Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Memfloofesis (floofinition) Term which describes the impression that an animal reminds others of another animal. Origins: first described in “The Floofilogues of Floofto”, circa 400 BC.
In Use: “When Pandora joined the household, memfloofesis arose among the other housefloofs that the new black floof was uncannily like their old black mate, Sugar, starting with how silent Pandora was to how they ate and slept on their back with their legs in the air. The memfloofesis was such that they were sure Sugar had come back to them, which made all very happy.”
I learned more new stuff yesterday. I’d never heard of ‘reverse harem’. So I looked it up: romance where a woman has multiple love interests.
In the course of exploring that, I discovered vore, a shortening of vorarephilia: an erotic desire to be eaten or to consume someone. I’ve never had such a desire and it’s alien to me. But I can see how it can be a part of a character or plot. Imagine building this into stories about aliens or time travel. How ’bout a vore time-traveler with an erotic interest in eating other time-travelers? Or a human with a desire to be eaten by aliens?
Then I learned about agnotology: the study of deliberate, culturally induced ignorance or doubt.
I’m constantly amazed by how little I know. I definitely need to expand my spheres of thinking and socializing.
Yesterday was a hot one, as they advertised. Today, Saturda, May 31, 2025, is expected to cool into the mid-80s. It’s 72 F and sunny now, and the clouds have ran away for grayer skies.
It’s May’s last day. Five months of 2025 are history. It’s been as chaotic as a Black Friday sale in the United States. As we spring into summer, I’m not enthused about what will come out of the Gold House, as Nan calls it. Her reasoning is spot on. It ssed to be the White House, but the present occupant, PINO TACO, is remaking it in the right’s craven, gold-worshipping image. They say that’s what the Bible says to do.
From Gold House, I crossed to Heart of Gold. My Neurons went onto a Neil Young kick. Soon they had “Old Man” playing in the morning mental music stream. The music faded for a while as I rambled through a litany of problems, stories, and challenges. Some were personal and narrowly defined from my novel-writing half of living. Thoughts about Mom’s health boiled in, and then came sympathy for a friend who is enduring a mess in his life. Prosaic matters like fixing the oven — the part has arrived — took over. Then there’s the ever-growing worries about the human rights, war, climate change, the nation, the world, and measles.
I read in MedicalXPress this morning:
There are 1,088 confirmed measles cases in the U.S., up 42 from last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. Texas, where the nation’s biggest outbreak raged during the late winter and spring, reported 10 additional cases this week for a total of 738.
There are three other major outbreaks in North America.
The Neurons shot a gap to bring “Don’t Let It Get You Down” by Neil Young into the morning mental music stream. It’s a 1970 song which will probably get you down, because it makes you listen, think, and feel. I once heard a DJ say that Young announced this song by saying, “This song is guaranteed to bring you down. It’s called “Don’t Let It Get You Down”.” It was a song I preferred to hear with a glass of red wine, either overlooking a body of water at sunset, or in a dark room, alone.
Into the day I go, with a cuppa coffee to help me carry the load. Funny, but our existence is fleeting in the great rush of time and space, but sometimes it seems so long.
Here we go. Cheers
This reminder comes to you courtesy of Mock Paper Scissors. I tried reblogging it, but, WordPress. So here it is, with a link to them. Respect to them for the reminder, this felon is the leader of the former GOP, which is now the Greedy Old TACO Party, GOTP. The Trumplicans who were once Republicans sometimes weakly mew with indignation have certainly demonstrated that they are, like him, racist, greedy, unprincipled, with little regard for due process, the oaths they swore, or most of their constituents.
LET’S GO, TACO.
It’s another year. That means more do-it-yourself work.
First, praise be to the net and the help that it provides.
My DIY needs began without any foreshadowing. We have up / down Duette honeycomb blinds in the office. The right sash raises and lowers the blind’s top while the left sash raises and lowers the blind’s bottom. This arrangement allows broad and flexible configurations. We drop the blinds’ top halfway in the morning to let early daylight into the room. Later, we raise the top all the way and then raise the bottom about two feet. Bushes block most of the bottom window so we get light without direct afternoon sunlight, which can be scorching, but still have privacy.
I pulled the cord to make this arrangement the other day and won ‘snap’ for my efforts. The ribbon tape which controls the inside mechanism broke apart. First thing I did was remove the blind and take photos of the labels. Labels on products are packed with information.
Then, to the net! I researched how to repair it. I figured I could do it. As usual, the challenge is to find the right parts. Unable to do it, I reached out to the manufacturer, Hunter-Douglas. Six emails, four days, and two photos later, they sent me a link to a KB article for how to fix it and told me they’re sending the needed parts, free, in ten to fourteen days. I’ll update you after that.
The second job came to light an hour later. I preheated the oven to bake potatoes. Only the oven didn’t go on. The burners lit so it wasn’t a gas issue, nor a general electrical problem.
To the camera!
To the net!
