Month: July 2009

Sunworshipping fun

Let’s see.

Katie helped me find my bedroom floor on the weekend.  Me happy.

I have finished another song “The weekend’s over” which I wrote for ScaryClown’s birthday three years ago.  I even learned how to use the ‘repeat’ notation in Songwriter, woo hoo.

Jeff hung the clothesline, which should save some money on electricity this year.  Still loving my compost bucket.

Gizmo got sprayed by a skunk this past weekend.  Freaked the hell out of me; he was on the back deck foaming at the mouth when I realized something had gone Terribly Awry; he still smells terrible and we’ll have to wash him and his bedding repeatedly, but at least the whole house doesn’t smell as bad as it did yesterday.

Watched Terminator III, some more Civil War, and a whole bunch of How The West Was Won yesterday.

And further to my love of sunbathing…. Good news, everyone!

copy of my email to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page

Please allow me to provide some encouragement for your important work and to convey my regards to you and your staff as you continue to make available to the people of Canada facts and data about government expenditures and the Canadian economy.  The press is reporting that both the Liberals and the Conservatives think you’re a pain in the cheeks and that can only mean one thing…. You’re doing your job.

With respect and admiration,

Allegra Sloman
Burnaby BC

sitting on the back deck blogging and thinkin’ ’bout the King of Pop

Gizmo is sitting on the carpet we’ve had airing on the back deck for a week, Miss Margot is chasing fluff around the deck and being a crazy cat, first batch of waffles is on, and Katie’s coming over later to help motivate me to unpack.  Sometime between now and her arrival I must pick off another song. Time’s a-wasting!  At my age a year goes by like nothing!

On a completely different subject I have been thinking about the cultural reverber-erberations around Michael Jackson’s unfortunate death.  He was fifty and I’m fifty and don’t think I haven’t thought about what he did in his life and with it and what I’ve done with mine.  I am the tape measure for everything I perceive.  I must make a big effort to see things otherwise.

If I was taking 10 Xanax every night, my brother would stage an intervention.  It would take him a long time to work up to it, because he’s a pretty laid back guy and doesn’t stick his nose in other people’s biz without thinking about it in a considered way, but he’d pick up the phone, call the kids and Paul, and get me to a doctor.

The saddest thing about Jackson’s death is the extent to which it reveals how none of his friends thought enough of his one, single, precious life to make more than arm-wavy gestures about his drug use. One of his sisters tried, apparently, and one can only wonder at why she didn’t pick up the phone and call the cops.  He needed to be arrested for the godawful stew of illegally prescribed/obtained drugs he had in his house, and so did every person illegally prescribing and obtaining them on his behalf.

The best case scenario was a Robert Downey Jr. style self-reinvention as somebody who beat addiction and childhood trauma to head to the top of his game.  It would have involved his handlers and psychic moneychangers getting their meretricious mitts away from him and into something resembling honest employment. The worst case scenario was dying like Elvis, which, according to published reports by Lisa Presley, he fully expected to happen.  Kinda like Christ knowing he was going to get it; except in this case a willing offering on the pyre of celebrity.

And, of course, once again I think about this song I wrote, because with each passing day it gets more true.  When I wrote “Zombies stalk the headlines” I wasn’t thinking about MJ’s groundbreaking Thriller video, but if I had a buck for everytime I wrote a sentence in imagination to have it come true in reality (or what passes for my reality, as always your mileage may vary), I could stay drunk on the proceeds for a day.

The drugs Michael Jackson ingested and sought cause oblivion. They completely detach your consciousness from the rest of you.  Whether or not you seek oblivion, it will find you, and I would prefer to get more bang for my life.  If it’s true he raised three hundred million dollars for charity, that is a great thing.  The rest of the story is unbearably sordid, sad, full of missed opportunities, and just plain contemptible in spots.  And the horror, the horror!  Like the Anna Nicole Smith saga which triggered my writing Slimfast and Methadone, this sucker’s going to live on for a long time.  I suspect the lawsuits alone will not be resolved for 10 to 15 years.

