Neurons fired, streams opened, and this song came to me today. Although I’m a Blood, Sweat and Tears fan, I don’t own any of their albums. Still, I know a number of their songs, like “Spinning Wheel”, “When I Die”, and “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy”, the song that passed into my slipstream of memory was “Lucretia MacEvil”. Sit back and enjoy Clayton-Thomas’ throaty vocals and that soulful fat brass sound.
Floofcon
Floofcon (catfinition) – A cat that’s been convicted in the court of household opinion of crimes such as theft, malicious vandalism, or disturbing the peace (among other crimes).
The August Holiday
The best thing about Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the December holiday triumvirate in America is that they make it difficult for November and December to sneak up on us. It’s hard to be unaware of the calendar with all that commercial preparation – advertising, music, and sales, repeatedly presented at high volume – taking place.
That’s the trouble with August in America: no real holiday to mark the calendar. Sure, we have Labor Day at September’s beginning, but it’s one of those nebulous Federal Monday holidays. People often ask each other, “When is Labor Day this year?”, meaning, what day does Labor Day fall on? Then you hit that long stretch from there until Halloween. Days skim by on such untroubled water. Suddenly September has turned to October, and you’re playing catch-up with time.
It’s a game that’s hard to win.
Portents
He couldn’t quantify how long it took — minutes, certainly, but how many? — but it required some time before he could gather enough information and thinking to perceive, something was wrong, and then to specify what it was. That, he told himself, was because it was morning, he’d not had his coffee, he was hungover, and this was weird. Then his thoughts were, I must be wrong. He sought to understand what was going on by learning how he was wrong.
The thing first noticed was that the sun was coming in the wrong windows. For that to be happening, it had to be past noon. This time of year, the sun didn’t move to the front windows until the mid-afternoon. He’d just arisen, so he must have slept in past noon. That made sense. The clocks said seven oh three, but they must be wrong.
Armed with a cup of coffee, he went outside to vet further observations. Nothing was really there. It seemed like morning, with the most obvious clues being that his neighbors’ cars were parked as though they had not left for work yet. Unless…was it a holiday?
His Fitbit said it was November fourteenth. He pondered whether he could accept that its calendar was accurate while its time was wrong. Either way, November fourteenth wasn’t a holiday, was it? None that he could recall.
To the computer! It would explain it all. He couldn’t really think what it was going to explain. From his simple observations, the sun was rising in the west.
That didn’t portend anything good for the remains of the day.
Deceived
You ever look out the window and think, “Wow, look at that sunshine, what a gorgeous day,” and then go out and get berated by body parts shrieking for warmth and calling you stupid for not dressing warmly?
Yeah. Brrr.
Michael Seidel, writer 