Quick research pointed to the igniter for my eight year old GE Profile range model PGB911ZEJ4SS. I should trouble shoot to pin it down but I gambled, hunted down the part, WB13X25500, and put in the order. I’m waiting for its arrival.
Will it work? As with everything, time will tell.
Out walking on break today, a Honda Civic passed.
1983, and silver, I saw. As sis had.
Sis’s Honda suffered from cancer rust. This one was in good shape. A Sarah Lawrence College decal was on the back window.
I was taken back. I’ve never been to Sarah Lawrence College, but it’s been in pop culture in sufficient settings that I knew it’s located in New York city. How did that car with that decal end up almost all the way across the nation, in Ashland, Oregon?
I wondered about the car’s history. Was it a gift to a student freshman attending Sarah Lawrence College? Conversely, maybe they bought it for themselves after graduating and beginning a new job. Maybe, though, the car was located here, and a Sarah Lawrence grad bought the car and put their alma mater on the window.
So many questions. When I returned to the coffee shop, I did a distance check between here and Sara Lawrence College: 2901 miles via I80. Take note, though: there’s a lot of construction enroute between here and there, and toll roads. But traffic is light. It’ll take just under 42 hours if you drive straight there.
I wonder if the car would make it. I imagined it returning to its home, like salmon returning to their spawning waters. Then it all veered along science fiction lines and became a tale about cars gaining intelligence and becoming homesick for their first owners, and then seeking them out.
Guess I’ll call it “Tires & Wheels”. That’s the name of the two main characters: a red and white 1985 Chevy K10 pickup called Tires and a 1983 silver Honda Civic named Wheels.
You know what? I think it’s a love story as much as an adventure.
Got up early, cut the grass. It’s Frida. Gonna be 95 F plus here in Ashlandia today. It’s 85 F now, all pretty typical for May’s penultimate day, the 30th, in 2025. Connectivity issues are stalking me in the coffee shop, which is also typical for when it’s hot, cold, wet, snowy, windy, or stormy. This post took an extra chunk of time because connectivity drops, and the categories and tags would disappear. Sigh of frustration.
Papi has taken early to his hot weather hidey hole among the vinca on the house’s side yard.
The photo was taken through the window glass, between the blinds, with my phone. Papi is usually hyper aware of sound, so I didn’t want to move the blinds and risk waking him. That’s me, don’t-disturb-the-cat Michael.
The news spin is so fast, it’s like trying to catch Road Runner. Just ask Wile E. Coyote how challenging that is, and he’s a super genius. Tariffs are on hold, tariffs are back, the Roberts Court ruled for TACO, the SCOTUS ruled against TACO. Senators are speaking against Trump, speakers have just supported his agenda. The stock market is up, the stock market is down.
Speaking of super geniuses, TACO sent the stock market tumbling with accusations that China has been caught cheating on tariffs. Given TACO’s usual M.O., that means the TACO Regime was probably caught cheating. Or they’re playing squirrel again, trying to distract us from news and information which TACO finds upsetting and doesn’t want us to notice. It might just be that he’s trying to make us forget that we’re calling him TACO now.
LET’S GO, TACO!
There. Don’t know if he got that. It’s our version of “Let’s Go, Brandon” that made the right so happy last year. Maybe if more of us did it, TACO will get the message. So, let’s all amplify it via social media:
News reading and wondering what fresh bad news is rising for TACO has The Neurons firing up “Duran Duran” with “Is There Something I Should Know?” from 1983 in the morning mental music stream. I suppose it could be the Propublica and Texas Tribune article (shared here via Alternet) that the Trump Regime knew that the Venezuelans they deported were not the criminals claimed. Maybe there’s worse economic news coming that’s prompting the Trump Regime to shout, “Squirrel!” Time will tell.
Hope your Frida works out well for you. Hope mine works out for me and my family, too. Let’s make it the best one we can. Coffee is at hand. Here we go again. Cheers
What jobs have I had?
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.
No, wait, those are song lyrics.
I was in the military 20 years plus. Did a bunch of jobs in there, you know? My specialties were war planning, command and control, and disaster recovery operations. And I was a facilitator for team building projects. I was in tactical air forces, space command, military airlift, and special ops.
Before engaging in that occupation — the Air Force — I was a newspaper delivery boy, worked in a grocery store during Christmas, and dug ditches. While out of the military after finishing my first enlistment, I was owner/manager of a small cafe. Cook, cashier, did the books and payroll, cleaned and stocked, and supervised a small group of employees. Since retiring from the Air Force, I worked in marketing, was a database administrator, an analyst and service planner for a Fortune 500 corporation, ran tech support, customer support, and sales for a small software Internet security unit as part of a startup, was a product manager for coronary and peripheral angioplasty products, and a marketing manager for new medical products attempting to find a safer way to treat chronic total occlusions. Now I write fiction. I don’t tet paid for that, so it’s not technically a job.
Basically, I was a jack of several trades, doing what I could to be gainfully employed. All of it was interesting and boring, challenging and tedious, but it helped me see the world and learn.
Michael Seidel, writer 