Month: April 2010

Gizmo fading fast

It’s close to the end for Gizmo but I’ll let Jeff tell the story.

I finally got over to Dr. Katz (Best Dentist in Burnaby) to get a small detail in my occlusion resurfaced; smiles all round for that.

Other than that, and that the weather is finally being cooperative, if cold,  there’s not much news.

The Tarot reading yesterday called for Temperance, more attention paid to the men in my life (family members) and church.  Atheists should be spanked for participating in such nonsense; that result could have been anything, it’s just like astrology, wonk wonk.  I found it interesting though.  This deck is pretty big on duty and hard work, may the fairies cart it away….  I may just make up my own deck.  I was sure the Chariot would turn up, with all my misgivings and weirdness about cars these days, but no.  Temperance.  Blech.

I am three verses into the composition of 40 Million Light Years and enjoying it.  Paul heard it last night and burst out laughing in all the right spots.  I suspect John would have enjoyed it too.

Time vs money

I am SO tired of the commute, I’ve decided to buy a car.  Kat has one for sale and she said she would do the cv joint and the muffler for me if I buy the parts and I am very tempted.  It is not a particularly useful car, being, like the MR2, a two seater.  LTGW told me to buy a truck.  This was in the same week he told me I was wearing sensible shoes.  I ended up screaming “Want me to shave my head and start wearing overalls TOO” in the middle of the cafeteria, which certainly made Robof9 laugh.

Robof9 is leaving the Tiled Cell on the Hill later this month.  I am just punched out about that too.

The lights over my desk give me a headache every day.  My eyes are so tired by the time I go home I feel like I’m in a dissociative state.

The weather is cold and windy.  I heard what sounded like ice pellets pinging off my window at 3 am this morning.

Anyway, now that I know I’m getting a car I feel very bad at the same time I am feeling better.  It’s just that I can’t read, play games, watch video on my phone or do anything that doesn’t involve looking out the window to prevent motion sickness whenever I ride the bus.  I can spend two and one half hours a day commuting, or half an hour driving.  I’m 51 and I’ve only got so many hours left.  Translink is not bad for my part of the world, and it’s not their fault that there’s a fucking lake in between me and work.  I am tired of the asinine creature who takes up five seats on the bus with the rude way she occupies the front section.  I’m tired of the men who smell like pee and spilled stuff and the women who smell like air freshener.  I am tired of listening to phone conversations in a babel of languages; I am tired of hearing conversations that make me want to butt in and describe in detail the cognitive biases involved.  I am tired of fucking rude bus drivers (I’ve seen some good ones, but a couple of events in the last month have left me gobsmacked with disappointment and too disheartened to even complain.)  But I should commute because it’s better for the environment.  It would be better for the environment if I jumped off a bridge, too, but that is not in the cards.

The house is shifting on its foundations with the wind.

I want rainbows and unicorns and world peace, and I’m getting dying cats, blue relatives and friends, (this item deleted), (this item deleted), (this item deleted too, sigh), and a bunch of other stuff I can’t complain about.  Currently there are 18 items on the list; most of them I only wrote down so I could add one last item to the list & I FEEL REEAAALLY SHITTY about not being able to DO anything about the stuff that’s wrong.  Oh yeah, Mr. Cheerful Pants, I should just work on the stuff I CAN fix.  It’s all about reframing things.  Well how about I reframe this by breaking it over your head, how’s that work for you?

The only good thing that happened this week is that Mike showed the pictures he took of Rozo in the woods – nude.  Unbelievable.  All that hair, and her standing on a tree stump in Robert Burnaby Park looking like something shot out of a New Raphaelite wet dream.  There was one particular pic, her figleafed with hair, that I want to carry around with me in my wallet so I have something pleasant to look at when things really fuck up.

That’s not true, there was one other thing that happened this week.  I found a website with erotic photos and art that actually has about one in ten pics that I like.  I guess it’s yet another sign that I overshare that my first impulse was to email a couple of links to my daughter.  That’s not funny, it’s sick.

Jeff cheered me up by loaning the car to me yesterday – he stayed home with Gizmo.  I went and got treats after work to cheer us both up.

Now I’m going to do a Tarot reading.  The day can get worse any way it likes.

Gizmo update

Gizmo seems to be fading fast, and I’m facing the terrible decision. If only he could tell me how bad the pain is or what he wants… He looks up from my lap feebly and gazes into my eyes, seemingly imploring me to help him; but there’s nothing I can do, aside from that terrible final act of mercy. He ate a spoonful of tuna this morning and drank some water. He’s very unsteady now and has to move deliberately, but he went outside to explore a bit. I’m worried that he’ll fall down the stairs. Now he’s curled up next to me again. When he’s in my lap, sleeping, I can feel his little heart beating – far too quickly. I’ve been reading more about FIP and found a site devoted to curing the disease: Sock It To FIP (link removed for security reasons).

an open letter to Kash Heed

Dear Sir,

My initial reaction when I learned that the BC Liberals think it’s a good idea to axe the mandatory inquiry after a death in custody was, wow.  No more coroner’s inquests into government embarrassments.  Maybe articles like this will magically go away.

Then I thought, you know, just because I’m a tubby left leaning atheist with queer sympathies and anarchist tendencies doesn’t mean I have to even react to it.  After all, a 51 year old white woman who lives quietly in Burnaby (honestly, my neighbours probably wouldn’t even know I was here if my cats didn’t crap in their gardens, and if my brother’s car didn’t rumble in and out of here twice a day) doesn’t really need to put ‘death in custody’ on the top of her most feared methods of checking out.  I’d just pull out all of my priviliges and a harassed looking lawyer would show up and I’d waltz out of whatever misunderstanding had occurred.

