

Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not

He encountered a friend and told him, “I like your shirt. That’s very nice.”
“Thank you,” the friend replied.
“Would you sell it to me?”
“What?”
Brainstorm! He’d start a reality game show — “The Shirt Off Your Back” — where minor celebrities would go around offering people money, gifts, or favors for the clothes they were wearing. It’d be sort of a poor person’s Indecent Proposal.
It was dumb enough that it might just work.
Late log in on this August 14, a Sunday in the common era human year of 2022. That’s the date according to the instruments. Looks like a decent world. I’ve already sampled the drink which they call coffee and sent a glowing report back to headquarters. Feel like I can fly back there without a ship after drinking that coffee!
Greetings from Earth! I made it. As expected, the situation for humanity is swiftly deteriorating. Few of them should remain in another five hundred of their years, making our conquest very easy. I am looking forward to it.
The data specifies that I’ve landed in a small town in the Rogue River valley in Oregon in the United States on North America – their terms. Sol, their local sun – they only have one – passed the eastern horizon as the world turned at 6:17 this morning, using their time reference, shortly after I touched down. Air samples revealed the fresh, oxygen-rich atmosphere that we’d anticipated and a temperature of 22 Gluck, cool for us but a comfortable temperature for humans and most other life firms of this small rock. I’ll stay here, where the temperature will reach 30 G until the sun sets. I want to see a Terran setting sun. I heard that pollution makes them very pretty. That sunset will take place at 8:13. Then I’ll take off and continue to my final destination, Mars. It’ll be interesting to see how Mars as changed since I’ve last been.
Meanwhile, I’ll drink coffee and listen to human music. Influences of others who’ve been to Earth are felt. Although a large spectrum of music is available, the genres and its offspring known as rock and roll most please my neurons. There seems to be a mental musical stream which this music has ignited. I have one particular song, which I’ve learned is called “Crossfade” by Cold, playing in this stream. (Sorry, I have that backwards. I don’t understand this aspect of their terminology, and why Crossfade is the band’s name and “Cold” is the song title. Perhaps I’ll study it while I’m here.) I find myself inexplicably humming this song, “Cold”, off and on as I do other things. The song came out about one hundred years after I hatched, which would make it 2005 on Earth. I do not know why it continues to play in me in this way. I’m not the first to experience this, of course. Elvis warned us about it in his report, for example.
I am going to drink more coffee now. As always, my Lygers, stay positive and test negative. Hope to be home again in a mersoon. Meanwhile, please enjoy this song which is trapped in my head. See what you make of it.
A small orange striped creature which humans call a cat is approaching. It seems to know our language! I will provide an update later.
Bleck
Apofloofaic Magic (floofinition) – Benevolent magic used to protect or heal animals.
In use: “Many people, without realizing, developed apofloofaic magic while trying to save animals, using affirmations to build their magic skills.”
Imfloofdence (floofinition) – Animal behavior marked by cocky boldness.
In use: “While other kittens kept close to Mom, Jazz was the picture of imfloofdence, marching up to adult cats and dogs and challenging them to duels, and aggressively trying to steal food from everyone everywhere.”
He enjoyed people watching. Regulars were given backstories as their habits and details were observed and conversations they had with others were overhead.
One twentyish woman always wore a jean jacket lined with wool. An ordinary jacket except she wore it every day. This was during summer, during the day, during times when the temperature tiptoed up through ninety to one hundred degrees F. Yes, she was inside, where air conditioning sometimes made it feel like we huddled in shacks as we went ice fishing. But she never removed it, always wore it.
Imagination began fabricating reasons for her jacket. It could be fashion commitment. Perhaps a medical condition? Maybe the jacket provided her with extraordinary powers or protected her. There was also the possibility that the jacket gave her form. Removing the jacket would reveal that she had no body beneath it, exposing her as a neck with two hands and a lower body.
It was hard to say why she wore the jacket, but many possibilities existed.
He enjoyed a long, intimate drink of coffee. The brew — temperature, flavor, highlights, smell — was perfect, encouraging him to drink longer, and then, to close his eyes and indulge in another long drink.
It was a gorgeous cup of coffee, and almost made up for the years of harsh, hot coffee he’d drunk in military facilities around the world at life dark thirty in the morning.
After he and his wife were married a few years, she passed on the casual judgement that he had a flat butt. He’d never considered his butt before, imagining without thinking about it that he probably had a pretty nice butt, but the comment raised his butt awareness. He began studying other’s butts and soon realized that a large spectrum of butt characteristics exist – flat, round, broad, muscular, chubby, pert, drooping, and so on. So many ways to classify and categorize butts by shape, contour, and type are out there that he eventually developed a large index butt shapes.
He had, somehow, become an asspert, all because of his own flat butt.
Whensday, August 10, 2022, slipped in when our backs were turn. Looks like he’ll stay a day. Maybe two.
You feel that it’s Whensday, a day when questions rise like a two-year-old learning to talk is following you around. Your neurons bombard you with questions. “When is the pandemic going to end? When are things going to get better? When will I be able to relax? When is my package arriving? When is dinner?”
Yeah, I feel very Whensday today.
Sun arrived like a teenager sneaking into the house at 6:13 AM. Won’t go away until 8:19 this evening. I cannot help but notice the reduced time allotted for sunshine in my valley, the product of the orbital spins and revolutions. Temperature is cool but pleasing 18 C. Only anticipating the heat to push the mercury up to 86 F today. Our air quality leaped into the red zone yesterday. The air red zone isn’t the same as in American football. Air red zone means it’s starting to be unhealthy for breathing creatures. It’s dropped back down to the moderate zone this AM. All depends on the winds. Yes, the answer is blowing in the wind.
“Young Americans” by David Bowie (1975) is circulating through the morning mental music stream. (The stream, BTW, is like a rambunctious labyrinth with several connected levels. It’s a boulder strewn rockin’ place.) It arrived after reading through news stories and then taking a contemplative stance to question, “What will the future be like?” What will the young Americans be like? Will real and sustained change arrive. An eternal optimist, I reply, yeah, but it’s gonna be messy. Won’t be straightforward, will be more like a shuffle back and forth, left and right, up and down, just like most of history has been.
Anyway, here is the song. Hope you enjoy it. Speaking of enjoying, I believe young coffee is patiently waiting in the other room. When will I drink it? I think now is the time. Stay positive, test negative, etc. Cheers
Old floof song, usually sung at night, often to the tune of a “I’m A Floof”.
Five o’clock in the morning,
‘bout more than a hour ‘fore dawn.
I’m staring in my food dish.
My kibble’s half gone.
Starvation is standing beside me.
It’s not a good place to be.
All I want is some kibble.
Why do they torture me?
Whoa, I got the kibbles,
I got the old kibbles blues.
If you had to eat ol’ kibbles,
You’d have the old kibbles blues, too.