Tag: cats

Sunday’s Theme Music

Mood: Rainchilledflecting

Sunday came in with little sunshine, but it’s been creeping taller, brighter, warmer through a sluggish morning. Its September 15, 2024 and about 61 degrees F. That’s about three off from an anticipated high of 64 F. Rain, thunderstorms, and sunshine will be trading places throughout the day. It’s aggravating our tentative plans to go to the Japanese Gardens for an organized moon watching thingy about 7:30 this evening. Like, will it be raining? Or too much cloud cover to take in the moon? Can’t decide now. It’ll be an event time decision.

I’ve been watching and enjoying Slow Horses on Apple TV. Based on a series of novels by Mick Herron, the series is about Slough House and MI5 rejects exiled to deadend jobs for various failures and character flaws. I’d watched the first two seasons about a year ago but decided to watch them again and then go on with two more seasons. The show is rich with characters. Gary Oldman plays a terrific character, Jackson Lamb, a cynical, obnoxious, and brooding burned-out spy. He drinks, he smokes, he eats poorly, and he insults. By the third season, everyone is telling him that he stinks.

Our other main individual is River Cartwright, an impulsive spy who wants to be a hero but often sabotages himself with his behavior and thinking. Ironically, he starts out looking suave as a spy and slowly shifts until he begins to resemble Lamb. My favorite, though, is Louisa Guy, played by Rosalind Eleazar. Her depths, grief, and stoicism intrigue me, and I want to know more about her. She’s not infrequently a surprising hero.

Besides them, we have Kristin Scott-Thomas playing Diana Taverner, the poised, intelligent, and mildly amused organization climber. Her main frustration is often brought on by Lamb and his Slough House exiles.

My wife has become sucked into it. She told me yesterday that she read that Slow Horses is currently the most popular show on television or something like that. I think it’s deserving of that. I’ve finished three seasons and I’m ready for season four. As I often do when I find a television or movies series which I enjoy, I plan to read the novels.

Today’s music is “Walk Away” by Kelly Clarkson. It’s playing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark charred) because of a floof incident, also known as a floofcident. Papi, the ginger blade, rounded a corner and encountered Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah), the aging black and white bruiser. Some lowly muttered threats emerged over this apparent transgression. Having witnessed the entire event, I’m not sure how their pride or territory was affected. Maybe it’s spillover from some previous encounter. Or it could be moods exacerbated by the changing weather. Who knows with floofs? Hard to read as husbands.

So, watching the incident, I said, “It’s okay, boys, there’s no reason to fight, just walk away, Papi.” The Neurons heard that and it was mental clickbait to call up the 2006 song out of the memory channels and put it in the morning stream.

Be strong, stay positive, and vote blue in 2024. Here’s the music video. Coffee and I are doing our tango. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Mood: Fallandfell

Today is Thursday, September 12, 2024. A chilly morning here in Ashlandia, the rain has stopped and the sun is crowning over obstacles, trying to toast us a little today. Right now, it’s 54 F, and the high won’t wander much more than the low seventies.

Yesterday was supposed to see us in the upper seventies. We never made that mark at my place. When I was out writing, rain was dumping on the intersection where the coffee shop sits. Like, wow, very cool to see the silver bullets splashing up on the soaked asphalt and cement. Heavy streams built up fast, gushing into sewers. But driving home, just a four minute event, I was quickly out of the rain; we didn’t see that rain event at our place. Weather can be fickle like that.

The cats took to the rain like cats who don’t like water. After some feeble efforts to assert himself as an outdoor animal, Papi stretched out in front of the fireplace. Although it wasn’t on, it has a pilot light when I lit a few days ago, so it emits some heat. He stayed there for hours, deeply asleep. Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) on the other hand headed for the bed and sacked out.

Last night at the beer gathering, a small group ended up discussing birds. One asked about robins and their migration habits. Like me, he’d been taught in grade school that robins fly away for the winter. Like many life aspects, it gets more complicated than that. Our retired biology professor recounted that a friend of his did several bird counts at a slough for several years and discoverved exactly where the local robin population went each winter, living off various winter berries.

Other than that, we talked about the election and the debate, and the vice president’s pearl earrings. You now, on the right, they believe those were audio devices, giving Vice President Harris an affair advantage over Trump. That’s why he did so poorly. Because how else could he have done so poorly when she did so well? Yes, that was morning snark, undiluted by coffee.

The Neurons fired up Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble from 1989 in the morning mental music stream (Trademark caught). The song is “Crossfire”. It seemed to come into mind as I gazed across the valley. The air feels like autumn but most of the trees didn’t get the text in this area. And then I just sort of mused about how we were caught between the two seasons. And ‘lo, “Crossfire” began playing. I always particularly enjoyed the lines, “Money tight, nothing for free. Won’t somebody come and rescue me.” Used to sort of identify with it.

Stay positive, be strong, lean forward, and vote blue in 2024. Breakfast has been consumed; so has some coffee. Time to get up and do things. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Mood: angrified

8 AM. My wife has left for her exercise class, Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) is talking to me about breakfast, sunshine is streaming in through the windows, and I need to pee. Time to rise and stalk coffee, I decide.

I step onto the back patio with the cats. Papi is chatting up a storm. Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) is more reserved. Sunshine baths us but smoke lingers in the air. Not as bad as yesterday. The air worsened yesterday as the sun arced over the sky. The air quality plummeted, skating through 190. Forests and mountains disappeared behind the smoky curtain. Fortunately, the curtain rose lost night for a while and we had a night of relatively fresh air. Looks like it’s getting pulled down again.

