Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Purrunclaw is a naturally occurring condition that develops when a person is petting a cat, and the cat is enjoying it only to suddenly swipe at the owner with their claws in a definitive pronouncement, “That’s enough!”
In illustration:
“Nan, what happened to your hand? It’s all scratched up.”
“Oh, just some purrunclaw with Flash.”
It’s been some time since I’ve written about the invention of beer and the truth about why it exists.
Michael Quirk provided me with this theory. Michael was the originator of our weekly beer gathering. The group is composed of retired scientists, engineers and doctors to discuss science and technology. Michael himself, now deceased, was a retired Army light colonel. He’d served in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot, surviving two tours. After that, he’d become an artillery officer and ended up programming specific artillery systems that were being introduced. He eventually ended up as a globally sought subject expert on the matter. After retiring from the Army, he was hired as a consultant by DARPA so he could keep working on and advising about the artillery program. His daughter is an Air Force colonel who is now a deputy base commander.
I met Michael through an art museum fundraiser. His wife and my wife went to the same exercise class at the local Y. Several of these wives enjoyed each other’s company. It was contrived we should all go to this fundraiser and share a table. Naturally, the wives socialized, leaving the men alone.
Michael and I both enjoyed science fiction, so we chatted about that. He then told me about the weekly beer group and invited me to join. Not having much education and not being a scientist, engineer or doctor, I declined, and told him that’s why. “But we drink beer,” he explained. “You drink beer, don’t you?”
“Yes, but — ”
Nothing else mattered to Michael. I drink beer, so I should join. I finally agreed just to shut him up.
I started going, and the time became something I looked forward to, largely because I was very fond of Michael. It was during one of those weekly beer gatherings that he told me about his theory regarding the invention of beer. Noting that beer had been invented about eleven thousand years ago, he claimed that women invented it.
Naturally, I was curious. “Women invented beer?”
“Yes, they invented beer to control men.”
“I see…. Why?”
“Because women are aliens who came to Earth eleven thousand years ago. They invented beer to control men.” Michael went on to cite the chromosome difference as evidence that women are not humans like men. Besides, they think so differently.
His theory had a lot of problems to me, beginning with, if they were aliens and so advanced they could travel to Earth and invent beer eleven thousand years ago, what the hell have they been doing since then? Also, what happened to the original human women? And, why….?
It was all very tongue-in-cheek. Michael passed away at the beginning of 2015. I still go to the beer group once in a while, just to have a beer. We always toast Q at the beginning.
Sometimes, I remind the others how beer was invented.
There were sounds.
Tilting an ear toward the sounds he cracked one eye open.
A touch on his belly caused him to open his eye more and lift his head.
He saw it was a hand and knew who it belonged to.
Comforted, he purred his appreciation, flexed his paws and resumed his snooze.
Truth for me. When I’m not permitted to write or feel that my writing time/space continuum has been impaired, I feel like I’m suffering. That feeling of fulfilling my life’s purpose as I’m typing…yes. When it’s right, it’s sublime. Even when it’s bad, it’s very, very good.
by Meg Dowell
For the first week of 2017, because of the new year, I did not write any articles. Clients either weren’t ready to assign them yet or they were having me work on other projects (because being a content creator means you get to write marketing emails too).
For many of you, this probably doesn’t sound like that big a deal. But you have to understand that the nature of my work resulted in me writing over 500 articles last year – that doesn’t include these blog posts. I write articles. It is what people pay me to do. And having already taken a week off of work between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, enduring another week without producing an article was like going without food: it was unbearable.
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His dagger of self-awareness is a sharp blade and ready at hand. He plunges it into himself again and again to prove he knows who he is.
Never mind the blood.
This duo began recording and performing a few years ago. I didn’t know Marian Hill was a duo. I thought, “She has a nice voice.” The song, ‘Down’, has unusual and interesting conflicts and contradictions. The piano is generally soft, tentative and mellow. The singer sounds distracted, like a person might sound as they observe another and try to connect with them, but the word images are immediate. She’s asking if the other is down as she describes a dance scene at a club. There seems ambivalence about whether she’s asking if the other is down with going out and dancing, joining the others, or down, as in a depressed emotional state.