Just, like, you know, don’t loan me anything.

Who loaned me Ceedo on a white Lexar thumbdrive?  Now I have to send emails out, grump grump.  I know it’s not mine and somebody is probably annoyed with me right now because I haven’t given it back.

Marylke and Bareld’s meal was of uniform excellence in setting, food, company and weather.  Stupendous.

The cats are all acting nutty, especially the Giz.

Today is shaping up to be the kind of day I envisioned when I quit

I gave up on Grieg – and got Give Me Five, Give Me Ten done in 1 hour flat.  Then Alex and Darwin (and his IMMENSE font of charm, appetite and ENERGY) came for a visit and we played in the park and it was merveilleux.  Later today I’ll wander over to Planet Bachelor and Paul and I will go to an Indonesian dinner at Bareld and Marylke’s.  (Fellow churchgoers… and it’s somebody’s 50th b day so I will have to ensure I have a proper card for the occasion.) Keith and Jeff will probably get together to replay campaigns or kill zombies or such like.

The weather is of unexcelled glory, the expression on Gizmo’s face the first time he saw Darwin was priceless, and all is as it should be, most wonderfully.

I can haz video of Darwin playing with a three and a half year old girl although darn, I missed filming him getting his face licked by a very sweet and gentle Jack Russell terrier in the park (that was so funny).  When your kids are old enough to drink and be cynical with, how fast we forget their marvellous baby playfulness and those mischievous grins.

Free lawnmower! Rrrowr

birthingway (her LJ name) GAVE me a perfectly fine gas mower, so that potentially expensive matter has been put to rest.  We had a lovely visit.  I had previously advised her to put one of her kids in Purpose School, so this is my karma coming back at me… I hope.  I also did a small shop that turned into 129 dollars, but $20 of that was maple syrup, which has gotten quite expensive, and another $10 was butter, and another $10 was cheese, so these things add up.  Also, how did I end up with two kinds bacon in my hamper?  Oh well, I got flour, which I CANNOT run out of because then we no can haz wofls.  And waffles, candidly, are like currency around here.

Not much done on creative projects today except a tiny bit on Grieg, and a tiny bit on the atheist liturgy, but any day that includes saving $200 on a mower can’t be a toetle loss.  I also did the minimum daily walk – I walked back from Highgate and got pappadums and picture hangers (how gloriously and alliteratively Vancouver!) I am trying to get the strength together to get going to Kopper’s show tonight but my innards are warring with me.

Finally! A job I can do!

Reddeer sends me the following link:  Get a Job in Wookey Hole!

I can cackle! Anybody knows I can cackle.

Yesterday I made up the downstairs bed, made banana bread, added a new verse to “Give me Five, Give me Ten”, made an appointment to get Miss Margot’s stitches out today (I chickened out of doing it myself), found a FREE LAWNMOWER (now that was a good day’s work) which now I have to borrow a car to collect.  I also filled up more bookshelves, bought some more of the Santa Cruz lemonade – Gosh I love that stuff, and so does everybody else who comes into this house and drinks it all; made Thai Basil Beef for supper, had an idea for a science fiction short story, had a FANTASTIC idea for the McGuffin in the zombie movie, thought very sadly about a friendship – if I can call it that – I have, which I am going to have to jettison (all in the “Allegra, stop hurting yourself on things that you know hurt you” vein), talked briefly to Mike, visited with Paul, managed to call my son without making stupid noises about how it’s his 23rd birthday today and how does he feel about that, discovered his potential job (he’s on tryout this week) is working out, so far as he can tell, practiced guitar for a while, played with the cats – all of them, they appeared to be in a good mood and much more kindly disposed to me these days, and shot, edited and uploaded a youtube video; and I slept in a different room than my laptop, and thus slept way better and longer.

Today I am going to FORCE myself to finish Grieg so I can work on Give me Five, Give me Ten, which seems to want to be worked on a bit more.  And take Margot to the vet.   She’s not gonna like it.