Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Must Be Time For Some … MEMES!
There are so many good ones — ‘good’ meaning that they savagely illuminate events and make us laugh, swear, or — and sometimes and — go GRRRRRRR — but here are my top three from Jill’s collection:
Go check them out and find your own favorite.
If we’re rockin’ and rollin’, it must be Saturda. Well, according to the calendar, even if you’re not rockin’ and rollin’, it’s still Saturda.
Sunshine flashes some spirit but we’re mostly under cover of long stretched waves of gray-topped white clouds. Will it rain? Wouldn’t you like to know… Temperature is 42 F. We came close to edging into 60 yesterday. Weird experiencing that much warmth and sunshine for such sustained exposure. Dressed in jeans, shirt, and light jacket, sweat peppered me as I walked around on household business. Nice to have, as this is our expected average for the year. But it’s been so sorely absent that we have to re-adjust to it.
This being February 22, 2025, we expect a high today of 55 F. It’ll be partly sunny and partly cloudy. Rain is expected this afternoon. The wind has punched up, reminding me of that expression about March coming in like a lion. Papi the ginger blade (aka Butter Butt) doesn’t like the wind, mewhining, “Let meeee iiiiinnnnnnnn.”
Today The Neurons have offered a musical suggestion on behalf of Trump supporters. “Use Me” by Bill Withers, from 1972, inhabits the morning mental music stream.
But my answer, yeah to all that use me stuff
I want to spread the news
That if it feels this good getting used
You just keep on using me
Until you use me up
Until you use me up
h/t AZLyrics.com
I approached coffee with an offer that was eagerly accepted. Now the two of us are almost like one. Hope you have a day worth remembering for all the good reasons. Cheers
I often wear a hat. Not in the house, except sometimes to bed, but that’s another night’s tale. The hat is a wide-brimmed green Tilley. A dozen pins decorates it.
When I checked in for my medical appointment yesterday, the young guy doing my intake looked at my hat and grinned.
“I was just admiring your pins.”
I replied, “That’s my flair.”
His grin grew wider. “You can never have too much flair.”
I answered, “No, but I think I need to speak to you about your flair.”
Laughter answered me. “I know. I gotta work on that.”
We both nodded. It was all an unspoken reference to Office Space from 1999. I figured the kid I was speaking to is about 29 years old, five or take, you know. But just a child when the movie came out.
I feel like we’re part of a secret tribe. The tribe of flare.
Of course I have never intentionally broken the law. Unless you count speeding. Okay, I admit I exceeded the speed limit once or twice…or ten thousand…times. I had good reasons! Like, the bathroom, yeah, I had to go to the bathroom. That’s the ticket. And I was, um, I was, I was, yeah, late for a funeral. And my wedding! Yeah, I was late for my wedding, that’s it. So I had to speed to get us there on time — yeah, my wife-to-be was with me in the car, so, you know, if I didn’t speed, neither of us would have gotten to the wedding on time. So, you see, really, I had to. No choice.
And the other times it was because, um, I was picking up food! Food. Yeah, pizza, and Chinese and Mexican food. And doughnuts. So I had to speed because I was saving people from starving to death. Other than that, and those times I was speeding to get away from the cops because there was a warrant out for my arrest, I would never intentionally break the law. Oh, and that time I was fleeing the threat of bodily harm because someone accused me of stealing from them. But they were going to hurt me, so can you blame me?
But other than those few exceptions, which, you see, I had no choice about, I would never intentionally break the law. Well, except for that time I went back in time, but that doesn’t happen for another eleven years so that doesn’t count, does it? Because, if you’re gonna count that, you might as well count the time I broke out of jail on the moon.
Say, there’s no law against not telling the truth, is there?
I sometimes subscribe to Hulu for streaming content. I’m actually currently a subscriber but I put my account on hold because they’re offering anything that anyone in my household wants to watch.
They sent me a notice that they’re ‘updating our Subscriber Agreement’. Three things were specifically called out. Here is the second point, copied and pasted for your consideration.
• We are clarifying that, as we continue to increase the breadth and depth of the content we make available to you, circumstances may require that certain titles and types of content include ads, even in our ‘no ads’ or ‘ad free’ subscription tiers.
Is that not straight out of 1984? We are offering you ‘no adds’ and ‘ad free’ subscriptions but they’ll have ads.
I can imagine something similar happening at restaurants: ‘We are clarifying that as we continue to offer vegan meals, circumstances may require that certain dishes include meat and animal products.’
‘Certain circumstances’. Guess it’s the god of money forcing them to do this. “We couldn’t help ourselves.” Executives wring their hands. “It was the money. The money made us do it.”
What bullshit. I might need to change my account from ‘hold’ to ‘cancel’.
Floofpower (floofinition) Philosophy among animals that uniting despite species, breed, or personal animosity can lead to greater rewards for all animals.
In Use: “With the new year, many people found themselves confronting floofpower as the household furtizens stood up and negotiated for more treats, walks, better food, or improved sleeping conditions and playtime.”
The weather warmed, delivered rain, and the massed, pile snow is dwindling.
Good mornin’, afternoon, or evening, wherever you are. Today is Frieda, February 14, 2025. Valentine’s Day, so here’s to that if you’re into that commercialized celebration. 37 F air holds us in its palms. White clouds overlay the valley, piles of graying white towels fresh the laundry, waiting to be folded. No breaks are permitted for blue sky, no cracks for sunshine. Rain has fallen and probably will again within a few hours. Our air will warm to the low forties, upper thirties, ‘they’ tell us.