I like all that. I’d never seen this video before today. Their intro explains some that I researched after singing the song to myself yesterday.
Here is ‘Down’ from 2015. Hope you enjoy streaming it in your head as you walk around.
Catlias: the other names by which a cat is know.
Example: Meep, A.K.A. The Ginger Prince, little one, the golden blade, golden boy, sunshine
Once again, it’s time to celebrate cereal. Yes, it’s National Cereal Day in America.
We’ve embraced cereal in America. The ready to eat stuff first originated in the 1800s. Pouring it into bowls and adding something to it is standard breakfast fare in many houses.
Back as a kid, my favorite was Wheaties. Yes, I was a Breakfast of Champions guy. The flavor was so-s0 but I believed in the advertising. My little sister was strictly a Cheerios person. It was Cheerios or nuttin’. This was back in the day when all that was available were those basic miniature oat inner tubes. She did like adding banana to it. On Saturdays, the practice was done to the sounds of the Roadrunner and Bugs Bunny, cool friends to have.
Mom liked it because we could ‘make our own’ breakfast without involving electricity and sharp objects. I liked making a game out of it, racing around the kitchen while multi-tasking, grabbing the ingredients, bowl and utensils in the fewest possible steps and motions.
Unfortunately, the refrigerator wasn’t properly grounded. We were warned never to touch the refrigerator handle and the counter at the same time, but in my quest for speed, that’s what I did.
I can still feel that current coursing through me.
My reaction was apparently to scream and cry with pain. Mom came racing in. “What happened?” I told her I’d been shocked. “Well, keep it down,” she replied. “You’ll wake the baby.”
Blaming the Wheaties for my error while acknowledging that Wheaties essentially tasted like wet cardboard, I switched to Raisin Bran. It was my go-to for about a dozen years. Oh, I tried Kix, Trix, Coco Puffs and Life. I think Lucky Charms, Count Chocula and other disgusting, sugary cereals came out then. I tried them at friends’ houses during sleep-overs and found them repulsive.
I liked Puffed Rice and Shredded Wheat for a long time, but they gave way to my all-time favorite: Grape-Nuts. I put very little milk or sugar on them. It was, my wife noticed when I introduced them to her, like eating a mouthful of gravel. I found chewing rocks personally rewarding. Maybe it’s the Neanderthal in me.
They were once tried with beer, Miller Lite, I believe, just to see how that worked. It provoked a shrug sort of response, meaning, not good, not bad, just different.
But eventually, I drifted into eating oat meal regularly. Organic steel-cut instant oats (now GF and non-GMO) with a little brown sugar and cinnamon, berries, fruit and walnuts have been my breakfast preference for the past dozen years. And today, in honor of National Cereal Day, I had pancakes.
What’s life without whimsy?
Probably Cheerios.
This one has been downloaded from the memory cloud formed immediately after retiring from the USAF in 1995 and my new work commute to Progressive Angioplasty Systems.
I lived in Mountain View, in a little cul-de-sac not far from Moffett Boulevard and the Highway 101 ramps. PAS was located in Palo Alto off Univesity. Easy commute, right?
Sure, in the morning. It was eleven miles, if I remember it right. The morning commute required twenty minutes because I enjoyed working early and leaving early. I typically was the first or second to arrive, at 7:00 AM, and then would leave at 4:30 PM.
The 4:30 PM return trip was a completely different story. Those eleven miles consumed forty-five to fifty-five minutes on a good day. Rain and traffic accidents would mar that stellar time, creating a sixty to ninety minute commute. Bleah.
So I listened to music, news and audible books. This is a song from that commute era. Here is Jewel with ‘Who Will Save Your Soul’.
Purrnotic: (adjective) a trance-like state of paralysis induced by the close proximity of a purring feline. See also: purralysis.
