The Blog I'm Not Writing

Department Of Why Not All Dreams Should Become Reality

Dateline: last Friday (early Saturday); a dream from which I woke moiself up at 5:30 AM. In that early morning reverie, I was the lead detective on a murder case.   [1]    No one was mourning the victim, “XY,” a well-known serial rapist and sexual harasser whose money and political connections had kept him from prosecution for years.   [2]   XY had been found dead in his mansion, lying on a floor in the proverbial Pool of Blood ®. He had been beaten to death with an as-of-yet unidentified, blunt, mallet-like object, then castrated postmortem with an instrument which, according to the coroner, was likely a pair of pinking shears.

Bear with me for a moment.  Do you remember the song, Who Let The Dogs Out, the highly annoying festering turd of a song one-hit wonder by The Baha Men? 

 

 

Well, then, imagine hearing the song’s chorus over and over and over again, in a dream – you’d try to wake yourself up from that, wouldn’t you?

 

Only the version (of the song’s chorus) in my dream was much, much…stranger.

Detective moiself had, using false pretenses and in true Movie Murder Mystery ® fashion, gathered a group of likely suspects – XY’s known or suspected sexual assault victims – in the drawing room of XY’s mansion.   For the kind of reason that can only make sense in a dream, my Professional Detective Strategy ® strategy was to have all the room’s exits blocked after the suspects had been seated and get a confession by repeatedly playing a recording of Who Let The Dogs Out, wherein the chorus had been altered thusly:

Who cut the balls off?
(Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof)
Who cut the balls off?
(Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof)
Who cut the balls off?
(Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof)
Who cut the balls off?

I managed to wake up/escape from the dream before any of the suspects confessed.

 

My guess is Ms. Scarlett, in the kitchen, with a meat tenderizer.  [3]

 

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Department Of Thank You For Sharing That Previous Story,
Which Was, Truly, The Epitome Of The Holiday Spirit

 

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Department Of Oh Yeah, Solve This Too, While You’re At It
Sub Department of the Fleeting Dreams Of Youth

In last week’s post, moiself asked (not entirely rhetorically, but certainly wishfully) for the proverbial Someone to solve the problem of redesigning life to accommodate humanity’s lengthening lifespans.  According to Major News Sources,   [4]  the problem remains unsolved.

C’mon, folks, you can do better. If that particular dilemma doesn’t spur your imagination, how’s about the ongoing issue of cleaning up, or at least detoxifying, our environment – starting with the big one: the air we breathe.  We can go a couple of days without water and a couple of weeks without food, but a couple of minutes without breathable air and we are toast.

A major unpleasant memory from my childhood (in late 1960’s – early 1970’s So Cal) was dealing with Smog Alerts.  Activities were curtailed; recess and PE classes cancelled….  Flash forward to the present, and whenever we have had “low quality” air alerts – as when the smoke from recent year’s wildfires drifted south or north to the Portland metro area – my watery eyes and that distinctive“catch” I feel in my chest/bronchial tubes takes me back to those wretched Smog Alert days.

 

 

In the late 1960s through the early 1980s California’s enactment of innovative, first-in-the-nation, vehicle emission control strategies and standards actually worked, and although the state’s population continued to rise its air quality improved…for a few decades, at least  [5].  But while politicians and scientists joined forces to cobble together stop-gap measures, a grade school girl dreamed of a fantastical invention which would solve the problem forever.

During an interval of several months when I was 11 or 12 years old, I had dreams wherein I invented colossal fan/vacuum type devices which, when placed in strategic locations across the state, sucked in air and ran the air through a series of filters, which strained out the polluting particulate matter and compacted the pollutants into bricks, particle boards, and other (non-toxic) building materials. Not only would our air be clean, this invention also protected trees and forests, as the need for lumber was greatly curtailed.

Yep, it seemed realistic to me at the time. The decades passed, and the Scientist/Engineer Who Saved The World…well, it very obviously didn’t turn out to be moiself.  So,I know it’s the Holiday Season ® and we’ve all got things to do, but can y’all get to work on this, maybe next year?

 

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Department of Epicurean Excursion   [6]

Featuring this week’s cookbook, author and recipe:  Never mind.  EE was preempted this week by my annual ladies’ lefse Party. 

 

 

And how do the ladies feel about lefse and Lars?

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

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Department Of The Partridge Of The Week

It’s that time of the year again. As has become a tradition much maligned anticipated in our neighborhood, moiself will be hosting a different Partridge, every week, in my front yard.   [7]   Can you guess this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

May you solve murder mysteries and more in your sleep;
May your imagination and your knowledge be complementary;
May Lars the Luscious Lefse man grace  at least one of your holiday parties;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

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[1] I am attributing my having recently seen “Knives Out” for that dream occupation.

[2] Imagine that!?!  Only in a dream, right?

[3] If you don’t get the reference to the board game Clue, I sentence you to repeated listening sessions featuring “Who Let The Dogs Out” until you publicly confess your cultural illiteracy.

[4] Read: the tabloids whose headlines I scan while standing in line at the grocery story.

[5] So Cal air  pollution is rising again.  Rising numbers of people and vehicles outnumber good intentions and inventions. Waaaah.

[6] A recurring feature of this blog, since week 2 of April 2019, wherein moiself decided that moiself would go through my cookbooks alphabetically and, one day a week, cook 9at least) once recipe from one book.

[7] In our pear tree.