Month: April 2005

letters to politicians
2005-04-03— Posted by: allegra

I have now forwarded the letter shown previously to the editors of the Sun and Province, and to 20 MLA’s including my own local one. I will be judicious about posting any responses; I am trying to establish dialogue, not demonstrate something about politicians and newspaper editors that most of us already knew.

Oh, by the way…. if any of the constituency office staff delegated to deal with my letter are smart enough to find this website (which is not easy to find because nobody can spell my name and I don’t do the live link thing) be advised that I only get 3K hits a month to this site, so you can cheerfully ignore me – media wise, I don’t even rate as a drunken heckler. And besides. I’m not left wing, I’m actually an anarchist or I CALL myself an anarchist, so I’m even lamer, politically, than those NDP warhorses you’re so bored with. I must state publicly, however, that my religious beliefs prevent me from being personally violent unless you actually hit me first. That means, essentially, that I don’t care about your spoken politics. I care a lot more about what you do. (It also means that other people who call themselves anarchists disown me, because I don’t have the chops to perform direct action. Give me a break kids, I’m 46 and my hip hurts! But I’ll hide you while the cops are looking for you, so I have my uses.) And I will cut immense amounts of slack for a politician, any politician, no matter his or her party, who gives me a response in a human voice, as per the Cluetrain Manifesto, quoted earlier in this blog. So dear constituency assistant, congratulations! I send you a big hug and hope you’re giggling to yourself, now that you’ve found my belated Easter Egg.

I light a candle for John Paul II. I really wish he’d been a little easier on the birth control issue (and I would have forgiven him, teeth gnashing, on both the ordination of women and homosexuality had he lightened up about population control) but he made a good death, and I have to grant him that.

Paul’s off at church. Good on him! I’m going to finish up here and start cooking for Rob and Liz.

FDR quotes
2005-04-03— Posted by: allegra

Dear (politician, newspaper editor, religious leader, business leader):

The world is running out of cheap oil, and this will trigger events that require a measured response, rather than whining or partisan posturing. What are you, personally and politically, doing about the end of cheap oil?

Sincerely, me.

You know, I was thinking I should write a goddamned diatribe, but I can’t. The facts are now plain. I’m leaving out climate change and environmental destruction and all the other things I could throw into a letter, as that would just be me touching myself inappropriately in the hope of getting off (so to speak) some gonzo shots. It’s the oil that is going to break us… the question is, how badly, and at one point are the politicians gonna think about Franklin Roosevelt and Mike Pearson instead of Jeb Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Which reminds me. Somehow – books are like this – I inherited a history book called Pageant of Europe and I bought, at the amazing Renaissance Books, one of the best used book stores in the known universe, a book called Light from Many Lamps. Let me excerpt in large part from these books

These, quoted from Lillian Eichler Watson’s Light from Many Lamps, are the last words FDR wrote for public utterance. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage the next day. Think ye o readers of a day when men were elected President who actually *could* think and write like this.

“Let me assure you that my hand is the steadier for the work that is to be done, that I move more firmly into the task, knowing that you – millions and millions of you – are joined with me in the resolve to make this work endure.

The work, my friends, is peace; more than an end to this war – an end to the beginnings of all wars; yes, an end, forever, to this impractical, unrealistic settlement of the differences between governments by the mass killings of peoples.

Today as we move against the terrible scourge of war, as we go forward toward the greatest contribution that any generation of human beings can make in this world – the contribution of lasting peace – I ask you to keep up your faith. I measure the sound, solid achievement that can be made at this time by the straight edge of your own confidence and your resolve. And to you, and to all Americans who dedicate themselves with us to the making of an abiding peace, I say:

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.”

The passage in quotes is taken from Pageant of Europe. After asking Congress to agree to send munitions and material to the democracies fighting Hitler, on January 6, 1941, this is part of what FDR said, “In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in (his) own way everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world terms, means a world wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbour – anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.”

Setting aside the terrible irony inherent in some of his words, doesn’t it sound wonderful? You’d think he had actually read the Constitution and the Bible and decided to try to apply them in real life! <*?Anyway, I’m off to fax this letter to the unsuspecting opinion makers and politicians of the GVRD. May Cthulhu have mercy on all of us.

Thunder of God
2005-04-03— Posted by: allegra

It was very strange but fitting that the Pope died the same day I went to Chor Leoni’s Thunder of God concert. The Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring that they sang was dedicated to his memory. The organ at Christchurch Cathedral is awesome but new, and so a little ‘buggy’. But it was still a great concert. I kept thinking that both of my parents would have enjoyed it tremendously.

Calling Emperor Norton
2005-04-03— Posted by: allegra

By virtue of the power invested in me, with the assistance of the moon and a bad tempered mule, I issue a Proclamation Of Things That Shall Cease To Exist.

Ordnance larger than 50 calibre.

Disney retail stores.

