Month: January 2022

like a poem

Just bragging about how I got wordle in three this morning. If any of you play wordle I am sorryunsorry. You can cheat if you like I won’t tell.

My heart is full of mixed emotions, but chiefly joy at seeing my friends, grieving and battered as they are. Ville’s death was the model of an unnecessary tragedy.

The RCMP who attended the scene were absolutely foul.

We spoke of many, many other things besides Ville’s death and Jarmo stood us all our meal, and the sauna was incredibly relaxing and I should not have drunk that beer, but I was feeling convivial.

I want you to imagine how honoured I was that me and Mike were literally the first people they’ve interacted with since he died.

Big hugs to My People.

No concert

I was supposed to go to a concert at Massey Hall last night and didn’t. I gave Paul the ticket I bought for him. I’ll hear about the concert today I guess. My anxiety was so bad I just couldn’t face it. I deliberately tried to do something that didn’t involve a lot of travel or an unfamiliar venue, and I just …. couldn’t. I think I’ll give up trying unless it’s filking with locals.

I spend a ton of money on the tickets too. I just couldn’t go. At least Paul did.

Posting the ‘stuck’ story today, it’s finally done. Clocked in just under 9 K words. Yes mOm I will forward the link.

My UK fan is taking a break, but two other people left kudos on my most recent story. (Which is funny, it’s one of the funniest I’ve ever written actually.)

that wasn’t four hours

I got to help a girlfriend, hang with my daughter, make faces at my grandson and get out of the house. I also got to see that cool house in Surrey Suzanne was living at. THE VIEW OF THE NORTH SHORE MOUNTAINS AS THE FOG MELTED AWAY oh my heart. Apparently Keith is going to help Suzanne with her move.

It wasn’t four hours but we did get shit done and she’s got other helpers coming.

By posting this pic on my blog I’m ensuring I’ll be first against the wall when the Chinese walk whistling into Vancouver…. it’s the SS Olympic Bloodbath.

Just said in a reddit comment I HOPE YOUR CLIENT SUES YOUR ASS CLEAN OFF YOUR BODY. lol

My UK fan worked her way through another two stories last night. The consistency is really getting to me.

 

helping

Suzanne is moving to the the neighbourhood and I volunteered to help. I know I have zero stamina so she’s getting four hours and then I’m cutting out. Katie’s with Ryker and about to come pick me up. I shall report back in due course.

From L.M. Sacasas’ the Accelerated Life blog

The following is from the Translator’s Preface to the English edition of Harmut Rosa’s Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. (The translator is Jonathan Trejo-Mathys.):

A further weighty obstacle to the realization of any ethical life project lies in the way individuals are increasingly caught in an ever denser web of deadlines required by the various social spheres (‘subsystems’) in which they participate: work, family, (school and sports activities of children), church, credit systems (i.e., loan payment due dates), energy systems (utility bills), communications systems (Internet and cell phone bills), etc. The requirement of synchronizing and managing this complicated mesh of imperatives places one under the imperious control of a systematically induced ‘urgency of the fixed-term’ (Luhmann). In practice, the surprising—and ethically disastrous—result is that individuals’ reflective value and preference orderings are not (and tendentially cannot) be reflected in their actions. As Luhmann explains, ‘the division of time and value judgments can no longer be separated. The priority of deadlines flips over into a primacy of deadlines, into an evaluative choiceworthiness that is not in line with the rest of the values that one otherwise professes …. Tasks that are always at a disadvantage must in the end be devalued and ranked as less important in order to reconcile fate and meaning. Thus a restructuring of the order of values can result simply from time problems.’

People compelled to continually defer the activities they value most in order to meet an endless and multiplying stream of pressing deadlines inevitably become haunted by the feeling expressed in the trenchant bon mot of Ödön von Horváth cited by Rosa: ‘I’m actually a quite different person, I just never get around to being him.’

I made a post you can’t see

about my health troubles yesterday because whoo ee that’s a new symptom and I don’t like it. BP a little high, no surprise there. Also, maybe the chocolate was moldy, that probably didn’t help.

Absolutely gorgeous day yesterday, all breathing spring and brilliant sun after FOUR FUCKING DAYS OF FOG – psychologically that was yucky, folks. We took a brief walk and it was lovely.