This is Monday, September 9, 2024.

It’s just under 60 F right now. We expect a high of about 92 F.

BTW, the MAGA answer to wildfires and its smoke pollution is to cut down all the forests. Short-sighted as hell, but that’s them: intellectually bankrupt.

I have “Good Thing” from Fine Young Cannibals ringing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark hazy). It’s because I was singing to that 1989 melody with a word substitution. “Good air, where have you gone,” was my lament.

I shifted from good air to good things as the song played. Good things like the efficient post office and delivery systems we knew for a while. Good things like safe schools.

Which triggered reflections on Vance’s comments about school shootings being a way of life because schools are soft targets, which are attractive to a ‘psycho’, as he delicately phrased it.

“And again, as a parent, do I want my school to have additional security? No, of course I don’t,” he concluded. “I don’t want my kids to go to school in a place where they feel like they’ve got to have additional security. But that is increasingly the reality that we live in.”

Vance’s memory is not impressive. People have been killed in churches. Most people passing a church will note the lack of security. And a Pittsburgh syngagogue was found to be a soft target. Malls and shopping centers are soft targets. Grocery stores. Paint stores, hardware stores.

Remember the shooting from a hotel room in Las Vegas? So a concert is a soft target.

What about the college campuses? They’ve been shown to be soft targets.

Police officers being ambushed are not soft targets, yet we read about that numerous times a year.

I remember that several work places, post offices, and a McDonald’s restaurant have been a soft target through the years.

Beyond them, we had vigilante types like Kyle Rittenhouser out looking for targets, or Trayvon Martin’s killer, who thought the kid going for skittles was a threat.

And let’s not overlooked the people shooting others knocking on their door because they’re afraid, a fear the GOP actively stokes to harvest votes. Or the man who shot a woman because he thought she was part of a scam.

As long as you dance around the obvious and pretend it’s something else, nothing will get done and the problem won’t be fixed. And the problem is America’s worsening gun culture.

Congress sort of addressed it for themselves: they’re made themselves a hard target, surrounded by security forces, a place where guns are not permitted.

Funny how that works.

Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. Coffee has broached my system. Here’s the music video. Cheers



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Floofyfest

Floofyfest (floofinition) – A gathering of animals to celebrate the joy of life, the happiness of freedom, and the need for independence. Floofstorians believe it to have originally been organized by cats. Its time and place remains secret. No human is said to have ever witnessed Floofyfest. To date, the only insight that Floofyfest ever took place is from mentions in the remnants of The Chronicles found at Floofhenge. Some floofologists suggest that Floofhenge was the secret site of the first Floofyfest. Origins: circa 3100 BCE, old Floofish.

In Use: “Humper disappeared for three days to attend Floofyfest, and even though she knew her family was devastated by her extended absence, the opportunity to attend Floofyfest was too great to pass.”

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Confloofbondus

Confloofbondus (floofinition) – A natural condition where a human and an animal, or several animals, establish strong emotional and physical connections. Origins: Internet, 2024

In Use: “The Floofnet — that part of the world wide web dedicated to animal information — is rich with evidence of confloofbondus, such as large dogs taking in and carry for orphaned kittens.”

In Use: “Videos and stories of confloofbondus helped many people endure stay-at-home protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.”

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Infloofduction

Infloofduction (floofinition) – The process of leading an animal or making it known to another person or animal via a formal act, announcement, or recommendation. Origin:

In Use: “The challenge of welcoming a new animal or family member to a household can often be mitigated by a patient and well-thought out infloofduction.”

In Use: “Sharon B. was prepared for cautious infloofductions between the new kittens and her old Tom, Catmandu, but Catmandu heard and smelled the little ones and began grooming them like he’d given birth to them himself.”

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Floofartaphily

Floofartaphily (floofinition) – The collecting of knickknacks, artwork, trinkets, and materials related to or depicting animals. Origins: Circa 2000, Internet.

In Use: “Carolyn enjoyed floofartaphily, with little statutes of cats, dogs, geese, and cows abounding in shadow boxes or decorating shelves, but her passion were pigs, and there were two hundred items featuring pigs, including paintings, drawings, pillows with pigs on them, statues, and salt and paper shakers, in her living room.”

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Floogical

Floogical (floofinition) – Relating, involving, or being in accordance with a particular mode of reasoning by an animal.

In Use: “To Atlas, it was floofgical to crumple up the rug by the door, but Suzanne found it a floofstery.”

In Use: “Holler thought it wholly floofgical for him to have the largest and most comfortable chair in the room, even if he was just a small cat.”

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Floofgineer

Floofgineer (floofinition) — A designer, builder, or person who arranges things for animals’ use or convenience. Origins: Middle Floofish, original noted use circa 1635.

In Use: “With two old dogs and three young cats as her housemates, Shelby was an extraordinary floofgineer, installing steps and ramps for the dogs, cat trees for the felines, and floofios for both to go outside but remain safe.”

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Exfloofulate

Exfloofulate (floofinition) – To earnestly discuss matters with an animal to dissuade them from behavior or remonstrate. Origins: 1573, Europe.

In Use: “After Honey overturned the kitchen trash can, Marsha exfloofulated all the reasons why Honey shouldn’t do things like that as Honey sat there and listened, occasionally wagging her tail.”

In Use: “Bob was sound asleep when Lucy awoke him with a bellowing meow, causing Bob to pick Lucy up and exfloofulate, beginning, ‘What is wrong with you, you stupid cat? That was totally unnecessary.'”

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