Month: September 2015

Facepalm

Yesterday evening I tol’ my brO that I was marking up the margins of Stephen Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, what mOm loaned me.

She was okay with it, just like I expected, but when he learned of my gaffe Jeff looked at me like I’d produced a minute long Giardia fart with bean and beer top notes.

Keith gets it next.  Hope he doesn’t mind my markups.

My response to a post about a gun being marketed with a bible verse on it (this in Floriduh, natch):

And the arm has got a hand
in it’s habitual place
these days you understand
why it ends up on my face
You’ll say something indefensible
and in the worst of taste
and that is why my hand
will end up on my face

Facepalm facepalm facepalm

Jeremy Corbyn has been elected head of the Labour party in the UK.  He is being decried with tweets like this ARRANT HORSE MANURE coming from David Cameron’s office.

The Labour Party is now a threat to our national security, our economic security and your family’s security.

I think What In the Everloving EFF is this?  They must be terrified of him! Did Stephen Harper’s handbasket end up in Cameron’s office? And as for the ‘Labour’s no good they didn’t elect a woman’ argument, that won’t wash.  The two women who ran were accommodationist Blairites and shouldn’t have won for that reason alone.  Feminism means that some of the women candidates will be shite, not shining beacons of whatever political philosophy your Weird allows you to favour.
Corbyn will f&** Cameron’s sh*t up in Question Period for the next three years, before he resigns to make way for someone electable/Prime Ministerial/photogenic/good God man don’t you own a tie?  Cameron will respond with personal attacks because he’s easily flustered and then get his sh(t f*cked up by the Speaker.  All in all I’d say Corbyn’s a good pick for keeping a small corner of Cameron’s soul capable of emitting a squeak of truth once a week.
And look how scary he is in terms of reinvigorating the party.
Now some truth from Alice Dreger. Unca Dave useta say, “The pain is still there, but you just don’t care,” and in fact I used that line in my song about Sol Starr. “I can feel it, but I just don’t care, I got my load on Doc.”  Dave’s experience with opioids came after substantial and scary electrical burns.
No words yesterday.  I am watching Longmire S4 and reading the above-noted non-fiction, which I suspect will help me with the novel.  Less than 10K words I will END YOU!

So, about the couple ‘living Victorian’.  Three comments.

As you may know, my mOm is transcribing our ancestor’s diary. He was a lower middle class Victorian Englishman with pretensions, since he was an antiquarian and took tea with Carlyle (more than once, I’ll have you know.) He spends an inordinate amount of time diarizing about the weather, and how they had to break the ice on the wash basin in the morning, when they had infant children in the house. Damn right skippy, it freezes hard in jolly old England. Comfort was hard to come by and made much of when it occurred.

When people want to live their cosplay, I have no objections and am in fact quite envious. When I find out about their lack of technology in an article she wrote for the internet, I laugh quite heartily and my envy melts away, unless I missed something and she’s powering her server with a steam-engine. Then I’m envious again, although not of her neighbours.

Victorian birth control. Until you’ve done nappies the Victorian way (ancestors did vaccinate their kids, for what it’s worth) you have a contortionate and dreamily inaccurate view of a Victorian married woman’s life.

What the hell is wrong with some people

Huckabee says Dred Scott is still the law of the land in the US.  It’s like the 14th amendment didn’t happen.  W T F?

Jim Wright, in response to a completely different discussion said, and I quote:

 

Wrong. Utterly and completely wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. You’re wrong. You couldn’t be more wrong. You’re the creamy filling of wrongness in the middle of the wrong donut with brightly colored sprinkles of wrongness on top. You’re wrong.

 

There is a two sentence discussion regarding free will in the second book in the trilogy I’m working on.  The human knows there’s no free will, and the alien provides a semantic argument in support of it, which is me being an ass, since it’s a recapitulation of an argument I had with my mother, for whom I’m writing the novels.

My mOm is science-y in that she buys the deterministic model. I’m hand-wave-y but I know I’m wrong.  I’m filled with resentment about being wrong and I know I’ll be a better person when I take my spoonful of “there’s no free will” meds every morning until I’m cured. I’m going to get the giant economy size, this may take a while.

Here’s a nice long talk about free will, and how there ain’t none.  There are many thought provoking implications for theology and jurisprudence.