PINO Trusk established a new commission. MAHA: Make America Healthy Again. They’ll be working under the ideas that that vaccines which so effectively curtained the effects of a number of diseases didn’t work. Trump, who gorges on McDonald’s food, wants MAHA to look at food and water, this by an administration which is on a run to gut the EPA and the clean air and water standards. Irony laughed so hard when it heard this news, it peed its pants and farted.
MAHA will stand alongside PINO Trusk’s other initiatives, MADA: Make America Dumb Again; MASA: Make America Sexist Again; MAWA: Make America White Again; MARA: Make America Racist Again; and MAPA: Make Americans Poor Again. The rinions — right-wing minions — will eat it up.
In honor of what our nation is enduring under PINO Trusk’s lawless guidance, The Neurons have dragged out an old Black Sabbath offering. After dusting off the 1972 song, they have “Changes” orbiting my morning mental music stream. It’s an odd BS composition, as it’s slow and reflective, with no guitars and drums. “What?” You exclaim. “And this is Black Sabbath, you say? The group who gave us “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”, “War Pigs”, “Paranoid”, “Iron Man” and “Snow Blind”?” Indeedio, it is.
Coffee ambushed me in the kitchen. Next thing I knew, had a cup in my hand, breathing in its heady fumes, testing it on my tongue with tentative sips. Hope your day goes through some changes for the better. Let’s rock. Cheers
A stiff wind was rockin’ us last night in Ashlandia. As night came on shift, I watched our outside temperature drop to 34 F and then rise to 37 F. Rain fell and the temperature kept sneaking up outside as the wind barked at the moving branchs and howled at the sky. It’s not 41 F. ‘They’ have notified us that 51 F is possible as a high. The wind has skipped into a more mellow mood, sunshine has found a place in the sky, and all seems momentarily well on this day, Thurzda, Feb. 13, 2025.
Snow remains out there in force but its presence is shrinking. Bushes and trees continue their recovery. Fallen branches and trees around the city are being collected, cut up, moved away. If a bit more snow can melt off the piles lining the roads, we’re almost be back to normal.
Many are commenting on the bizarro Oval Office presentation by PINO Trusk. The elected half sat in a chair doing nothing and little vacuous. The other paced and made claims about finding and eliminating fraud. He made wild claims but stayed with the GOTP M.O. of offering no evidence or facts to back the claims. Looked like a Banana Republic Production to me. Paul Krugman did a nice take down of it in a post titled, Elon Musk Is Faking It.
Bet you saw the news that the GOTP wants to raise the debt ceiling for PINO Trusk. One reason given for the need for more debt is that ICE is running low on funds. Wow, who would’ve predicted that, right? Well, just ’bout anybody with the wits to realize the enormous costs involved with Trusk’s deportation plans. As seen on TV, the GOTP and their Project 2025 planners are purty damn witless, in addition to being lawless.
The Neurons jumped back to 1974 to find a tune to honor PINO Trusk. With all of his claims, he’s done nothing provable in quest of slaying fraud, as he claims; he’s only made us more vulnerable as a nation, broke laws and undermined justice, broke promises made to his MAGAts (see inflation and the cost of eggs), and sowed disorder and chaos on a national scale.
Stevie Wonder was found to have provided a song for the times. He called it, “You Haven’t Done Nothin'”.
We are amazed but not amused
By all the things you say that you’ll do
Though much concerned but not involved
With decisions that are made by you
But we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong
‘Cause if you really want to hear our views
“You haven’t done nothing”!
It’s not too cool to be ridiculed
But you brought this upon yourself
The world is tired of pacifiers
We want the truth and nothing else
And we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong
‘Cause if you really want to hear our views
“You haven’t done nothing”!
h/t to AZLyrics.com
I chugged some coffee earlier and I’m pretty well ready to go. Hope you have the plum-est of days imaginable, or some reasonable facsimile thereof. Let’s go get it. Cheers
“Watch out for those stairs.”
My wife and her friend are telling me this. Going down some steps, I’m wearing the blue and white flat sandals forced on me by my lymphedema wraps around my feet and lower legs. They’re a little clumsy to walk in but after five days, I have the measure of them.
“Be careful,” they tell me, hovering around me like I’m a toddler taking their first steps.
“Watch the snow and ice,” they proclaim as I step outside. “There’s a clearer path over there.”
Their concern strikes me as condescending. I mean, they’re with me for ten minutes; what do they think I’m doing for the other twenty-three hours and fifty minutes of the day?
“Are you okay to drive?” one asks me.
I smile and nod. I mean, I drove over there. I’ve been driving every day with these things on several times per day. Really, their concern says more about them and their fears and worries than it says about me and my condition.
I encountered a friend while I was out this morning. I hadn’t seen him in a while. Spotting my blue and white open-toe ortho sandals with their velcro straps that were forced on me for my lymphedema treatment, he asked, “What’s going on there? You okay?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. These are my new Nikes. They’re the latest in footwear. AI designed. And they are so comfortable. Really amazing. I know they don’t look like much….”
“No, they don’t.”
“No, but they’re actually this very sophisticated series of layered ‘smart’ materials that shape to your feet and adjust for your activity. Kind of expensive, too. I got these for about a hundred eighty dollars on Amazon.”
Shock rode into his expression. “Really?”
“No. I made all that up.” Turning off my brain’s bullshit center — the bullshitis centritis — I revealed the truth.
Then we had a good laugh about the fiction I’d spun.
Michael Seidel, writer 