Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Floofgress (catfinition) – a cat attack; an aggressive cat.
In use: “She thought that when he rolled on his back and presented his furry tawny belly that it was an invitation to give him a belly rub, but her motion to do it started a floofgress.”
Blame today’s theme music on a cat.
I was administering a dose of hairball malt. Being of a loving, but perverse and distrustful nature, the cat fought, and the malt ended up on his paw. He tried shaking it off. I told him, “Lick it off, lick it off.”
From that moment, Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” mindjacked me. The beauty of the song is its malleability. All manner of phrases can be inserted and employed for the song’s lyrics. For instance, when you’re driving and encounter a rude driver, you can sing, “That driver is a dick, dick, dick, dick, flip him off, flip him off.”
Or you can just play with the words. “Bakers gonna bake, bake, bake, and the bandage is gonna stay, stay, stay, rip it off, rip it off.”
From my head to yours, from 2014.
Time for a small vanity project (as if every post made on this blog isn’t a vanity project, right?).
I think everyone has certain movies that they love to watch regardless of others’ ratings and reviews. It’s our dirty secret.
Here is my dirty list. I’ve seen each of these movies at least a dozen times, and have a few of them on DVDs, but I still watch them when they come on. Some of them don’t come on much any more, because they’re old, and in black and white, and a few of them depressed people.
The list isn’t in any order. Each movie has several particularly favorite scenes. Thinking about those, I realize they usually come at the movie’s end. IMDB helped me with the quotes because my memory isn’t that good.
Unforgiven (1992) – “It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.”
Fail Safe (1964) – “You learned too well, Professor. You learned so well that now there’s no difference between you and what you want to kill.”
This Is Spinal Tap (1984) – “I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn’t believe anything.”
A Christmas Story (1983) – “Oh, fudge. Except I didn’t say fudge.”
The Great Escape (1963) – “Cooler.”
Tropic Thunder (2008) – “I know who I am. I’m the dude playin’ the dude, disguised as another dude!”
Being There (1979) – “It’s for sure a white man’s world in America. Look here: I raised that boy since he was the size of a piss-ant. And I’ll say right now, he never learned to read and write. No, sir. Had no brains at all. Was stuffed with rice pudding between th’ ears. Shortchanged by the Lord, and dumb as a jackass. Look at him now! Yes, sir, all you’ve gotta be is white in America, to get whatever you want. Gobbledy-gook!”
No Country for Old Men (1997) – “What you got ain’t nothin’ new. This country’s hard on people. You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”
On The Beach (1959) – “The trouble with you is you want a simple answer. There isn’t any. The war started when people accepted the idiotic principle that peace could be maintained – – by arranging to defend themselves with weapons they couldn’t possibly use – – without committing suicide. Everybody had an atomic bomb, and counter-bombs, and counter-counter bombs. The devices outgrew us; we couldn’t control them.”
Fifty First Dates (2004) – “Sharks are like dogs, they only bite when you touch their private parts.”
Bladerunner (1982) – “Time…to die.”
Bridge Over the River Kwai (1957) – “Are they both mad? Or am I going mad? Or is it the sun?”
Love Actually (2003) – “A tiny, insignificant detail.”
Men In Black (1997) – “No, ma’am. We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor we’re aware of. May we come in?”
The Dirty Dozen (1967) – “I reckon the folks’d be a sight happier if I died like a soldier. Can’t say I would.”
Doctor Strangelove (1964) – “Well, boys, we got three engines out, we got more holes in us than a horse trader’s mule, the radio is gone and we’re leaking fuel and if we was flying any lower why we’d need sleigh bells on this thing… but we got one little budge on them Rooskies. At this height why they might harpoon us but they dang sure ain’t gonna spot us on no radar screen!”
What of you? Andy dirty secrets about the movies you watch again and again?
Floofiebrity (catfinition) – the quality of being a feline.
In use: “The tabby’s floofiebrity inspired her to decide that being herself was best expressed not by conforming to others’ expectations, but by finding and being her own true, confident self.”
It might just be me, but I think it’s pretty damn impressive that the volcano in Hawaii has been getting more and more jiggy, but it’s only today after two weeks, that the first major injury was reported.
I don’t envy the victim. Sitting on his third floor balcony, lava splatter hit him on his leg and shattered it below the knee. That’s how it’s been reported.
I appreciate technology more with this eruption. It’s amazing to see those explosions and flows, something that I can see from my home’s safety in Oregon as the volcano blows thousands of miles away. Jaw-dropping is the term I often hear when the footage is described. I, with my limited imagination, think, stunning and powerful.