And here’s an article which is pretty much where I am with self-help nowadays.

Faith based

…the charity I’m interviewing at today is faith-based.  That doesn’t necessarily mean bad, not at all, as I know from personal experience, but I’m hitting the pause button on my enthusiasm until I understand a bit more.

456 words yesterday.  77.5k words so far. JUST TEN K MORE and I can go on vacation and start the next one o doodie.

Judy Carne is dead.  She was a lively critter.

Tomorrow Queen Elizabeth II will be the longest reigning British Monarch.  I used to think she was awesome, but I’ve grown out of colonialism.

Confessions of a word geek. I was going to use rebarbative in a sentence, had an attack of common sense, and looked it up. I had a strong memory (alas, false) of having seen this word in Patrick O’Brian’s works, in the context of deeply restorative, as in sleep, or a cuppa. Well, no.

Rebarbative means repellent. So I’m thinking, O. Crap. What was that word?? It’s not like I can scan the entire oeuvre looking for it, unless I have nothing else planned today. Or tomorrow.

Okay, maybe it starts with rebor- rather than rebar-. So I start mashing keys, and eventually Google resentfully hurls up roborative, and now… well I was awake anyway. But if I HAD had more sleep, I’m sure it would have been roborative.

 

Marcus Bales of Cleveland wrote this

The Modern Fundamentalist’s song By Marcus Bales

Fundamentalist:
I am the very model of a Christian fundamentalist
And by a strange coincidence a solid occidentalist.
I cherry-pick the Bible for the verses close or distantly
Amenable to straight white males, however inconsistently,
Unless those verses might apply a little inconveniently
In which case I interpret them a good deal more than leniently.
We want to do just what we please however strange or horrible
And still regard ourselves as wholly moral and adorable.

Congregation:
We want to do just what we please however strange or horrible
And still regard ourselves as wholly moral and adorable.
And still regard ourselves as wholly moral and adorable.

Fundamentalist:
I call myself a Christian but it’s really Paulist cultery
Since Christ himself has said that my divorces were adultery.
But I from man to man enjoy convexness and concavity
And call whatever others do immoral and depravity.

Congregation:
But we from man to man enjoy convexness and concavity
And call whatever others do immoral and depravity.

Fundamentalist:
I do not want to hear about the quantum or molecular
Or how the Founding Fathers made our institutions secular
I say the nation’s Christian under Biblical authorities
Rejecting what the Constitution says about majorities.
The workings of the government may worry and perplex you all
I say we’re equal under God — unless you’re homosexual —
Or black or brown or female or some kind of evolutionist
For all attempts at reasoning are really persecutionist.

Congregation:
Or black or brown or female or some kind of evolutionist
For all attempts at reasoning are really persecutionist.

Fundamentalist:
My freedom of religion trumps your Constitutionality
Because the Constitution says it does with firm legality.
I claim my rights from God or man, whichever’s more commodious
For what I want to do however evil, vile, or odious.

Congregation:
I claim my rights from God or man, whichever’s more commodious
For what I want to do however evil, vile, or odious.

Fundamentalist:
When I can issue licenses or not because I feel like it
The public’s just my piggy and the public can just squeal like it.
I’ll happily apply whichever law is most agreeable
To what I want to do since what I want is unforseeable:
The conscience of the person must control the way they view their job
And not demands that public servants ought to serve and do their job.
The Constitution’s man-made law and God is not endorsing it;
The SCOTUS made their law, and now good luck to them enforcing it.

Congregation:
The Constitution’s man-made law and God is not endorsing it;
The SCOTUS made their law, and now good luck to them enforcing it.

Fundamentalist:
There’s nothing in my creed that advocates for love officially
Except some quotes that God and Jesus handed down judicially —
I don’t see why I must obey the acts of which God sent a list
And yet I am the model of a Christian fundamentalist.

Congregation:
We don’t see why we must obey the acts of which God sent a list
And yet we are the models of a Christian fundamentalist.

All rights remain with the original author, Marcus Bales.  PLEASE DO NOT REPOST WITHOUT ATTRIBUTION.

577 words

Jeff, Mike and I went to Brooklyn’s yesterday afternoon for beers while looking at the Mighty Sto:lo.  It would have been better without the train whistle and wasps, but it was still pretty spectactular.

