Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Mewincholy (floofinition) – a housecat’s sound of pensive sadness, often with no discernible cause.
In use: “Sitting in the living room, not far from him as he read his book, his cat released a a deep mewincholy, breaking his focus. “What is it?” he asked, staring at his fur friend. In response, she turned to him and unleashed a softer rendition of the same sound.”
Once again, a debt is owed to the house clowder for coming up with a song. One cat was briefly absent, prompting me to say, “Where have you gone?” That was enough to let “Good Thing” (1989) by Fine Young Cannibals shoot into the morning stream. The cat turned up almost immediately after I began singing the song. My cats are always curious about me when I start talking, singing, or typing, apparently thinking, “What’s that sound he’s making? I better go check on him to see if he’s okay.”
Leaning back, he let loose with one drop, shifted to the other eye and let drop again, as he’d done every day for decades.
After a moment, he realized he’d dropped both into his mouth, and laughed. How silly he was getting as he got older.
It wasn’t so funny the next time he did it.
But the third time…well, the third time, it wasn’t even noticed.
A disturbing new movement is taking place in the opinion of this average white heterosexual male. After watching women of color under the Democratic Party banner win Congressional seats in the mid-terms, stories are emerging about why women shouldn’t march or wear pink during marches, or support and attend these marches. Three different reasons to date have been raised, about women of color not being involved and the marches being too white, about wearing pussy hats because that’s excluding or offending some, and now, the latest, that the group is anti-Semitism. Because of these stories, fewer marches are being planned. This year’s turnout is projected to be much lower.
I suspect that other reasons for not supporting the women’s marches will be raised in the coming days. I’m suspicious that the unification of women and their rise are terrifying the established powers — like the Koch Bros. and the white, male-dominated GOP, groups that prefer that women, no matter their education and accomplishments, their religious beliefs, or color of their skin, need to be kept in their place — and they’re fighting back through a whisper campaign to divide women.
Women’s success in the 2018 elections buoyed my hopes for the future. I love hearing and seeing women raising their voices to promote equality, justice, freedom, and democracy. Men have been dominating our politics since our nation’s founding, and look at the state we’re in. Look at our priorities and how ineffective our government has become at the highest levels.
I hope women keep strong, rally, stay united, and overcome these issues. If not, our country will be set back, yet again, at a time when we really need to push forward. Please, don’t let them break you.
Resist. Fight back. We need to change the status quo.
He had no sense of direction, she noticed, but then she observed other oddities. When he entered a room, if the door was closed on his arrival, he left it open. If the light was off, he turned it on and left it on, and if it was on, he turned it off.
As she realized these things, she also saw that he was always confused about which pull to use on the up/down blinds, lowering them when he meant to raise them, exclaiming, “I don’t know why I can’t remember which one of these to use. I’m always doing this.” Of course you are, she thought without telling him. When she asked him to look right, he looked left, and when he was told to turn right, he often began turning left. Sometimes, she heard him tell something that he’d said as something that she’d said, insisting that the false memory was true.
With these traits piling up, it didn’t surprise her to realize that he always thought that lies were the truth, and that truths were lies. It was, she decided, that he lived in a mirrored world. With that observation, she understood him much better, and could use words to get her way.
And she lived happily ever after…
What about the speed of love? she asked.
Raising his eyebrows, he laughed. You can’t measure love’s speed.
Why not?
Love is beyond classic physics and quantum mechanics. Love exists in a reality of its own. Time bends love, and love bends time, and if you try to understand that, you’ll bend your mind.
She said, The Rolling Stones said time is on our side.
The Rolling Stones were wrong. Time doesn’t take sides.
I’m returning to a favorite topic, the speed of time, because I’ve discovered more about about it.
The speed of time is not universal. As everyone knows, according to the School/Work Principle, time’s speed isn’t constant. When you’re waiting for the school or work day to end, time not only slows, but sometimes goes backward, forcing you to repeat several minutes. Some movies, are like that, too.
Learning of this, the NFL manages to employ this in their football games. The last two minutes of an NFL game often takes as long as most of the rest of the game. My wife can attest to that. She’s endured it. “When are we leaving?” she asks.