Wasn’t streaming anything in my head this morning, save the theme music from “Magnum, P.I.” by Mike Post. I think Mike Post wrote half of the theme music for television shows in the seventies and eighties. Sure seemed like it.
I decided today needed something crunchier. As I walked, my mind recovered a little gem from 1999 by a man named Lenny Kravitz, “Fly Away”. I like those opening chords, and the general message, “I’d like to fly away.” 1999 was a damn fine year for me, maybe my favorite year.
Crank it up and sing it with Lenny. You can even play the air guitar.
I guess, to give it a start, it began with the cat.
The rest is backdrop. Setting. Background. This started with the cat and her kittens.
They were totally unanticipated. We were starting another football season. Done in by injuries, my team had finished second, losing in the Superbowl by two stinking points the year before.
Unfortunately, I lost to iBot. He’s the housebot. Thinking I’d be funny and play against casting, iBot has the most masculine personality among the bots. I also made him the most abrasive. So losing to him sucked. iBot isn’t a gracious winner. I guess I should say, wasn’t, since we’re talking about the past.
There were twelve of us, and the eleven bots. Our league was three divisions of four teams each. You played your division opponents twice, and each team out of the other divisions once, for an eleven-game regular season. Then we had the playoffs. Eight teams with the best records squared off.
Cat Day, as iBot officially named it, was the first day of the season. I thought I could take the Lombardi that year. We were playing by the 2030 rules. I had Ben Roethlisberger at QB (my Dad, before he was killed, used to tell me I was a big Roethlisberger fan when I was young), with Franco Harris (Grand Dad’s favorite) in the backfield, Mike Webster at Center (another of Grand Dad’s recommendations) and big Gronk at TE. I’d managed to add Alan Faneca. Wide receivers were Antonio Brown with Larry Fitzgerald in the slot. It was on defense where I’d improved, managing to add Ron Woodson, replacing Sherman, along with Troy Polamalu. I’d had enough money to get the 2010 version of Troy to go along with my 2009 version of James Harrison. I was set.
I’d settled into the Immersion Deck, opening day at Heinz under a gorgeous warm fall day. The crowd was roaring, my beer was cold, and my pizza was hot. TinBot’s Bengals, with Tom Brady under center, was my opponent. TinBot had finished last the previous season. He’d given up a lot to get Brady, although it was old Brady. I expected a good game.
They’d just placed the ball at the twenty when the alarms went off. iBot immediately roared, “Game’s starting. Shut that fucking alarm off.”
Arya said, “It’s an intruder alert. We can’t just turn it off. It must be investigated.”
“You’re fucking security,” iBot said. As Arya said, “I know who I am,” iBot finished, “Get it done, bot.”
“Game pause,” I said, as the only human, and the only one for which an intruder actually mattered. “Delay the starts until the alarm is resolved.”
While every bot except Arya cursed me, I brought up the security monitors. I figured this was a false alarm or malfunction.
“Where is it, Arya?” I said.
The interior cams caught her moving across the domescape. Drones overtook her.
“Don’t know yet, boss,” she said. She carried two weapons. The drones were armed, too. I pitied any intruders Arya might find.
The security net immediately pinpointed a breach back by a drain. That worried me. As the drones closed on the grassy place beneath a big black oak tree and hovered, their cameras picked up the cat.
“A cat,” I said.
“Yeah, we all have fucking eyes,” iBot said. “Thanks for the news report, egghead”
Protecting three kittens, the cat looked unafraid and ready to fight. The kittens looked like they were just a day or two old.
Arya arrived on the scene. She had her weapons ready. “Instructions,” she said.
“Nuke ’em,” iBot said. “The game’s waiting. Kill them and let the games begin.”
“No,” I said.
I had no need for a cat and kittens. I’m not an animal lover. I have livestock but that’s because I eat real food.
But I saw no reason to kill the cats. She looked like my first girlfriend’s cat. The girlfriend was Joy. The cat was Snuffy. Snuffy was male, though.
A cat with kittens in my sanctuary sowed a shitload of questions that required answers. Besides the breach, her presence meant something was going on outside of my fortress. Plus, being in the dome was one thing, but how had even reached it was almost as critical.
Shit. I didn’t say it, but I thought it about nine times in a row. I wasn’t going to start the football season that day. Not until I knew what the hell had happened to my security and what was going outside of my fortress.
So, see, that’s the day everything changed.
On Cat Day.
Michael Seidel, writer 