Bill Gates, except as a legend to scare children with.

My arrhythmias.

People who spam indiscriminately.

Bedside clocks with alarms.

Bad Shakespearean ecktors.

People who think they are as witty as John Cleese, but aren’t.

Indigestion.

Starving children.

Big hair. I mean ARTIFICIAL big hair.

Duly witnessed by a dust mote exhaled by Caesar as he expired, I remain Dowager Empress Allegra, channeling my spiritual ancestor, Emperor Norton.

Global dog food sales in 1998 amounted to 9.237 million tonnes and cat food to 5.424 million tonnes, totalling 14.661 million tonnes.

Source, http://www.afma.co.za

Recommendation: with respect to consumption of resources, specifically meat, either start feeding your animal raw food, put it down, or don’t replace it when it dies. If you don’t already have a pet, don’t get one.

With the total value for the C&T market reaching new heights of US$228.9 billion in 2004, the list of products that fall under the personal care category are like wise incrementing in sales and variety. Brand developers are continuously launching new products that treat and pamper the consumer’s every real or perceived need.

Not quite sure what C&T stands for; I think it means cosmetics and therapy, source http://www.globalcosmetic.com/.

The amount quoted is interesting to me for several reasons. I don’t wear makeup largely because my mother doesn’t, and it didn’t stop her from ‘landing a good man’ and ‘having babies’, which after all, is all that women really want from life. I am being sarcastic, but anybody who really knows me, knows that I am not being VERY sarcastic, unless you’re gay, in which case I’m being an idiot stuck up on my heterosexist privilege, for which I humbly apologize; however, I am given to making broad sweeping statements, and this is just another one. Okay, I’m being more acidulous than vitriolic, if you want precision. And if I come on too strong about makeup, every tranny from here to NYC is going to threaten to kick my sorry ass.

ahem… where wuz I. It’s also interesting to me because the yearly aggregate dollar amount traded in the global cosmetics and pet food industries could put a) clean water in the mouth of every child on earth b) put birth control into the hands of every man and woman who wanted it and c) immunize every child on the planet against measles mumps pertussis and tetanus, with a side of fries.

Now since my dad makes Malthus look like a Dallas Cheerleader on crystal meth and he’s already going yeah, but, I have to interject at this point that YES I know that throwing money to third world countries on development projects is a mug’s game, we’ve all seen that on our TVs. I would add that small scale development projects controlled by locals using local resources work really well; unfortunately these are scarce and unevenly applied. The planet just doesn’t have a human distribution system that works without raping and killing the biosphere in the process of delivering goods and services. So supposing, just supposing that I DON’T want to throw up my hands and go, ya know, this problem is too big for one person. What would I do?

Well the first and most obvious thing is to sell the car. Paul and I are looking at our options about that, because the Soob, in every other respect a fabulous vehicle, is a complete frikkin gas hog. The next most obvious thing is to stop eating meat. The third most obvious thing is to support land and nature conservancy efforts, at least the ones that appear to be working. The fourth thing is to start growing as much of our own food as possible. Then there are a whole bunch of things that flow out of these things, but they are all really little. The big ones are gas and meat. Now I know that my consumption reductions, such as they have been, mean nothing. And I’m angry that private aviation and drag racing and muscle cars are going away, which means that I’m not really very grownup about all the changes that are facing us. But at least I’m past the point of feeling inert. I’m going to go around and be my true self. I’m going to be an unpleasant cow, and I will post the results here. Up next; letters to local politicians.

W
2005-04-02— Posted by: allegra

W, after work, on a Friday, in the golf course club house where we repair to suck back beer (and tequila shots) and eat nachos (and drink wine) means, not el Presidente, but work. Work this week has had a surreal, Gonzo quality that is hard to exactly describe. I just went back and read the terms of my employment, and with that sobering document seared into my cerebellum, I deleted the next two sentences. It’s not bad, it’s just… impolitic.

Tonight was amazing on So Many Counts. First, 3/4’s of the original lunch bunch, from the old days, reunited. Our 4th, the wonderful man, is currently in India wandering around by himself having epiphanies. I didn’t even think to raise a glass on his account, but that’s okay. Next count… I took my bra off without taking off my shirt. I love doing that. It’s so much easier to be that kind of extremophile than pay for tattoos – if you’re going to be extreme and bizarre. Count off the next thing…the twins were there. They aren’t twins, but they are dynamite together. And Jim drove me down and Jerome took me home. I FINALLY HAVE his nephew’s name, it’s Julian. All the Dunnett fans will snicker behind their hands, if they don’t pull a face, but before I knew about the House of Niccolo series, I thought Julian was a great name and I’m happy with it. And found out that Jim is thinking of girls’ names like Madeleine (or however he and his lady wife Carol wish to spell it).

