Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Flooftonia (floofinition) – Pain or movement disorder caused by immobility or odd positions brought on by sleeping with an animal.
In use: “He’d slept with his head awkwardly canted because he didn’t want to disturb the cat nestled against it, so a fit of flooftonia was afflicting his neck and shoulder.”
Sunshine began crowning around 7:15 this morning in Ashlandia, and then came the sun’s piercing rays through trees and over snow-topped mountains at 7:34 AM. White and blue has been sprayed-painted on the sky. The paints are still resolving their form. It’s still and cold, 29 degrees F. Saturday, January 21, 2023, has been reached.
The other end of the day will come with the sun rolling away as the planet spins on at 5:11 Ashlandia time. We’ll have clouds and sunshine and other fun stuff with an ultimate high temperature of 54 degrees F.
I’ve been reading about state responses to electric cars. Many manufacturers declared that they’re shutting down internal combustion engine production by specific years. Some states have mandated that only electric cars will be sold within their borders by an established date. In response, other states, such as Wyoming, are attempting to ban electric cars in their state by 2035.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that we’re seeing this. We saw the same happen when ICE cars were introduced over 100 years ago. States drew up actions to throttle enthusiasm for these noisy vehicles and people rejected them as foolish. In one memorable article in the Saturday Evening Post, Alexander Winton recounted how his banker called and berated him about buying a car.
‘My banker called on me to say: “Winton, I am disappointed in you.”
‘That riled me, but I held my temper as I asked, “What’s the matter with you?” He bellowed: “There’s nothing the matter with me. It’s you! You’re crazy if you think this fool contraption you’ve been wasting your time on will ever displace the horse.”
‘From my pocket I took a clipping from the New York World of November 17, 1895, and asked him to read it. He brushed it aside. I insisted. It was an interview with Thomas A. Edison: “Talking of horseless carriage suggests to my mind that the horse is doomed. The bicycle, which, 10 years ago, was a curiosity, is now a necessity. It is found everywhere. Ten years from now you will be able to buy a horseless vehicle for what you would pay today for a wagon and a pair of horses. The money spent in the keep of the horses will be saved and the danger to life will be much reduced.”
‘It is only a question of a short time when the carriages and trucks of every large city will be run by motors. The expense of keeping and feeding horses in a great city like New York is very heavy, and all this will be done away with. You must remember that every invention of this kind which is made adds to the general wealth by introducing a new system of greater economy of force. A great invention which facilitates commerce, enriches a country just as much as the discovery of vast hoards of gold.”’
Skepticism and denial are natural in the face of change. While Wyoming’s legislature is rationalizing why electric cars shouldn’t be brought to their state, the backdrop is that they, like Texas, who is also contemplating anti-electric car legislations, is trying to protect the fossil fuel industry. Their state economies depend on fossil fuels.
In other news, I sometimes just stop reading and turn the page, frustrated and depressed again by the rise of murders, particularly shootings, and the obstinance always flashed whenever reform is addressed. The same lies are given fuel over and over. Meanwhile, the emerging agendas in several states who are trying to stop social change often by suppressing votes and others’ rights, has me thinking of Linda Rontstadt. The Neurons brought up her cover of the song, “You’re No Good” from 1973.
The coffee is half consumed but I might refresh the cup and sip a bit more before facing the cold and going off to the coffee shop to write. Stay positive and enjoy your day, summer, winter, whatever, best that you can. You can complain about it, like I do, but don’t let that stop you from trying.
Here’s the music. Cheers
Time to start the day and get underway. We’re at the port of Friday, January 20, 2023. Next destination: Friday evening. We’ll get there after the sun sets on Ashlandia, 5:10 PM.
“Ashlandia, where time is never the same.”
Sunrise at 7:36 AM found Ashlandia frost bound beneath full blue skies. Snow and ice still cap higher mountains and ridges, a winter photo delight against that blue. 25 degrees F says the local weather station while prognosticators tell us that a 48 degree F high is expected. That’s a little cold for Ashlandia’s winters. We usually see the thermo squeaking down to 30 before braking to a full stop, but we’ll live. We’ll complain, but we’ll live. Well, some, such as me, complain, but others just march along with it. The shelters are open for whoever needs them, and hot meals are being provided gratis in several locations. Crews have remained busy removing fallen trees from the month’s earlier windstorms. A drive around yesterday showed all were gone. No houses or buildings experienced major damage, so we’re thankful for that.
My wife remains in bed, affected by her RA and Raynaud’s. One of her fingers looks ghastly, white and waxen. She says it’s painful and stiff but doesn’t complain. She was planning to make me a cherry pie yesterday but I nixed that. We just had sugar pie instead. She skipped her exercise class this morning, which is never a good omen.
Mom’s list of issues continuous a daunting trend of increasing. Little seems to improve for her and pain shadows every decision and conversation. She soldiers on, a tough old broad, as she likes to self-reference, but she seems so tired from the constant fight to live.
With all the dreams I had last night, The Neurons packed the morning mental music stream with songs on dreaming. I ignored them. We lost David Crosby this week, another talented musician who brightened my life. The Byrds were on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1965, which was my childhood, playing “Mr Tambourine Man”. I was nine then. Though a little too mellow for my budding rock and roll tendencies, I admired their style and harmony and their songs stayed comfortably lodged in my mind. Formation of CSN and then CSN&Y was a positive addition to the folk-rock scene, where their harmonies and smart lyrics adjusted my budding teenage attitudes.
Got my coffee. French roast, which is my usual. Unsweetened and untouched by milk or cream, it offers a sharply bitter living on my tastebuds, with a friendly chocolatey overlay.
