Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Floofogenarian (floofinition) – An older person with an animal or animals. Origins: First known use in 1744.
In Use: “The Railroad District was a serious of very square blocks of houses built in the 1930 filled with floofogenarians who shared their homes with cats and dogs.”
I so dislike questions about my favorite. I don’t care about the object: book, pie, food, beer, wine, music, movie…you get it. I don’t declare absolute favorites. I can’t speak for others but IMO, my favorites often slide along a spectrum that’s driven by mood and, or, circumstances. Sometimes memories float up and a song comes on, such as Tom Petty, “Running Down A Dream”, and I think, yes, this is my favorite song. But in another place and time, another song, such as “Us and Them” by Pink Floyd, or “Zombie” by The Cranberries or “Get It On”, is played and it strikes the note for the moment, finding a bit of sympatico with my soul.
I swing the same way with food and beverages. While I have regulars I turn to, they’re not necessarily the favorite. Same with movies — “Unforgiven”, “Bladerunner”, “This Is Spinal Tap”, “Men In Black” — and books — “Catch 22”, “Catcher In the Rye”, “Lincoln in the Bardo”, or series like the Murder Bots or Chronicles of Amber. Novels…authors…genres…
If I have an absolute favorite in anything, it’s
My wife was stewing. “Papi changed his routine today. For some reason, he suddenly wanted outside at 4:22, more than two hours before his usual time. I don’t know what’s going on but there he was, scratching on the door, yipping at me because he couldn’t wake you up.”
Between us, I had been awakened but ignored the floofcas Papi was causing because I didn’t want to get up.
I thought of the reasons why Papi the ginger blade, aka Butter Butt, changed his hours. May have been a bowel movement thing. Papi prefers to use the outdoors as his toilet, frequenting the area by the fence behind the bushes.
But, him being a cat, perhaps he heard noises outside and felt a need to investigate. Conversely, maybe he realized the noises were coming from inside the house and decided that the outside was safer.
Other ideas are possible. Flooflight savings time may have kicked in. From what I understand from floofotologists, floofs are notoriously independent about FST. Each decides when they’ll switch over — or if they won’t switch at all. Often, though, once one floof changes to FST, other housefloofs do the same. After all they don’t want to miss out by falling an hour behind their floofmate, cause food. They’d rather get up an hour early rather than missing out on food.
I can respect that.
My wife and I remain surprised by how many friends and families are acting as though events under PINO Trusk is business as usual and no big deal. Pretty astonishing to me and downright demoralizing to the household’s female ruler. While one friend scowls and proclaims there won’t be 2026 elections — or they’ll be a sham — many others speculate that life will go on as usual; we just won’t have a useful Federal government.
Head-shaking to us, it’s head-in-the-ground thinking IMO. “Let’s just not pay attention and and pretend nothing is going to change and we’ll be fine.” These are self-professed Democratic lifers and progressives, retired professionals such as doctors, accountants, teachers, college professors, and nurses. I wonder, are my wife and I too deep into Doom Scrolling to make objective and intelligent assessments of WTF is going on? I don’t think so.
Now we’re seeing His Slickness reversing the tariffs. No, puttin’ ’em on hold. How’s that make sense? He’s all bold speech about how great tariffs are and then jumps back when he installs them and they have the immediate expected negative impact which anyone with common sense predicted.
“And you listen to some of our stupid people, and some of the very stupid people in Washington, DC, “We don’t want to charge tariffs. That’s not… It’s going to increase inflation.” China paid us hundreds of billions of dollars and we had almost no inflation. This group that came in, they had the highest inflation in the history of our country. We took in billions and billions of dollars from foreign countries in the form of tariffs that I hadn’t even gotten started yet. We’ll be a rich nation again. We’ll be able to do what we want to do. We have to do the tariffs. We have been treated so badly mostly by allies. If you want to know the truth, our allies treat us actually worse than our so-called enemies. But we have been treated so badly on trade and other things on military. We protect them, and then they screw us on trade. We’re not going to let it happen anymore. We’re going to be a tariff nation. It’s not going to be a cost to you. It’s going to be a cost to another country.”
