Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
He can use the lab as a reference on a resume… they just weren’t busy enough. Not an issue with him… it’s the economy, stupid.
His comment. “I have never lost a job for insolence, incompetence, or tardiness. And I will keep saying that in interviews until it is no longer true.”
I love how he just doesn’t lose his sense of humour when all this crap is raining down.
Tomorrow, Avatar in IMAX 3D with my new friend.
Also, I will never do a secular Christmas carol this well, and I don’t care. I still will do it anyway.
Young people today are so creative and wonderful. Don’t you think? I mean, when they aren’t like the little bastards down at New West SS pushing me off the sidewalk into the traffic on Canada Way.
Remember what Martha Graham said:
“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate YOU. Keep the channel open… No artist is pleased… There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
I don’t know why, but I am very happy this morning. It’s a smiling contentment triggered by Christmas and the prospect of seeing my folks and Granny and my cousins and aunt and uncle; the weather continues mild, which is a nice change; there’s this which I watched with the sound down, SFW, and then there’s this, also SFW. There’s also the prospect of biscotti, a meal to cook for Peggy tonight (Tom may or may not be joining us), a post Christmas filk at Cindy’s place, a non denominational Christmas carol to work on, a phone call which may or may not presage work, a meeting that had no minutes and scarcely any action items, and the calm happiness that comes with knowing that you don’t have to buy any Christmas presents.
There are other reasons to be happy, of course, but those will do for the time being.
Oh, and here’s William Gibson’s review of Avatar from Twitter. I guess I’m going.
Link removed for reasons of security.
“Before you make claims about physics, check with a vaudevillian.” Advice I intend to take in future.
Yes, I am dating somebody. I can hardly deny it when he met everybody in my family yesterday. That is enough on that subject.
I missed the winter spectacular as a result (Sue gave me tickets), but life presents us with many situations where bi-location would be useful, and I decided to stay home.
The rest of yesterday was a few chores and being amazed by the fury of the rain.
And now, a picture of a bat eating a banana, and a list of the best restaurants in Vancouver, and Nathan Fillion kissing his new co-star.
Uh, no. I am sure the next time I look they’ll have corrected it, but 
Somebody is finally biting the bullet and talking about the effect it has, especially on younger people.
You know, one of the things about The Correction is that porn will go back to being like the good old days. It will be drawings, cartoons, carvings on the outhouse wall, sexxay netsuke, possibly pictures, books for sure, and live shows. Wow. Never thought about that before, and all of a sudden I have an inspiration for an SF story. That aside, I will now make a couple of other observations.
When I was a wee tad, my parents tried to protect me from pornography. They said that it wasn’t bad in and of itself, but it could lead inexperienced young persons to get the wrong idea about sex with a real partner. Nothing that has happened to me since has changed this received wisdom, which is now my opinion. If kids want facts they can have them. But porn? ehn. As much as I like porn, or the branches of porn I like (being either big budget 70s porn or home movies of contemporary ‘ordinary people’ having consensual sex, if only to avoid the godawful music of current DVD porn), I still think young people should be protected from it, for the same reasons my parents gave me. Don’t ask me HOW you protect your kids from porn; I was very fortunate in that my kids believed what I told them on the subject, and even more fortunate that they at least appeared to be convinced, and that I didn’t have to have the “Please don’t steal mommy’s credit card to order “Splort – an illustrated history of Bukkake”, thanks!” conversation.
And isn’t it extraordinary that I was born in 1958 and I HAD that conversation with my parents? Sometimes I think I was born in the future and it was only an accident that I ended up living in the 20th century at all. Anyway, thanks to Tyee’s twitter feed for bringing this article to my attention. I well know how that woman feels about talking in public about porn. It’s not a comfy feeling, but somebody has to acknowledge these things before the lies and hypocrisy overwhelm us. Besides, my parents probably have no recollection of that conversation. I know my memory isn’t as good as it was. Okay, move along, there’s no pictures.
I know, he’s dead.
But in response to this news (first this) (then this) all I can hear is “It couldna happened to a nicer guy.” No, I do not condone the pitching of tourist chachkas at political leaders. No, I do not condone violence as my personal means of effecting political change. I prefer mockery and bribery, personally, but that’s just me. When one of the most media savvy and scummy politicians of the modern era gets injured in this way, I know that he has access to the best pain killers on the planet, and he’s gonna come out okay.
This remarkable open letter to the Governor of Makkah (Mecca) follows on. Yes, the translation into English isn’t perfect. It’s still a remarkably ballsy thing to write.
I must have seen news about the floods in Saudi Arabia but it never registered before today.
