleancornered strokable
body          these men’s
fingers toss trunks
shuffle sacks spin kegs they

curl
loving
around
beers

the world has
these men’s hands but their
bodies big and boozing
belong to

Marj
the green slim purse
of whose face opens
on a fatgold

grin
hooray
hoorah for the large
men who lie

between the breasts
of bestial Marj
for the strong men
who

sleep between the legs of Lil

I enjoy reading poetry, but I do have trouble understanding most of it, but this poem celebrates the allure and power of two women, Marj and Lil.  It focuses mainly on Marj and the men who are captivated by her.  The working-class men find comfort and pleasure when they lie between Marj’s breasts.  They are infatuated with Marj, because she offers them something different to do with their hands unlike how they spend their workday.  Ther perform exhausting physical labor during the day, but then at night they seek primal pleasure, that involves drinking, and intimacy.  These men are described doing heavy, blue-collar labor that involves tossing trunks (moving, loading, or organizing heavy storage trunks or cargo boxes), shuffling sacks (physical, repetitive manual labor tied to commerce and industrial shipping), and spinning kegs (rolling or pivoting a heavy wooden beer barrel on its edge to move it across a floor) while holding onto beers. Shuffling sacks evokes the image of dockworkers, warehouse laborers, or industrial workers dragging, moving, and stacking heavy burlap sacks of goods (such as grain, coal, or flour).  Their labor-worn hands belong to the outside world, but their large bodies find a home with Marj.  These men do real work that the world depends on, but these same fingers that toss trunks, shuffle sacks, and spin kegs will “curl loving around beers” and gently stroke Marj’s body.

E. E. Cummings never held a regular job that involved traditional manual or physical labor. He was born into a wealthy, highly educated family, and his father was a Harvard professor and prominent minister. Cummings was supported financially by his parents and friends for most of his life, allowing him to dedicate himself fully to his poetry and painting.  He loathed the idea of a conventional career and held only two brief corporate jobs: a two-month stint at the Collier publishing company and a brief period working as a book dealer.  E.E. Cummings held deeply complex, romanticized, and sometimes contradictory views on women, which shifted dramatically depending on whether he was writing about idealized love, raw sexuality, or conventional society.

Cleavage describes the valley or hollow between the breasts and the medical or anatomical term for this region is intermammary sulcus or intermammary cleft describing the groove or space located between the two breasts on the chest wall.  E.E. Cummings and Scofield Thayer shared a complex relationship where Cummings had an affair and eventually children and marriage with Thayer’s beautiful wife, Elaine, with Thayer’s knowledge and financial support.  Edward Estlin Cummings met Thayer when he entered Harvard.  While Scofield Thayer was on his honeymoon with Elaine, he told her that he wanted nothing more to do with the marriage and that they were to live separately.  Thayer set up his wife in a Greenwich Village apartment, and he moved into the Benedick, an apartment building that catered to bachelors adopting the philosophy of free love.  Thayer gave Cummings money to write and paint, and Cummings wrote around one hundred poems about Elaine.

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge #449 where today she gave us two lines from an essay on Shakespeare by James Baldwin, which are “No time can be easy if one is living through it” and “That is why he is called a poet”, and I chose the second one.

Thursday Inspiration #342 Forever Autumn

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Respond to this challenge by either using the prompt word colder, or going with the above picture, or by means of the song ‘Forever Autumn’, or by going with another song by Justin Hayward, or a song that is about missing another person, or another song that reflects the autumn season, or you can go with whatever you think fits.  Gary Anthony Osborne, Jeff Wayne, and Paul Anthony Vigrass are musical collaborators best known for creating the song ‘Forever Autumn’.  Gary Osborne and Paul Vigrass performed as a musical duo in the 1970s.  Wayne produced two albums for the duo, including their 1972 debut album Queues.  The melody was originally composed by Jeff Wayne in 1969 as an advertising jingle for Lego. Vigrass and Osborne added the lyrics and performed the original 1972 version.  The song was later famously re-recorded with vocals by Justin Hayward for Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds in 1978, which was a progressive rock and orchestral concept album that retells H. G. Wells’s 1898 science-fiction novel about a Martian invasion of Victorian England.  Jeff Wayne specifically wanted Justin Hayward to sing this romantic track, as he envisioned a warm, acoustic, and string-oriented sound for the human and reflective moments of the Martian-invasion story.  He felt that pairing Hayward’s distinctive voice with a 48-piece string orchestra would be “magic”.

‘Forever Autumn’ is about deep personal grief, lost love, and the melancholic passage of time, sung from the perspective of the Journalist mourning the absence of his partner during the chaos of a Martian invasion.  The Northern Hemisphere just had its autumnal equinox for 2026 on Tuesday, September 22, at 8:05 p.m. Eastern Time, so I thought this song should fit in.  Justin Hayward recorded the song as a solo artist in 1976 when the Moody Blues were on a temporary hiatus.  It was released as a single in 1978, becoming a major hit, reaching #5 on the UK Singles Chart.  Justin Hayward sings the inner thoughts and emotional reflections of the main narrator, the Journalist, who tries to survive the Martian invasion of Earth.  The Journalist feels deep grief and longing after becoming separated from his fiancée, Carrie, during the chaotic Martian invasion, but she safely escapes and they are eventually reunited.

The summer sun is fading as the year grows old
And darker days are drawing near
The winter winds will be much colder
Now you’re not here.