Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Floofboree (floofinition) – A large, festive gathering of animals.
In use: “After midnight, the housefloofs went outside and hosted a floofboree in the backyard, inviting the local skunks and squirrels, raccoons and bears, mice and rats, along with the other cats and dogs. It was a swell time until the skunks got overly excited and sprayed everyone.”
Dreamed I was walking home alone, in my present neighborhood. Premature darkness dropped as the wind hissed and moaned, thrashing tree branches. I thought it might rain. Turning up the street, I came to my house. One of those POD storage units was by the tall wooden fence in the side yard, smothered in shadows. I did a doubletake when I saw it, then remembered, oh, yes, I’m getting rid of all those things.
I was inside the house. It was dark, without electricity. We were mixing fruit juices. I was contemplating lemon, lime, orange, with cherry and grape. I said, “Those flavors won’t mix.” I knew someone else was there, but I couldn’t see nor hear them. I collected more flavors but didn’t mix them. Then I said, “I must mix them, and then drink them. If I don’t, I’ll never escape.”
But I worried. If I escaped the house, I still needed to face the vampires outside. Surely drinking the mixed juices and escaping had to be the first priority, though.
One candle lit the space. I was in the dining room. A man came to me with a large, flat red box. He wore a black coat with a white shirt. His face was unseen. He presented the red box to me. I didn’t want to take it. “How much?” I finally asked.
Seven hundred, I knew he said without hearing him speak.
I repeated, “Seven hundred?” I shook my head. “That’s not enough. A thousand.”
A thousand was agreed.
I walked outside. Rain was falling but I was protected. I walked down the sidewalk and stopped. Lightning lit the night. The bolts held, frozen in place in the sky. The rain hung, unfalling, lit by the lightning. I could see miles and miles ahead across the dark landscape.
Dream end
I was a young man, collecting and selling information on other people and on events. It started with two young women bemoaning the inability to learn something. I told them that I could do it. Then I did.
When I went around collecting information, it ended up taking the form of a thick hardback book. I showed them the book and then told them I’d sell it to the highest bidder. They were taken back — they’re the ones who suggested the information was needed, according to them — and thought I should just give them the book. I disagreed and said that wasn’t going to happen.
Rain started falling. I decided I needed a safe hideout. I found one side of a wooden crate leaning against a hillside. Pulling it aside, I saw a hole. I crawled through and found myself in a small living space. It was where I’d been living, I realized.
It stopped raining, so I left, taking my book with me. I went around, showing others and generating interest in it. People began offering me money. I wasn’t ready to sell.
My father appeared on the scene, telling me that I had to go to court. I wasn’t bothered by that, I would go to court and win. Dad was walking through a creek at that point. The water was low, just covering his feet, but muddy. The original two women were with him. I was back in a military uniform, following Dad. Note that in RL, he’d had a twenty-year career in the military, then I’d done the same.
I realized that I didn’t have a military hat, that I was outside and ‘uncovered’. That’s against reg and disturbed me. I asked Dad if he had a cap I could wear. He didn’t hear me, and I repeated the question several times before he said, “No,” and then told me that I didn’t need one.
Rain began falling anew. The two women started looking for cover and saw the opening to my place because I’d left my protective cover off. I didn’t want them to go in there. They were going enter but decided that it was too small. I then changed my mind and invite them in. I went in first, and then invited them in and showed them how large my space was. They agreed and then made me an offer on the book of data. It was a very large offer and made me grin in delight.
Dream end
Sopfloofrific (floofinition) – An animal’s influence on making people sleep.
In use: “His dog and cat found him whenever he sat to read and climbed onto his lap, which became a sopfloofrific prelude to a nap.”
In the Smithsonian Magazine’s excerpt of Narrative Tension, Inc.. From the forthcoming book Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past by Richard Cohen to be published by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission, Richard Cohen writes this:
‘Around the same time, between 1934 and 1936, the Politburo, or policy-making body, of the Russian Communist Party focused on national history textbooks, and Stalin set scholars to writing a new standard history. The state became the nation’s only publisher. Orwell had it right in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the Records Department is charged with rewriting the past to fit whomever Oceania is currently fighting. The ruling party of Big Brother “could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.”’
He is writing about the old U.S.S.R., the Soviet Union, and how Putin’s Russia draws from the lessons learned from Lenin and Stalin about rewriting history to control the narrative.
I can’t help but think of the United States. GOP led legislatures in several states are fighting hard to rewrite history or ignore it, battling against teaching critical race theory, solidly misrepresenting it as they do. Alabama passed HB 312 earlier in 2022, 65 to 32. Pushed through by Republicans, the bill bans teachers from broaching subjects that Republicans find divisive, like ideas that the United States is now or was ever racist.
