Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts

A friend sent me an email which included a recent Charles Pierce column in Esquire.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a46506384/trump-rally-new-hampshire-qanon-hecklers/

My buddy closed his email, “I especially liked the phrase, ‘he will wrestle unsuccessfully with the spark gaps widening in his brain’. Although it occurs to me that few under 60 will know what ‘spark gap means.”

Spark gap might be one term falling out of use. Another is DMZ, as in De-Militarized Zone. A friend teaching network security began talking about a DMZ with servers as part of network security and had to stop and first explain ‘DMZ’.

No surprise for me, but a little sip of delight. The world is always changing; word use is just more piece of evidence.

A New Take

Overheard in the coffee shop: a team said they were working together.

“Yes,” one said. “We’re twerking.”

Groans and laughter all around.

Flooace

Flooace (floofinition) 1. A person who is not an animal expert or but is knowledgeable about animals from experience. Origins: Internet era circa 2003 in this meaning, a combination of floof and ace.

In Use: “Growing up with dogs and cats — her mother’s cat slept with her from the day she was brought home, engendering some mild, amused jealousy in Mom that Marla had stolen her cat — made Marla a flooace by the time she was fifteen. Everyone thought she would be a vet, but she instead went into politics because she’d decided that the world needed to change and she was the one who was going to do it.”

Recent Use: “People post lost or found animals on Nextdoor, and flooaces get online to offer opinions in the comments sections about what to do to resolve the problem.”

2. The locations where animals like to stay or rest. Origins: Text messages first noted in 2019, created from joining floof and place.

In Use: “Tucker’s go-to flooace is under the dining room table when Michael isn’t home, but on Michael’s desk, chair, or computer, when Michael is home and on his computer.”

In Use: “Being a large dog, the Maxinator enjoyed the kingsized bed in the master suite as his flooace, but the rules said he wasn’t allowed in there, so he had to go to his secondary location, on his huge bed by the family room patio door.”

Recent Use: “Some cats, such as Marley — yes, named after the dog in the book and movie — like to find the most unusual flooace to sleep, like it’s a competition to upstage other floofs.”

Misanfloof

Misanfloof (floofinition) – Person or animal who avoids the company or society of animals. Origins: Greek, first used in the stated meaning in 1683.

In Use: “She thought he might be a person she wanted to spend her life with until she decided to adopt a puppy and learned that he was a misanfloof.”

In Use: “Karen loved having a pet floof but somehow always managed to adopt one who was a misanfloof who angered whenever any other animal of any sort was around.”

Recent Use: “His latest movie was about a misanfloof who becomes a prophet surrounded by animals after a climate change disaster.”

Simplefloof

Simplefloof (floofinition) 1. An animal with few needs or worries.

In use: “Rocky was a simplefloof, happy with a toy, some kibble, and the company of humans or other animals.”

2. An animal whose foolish behavior or silly personality is often the subject of repeated stories for others’ amusement.

In use: “A sweet simplefloof, Peaky loved playing with a rubber worm but despised how it felt and tasted. She’d bat the toy across the room, then wash her paw before galloping over to the toy again. Whenever she picked it up in her mouth, she immediately dropped it, shaking her head. Yet, she’d pull the toy out of her little toy chest whenever it was put away.”

The Writing Moment

He enjoys writing, especially science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction. Been entertaining himself with it on computer since he first bought a Kaypro in the 1980s and installed WordStar. Many of those stories are trapped on old floppy disks stored in a container in a closet in his home office.

He still uses a computer but MS Word is now the program, and all is saved on a hard drive regularly backed up. One feature in Word both helpful and bugs him is autocorrect. Making up words, planets, languages, names, of course, is fun. Autocorrect usually marks it as wrong and tries ‘fixing’ it for him. What’s weirdest is when it takes one of manufactured words and turns it into a real word which he doesn’t know. Always sends him to the net to see what that word means.

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