Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
I stole this graphic from a Facebook post I saw today. Not mine at all. But as I encounter bloggers who sometimes issue GRRRRRRs in response to news events — won’t give any names here — I thought the graphic was apropos.
You can probably bet I’ll spend some time in my private growlery over the next few days.
We share our house with two floofs. Both are cats, strays that decided to call our place home. One is Papi, the ginger blade, also referred to as Meep and Butter Butt. The alpha cat is Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah), a black and white mixed fur cat with shades of Maine Coon. He’s older by several years.
Tucker has recently taken to not responding to me. Not responding, that is, until I mention Papi’s name. I can and do say, “What’s up, Tucker, are you hungry, what do you want,” etc., and get nothing. But if I say, “What is it, Papi?” Whoa, Tucker turns and marches over.
In my mind, I attribute this whole thing to Tucker trying to trick me into thinking he’s Papi. When I call Tucker by Papi’s name, Tucker is thinking, “I did it! He thinks I’m the other cat.”
As anyone who lives with an animal knows, this is basic flooflighting.
Mood: feelinalright
It’s crazy frog outside.
‘Crazy frog’ is a mondetext. A mondegreen is ‘a word or phrase that results from a mishearing especially of something recited or sung’. (h/t Merram-Webster). I figure that a mondetext would be a mishearing by an app when creating a text message, especially homophones. In this case, I was speaking into my phone, texting my sister when my wife behind me said, “It’s freezing fog outside.” The app turned that ino crazy frog. It’s our new household phrase for 2025.
Frida, January 17, 2025, has commenced in Ashlandia with crazy frog at 32 degrees F. A stagnant air advisory is in effect. When the fog burns off or moves away, it’ll be cloudy, sunny day that will make the thermometer sing at 46 F at its highest.
Alexa tells me that the Supreme Court ruled that TikTok is a goner. That’s business in ‘Merica.
Since mondegreens were introduced as a topic, The Neurons have awakened and put one of my favorites into the morning mental music stream. “Alive and Kicking” was released by Simple Minds in 1985. When it came out, my wife and I were out for a drive when it hit the radio. After a moment, she asks, “Are they singin, ‘I like the chicken’?” If you wanna check out other mondegreens, here’s a short list of some well-known mishearings.
Closing with hope that you have a strong day. Coffee and I have come together in a good way once again. Here’s the Simple Minds video. Sing along with it: “I like the chicken.” Cheers
So, some things were not loading in any browser (Edge, Chrome, Firefox). Not everything; it was an odd mix. Updates had been conducted, diagnosis run, etc. Wasn’t deeply affecting my ability to surf the net so I mostly just ignored it. I figured some update would be installed at some point which would fix it.
That didn’t happen.
Then it grew worse. Suddenly my ‘puter began telling me that I was in Airplane mode all the friggin’ time. Again, not a serious issue but annoying to me and also a concern that there may be deeper issues at work.
So, on a whim today, I ran updates on my drivers. Turned out my WiFi driver wouldn’t update. Ran some stuff to fix that, and all the network stuff just disappeared. Adapter wouldn’t turn on; didn’t even show up. Wireless switch didn’t work. For all intents and purposes (or intensive purposes…chuckle), my laptop’s wireless didn’t exist.
With a deep-throated GRRRRRRR building in my head, I pulled out an ethernet cable and went wired with my laptop to connect to the net. Next I did some brief searches about the problem. Really inane and simplistic solutions were offered. Like, “Check the wireless password and ensure that is right.” That was just red meat to the GRRRRRRR within me. But finally, with patience, I found a site that knew what was up. It directed me to my Services where it was revealed that Windows had turned off my WLAN AutoConfig. WTF, right? Right-clicked that puppy and joy was achieved. I was wireless again and everything loaded.
We have joy in mudville once again.
Flooflemma (floofinition) – A usually unpleasant choice faced by an animal. Origins: First known use in 1523 in Europe.
