Month: May 2020

sundry and variousness

Roger Ailes dead = good

Paul, Peggy and Tom came by yesterday with instruments. We talked instead of sang. Greg came with but he didn’t actually interact with me that much. We didn’t wear masks.

The weather here yesterday was spectacular.

My anosmia seems to be back and worse than ever. Jeff says it’s likely allergies but I have my doubts.

The banana bread I made tastes great but the heartburn literally WOKE ME UP at one am, so here I am. I’ve nuked up some tea and I’m waiting for brO to wake up before I do anything noisier.

Cannabis protects against COVID? er…

Card of the day is Magician… generally that means I’m going to hear from Mike. Wonder if I will.

the difference is amazing

On this page there are at least two versions of Toy Town Parade, one corrected and one original, and ain’t technology grand. Anyhoo pOp you should like this tune.

brO and I went for a walk in Hilda Park today, and we got to watch crows feed their babies and one of those crows send an adult bald eagle packing. The eagle twitched its tail in irritation as a crow pecked at it… and it all took place at low altitude so a) we got a great view but b) sadly very brief.

Trees are already growing in the playground, coming up through the mulch. They would have been ground into nothingness by the kids playing, but now they’re coming up in dozens.

I believe – I will know for sure in a couple of days, but I believe one of the bambara beans sprouted.

RIP

I won’t say it on social media, but this is my space, so… I’m really sorry about the death in Kamloops of the Snowbirds pilot and await with solemn interest the results of the enquiry.

Also RIP Beyond the Beyond one of the few weblogs older than mine. I wonder how long lived mine shall be.

In better news, I saw Katie and Alex today, and I’m so glad.

Today on twitter I said that Andrew Scheer makes a bag of dicks look like party favours for a charm school picnic.

sad tidings

Bert, Kim the landlady’s husband, has passed away, but in better news we’re rounding down our rent for the next little while….

Image
three increasingly large waves are shown about to overwhelm a city captioned ‘be sure to wash your hands and all will be well’ the waves are captioned “COVID-19” “RECESSION” and “CLIMATE CHANGE”

Abstract – Racial Capitalism

Racial capitalism is a fundamental cause of the racial and socioeconomic inequities within the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) in the United States. The overrepresentation of Black death reported in Detroit, Michigan is a case study for this argument. Racism and capitalism mutually construct harmful social conditions that fundamentally shape COVID-19 disease inequities because they (a) shape multiple diseases that interact with COVID-19 to influence poor health outcomes; (b) affect disease outcomes through increasing multiple risk factors for poor, people of color, including racial residential segregation, homelessness, and medical bias; (c) shape access to flexible resources, such as medical knowledge and freedom, which can be used to minimize both risks and the consequences of disease; and (d) replicate historical patterns of inequities within pandemics, despite newer intervening mechanisms thought to ameliorate health consequences. Interventions should address social inequality to achieve health equity across pandemics.

from Sage

poem ‘the open tap’

fantastical lights from faraway places
retain their moment in time and I mine
settling myself into the gendered slurry
that is English

those lights
candles for my bath
as I stub the life from this lepisma saccharina

here’s a snapshot
it will be six months later
during a pandemic
when I finally stir myself
to clean up its corpse

grey in life, grey in death
almost indistinguishable from the grout

I can’t write today, I can’t
I’m a mote, should be mute, a little scrotey
blemish on the terrifying backside of English letters
all jealousy, a tunnel through inadequacy
reaching up through all this debris
for a garden of kindness
a shield against the noise

instead
a mask

over the top of my face
years ago I got the plague mask
years ago

and on the bottom of my face
a white rectangle, broken into diamonds
a fabric diamond on my face
I never had one for my hand
I am a metagraph of ‘something into something else’

my mind and my DNA

once I had a face and now
because I love you
I do not