Stay positive. Sail on to new horizons. Here’s the music, in living color. Cheers
He admired his blue pullover. It was a cheap thing, a rag sweater bought for about $15 over twenty years ago. He still liked it although no elastic properties remained in it. Other than that failure, the sweater had no holes, no picks from an animal’s claws — which was truly amazing — and had not frayed anywhere. He’d bought it a store which no longer existed.
The store name, Mervyn’s, came to him after a moment. He remembered their television commercials. It seemed like they’d gone out of business so suddenly and was gone, like a brief rain shower on a hot summer day.
Although he was still at home, preparing to leave, he’d already shifted into writing mode. His mind’s doors were open to characters. Watching and listening to them like they were people arriving at a conference, he addressed a scene which he’d edited yesterday and barely heard his wife saying something about a news event.
He turned to her as her remark’s tail end registered. “Who?”
She repeated the name and summarized who he was.
He nodded. “Oh. Him. Yes.” He knew exactly who she was talking about. It’s just that he wasn’t really there. It was only his body which was present.
They call it snowy Thursday. Early afternoon yesterday, sitting at the coffee shop. 41 F out. Rain falls, turning to snow as it drops. Temperature loses its grip, slipping to 39 F. Snow begins sticking. Within an hour, we had an inch. Two and a half inches before the snow stopped two hours later. By then, it was 36 F.
Yes, it was a very wet snow. As temperatures tumbled for us to the upper twenties last night, visions of slippery roads and sidewalks filled conversations and emails. But this morning, it was wet but not slick. Snow had iced but was rapidly retreating. 34 F now, snow clouds rule the air. We’ll see how that goes. None of us were expecting yesterday’s snow.
It’s Thursday, January 19, 2023. Winter snow finally came to Ashlandia’s valley.
Sun influence came over the peaks and ridges 7:36-ish this morning. Sun’s retreat from the valley will be about 5:08 PM. A 40 degree F high temperature is expected.
I have Simply Red with “Holding Back the Years” from 1985 swirling around the morning mental music stream. A mellow song, I can’t trace its origins in today’s head, but I blame dreams. I also blame The Neurons. They can’t be trusted. I will say that when I was driving long distances in 1985, as I was frequently required to do, I didn’t like it when “Holding Back the Years” came on the radio. Out on the road on assignment, away from family for a week to months, the song was just a downer.
Speaking of downers, time for me to down a cup of coffee. Stay positive and do what you need to be healthy. Merry Christmas. Just thought I’d get an early start on that season. Here’s the music. Cheers
Several memorable aspects emerged from this dream. My wife and I, younger folks, had bought an older place. Having moved in, we discovered it was a hotel and we had several guests. I knew them; all were male salesmen, white, with short black hair, wearing suits, with very broad shoulders. They looked like ex-offensive line men and I knew one had been. Right after I realized they were in the rooms, they began checking out. Turned out there were three.
The first salesman checking out forced me to realize that I didn’t know what was happening. Scrambling to catch up, I went through the small hotel. Dinghy wallpaper was hung, which I declared needed to be replaced. At least three stories were found. The rooms were small and the halls were tall and narrow. Several cats were present. I began taking care of them while inventorying the hotel. It was dilapidated, with a strange, brownish carpet which was bare in many spots. The salesman was ready to go and needed to pay and get a receipt. I found a system hidden behind pieces of paper taped to the top of them. The paper were notes to staff about how to use the system according to the header on one, but all were blank.
I wrote out a receipt longhand for the guest, thinking through all the line items a receipt like that should have. He was comfortable with that and prompted me, “You also need the date.” I then signed it. Holding up a fat tome, he mentioned he had a paperback book that was in the room and wanted to take it with him. I told him, “No charge,” because we had bought it used at a Goodwill for a quarter.
My wife, who’d been wandering around the place rushed over, urging me to charge him, complaining, “That’s why we’re losing money.”
I told her that I didn’t think a quarter would break us. We argued about little things adding up. I noticed that the carpet’s edges were green.
Meanwhile, I was thinking, I need to organize a checkout system. I removed the papers from atop the system and found a small gray system. Looking very old, it was turned off and didn’t seem to be attached to anything. I decided not to use it but just do everything by hand myself. The second man showed up to checkout. This went better, but he had to tell me when he arrived because I had no idea.
I realized by this point that the odd carpet was withered grass. Finding a spray bottle of water, I began walking around, spraying the grass to encourage it to grow back. As I did, I discovered petunias and tulips springing up in full bloom and called out to my wife, “Hey, look, we have flowers in our yard.” I was thinking as I did this it would be lovely to have a lush green lawn as my carpet. This lawn was full of weeds. That didn’t worry me; I would pull the weeds. Since they were inside, the weeds shouldn’t return as long as I kept pulling them when they appeared and watered the grass. Many parts of it were already green and restored. I would let the flowers stay.
At this point, the third man arrived to check out. Since I was working on the carpet-lawn, I told her to check him out and explained what to do, which she did.
After that, a very slick-appearing man in a uniform appeared. He introduced himself as ‘the major’ and showed me so beautiful shiny blue things which he’d acquired from foreign countries. He wanted to display them for sale in my hotel. My wife was instantly against that, telling me, “Don’t give him any money.” I informed the man that I wasn’t paying anything or giving money or security in any form, no security deposits, nothing, and that we would not be liable for his objects. He seemed to be agreeing with that. Then he sat down and put his legs up. His feet were replaced by prosthetics. I asked him if that happened in the war, and he said, “Yes.”
Dream end.
Floofsbody (floofinition) – A person, gofer, or dogsbody who must do boring, menial tasks for animals.
In use: “Most people who live with floofs become a floofsbody, taking care of their bedding, cleaning and replenishing their food and water bowls, brushing their fur, and so on, as if their floof is their master and they are the servant.”
