Scotti provides us with a somber but excellent collection of memes and news over at Scottie’s Playground. They all struck hard and true. Some stayed with me more, so I included them below. I hope you’ll check them all out. Cheers
Scottie’s Stuff
Awesome Toons
Just in time to save my sanity, I clicked on Jill Dennison’s Saturday Afternoon ‘Toon Time! Quite a collection of humor, I encourage you to check them out. Meanwhile, here are my Saturday super-seven favorites.
Floofstock
Floofstock (floofinition) – 1. Supplies stored for animals’ use. Origins: First noted in the 1897 pamphlet, “Mandatory Requirements for Keeping & Tending Floofstock”.
Un Use: “Learning their animals’ eating habits can drive people to have a large floofstock to satisfy their picky fur friends.”
2. Legendary music venue held by animals, featuring such acts as Canned Floof, Ten Floofs After, and the Grateful Floofs.
In Use: “The First Floofstock Music & Treats Festival was hyped as a three-day conflooftration of good purrs and mellow woofs and attracted more than half a million animals, including elephants and a giraffe.”
For Donald
I live a dull life
Behind the blinds
Peering out to see –
Is anyone trying
to get inside?
Watching all those neighbors
Coming and go
Wondering if the police
Are ever gonna show.
The crimes they’re committing
In my mind
Are the terrible most worse crimes
Of all time.
I need a big stick
To beat them all down.
Until I do, they’ll treat me
like some big orange clown.
Hi Yourself
Stepping into the coffee shop, I immediately scan for a table and chair to sit and write.
It’s late morning and busy. Aha, though — two tables are there for —
“Hey, Michael.”
I’m being accosted from across the room. The speaker is a barista. Having shouted out my name, they’ve busy multi-tasking.
Spotting Kat first, I begin, “Hey, Ka — “
I see Natalie.
I don’t know which called out.
So I finish, “Talie.”
Chuckling to myself about this, I dumped my gear at a table and head to the counter. Kat is manning the register and Natalie is busy preparing my coffee. I hear Natalie say, “Curling,” before she turns away.
Kat asks, “Let me ask you, Michael. Are you watching the Olympics?”
“Only the curling,” I reply.
Natalie roars with laughter as Kat’s mouth drops open.
“No way,” Kat finally says.
“Yes, way,” I answer. “By the way. When I came in, I heard one of you say hello to me. I didn’t know who it was, so I called you Katalie.”
The two bend over with laughter. “We ARE Katalie,” Kat shouts. Whipping toward each other, she and Natalie exchange high fives.
I pay and take my coffee. The writing day has an auspicious beginning.
A Traveling Dream, and Other Snippets
Dreamed I was going to a camp. Just a small sort of outdated place, with low wood-framed buildings painted brown or dark red, with a flat, slanted roof. A woman I’d just met was going with me, along with her sister.
We arrived in a 1970s era dark Dodge Charger or Ford Torino. I was driving and it was night when we arrived. The sisters had no place to sleep. I told them they could share my bed or sleep in the car, or I could sleep in the car, but I didn’t really want to. They ended up sleeping with me, one on either side.
Later, we got up to go find food and ran into other people I casually knew. They had soup and bread. We asked where they got it and headed toward a little shack they indicated. It was a dark place with a low ceiling, where we discovered we needed to pay in marks. I didn’t have any marks so the sister paid a 1,000 marks for food for me.
We ate and then separated. I wandered, exploring, following winding dirt paths between the buildings and trees at this tiny resort. Night was falling and I didn’t have any marks, so I didn’t know what to do. I did have dollars but not a large amount.
It was dark. I went back to my car. Another car, very like it, was parked beside it. Both with nose in, the rear ends toward me. As I reached my car, I looked over to the other car and saw the sisters sitting in it. I wondered if they’d gotten into the wrong car by mistake.
Dream end.
This was one of three dreams remembered from last night, but the most coherent and lucid.
Can’t recall much of the other two dreams. They’re shifting, like almost there, not quite remembered or forgotten. The strongest of the two had me carrying baking tins. Something finished was in it but I don’t know what. Others were doing the same. Many of the others looked like me but were slightly different. When I offered my baking tin, I saw that their offering was fully risen and mine was flat. I went off, got another like magic, and it was full. I went to give it to someone else, but discovered it was flat again. All of this took place outside in bright sunshine on a calm day.
The main thing I remember from the third dream was that I was happy and laughing a lot. And younger, but an adult.
Ah, night work.
Monday’s Wandering Thoughts
We attended a musical show in Talent last Sunday. The woman beside me started chatting during intermission. Eventually, she asked, “Where do you live?”
“Ashland. And you?”
“Ashland. I moved here in 1976. When did you move to Ashland?”
“Over twenty years ago.”
“Really? A town this size, I meet many people but I don’t recall seeing you before.”
I smiled. “Well, we’re southies. We live on the southern end.”
“Southies.” She laughed. “I like that. Yes, I’m on the northwestern end of town.”
The show resumed. I wondered where she did her grocery shopping. Ashland is unofficially divided into the center, north, and south. North Ashland doesn’t have a grocery store. The south is the town’s newest area and offers five stores. A small Safeway is the only store in the center.
Townies who have lived here a while seem to go to Medford for their shopping needs, especially WinCo. From conversations, it seems like the southern stores — Market of Choice, Shop N Kart, Albertson’s, BiMart, and Grocery Outlet — haven’t been there ‘that long’. In fact, old timers often regale us with what ‘used to be there’ and how they loved those previous places.
I didn’t get a chance to ask my new friend where she shopped, but I’ll be sure to take it up with her, next time I run into her.
Look!
Driving back home, I pulled up to stop behind other cars. My attention drifted from traffic to the mountains to the north.
Gasp.
Snow.
Not much, mind you, but snow was topping the northern mountains. Excitement building, I leaned forward to look east as traffic moved.
Yes, more snow capped Pilot Rock and the eastern mountains.
Been too long since snow crowned those mountains. More rain is expected tomorrow, moving in from the south later this week. Weather forecasters are calling for snow, but only at higher elevations. Still, if a bit more of the mountains are covered, I’ll be a much less worried camper.
Floofcedarian
Floofcedarian (floofinition) – Someone learning about the rudimentary needs of animals, especially housepets. Origins: floofcedary “floof primer” (going back to Middle Flooflish floofcedary, derived from Middle Flooftin floofcedārium). First known use, 1703 – “Practickal Advice for Floofcedarians”.
In Use: “After rescuing a vocal kitten from a heavy, Sly and Benji became overnight floofcedarians, chasing information on the net about to care for the first pet either of them had ever had.”
Michael Seidel, writer 