Poor Sadie. She had a hell of a ride.
We got about an inch of fairly wet snow. I’m going to put some shoes on and go deal with the worst of it so the mail carrier will continue to be happy with me.
I should REALLY work on music today, it’s just piling up higher and higher. And I should get Denis’ (sure wish I knew whether he was a one n or two n Denis) life story transcribed. And do banking. Yup, I should definitely light a fire under myself today.
Daughter Katie (Kathryn) is living with Kat (Kathleen) and Kashka (Polish diminutive of Katherine). Weird, hunh?
We are going to have a LOT of coming and going this holiday season. Keith goes to Victoria from the 19th to the 23rd. He comes back the same day as when me, Paul and Katie go to Victoria for Granny’s b’day party. We stay overnight and then come back Christmas Eve so I can start cooking for the big Xmas dinner. Then Jeff goes later that week. And Alex and Darwin will be going at the same time… tis nuts, but that’s Xmas for ya.
Margot is coming with us. I suspect that despite my pOp’s inability to understand why I took this completely useless animal on as a pet, that he will like her anyway. Many thanks to Paul for allowing me to use his car to transport her. She’s not a big fan of car trips,
I punted her with a piece of furniture yesterday. (Accidentally, I didn’t see her). She just slid across the floor and neither mewed nor changed position. She has no conception of the possibility that someone would harm her. She can spend 10 minutes being brushed, grousing the whole time, scratching at my hands and kicking like a baby with her back feet. Any other cat would vanish afterwards, and she merely flops down on the floor in front of the bathroom door and glares at me. She can try to bite me but she doesn’t have enough strength in her jaw to even break my skin. This makes her behaviour with Eddie and Gizmo even more hilarious; she’s defenceless, except for the cute; why Eddie hasn’t given her a good thumping I have no conception.
I have picked her up three times in a row to keep brushing her, and she doesn’t run away. I can’t say she knows she can’t keep up with her own fur, but she sure acts like it.
Should I start keeping her fur as an art project? She makes a loonie sized tuft of fur twice a day.
Skating was wonderful, although I have a blister half an inch across on my calf. Then, I wrote a song. I went outside for a second and got inspired and came right back in and sang it into the mp3 recorder. Slept. Wrote another song. Got up. (Particularly pleased with this most amazing piece of multi tasking, what with the lying in bed and thinking up songs). Got dressed, and did not realize until I had left the house that not one piece of my clothing was on speaking terms with the next. Girls, I looked like I had slithered through six closets and only wore what stuck. Went to church. Witnessed the single cutest moment I’ve ever seen after a very entertaining and well received children’s pageant. I’m not going to try to describe it, but I hope there are pictures. Got a phone call from ScaryClown and went to a late lunch with him AND dragged him back here for Primer (neither he nor Keith had seen it, from which you may infer that my gorgeous, vivid, witty and perceptive son is here) and classic Warner Brothers cartoons.
Snow has been falling off and on since church got out.
I swept up straw from the manger this morning.
I had a day with my peeps… Jeff ate his late repast with gusto …. boys killing pixels in the basement. Beautiful and people-filled day, with music ringing in my ears. One of the songs I wrote is “Christmas in Vancouver” which is a very Accommodationist-wing-of-contemporary-atheism-anti-hymn, and the other is “Load On”. The latter is a very Band-ish tune meant to be played trad instrument, light percussion and at least four voices. Okay, that’s how I hear it in my head. It’s from Deadwood, when Sol goes to back Bullock’s play with that tomfool popgun his girlfriend Trixie loaned him. And, like one might reasonably expect, gets shot for his pains. The song is about Sol loaded up on laudanum before, during and after the extraction of the bullet, and the stuff he raves about while he’s wrecked. I know, isn’t that the damnedest thing to get an instant song about? I had sung my song about Al Swearengen earlier in the evening and it made me think about Deadwood, so I guess I was primed for it. I still can’t believe how fast it came on.
I have a quiet happiness inside me which corresponds to chocolate chip pecan cookies. Happy Xmas to all reasonable people, in the very broadest humanistic terms and without reference to goshes, I mean gods.
Jeff worked at the shop today, which is unusual. I expected him home half an hour ago. I figured he’d had a bad day and needed filet mignon, mixed veg and potato for dinner, with scratch made chocolate chip cookies. As a joke I made a cookie as big as his head.
Sigh, he is at a work function which he got drafted into about the time I should have called him. So I cooked it all and supper will be waiting for him, but I’m heading out skating now. It’s been ages and I desperately need the exercise. He was chagrined when I phoned him, but all that stuff reheats.
The cats circled my plate like vultures.