“As soon as this game is over.”
“How much is left?”
“Not much.”
That waffling, of course, warns her. “How much time is left?” she asks.
“It’s the last two minutes of the fourth quarter.”
“Okay, I’m going to go bake some cookies.”
Using that as a basis for my research, I confirmed that traffic-jam time drags almost as slow as the final two minutes of an NFL game, or the last ten minutes of work or the school day. Shopping time remains the slowest of all, though. Even the NFL has not been able to slow time like shopping will do. Figuratively speaking, shopping time can literally last an eternity. I’ve endured several election cycles while I’ve been shopping. I found that having a Fitbit helps deal with shopping time. It doesn’t change the rate of speed, but I can get a couple of million steps in while I’m walking around, waiting.
Waiting in line time is almost as bad as shopping time. I’ve had clothes wear out while I’ve been standing in line to pay for my purchases, especially at Costco. Costco cashier lines exist in a weird time zone of their own where time gets very sluggish. I’ve spent hour-minutes in line, gazing at what others have bought and comparing them to our purchases.
On the other end of it, I’ve discovered some periods of time that pass quickly. Sleep time is very fast. I don’t know how many times I thought, I’ll just sleep for a few more minutes, and then close my eyes, and, snap, forty minutes have elapsed.
Writing time is frequently often as fast. I have three hours to write, I think, and a cuppa coffee. Then I begin, and the next thing I know, writing time is ended, and I still have coffee.
Which is sort of weird. Coffee time by itself seems to flow at an ideal pace. That’s not true for all beverages. I can tell you, beer time goes fast. Sit down to have a beer, and next thing you know, it’s hours later.
I watched some NFL wildcard weekend on Saturday and Sunday, then went to see Veep on Sunday, returned home, and watched the Golden Globes.
I think the Golden Globes can learn a few things from the NFL. When San Diego was beating Baltimore, I knew it was the fourth quarter, and so many minutes remained. As Baltimore drove and scored, tension grew because the score was getting close, and they were running out of time.
That’s not really germane.
What I want the Golden Globes to take from the NFL is how much time is left to the presentations. They could have a little clock counting down on a scroll on the bottom, along with what movies and stars have taken what awards so far.
Sure, the G2 could also break their broadcast into quarters, too. I wouldn’t have a problem with that. That would give the hosts some more talking points. I could imagine Oh saying last night, “That ended the first quarter, Adam, and we haven’t still heard anything about the big movies and stars.” Adam could reply, “Yes, but there’s still time, Sandra. There’s still a lot of presenting and awards remaining.”
Then we could have a decent halftime, with a recap by Variety and ET analysts about who won so far while we all go to the restroom and get something to eat and drink.
Just sayin’, y’know?
Red, white, and yellow peered out from the covers of foggy drizzle and gray sky, an aberration among the bare trees and stolid grave markers, calling to him out of their difference. Swinging that way, he strode past the long dead, eyes mostly on the colors, finding a small, cheery snowman in the decorations of poinsettias, daisies and lilies, along with a petite bluebird of happiness.
Reaching the stones, he stared down at them for a few seconds. He’d expected recent deaths, but none of those were recent. Grandfather and father, side-by-side, born seventeen years apart, had died in the early nineties. Grandmother – “I’m just taking a little nap” – was born in 1929 and passed in 2006. She was the most recent.
Son and brother, never forgotten, had been born the same year as him, 1956, but the dead man had preceded him by a few months. Son and brother had passed in 1974, the same year he’d graduated high school, the same year that he’d joined the military. He noticed son and brother was exactly eighteen years old when he died.
Nothing told him about their lives and deaths, nor why the graves had been visited, or who visited them. A recent windstorm had knocked some of the flowers over. Water filled the fake plants’ pots. He emptied the water, set everything upright, and arranged the flowers.
His journey was resumed, nothing learned. It was just a little color on a dreary winter day, a short break in the accumulation of miles.
Only had three cups of coffee and four shots of espresso. A nap is calling.
Michael Seidel, writer 