Ignoring facts or history that is painful or inconvenient has become the GOP standard. It’s been going on in Texas for over twenty years. The Texas textbook controversy erupted as Republicans attempt to color the United States in white, Republican, Christan hues. Trump leans hard on this idea of changing history to fit his needs, denying that he fairly lost the election in 2020, accusing everyone he can of voter fraud, lying, and cheating, without offering evidence. Officials and lawyers working on his behalf have had their cases and lawsuits rejected as lacking merit in courts across the United States. The most prominent cases of voter fraud involve Republican and Trump lackeys being caught while illegally voting or tampering with the process. Search the net for proof of this. Of course, deep Trumplicans hold that anyone saying or printing anything except their version of the truth is guilty of spreading false news.
This is all supported by ‘Evangelicals’, a group that holds the world is only six to ten thousand years old, depending upon which group you hear. They ignore all evidence and facts to the contrary. Listening to such would distort their reality.
This operating process of distorting reality and twisting and denying history is just like Russia and the old U.S.S.R. It’s sad but not surprising that several Republicans are admonishing the world for not embracing Russia’s excuses and lies as the truth for why they invaded Ukraine. Why, paraphrasing their thinking, Russia is only destroying Ukranian cities and killing Ukrainians to protect them. Doesn’t that sound like thinking right out of 1984?
And the one excusing Putin and Russia most of all? That would be the dear GOP leader, Donald J. Trump.
The GOP has become a shallow party, bereft of principles, and desperate to remain meaningful. The only way they can now make history is by pretending what has happened — and is happening, in the case of climate change, and LGBTQ rights and equality — didn’t happen. Deny, deny, deny.
It’s been a long, sickening fall to watch for the party begun by President Lincoln.
I went through a period a few years ago where eight figured prominently in my dreams. Last night, it made a return in another superpower dream.
We were youngish people, nobody I recognized from RL. Eight of us, we seemed to be on the run at the beginning, fearful of being caught, though I don’t know who was chasing us or why. I’d just made a decision to leave them and was walking out when a young woman confronted me. I realized she was one of those chasing me. She told me that I wasn’t leaving, to go back into where I’d been, with the others, and threatened me with harm if I didn’t.
I refused, then tried advancing with intention of going around her and escaping. She raised her hands, spread her fingers and fired her magic crystals at me.
I blanched. I knew the crystals incapacitated people. They struck me.
And bounced off with no effect.
I was astonished. She was flabbergasted. She unleashed more of them. They did nothing as I walked toward her. “My powers don’t affect him,” she said with a shocked voice.
An older man stepped up from behind her. “I’ll stop him.”
He released a repelling wave at me that was supposed to shove me backwards. It had no effect. Raising my hands, I repelled him with his power, then did the same with her. Realizing they were defeated, they took off.
I hired back to the other seven, told them quicky what happened, and then urged them to see if they had powers. They did. I found that I had more powers than I realized. I had eight, in fact, including levitating.
We huddled up. I told them that we need to defend our country and that we should fly out to do it. We eight swore a vow that we would never give up nor surrender. Then we headed to the airport to get on a flight.
All flights were booked but we separating, we managed to slip onboard an aircraft. Five of the others were caught and escorted off, leaving just three of us. All the airline seats were bright red. The aircraft was amazingly wide, more like a large waiting area. I found a row of seats that ran parallel to the aisle. The third seat was empty so I jumped into it. One of my companions was in a row behind me. The attendants realized that he didn’t belong there and escorted him out.
A young male flight attendant approached me and asked if I’d like the meal that I’d ordered to be served now. I agreed to that. He brought me the meal on a tray but then withheld it, announcing, “I think I need to confirm who is supposed to get this meal.” I protested that it was mine, that I’d ordered it, but he went off and came back with the news that it belonged to someone else, and that it was included in their ticket, which cost $28,000. He then asked me for my ticket. I told him I didn’t have one but that I was on an important mission.
He told me that I had to leave the flight. I refused. He drew out a taser and said that if I didn’t leave, he would taser me. I told him, go ahead, it won’t hurt me.
Everyone around me was ordered back. He fired the taser. The barbed darts struck me and stayed in but I felt nothing. The FA was astonished. “It must not be working,” he said. I suggested that I fire it on him to see if it worked. Declining, he acquired another taser and shot me. Again, there was no effect. He said that it didn’t make sense that two would fail, and then asked me if I’d felt anything at all. I told him that I’d felt a little warm, that I had special powers, and that I was going to the other side of the world to defend my country. I levitated myself and then him to demonstrate some of my powers.
The attendant said that the other person didn’t want the meal because I had ordered it, and it was already made, so he would give it to me, if I still wanted it. I did, and he brought it to me on a dark red tray.
Dream end.
