Author: Michael Seidel

Science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer. Singer (sorry, no shows) & nudist (in my home). Beer, cat, cheese, coffee, pie and wine friend. Left IBM and Silicon Valley for the southern Oregon life but I miss the ocean. We're too far inland. Gotta move.

A Ferrari Dream

So many of my recent dreams have been like watching adventure movies. I can’t recall seeing myself in many of them.

I starred in last night’s dream, though. The dialogue was often too fast for me to hear and capture, and there weren’t any captions or replays available. But I was happy, cheerful, and, well, unstoppable, overcoming everything.

The dream took place outside in pleasant, balmy weather, and daytime. Accompanied by my wife, I was somewhere that seemed tropical, but I — we — had to get out of there. The question was, how? Other men, in suits, were trying to keep us there.

My wife and I were armed with small black devices. About the size of a television remote control (clicker, as my wife calls it), it had no buttons. Pointing it at people immobilized them. People with stronger wills could resist it, but they could be overcome by pressing the device against them. The stronger their will, the longer we had to hold it against them, but none required more than several seconds.

It was all kind of frolicky. The men in suits would say, “There they are, get them.” They’d come after that, but there’d be no rush. It was like they were going slow, trying to be clever and unobserved. But we saw them and knew what they were doing. Laughing, we pointed and stopped them without a struggle.

A stalemate delivered. We couldn’t leave, so we’re weren’t escaping, just keeping the others at bay. Along came a man and a woman. They were older than us and well-dressed. My impressions of them were they were wealthy and powerful, but also trapped. I didn’t know them, and observing their exchanges, I thought that they weren’t together but had recently met. I think she was called the duchess.

“Take the Ferrari,” the man said. He pointed.

An older white Ferrari was there. I hadn’t noticed it before. I thought the car was from the sixties. (I confirmed this after researching and finding the model. Here it is, a 1966 California 365, except my dream car was white.)

Ferrari 365 California - 1966

“I can’t take that,” I said, laughing at the audacity of it.

The man said, “Why not?” The woman said. “Yes, you can. Take us with you. Drive us out of here. You can do it.”

So we pointed and stopped the pursuit, got into the Ferrari, and I drove us up through some forest. We couldn’t get all the way out, though. “We need to stop and rest,” I said.

We did that. The dream showed us stopping and then awakening the next morning. Pursuit had caught up to us by then, but they weren’t energetic, and we had our remotes. After doing our point and incapacitate thing on those closest to us, we all got in the car. I was driving and my wife was in the passenger seat, with the other two in the back. I drove us up and out of the situation.

The end. An uplifting dream, it brings a smile to my face as I remember it.

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Stalefloof

Stalefloof (floofinition) – a position counting as a draw, in which two or more housepets cannot move because of a conceived advantage over the other(s).

In use: “The dog and cat met each morning in a classic stalefloof, standing on either side of the kitchen entrance when Carrie entered the kitchen. The pets refused to move because they didn’t want to miss out on any dropped food.”

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Next

You’ve slip into another life, putting on their skins. You pick up on their words. Their thoughts and feelings float into you. You begin to appreciate who they are.

Surroundings emerge. The plot rises. Events become clearer with a sudden squirt. You’ve followed paths that you didn’t know existed. They twist into surprising turns. The characters become deeper than you’d known. Sharper edges develop on their worlds. Their love and pain quickens as their direction grows crisper.

You walk with them, feeling it all, wanting to cry, and sometimes laughing, standing aside as you witness their existence and embrace them. Insights into their relationships develop stronger pulses. Typing and thinking, picking through words, you strive to keep up the best that you can. Their lives and times overpowers yours, and then, you stop for the day and think with a soft, private sigh, I miss them.

And you wonder, will they be okay? What’s going to happen to them?

What’s going to happen?

You think you should know because you’re the writer, the artist behind these ideas, but really, you’re just transcribing. It’s all going on whether you write it down or not.

That’s what happens when you write like crazy.