Brief aside; I don’t think I ever explained, ma, what I mean by “your lady wife”. When I say that, in conversation or in print, I mean three very specific, linked things. I am saying “I respect your marriage”; I am saying “your wife/s.o./partner is worthy of respect” and I am saying “it appears to me that you treat her well”. So I am compressing many positive opinions into three words… but if I don’t explain what I mean by that, it’s hard to appreciate why I say it and why I never say it sarcastically, although I may say it with asperity. Ma, I know how you are about winkling the last shreds of meaning from the shell of every word, so I thought I’d be discursive.

What else was wonderful. The waitress. What a doll.

And there was other stuff – crikey, I missed the new gal, who is an engineer. She seems really nice, but a bit overwhelmed by how we are. I mean, all this talk about dancing with Lashkar, nautch style, and then having my bra explode – this is the best part of ten years ago now, and I’m by no means as wild as I useta be – and it didn’t really explode, it kinda disassembled itself – is enough to put a nice girl off. And she’s a woman, OF COURSE, when I call her a girl it’s a backhanded way of saying I feel super old. But right now, I’m thinking good thoughts about good people, and we hardly talked about W at all. And I’m thinking about watching one coworker creep up the stairs to fart in another’s sleeping face. Actually, his boss’s sleeping face. That happened at the first party with coworkers at this company that I ever attended, almost 8 years ago now. They were both sitting across from me tonight, and they still know how to laugh.

Stanislav Petrov was minding his own business in a missile silo in Russia in 1983. The radar screen popped up five incoming missiles from the US, and the protocol was that he now had to hit the button sending some back.

A lot went through his mind, but, like Dietrich von Choltitz, the German army general who assumed personal responsibility for defying Hitler’s direct order when he refused to level Paris, he thought that he didn’t particularly want to be the guy who went down in history (such as it would be in the smoking rubble) as the man who escalated world war III. He figured it was a mistake; also, he’d been to a damned good military school, and it just didn’t make sense from a military perspective. The five missiles, displayed so convincingly on his screens, didn’t exist.

The next time somebody asks you to do something that’s just plain wrong, strap on your balls and think about Stanislav.

English
2005-04-01— Posted by: allegra

Yeah, well, anyway, I get home and call Peggy to see if she wants to go swimmin’ and she sounds like she’s expiring from a cold, except that her usual good humour hasn’t leaked away, so it was a brief but cheery conversation and I’m still sitting here instead of exercising. Then called my mother but kinda had to get off the phone in a hurry because pOp was working. So I kicked around the kitchen and ate a sandwich, and then thought I’ll look around my computer desk for that poem I was going to post, and there it is.

Keith is off to karate and Katie I think has found something to watch. I’ve got a hankering to watch one of the Mind’s Eye tapes. But I probably won’t. I’m still in mourning because the TV went downstairs. I didn’t mind having it upstairs, but Paul is really really adamant about it going downstairs. I miss us all being gathered to watch something. It reminded me of when I was growing up, and we’d all collapse around the phosphor dot shrine and gawk for a spell. The package arrived, mom.

Anyway, some of you may be irritated by all the poetry, but I do a lot of different stuff with words, and if you prefer the prose, I won’t kvetch.

Last night I was having palpitations again, in bed (and not in a nice way I hasten to add), and Paul and were facing each other, which is unusual because we’re normally in spoon configuration or back to back. The palpitations slowed and then stopped and I asked Paul very quietly if he’d been throwing healing energy at me and he said yes and I told him it was working. I could feel what I visualize as a column of golden warmth and light between his heart and mine. A very nice feeling – and I promptly fell asleep. I’m telling you, I’ll never be bored as long as I’m living with Paul, he never ceases to challenge and startle and delight and annoy me.

I light a candle to the memory of Terry Schiavo, may her life be a beacon in the darkness. Paul and I are off to the lawyers next week for living wills, which are actually called something else in BC. I think Paul will breathe a big sigh of relief once we do that, and after all this hoo ha it is a good and proper thing to grow something beautiful from soil richly fertilized by the bs that’s been spread so generously by the media. The lunch bunch and I had quite the discussion about it today at work. To cling to life when you have a fighting chance is an amazing thing. To be forced to cling to life against your will is a horror none of us wished to face. I have a simple dividing line. If I can still be of some use in raising my kids, keep me alive. Otherwise, kweccch (finger across the throat gesture).

I’ve been really down on the universe lately, so some good news for a change.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March05/grass.fuel.ssl.html

http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php?fuseaction=home.story&story_id=2346

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/PBD-follow-the-energy.html

http://www.hhmi.org/news/garcia_garcia.html

http://agnews.tamu.edu/dailynews/stories/HORT/Mar2805b.htm

I just love the notion of a purple carrot. I’ve had purple potatoes, and they were yummy.

Katie’s wall
2005-04-01— Posted by: allegra

This is something Katie has hanging on her wall. The wings and dress are adult size, so it’s quite the installation.