Month: February 2005

I light a candle for Mike’s mom, who got carted off to hospital with much the same ailment that put MY old man horsey de combat a few years back. Pic is from the beach walk.

This is Malcolm X as a child. He was killed 40 years ago today. By any means necessary Malcolm!!!

It’s like the calm before the storm…. everything so peaceful. http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html is excellent today. Love those aurorae. http://www.xmission.com/~emailbox/mapping.htm has a certain accuracy. Pic is to indicate that we are still in full bore Buffyverse mode. Buffy has just killed her first Ubervamp.

Yikes Lexi I never paid for the Steve Earle (and the Dukes) ticket. But I will. Amazing concert. Just bloody amazing. Now that I’ve seen him live, I’m definitely a fan – and I nearly swooned when he pulled out a mandolin, although I remember thinking that I’d heard some mandolin on a Steve Earle tune before. No duh! Copperhead Road – there’s even mando tab on it when you google images for Copperhead Road. Considering that I felt like hammered scrap most of yesterday it’s startling how perky I felt when I left the Commodore last night. Then came home and chilled with Katie before I collapsed. Another gorgeous mornin’ – Paul will be home soon and I get the car, tra la la. Steve Earle characterized himself as a borderline Marxist! Hope ev’y’body has a good week.

Hunter Stockton Thompson is dead, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Please drink heavily, or read aloud from Revelations, if you wish to memorialize this event. It is not advised to do both.

 

2019 says I did both and it was very funny

The great thing about being at my mother’s place, besides the notion that it’s the most peaceful place imaginable, is that I get a lot of slack cut for when I do my post. So it’s now late morning and I can sit down and tell the world that

1. Nineties music videos are not really all that great. I mean, I watched part of the ‘top 90 music videos of the 90’s’ and thought that I feel sorry for the aliens trying to piece our culture together from this whale dreck.

2. I really like Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett. Now you can guess which movie I watched. Also, Ron Howard actually knows how to direct children, which is really no surprise when you think of it.

3. Keith has fled to ‘the club’ being his uncle’s place. There they can grunt and scratch and be manly.

4. One of my relatives is expecting a baby. Unfortunately I can’t say who yet because her mother in law doesn’t know. My grandma’s saying My Family Can Never Be Too Big comes to mind.

5. I have now read the story that “It’s a Wonderful Life” is based on, and wow is it corny.

6. Remember that history is not always written by the people who were there. I have now seen what happens when a cruel and selfish man is turned into a saint in his old age by a well meaning historian, while the nephews that he worked half to death raise their eyebrows and chorus, as one, “b— s—!”.

7. I come from a long line of people who do kindly things on impulse, and who believe that when something’s meant to be, the way will clear.

8. I get to look more like my great aunt Elsie every year. This is a tragedy, but at least I don’t have facial bumps. And she was a nice lady.

9. My mother is working on the Siberian portion of our family history. During the collectivization and the Great Patriotic War, a lot of Mennonites including my kinfolk died, mostly of starvation, typhus and firing squads. For anybody reading this, no matter how hard your life is right now, you aren’t watching your 16 year old sister die after giving day to a child conceived in rape by the party stalwart running the local collective (the child lived a day). And if your life is that bad, you are likely not living in Canada.

10. Yes, I’m feeling somewhat grim.

11. To lighten the tone somewhat, I should mention that Katie and I walked down to the beach yesterday with our cameras, and I wish to god I had a USB cable or I’d show some of the pix I took yesterday; some of them are actually not bad. It was a lovely walk and Katie was in a really good mood (made better at the end of the day by a call from the D-man) so we were bopping up and down the beach scaring seagulls and taking pictures of driftwood and I was playing with the exposure settings, etc. I hope the picture of the burl comes out okay.

12. I would be feeling pretty good today but a HOWLING wind blew up and as I was attempting to sleep in the sunroom I got to lie there calculating which parts of my body would be obliterated by Douglas Firs. There are some damned big trees close to my parents’ place. I was thinking how funny it would be if I got staked by a branch from a Douglas Fir like something out of Buffy. So I am inadequately rested.