And I wrote.  I’ll be off to feed Ayesha shortly.

260 words

Fed Ayesha (rellies are in Seattle).  Meep!  I only had three beers and I was hungover yesterday.  I like beer but it no longer likes me.

The pictures coming back from Dragon Con are very entertaining. A couple of my facebook peeps are there.

Spoke to Dave yesterday on the phone, it was lovely to hear his voice.  And catch up on his blog.

A brief clarification

Jeff is the best at many things.  However when he volunteers for a horrid task, especially when I am so unbendy, I am very grateful.

Last night only Mike, Cassidy and Shad came but that was enough. We sang and played until 10:30.

Last night I had very broken sleep.  As you can see from the time stamp I slept quite late.

Last night I dreamed I was carrying around my manuscripts and they made me happy.  I was showing them off and saying how proud I was of them.  In real life right now they feel like a boat anchor so I have no idea where that came from.

Last night I dreamed that a bunch of women and their children were being forced away from their homes and they were moved to a land where they could be food for zombies. The zombies were grabbing sleeping children and eating them.

Jeff is the best

Today off to Paul’s to clean for the musical evening (invite yo’se’f – if you’re needing an address ping me) and get some food underway. Yesterday a nice walk on the new end of Westminster Quay with same and then a stop in at Galloways for bean salad ingredients. Only 200 words so far today but progress is progress.

Very happy with the latest tune, too. I have almost completely flipped over to composing instrumentals; I’ve lost interest in listening to myself sing. Lovely long chat with Carrie today, it was so good to hear her voice. Oh, and some other things. Sue put me in front of a job opening and I applied and I have an interview Tuesday morning, thank you Sue.

BrO found the source of the ‘something is dead’ smell and my gratitude is as powerful as the smell. So blessed by love and friendship

  Feeling hopeful!

Only connect

People who have been asshats to me over the last ten years are going to get a reminder of Anne Lamott’s blessed line “…if people wanted me to write more warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”  Best part of all? They dislike me so much they won’t read what I wrote, and they’re so narcissistic they wouldn’t recognize themselves even if they did.  Sweet revenge, sweet revenge, without fail.

500 miles, or words

Finally got back on that creaky old word horse yesterday. Paul took me for a walk in Robert Burnaby Park and we walked by where Cabin in the Woods was filmed.

He also took me shopping.  I got treats and rather an amazing amount of meat.

This has since triggered a novel idea set in the Sixer universe.  I’ve written my notes in Scrivener and I will now leave it until I’m ready to come back to it.

 

 

Lovely walk

Yesterday between showers Paul and I went to take a look at what happened to Oakalla after the windstorm.  There were four big trees down across the normally manicured paths, and four ravens, probably juveniles, were playing and croaking and chasing each other and getting up to great hijinks – I’ve only ever seen ravens in the park once before, so I’m thinking they were probably displaced by the storm. We heard frogs in the reeds.  Everybody we said hi to said hi back, a new record.  We also saw young wood ducks.

I am feeling incredibly poopy, as Jeff would say, to the point that I am turning down a trip to Value Village, which I would not normally do.  Jeff’s just gone off to source a jacket.

I should record and post the two most recent tunes but I’m feeling purty blah.

 

On the plus side, I ran across this article.  This article shows in excruciating detail how easy it would be for a single alien to compromise BC politics to the point that he could pressure various agencies (in the case of my book, the VPD, UBC and Fraser Valley Health) into doing things his way.  It sure came at a good time, I was trying to think how to make the politics run in the last book, and this is like a ground plan.

Chipper is having water problems, or more specifically septic problems.

Life sucks sometimes.

 

I can haz blahs

Since I can’t write for beans at the moment I think I’m going to edit instead.

Ray Donovan S3Ep8 was really good.  The latest Rick and Morty was thought provoking.

I helped a friend yesterday, and I have two instrumental songs on the cook.  One of them is a plangent cri de coeur, and the other is an ass-kicking tune I’m thinking of calling Heave Steve.

Paul brought us corn so fresh I nearly cried while I ate it.  I had Canadian grown melon for breakfast.

Keith was over here twice recently – but that might have had something to do with not having any power for 30 hours.  Welcome to the 21st century, Canada!  The north American grid’s in peril.

No world on the job, but it’s early days yet.