In Use: “Facing a major flooflemma between being bored in the house or being outside where it was cold, Papi chose to keep going in and out, causing some friction with his hooman room mates.”
In Use: “Forced into the flooflemma of not eating or eating food she didn’t like, Sunshine lived up to the Floof Code and walked away from the food.”
Yesterday was Wednesday. Per tradition, our local beer group met at a local brewery, Caldera Brewing in Ashland. The group’s name is Brains on Beer. It always makes me cringe, but we inherited that name.
Two new members joined us last night: Darrell James, engineer and novelist, and Dr. Pepper Trail, forensic ornithologist and poet, author of the collection, Cascades-Siskiyou: Poems. Mr. James learned of our group because, besides being a semi-retired engineer, he’s an energetic person who does home repairs for several members. Dr. Trail worked with and for several of our members, and they thought he would enjoy our company.
Whenever new people join us, the telling of the group’s origins is done. And I realized as I sat this morning and thought about last night, the whole story of the group’s beginnings is rarely told.
What is told is that four men came together to talk science and have coffee each morning. They shifted to meeting once a week, at night, to have a beer and talk science and technology. The four men cited are Lt Col Michael Quirk (Ret, US Army), Professor Frank Lang, Dr. Ed Shelly, and Michael Hersh. All are deceased. But while they were the first four BoBs, a woman was responsible for the group being formed.
See, Michael Quirk’s wife was a social worker. Through her work, she noticed that many men age into lonely, solitary lives. She knew that a strong social life helps people remain mentally, physically, and emotionally healthy. So Diane encouraged Michael to start the social group and shift from coffee in the morning to beer in the evening once a week.
Since that start around 2008, we now have 23 members. All are liberals, BTW. It’s not a rule, but that’s how it’s worked out. Ten to fourteen people usually show up each week. We had thirteen last night. We have one person named Bob in our BoBs. From engineers, we now include medical doctors, forensics scientists, microbiologists, botanists, teachers, an ornithologist, journalists, photographers, database administrators, graphic designers, architects, and firefighters in our numbers. We also have three female members. Since we began the habit of rounding up the bill and donating to STEAM programs in our valley, we’ve donated over $43,000 to buy computers, tubidity meters, and microscopes, among other things, while supporting local robotics teams and Ashland ScienceWorks.
And it all started with one woman’s idea.
If you’re ever in Ashlandia, come on by and meet us. We start at 4 PM every Wednesday. We usually collect $20 per person. Your first visit is on us.
I dreamed I was a fish. Apparently a youngish fish, I was gold and orange with red highlights. Swimming alone, I became aware that I had a pretty good memory, for a fish. I developed understanding that there were fish swimming around who unknowingly carried messages on their skin, and that there were some fish who carried memories and knowledge in their minds. All of these kinds of memories and knowledge had a short life and would fade, even though it all lasted longer than most of the other fish ever remembered anything. I began hunting out knowledge and memory fish after I established that I could transfer their knowledge to myself, keep it longer, and use it. I observed how several knowledge fish would swim together in schools, and other fish would join them, using information from knowledge fish to make decisions. But schools of fish avoided other schools, even if they were the same kind of fish. So knowledge would often not get spread past a school, keeping all of the fished dumbed down.
I began resolving to change that, to become a fish that spread and shared knowledge between different kinds and schools of fish. I felt that making all of us smarter would help preserve knowledge and maybe improve our lives.
Then the dream took a turn where an individual was lost and confused, and it sort of dissolved.
Then I went into another dream. In it, I was back to driving some silver, stunningly expensive sports car. I was alone in that one, and just driving along a blacktop road. Rising and falling, the road cut through an emerald green land under a blue sky. I would sometimes stop and exit the car just to gaze at the land and feel the sun and wind. I was much younger, but better looker than real life, with a dark beard. I never saw anyone else in the dream; just some dark birds silently flyin through the sky.
Michael Seidel, writer 