13. Debuted the Tapioca Song for my parents. Quit after the second chorus, as the expression of rising horror in my dad’s face was quite reward enough for my efforts.

14. Soon, the ferry, and home. And laundry. And a return for the complete lack of normalcy that passes for family life. Pic is something random.

Brooke sent me this. About four of these little octopots could rest on my fingernail. This one just hatched. Isn’t it totally adorable??? Don’t you want one!?

Into the “Live long enough and you’ll see some crazy sh’t” file goes a new datum. The Nigerian scammers went through the Dorothy Dunnett archives and have started sending their classic letters to what is probably the most skeptical and refined group of women (present company excepted – and there are a few guys, but not many, in the fan club) on the planet. We viewed this in a mood between hysterical paralysis (suppressed laughter) and bilious fury.

My life is about to get complicated and scary again. I can’t really say anything else except that I’m looking forward to an opportunity for us to really show what we’re made of. 2019 says I have no fucking idea what this means.

Pokey went crazy yesterday and attacked Paul. He has a lot of very big scratches.

Last showcase tonight. Hope you all have other plans; the Laughing Bean only holds 35 people and everybody else said that the known planetary population was coming. I am feeling reasonably relaxed about my set.

I am trying to figure out how I’m going to make a living, post apocalypse, and I have a number of dodges which I think may go reasonably well if I don’t have to move around a lot. Mind you I may not make the cut, but at least I’m trying to think in terms of ‘what small non perishable items will people still want after global industrial collapse?’ Played the Tapioca song to my bedroom walls last night… better than trying to play it in front of the kids, who start screaming and throwing things if I do.

This is either a pictorial representation of Bill Gates’ plan for world domination or a pictorial representation of the magnetic field of the earth.

Most of you have likely seen it, but it still makes me cry.

I was trying to remember when I got this shirt on this morning why I don’t like wearing it, and now that I am typing I know – the buttons bang and rattle on the keyboard in a most distracting way.

All the things that are bugging me right now I can’t talk about because a) the inertnet is forever b) I should be talking to the people who are bugging me rather than sandbagging them c) nobody really cares given THEIR general level of ickiness and d) adults are supposed to actually reflect upon their woes in private; it’s one of the things that makes an adult.

Then, after sober reflection you figure out which one of your friends-for-hire you should talk to about it.

The last showcase is Friday. I thank everybody who’s coming and advise you that if you really want a seat you’d better get there by 7:45.

http://www.321energy.com/editorials/winston/winston020905.html

Yeah, enough sleep. Like 15 hours. Worst aura in my life, completely shut down three quarters of my left side visual field. Followed in a matter of minutes not by a headache but complete inability to think and — this is really weird — a diminishment of my colour vision…The whole thing was triggered by the ruby laser in my optical mouse, if you can believe it. Before I went home sick I marched over to IT and replaced it. Woke up around 4, glanced over Katie’s shoulder at the computer which triggered visual effects AGAIN, this time on the right side, followed by tingling and numbness down BOTH baby fingers, so into the hottest bath I could stand, and lots of painkillers. Back to bed and up at 6:30. Feel like crap but I should be okay at work if I don’t move suddenly and nobody shines a light at me or yells in my ear. Gotta sign off, my fingers are tingling again. Must have caffeine. mOm the package arrived.

Pic is something random.

Brooke forwarded a link to hummingbirds hatching but I’m not going to post the pix because a) they are not cute, they’re hijjus, and b) she says she doesn’t like birds. I have no idea what the significance of this is.

Last night I dreamed that I nearly ran over a toddler while I was backing out of my parking space at Stuporstore and when I picked him up (he was squawking something fierce) and walked around with him I found his mother dead in her minivan. Then I woke up. My dreams have been so full of violence, especially violence against women, lately. I still got enough sleep though.

Brooke, do they really make “Banana Treat Sea Monkey Dessert” like it says on the piece of cardboard that was protecting the Tartelettes au Dali or am I still hallucinating? I think I’m going to go look that up on the net now…..