(Bravos and bravas! Especially to you, Peter T.--you're on my Mudcat pedestal for this thread--and to you, Kat/katlaughing. )

Loomings.

Call me Oatmeal. Some months ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me for sure, I thought I would surf about a little and see the muddy-watery part of the cyberworld. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the cholesterol-ridden circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily passing gas before coffin warehouses, and climbing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my herpes gets such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong marsupial principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's accordion's off--then, I account it high time to get to Mudcat as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and balling. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the bullshit and song. There is nothing surprising in this, for I love to laugh. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the musical and the ludicrous with me.

There now is your insular city of the Mudchattoes, belted round by musical wharves as British isles by choral reefs--comradery surrounds it with siren's song. Right and left, the streets take you musicward. Its extreme down-town is the battered DT, where that noble Max is washed by MIDI's (not WAVES), and cooled by Lyr Adds, which a few hours previous were out of sight of the man. Look at the crowds of folk-gazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Ard Tack to The Zulu King, and from thence, by @bawdy @sick northward. What do you see?--Posted like un-silent (insolent?) sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal mudtoms and mudkitties fixed in lyrical reveries. Some leaning against their piles; some seated upon the peer-heads; some looking over the possum's asses from Orilla; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better assward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster- tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the playing fields gone? What do they here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the folk-water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the post; loitering under the shady lee of yonder lurking songhouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling--nay, even with falling, and head straight into the mud. And there they stand--miles of them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from shady lanes and darkest alleys, red-light streets, prisons, or other porn venues--north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither? Or the magnetic personality of Joe Offer? Or is it simply the magnetic bras?

Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any DT search you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a musical dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream--if not the stream of music, then certainly the stream of gutter-minded flux. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his three legs, set his feet a-going, and he will inphallicably lead you to mudcatwater, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great international dessert of life without laughter and song or even lime jello, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical processor. Yes, as every one knows, folk music, friendship, and Mudcat water are wedded for ever.