That was Donald J. Trump in Wisconsin last year. Seems like stupid is as stupid does and DJT is cornering the market on stupid.
The Trump administration’s massive federal cuts and swelling feelings of economic uncertainty helped fuel a recession-level spike in layoff plans last month, new data showed Thursday.
US-based employers last month announced plans to slash 172,017 jobs, a 103% increase from a year ago and the highest February total since 2009, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas’s latest monthly job cuts report released Thursday.
It’s the 12th highest monthly total in the 32 years Challenger has been tracking job cuts. The 11 others (four came during the Covid-19 pandemic) all occurred when the US was in a recession, Challenger data shows.
The largest share of job cut announcements came in the government sector, where the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency has axed jobs, slashed federal spending and scrapped contracts.
By Challenger’s count, there were 62,242 announced cuts across 17 federal agencies. That’s a 41,311% increase from the 151 cuts announced through February 2024, Challenger noted.
The DOGE effect was not limited to the public sector: Downstream impacts, such as the loss of funding for private nonprofits, led to another 894 cuts, according to the report.
Outside of the government, the next largest cuts were in retail (38,956), technology (14,554) and consumer products (10,625).
I fully expect PINO Trusk and his MAGAzens to proclaim this to be former President Biden’s fault. Cos we know that story well, how PINO Trusk tries to take responsibility when things go well and blames every other biped when it doesn’t.
The firings of over 5,000 probationary employees at the Agriculture Department may have been unlawful, and the workers should be reinstated for at least the next 45 days, a federal civil service board ruled Wednesday.
U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board Chair Cathy Harris issued the order after the Office of Special Counsel alleged that the Agriculture Department had “engaged in prohibited personnel practices” to carry out the mass firings.
The question for me is, seriously, if you’d treated me like crap, firing me in the manner that you did, and then brought me back because it was probably illegal, how would I respond? Sadly, I’d prefer to act like a professional and do a good job because the nation depends on it and I swore that I would. But it would be evilly tempting to be spiteful and sabotage PINO Trusk’s government, basically treating him and his kind as assholes because that’s how they treated me.
Guess it’s a good thing that I’m not part of that workforce.
Someone kicked the bucket. Grays splashed across the sky. White highlights relieve the gray’s relentless hold and the sunshine skips in through whatever cracks it can find. Still, better than it was at 7:30 AM. I was on the road, northbound to a medical appointment then. Rain drizzled the traffic and motorways. 39 F then, we’ve jumped to 43 F now and may spring up to 50 F. Lot of the horizons were mystified as well, plying us with a wuthering heights vibe.
This is Thirstda, March 6, 2025. Remember, the holiday season begins less than nine months from now. Better get planning.
Coming back from ‘up north’…okay, ‘up north’ is actually almost due west northwest and just fourteen miles up the Innerstate. But it’s north and south on the maps, so, what am I going to do, just declare it differently because I think myself king of the world?
But coming back, heading east, snow topped the low northern mountains. The snow level looked like 2500 feet in elevation. The ridges on I-5’s southern side were snow free. That changed a bit as the valley pinched closed. Turning off the highway and climbing a surface street toward home, snow glazed the evergreens around 3000 feet in elevation. Nothing around our house, though. Typical of the period when seasons change, it all gets a little edgier, swirlier, and more unpredictable.
As far as medical updates from my appointments, my limbs are doing great and show no swelling. But appointments are necessary until the right side’s sock arrives. It seems lost in Truskland.
Didn’t have any sense of what today’s theme music should be. Like The Neurons in charge of that activity went on strike. Maybe they were fired. Terminated for poor performance. Who knows? Lot of that seems to be going around.
Fortunately, Dame Fortune stepped in and guided me to Rock n’ Roll HOF performance from 2008. Joan Jett, Billy Joel, John Mellencamp, John Fogerty and others were doing a cover of a Dave Clark 5 1963 teenbeat, “Glad All Over”. It’s a fun presentation, an excellent example of the thumping and rocking that attracted many to pop and rock. Hope you get a kick out of it, too.
Sunshine has made a breakthrough. Clouds are scurrying clear and blue sky is bowling in. I’m downing some coffee and hitting the writing circuit. Hope the day works out in good ways for you and yours. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 