Then I thought, well, sheeeeit.  It’s not like the BC Liberals do 5/8ths of a listless denial about deaths in custody right NOW, so why should anybody care that they are legally mandating what’s happening in truth in the cold light of spring, 2010?

But won’t someone please think of the children?  I tried to think of how an appeal to the interests of children might get spun by the BC Liberals.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of children growing up in BC – and other places, thank goodness – who want to be po-po when they grow up.

They want the gun, the badge, the pulling prostitutes over and getting free blow jobs in cars.  They want the skittery way meth-high teenagers deke down alleyways just before the Tazer comes out.

I kid, I kid.  Really what people want when they grow up wanting to be cops is to be on the right side, to catch dirtbags, to jail pedophiles, to bust drunk drivers.  Nobody who wants to be a cop when they are little thinks about the mental hardships and physical perils of being po-po.

Right now all police departments are having a bitch of a time hiring.  The RCMP nationally is looking to hire 8000 newbies in the next five years to handle resignations and retirements.  Things are so bad that they are hiring – so I have heard – people with known mental illnesses.

So I guess one way of looking at it is that the BC Liberals are canning inquests into deaths in custody as a recruiting ploy.  Come and join our police forces, all those with barely concealed personality problems and contempt for minorities!  If you get a little enthusiastic with a scumbag and he or she dies, not only will you not lose your job, your badge or your benefits, you’ll never have to face the scorn of the public and you’ll be able to sleep at night knowing that it was all a tragic misunderstanding.

Good job, Kash, hope that works out for you and your somewhat tinted kinfolks in the years ahead.  Yeah, I know you were the first Indo-Canadian chief of police in Canadian History, and that you have a storied career.  I just have one last question to ask.  Given that the Chief Coroner in BC is a political appointment given to a retired cop, do you have your eyes on that job after your political career moves away from you?  Cause if the omnibus bill passes, the Chief Coroner’s job just got easier.  That’s what I call planning ahead.

Peace love and anarchy,

Allegra

Got Gizmo to drink a little

He is so thin now that I started crying when I was petting him this morning.  He was on the rug in the bathroom – he’s lucky I didn’t step on him – and staggered to his feet for a good scritch about the hindquarters, purring softly.  Then I poured him some water in his favourite glass and he drank about two ounces.  Then I caught him as he fell off the bathroom counter.  He just leaned, and kept on going, and I gently set him on the floor.

Poor Jeff, none of this is easy.  The cats are quite subdued as well.

I had a very relaxed and low key weekend, and I am very happy about that.  I got some baking done, took some biscotti to church, actually, and I also saw Frost/Nixon, which I must wholeheartedly recommend.

MOA and not being here

Went to the Museum of Anthropology yesterday.  Spent some time looking at the outdoor exhibits and wandering around in the weak spring sunshine which seemed to get as far as Boundary Road, but it never really got sunny in Burnaby yesterday.

I just got accused of being pseudonymous.  Colin reposted my “Parking Goddess” monograph from 1993, and one of the responses was that even though I’m googlable and have an eponymous website, that proves nothing.

That son of a bits wants me to give up blogging entirely, and I may oblige him.  What’s the point of blogging virtually every day for five years only to have some asshat not believe in your existence.  I am so mad I could spit.

Give me a frakking break you asshats!!!!

Okay, thanks to the incompetence being shown by the cops and the Crown in Victoria (and no, I’m not talking about it on my blog because I don’t have permission to) I FnCKING HATE the cops and their apologists in the halls of the legislature of BC –  and everything to do with them right now.  But this latest is FnCKING OUTRAGEOUS.  They are hiding it in an omnibus bill.  The BC government wants to END mandatory inquests into deaths in custody.

Get off your asses and protest.  If you think that giving cops a licence to kill teenagers, immigrants and First Nations people, and that the right of the government to appoint a retired cop as Chief Coroner, makes BC a better place to live, you can go back to sleep now.

Happy Easter

Well do I remember John’s voice coming up the stairs, “Happy Crucifiction Day!”  Yes, I misspelled it.  Lady Miss Banjola warning, do not look at this baby bird. This kill it with fire baby bird.

I had a completely useless day at work yesterday.  I felt like I had spring fever, Alzheimers and an incipient migraine all at the same time.

Keith and Kate were both over last night, and it was wonderful to have them around.  Especially Katie; she’s having an unusual time adjusting to being Dax-free at the same time she’s still living with one of his family members.  I know it can’t last, and so does she; but the problem is she’s in better shape and happier than she’s been since she was in her early teens, getting enough exercise and eating properly (she’s lost ten pounds she didn’t need and looks awesome).  We watched Milk and it was awesome.

Watching Gizmo fade

Katie petted him last night and he lost his balance (she wasn’t roughhousing).  Today Jeff’s coaxing him with tuna.  Paul pets Gizmo every chance he gets, considering him a Most Superior Feline.  But even though he’s still going out and still using the litter pan and still (with some reluctance) eating, he’s not well.  Margot is less rambunctious with him.  Eddie smells him and then sits back, with the cat equivalent of a frown on his face.  And then I read this article, and it’s pretty obvious to me why vets have a high suicide rate.

no foolin’

It’s April Fools Day.  I am so tempted to go to work in my superhero cape, but that’s not gonna happen.

Church meeting last night; Rev Katie brought warm hot cross buns.  Like, she had just taken them from the oven at home. All this – and she cooks too.  Good meeting.  Margot came in at one point and played with Rev Katie’s shoelaces.

I have to say I am looking forward to the weekend.  I will collapse on Friday, go canoeing if the weather cooperates on Saturday, and then church and practicing instruments on Sunday.  And at some point, digging; the garden isn’t dug out yet. Tom says I’ll definitely need a mattock to get the worst of the tree roots out.

PS, one of the reasons I like Henry Rollins.