Beer-floof (floofinition) – housepet who enjoys drinking beer.
In use: “He had to watch his dog because the little beer-floof always lapped out of his mug of beer whenever the opportunity came.”
Thursday’s Theme Music
My wife gets credit for this one. She’s singing a few choruses from it as she goes about her day, so my stream took off and ran with the rest of the song.
From the good ol’ days of 1979, here’s Queen with “Don’t Stop Me Now”.
The Book Store Dream
There was so much dreaming last night.
One memorable part involved a back door where I checked on books. I don’t know why I checked on books there, but I would go out and look for books. It seemed to be by a garage door in my house. Returned surveys about books began arriving there. I struggled to understand what they were. My wife and some friends were in another part of the house. I took it to them but they were talking about other things and didn’t pay any attention.
I learned that the front of the house was a book store, but someone else owned it. I realized that the surveys were probably due to them but were being delivered to me instead. I found the owner, a woman, and told her that her surveys were being sent to me and that she needed to do something about that if she wanted to receive them. Another man, her employee, started talking to a group of people about the survey, and what they hoped to get from it. He was talking about the disappointment they had because so few had been returned. I interrupted him and told him they were being delivered to me instead of them, and gave them a stack of them.
Then I discovered an old Wizard of Oz DVD. Recalling how I’d come to have it, I went to return it to its correct place and discovered an entire stash of them.
Nobody else seemed to understand me, frustrating me. My wife kept leaving the back door open, and didn’t pay attention to my complaints about it. I finally told her that she couldn’t have those keys any longer. She and her friends decided to leave. She went to leave by the back door, discovered it was locked, and asked me if she could have the keys. That was a catalyst for sky-high frustration and irritation. I went through the same complaints and statements as before. She then left through the front, but still didn’t seem to understand.
Then I heard the book store owner, her employee, and several customers talking about the survey. The book store owner complained that they weren’t getting surveys back. The customers said they’d returned them. I intervened, explaining again they’d been sent to the wrong place, and that they were coming to me instead of the book store. I told the store owner that needed to be changed if she wanted to receive the survey. As I was now fed up with trying to get them to understand, I told her I’d no longer be an intermediary for ensuring her surveys reached her.
I left, but immediately regretted being spiteful. Outside, I walked down a large green hill. The hill was full of desks arranged like tombstones and grave markers. No one was at any of them. My desk, I knew, was at the bottom of the hill, where I was headed. As I was almost there, an old female friend, who I haven’t seen in twenty-plus years, joined me, talking and commiserating with me as we walked.
Reaching my desk, I sat in my chair and leaned forward in thought. She sat in a chair beside my desk, and then leaned forward and wrapped her arms around me. She was talking as she did, being very sympathetic, and then began kissing me.
The dream took an sharp, erotic turn after that.
Techno-floof
Techno-floof (floofinition) – a housepet who enjoys interacting with electronic technology or who is fascinated or entranced by electronic technologies such as telephones, televisions, and computers.
In use: “After showing his cat videos of birds and squirrels on the large smart-TV, Cameron was surprised one day when he heard the television go on, apparently by itself, in the living room. When he checked, he found his cat sitting on the sofa beside the remote. It seemed like the little techno-floof had watched him and knew how to turn it on.
“No way, Cameron thought. There had to be another reason for how the television came on.”
Wednesday’s Theme Music
I was thinking about the our entanglements through love and sex, blood and money, politics and hopes, and all the other ways we become entangled. Crazy dreams played a part, as did my writing process as I work on April Showers 1921, coupling and uncoupling plot twists and character arcs.
And lo, a song did rise in my stream, a song from 1975, when I was but nineteen and serving in the military in the Philippines.
A true legend and Nobel Prize winner (the accepting of which became another facet in the complex musician’s life), here’s Bob Dylan with “Tangled Up in Blue”.
Listening to it always makes me nostalgic for what I thought was going to be.
Interflooftion
Interflooftion (floofinition) – a task or activity left incomplete because of a housepet’s assistance.
In use: “She planned to put up the Christmas tree and decorate it, but a classic interflooftion orchestrated by the cat and involving the puppies shredded that plan.”
Tuesday’s Theme Music
Today’s theme music popped straight into the stream from memories and dreams. Here’s Rufus and Chaka Khan with a song that Stevie Wonder wrote, “Tell Me Something Good”, from the year I graduated high school, 1974.
The TV Movie Dream
The dream felt like a made-for-TV rom-com. I was a clean-shaven young NCO in a pressed service-dress uniform and tidy haircut. Due to weather circumstances and other logistic problems, I was required to help a four-star general for an evening. The general was a notoriously finicky and critical man, but I accepted my assignment with an aw-shucks gulp.
He was at a conference. The evening didn’t go as planned but I managed to keep a step ahead, and it went well from the general’s point of view, if not to anyone else’s thinking. (Sorry, but details are lacking.) The general then wanted to leave – now. But his aide, chief-of-staff, and other personnel weren’t there. Nonetheless, he wanted to go now. So I led him out of the building.
It was late a cold and starless late night outside. It’d been snowing for several previous days but sunshine had prevailed that day. Much snow had melted, flooding streets with icy slush. It was messy and travel was limited. But no problem, I took to the general to my parents’ house. Previously in the evening, I’d come by and set up a place for the general in their sprawling split-level. After showing the general to his place, I went upstairs and told my parents about their house guests. They accepted it with a matter-of-fact shrugs and smiles.
After that, I checked in on the general. He was fine, didn’t need anything and stressed, he didn’t want anyone to disturb him. He had work to do and then was retiring for the night.
Good to go. I returned to the convention center and encountered the rest of his group, as hoped, because they needed to be told what’d happened. They demanded to know where the general was. I explained it all to them and answered their questions. Their hostility soothed, they admitted that I’d done well. One insisted that he wanted to visit the general. I told him the general said he didn’t want disturbed. I left them discussing what they were going to do and went home.
As I arrived home (my parents’ house), a car of young women pulled up. The neighbor’s daughter left the car. The car left with the young women leaning out of their windows hooting and waving at me. The daughter, a short brunette in her late teens whose father was in the military, came over and flirted with me, beginning, “I hear you kidnapped a general.”
I told her the story. We flirted and then I was temporarily called to the house because the general wanted something to drink. When I returned, the young woman’s older sister, a tall blonde, was there. She asked me, “What would you do with slush like this when you were a kid? Wouldn’t you build a dam?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
The older sister said, nodding, “You settled a debate. Good-night.”
She left us. The young women and I went for a walk along the slushy street, building slush dams, but also breaking one open.
The dream ended.
***
Somehow, from all of this, I ended up thinking that the dream was about the outcome was the only thing that mattered.
Michael Seidel, writer 