Did a shop with Jeff. It had been days since there was any butterfat in the house, and I was feeling droopy. First thing in the morning is the right time.
Spent the afternoon at Mike Beach. Literally stared at clouds for two hours while drinking beer, occasionally watching eagles courting (presaged by an incredible rise in the noise of crows and flickers and followed by a grim silence which lasted about ten minutes until the songbirds lit it up again.) I introduced Mike to the ethnically exotic wonder that is Freybe Liquid Spam (oh, sorry, it’s actually Fine Liver Sausage but I sold it as Liquid Spam because I’ve seen Mike eat Spam) and the taste sensation that is applewood smoked cheddar and the cracker God himself lays out for faspa (hazelnut cranberry) . After he fed me rilly good Japanese food at Makoto on Rumble. I departed somewhat from my normal ordering habits and had Tuna and Salmon Don and Agedashu. By 730 I could no longer keep my eyes open and begged leave to go home.
OMG I just came to the realization that Margot is telling time again. It’s been a week since her last bowl of wet food.
We ‘give her the can’ once a week, and Buster of course ends up eating most of it but for a minute there she is really happy. I wasn’t here so Jeff gave it last week. This week I plumb forgot.
So… this morning around 2 am Margot comes downstairs (I was restless and slept on the IKEA couch, which I did very well, actually) and stands about half a metre off the port beam and SCREAMS:
AAAAAAOOOOH!
AAAAAAAOOOH!
AAAAAAAOOOH!
in what I can only describe as a commanding tone. Not aggrieved, not upset, just GET TO IT, handfinger.
I woke up fast enough to be discomfited and, having identified the source of the ungodly racket, returned at once to the snoring embrace of Styx. Which I rilly don’t think was her desired outcome, but I will give it to her as soon as I’m done here.
RANT COMMENCES
YOU KNOW WHAT I DON’T FEEL LIKE RANTING TODAY.
Anyway, I was going to rant about my use of accents in the novels I just wrote and the point I was trying to make about how English speaking humans assumed that George was smarter than Michel because Michel speaks English with a heavy Montréalais accent and George speaks this Mid-Atlantic, sort of Eastern European-inflected English that sounds like he had an expensive education and lived all over the world.
And I was going to rant about how I try to write how I talk when I’m writing in my own blog, and so I find myself stealing – stealing – stealing – imitating – nope, stealing – over and over and over again from the tropes, accents, cultural touchstones, dozens and church amens of American Black culture.
It’s how I talk. Jeff is not quite used to how I speak in a cartoon voice pretty much all of the time (and that’s the other place I steal from, WB and Tex Avery cartoons) but I have to stop doing it.
I don’t know if I can. It’s like hoping it won’t rain. It will eventually. You hope it won’t happen when it’s inconvenient.
The part of racist self-examination that contains cultural appropriation is not fun to drag into the light. And that’s all I can say about this tiny portion of the cognitive load I’m carrying right now.