 

6

Change

“Keep the change,” he said, turning away from the cashier.

“You always say that,” his friend said as they walked away as the cashier put the coins into the tip jar and said, “Thank you, sir, your order will be right up.”

“Habit.” The other shrugged. “I don’t want change.”

“But it adds up.”

He was about to reply when his friend said, “Hey.”

As he turned, his friend flipped a silver coin at him. He caught it without thinking, mostly as protection to keep it from hitting his face. Within a second, he raised the coin and looked at it. Seeing it was a nineteen seventy-eight quarter, he said, “Fu — ”

Then he was gone.

Puzzled, his friend blinked at the empty space. He’d lost the thread on what he’d been doing. He’d  had a quarter and he’d been thinking…something…

Rubbing his head, he tried to remember. There’d been something there, but where that something had been, it seemed like there was now a hole.

Sighing, he told himself, it’ll come back to him. He was getting old and forgetful, like his parents. Turning, he hunted for a table, sure that he’d forgotten something important, growing less certain that it would ever come back.

 

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Floofmulate

Floofmulate (floofinition) – for housepets to gather or pile in a heap.

In use: “Kittens and puppies love to floofmulate, often creating a cuddle-puddle of sleeping little furry bodies.”

2

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Remember the expression, sock it to me? Maybe yes, maybe no. Our culture, especially the pop side, is an ever-changing amoeba. We’ve populated our language with expressions. They catch fire, flash through, and die. Sometimes they’re distantly remembered, especially more often now, as technology aids her ability to look back and remember.

In this case, I thought of sock it to me as part of streaming “It’s Your Thing” to myself. I was singing to myself about the things I do, and the cats for the things that they do, and mentally, to my wife, in regard to the things that she does.

“It’s your thing.” We mostly address life through avenues as individual as ourselves, seeking to do our thing. Sometimes the things seem weird to others. They can’t deviate from their paths and doing their thing to acquire the freedom to understand that you’re doing your thing. If it’s not offensive and not inflicting pain on others, why do they want us all to conform and not do our thing?

So, I want to thank The Isley Brothers for doing their thing and performing this song. They were good at doing their thing, giving us some memorable funk. Sing along. Don’t worry; the words are easy to learn.

3

You Don’t Say

My wife made something really delicious for dinner this evening. Actually, we had it for lunch. We ate loads of it, along with bread, and then had big salads for dinner.

It’s the third time that she made it. I really can’t say more about it than that, except also that it smells fantastic. You can smell all the ____ and ____ ____. It’s incredible.

That’s really all I can say. She has this thing about me not bragging to other people about the food that she makes. She says that it builds up too much anticipation for it and then she worries that it won’t be good as people expect it to be because I bragged about it so much.

Like, for instance, take her __________ as an example. I loved it, and begged her to make it all the time. And she did. I had her make it for an office pot luck because I thought it was sooo goood. The people there agreed, so much so that they asked me to ask her to make it for several subsequent pot luck lunches. When we had guests, I always suggested that she make her__________. She often did, but then got angry because I’d ask the others, “Isn’t this great?”

That was just the one. There was also her ______, _______ ______, and her ____ _______ with ____. They’re all tasty AND healthy. ____, too. She doesn’t make those things any more, either, because I bragged about them too much. At least, it’s been a long time since she’s made them.

So, I don’t want to jinx this by telling everything how great this thing is that she made, because I really like it, and I want to have it again in the future. But if you ever visit my house, maybe she’ll make it for dinner for you. Then you can see how good it is. Maybe she’ll make her ______ for dessert, too.

I’m sure you’d love them both. Just don’t tell her that I told you about them.

4

Floofstantive

Floofstantive (floofinition) – having housepets; considerable housepets in large numbers.

In use: “Some homes were floofstantive with but one housepet, often due to the pet’s unwillingness to share with other pets, while others sported multiple pets – cats, dogs, birds, and reptiles – projecting a very floofstantive image.”

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