Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
I know some cats that might disagree with this bumper sticker’s sentiment. Then again, they probably won’t disagree, because they would need to acknowledge that they failed. Everyone knows that cats never admit that they failed. They always act cool, and claim, “Yeah, I meant to do that. I meant to miss that window sill. Fooled you, didn’t I?”
Have you ever been about to shut down the laptop for the day and go to bed when a sudden insight into a scene overtakes you, so you think with excitement, well, I’ll just sit down and add that part or make that change, it’ll just take a minute, and then you get into the work in progress, and look up to discover, holy hell, it’s ninety minutes later?
Yes, it’s at once irritating, satisfying, annoying, and exhausting. That damn muse has no sense of time.
Speaking of time, time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
So, confession, again. I enjoy the original Mad Max trilogy. The first is the least of them, but I will watch The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome again and again without too much thought.
Which is what I did this week. Thunderdome ends with Tina Turner singing “We Don’t Need Another Hero.” Which makes sense in that context; they’ve already lost it all. Civilization has been wiped out, and they’re trying to rebuild something out of the wreckage, something more humane than Bartertown and the Thunderdome.
But I wake up and read the news, and think, we need a hero. Seems like any fucking day, someone is going to decide, “Today is a nice day to nuke! Let’s find someone and make a radioactive statement.” Then a shit storm of retaliation will fire up. Anarchy and chaos get stirred in as civilization’s plastic veneer melts, and norms, morals, and ethics get tossed.
(As an ironic aside, I first saw The Road Warrior on VHS while I was on temporary duty with the Air Force in South Korea.)
Yeah, gloomy fucking Friday, right? Not really. A hero can stop all that. I don’t see anyone riding in at the moment, but I’m always an optimistic person that eventually sanity prevails.
So listen to Tina singing in 1985, and think about it. Focus on the song’s words, “Looking for something we can rely on, there’s got to be something better out there.”
Yes, there’s got to be.
Catpulsion (catfinition) – a feline’s irresistible activity or behavior, often impelled by an urgent or obsessive need to act.
In use: “Whenever the bathroom door closed, Ittybitty catpulsion to supervise her humans kicked in, and she scratched frantically at the door to get in.”
Six deer walked along Siskiyou, and then decided to cross the street and go down Sherman by Safeway. They began across and then paused in the middle, as though confirming their direction. All the traffic stopped and waited for them to make up their mind and move on.
“Only in Ashland,” spectators said.
Yes, it’s part of the town’s charm.
Michael Seidel, writer 