I can hear Jeff doing the trash for today’s pickup and then we’ll go …

The callous, selfish and uncaring crowd of truckers trying to wake up Canada by making sure as many disabled people die of COVID as possible has claimed that they have 11000 trucks in their convoy on twitter. Given that the Guinness Book of Records says the longest truck convoy in history was in Egypt a few years back and was just under 500 trucks, and given that all the photos they’re showing are actually of BREXIT JFC folks are ya high? The mockery they’re facing is heartwarming.

Today we schlep. I don’t feel scared doing shopping at 7 in the morning. It’s four furtive middle aged men, two stockers, one cashier and four personal shoppers, plus the counter gals in the deli and bakery. That’s it. It’s not many people in that big box. And I have an N95 or two.

Wordle in 5 this morning – 21 straight wins (which means nothing, I’m just participating in a global phenomenon is all.)

I continue to be asymptotically close to finishing the damned airport story, it’s reminding me of that Toronto divorce court judge in the 60s who used to yell GET HER IN BED, GET HER IN BED at the lawyer if he was taking too long proving adultery. YES I AM TRYING TO GET THEM IN BED, RELAX. I’m not really writing porn any more, it’s all HEA M/M AU Destiel.

I have more than 35K karma points on reddit. I got a thousand points just yesterday by telling a young person she is a champ …..and the mother of the bride is not playing in the consensus reality portion of the program.

My UK fan has gamely read another 25,000 words in three of my stories on Archive of Our Own last night. She is literally working her way through my entire posted oeuvre (the story about rescuing kittens was the most recent, but then there was the one about the masturbation club (way more fluffy than it sounds, I know that sounds real unlikely, and the one about the vet who moves in next door to the baker) – almost makes me want to post something just so she has something new. I’m glad she’s providing such innocent evidence of her enjoyment, and I hope she messages me at some point, she’s like my biggest fan at this point. Anyway, I am thinking that I will post them all here over the next year, but under a password, so if people want to read them they can. As Paul used to say all the goddamned time, People who like that sort of thing will find it the sort of thing that they like.

Finished the pho broth. It was so salty, maybe that’s what messed me up.

Another little walk

This time Paul and I went to the park and then ordered Ph`o the broth of the gods WITH all the extras. We had it delivered. I am no longer eating in restaurants. I felt safe enough to do it last fall, but no freaking way, these days. People I know and love who are vaccinated are catching COVID and getting dog-sick, none for me, thanks.

Yesterday I managed a load in the dishwasher and a couple of loads of laundry but now I have to put them away, the story of my life.

Hopefully a small shop today. Yes I should be getting stuff delivered or go for pickup but it’s hard for me to do and it’s not as crowded as a restaurant and I’ve got a mask on the entire time, which… er, you can’t in restaurants.

Still working on the damned airport story. It’s a battle regarding how much self-awareness one character has. I don’t know exactly what it is about my brain that allows me to fall in love with such unseemly ease, but reconstructing that sensation is part of the appeal of writing fanfic and either this character a) understands that he’s in love with the other character and behaves accordingly or b) has misunderstood his own emotions and is definitely not feeling love; this is a rich friendship, not love except in the most general way. Okay there’s some sexual attraction but it’s not returned and the other person makes it easy to ignore. How do you make that either interesting or realistic?

These are the things that trouble my mind. I’m going to make coffee.

 

FOGGGG

Fog has finally lifted a little kinda sorta, but that was an odd couple of days. At one time visibility was LESS than 100 m, which is incredible weather to last for hours around here.

Buster’s food schedule has returned to once a week for the wet food, at least until Jeff finds better food for his digestion. The difficulty is the cheap food which he adores gives him the shits… so he gets yummy food but I don’t want him to sit on me because he smells like shit and he fights like a tiger if I try to wipe his ass. (He can deal with all other cat maintenance with grace, but like Meat Loaf, he won’t do that.)

And speaking of Meat Loaf I remember sitting in Will T.’s Studebaker and listening (for the first time) to Paradise by the Dashboard Light.

Got this morning’s wordle in 3 guesses, which is nice.

I am SO CLOSE to finishing ‘Airport Dreams’. Still don’t think I’m going to finish writing it today.

I internet stalked one of my fanfic fans this morning. She’s a middle aged white woman from England. I kind of have a theme, don’t I? Anyway, like a silly she has the same twitter name as her AO3 user name, so that was like ‘doxxing 101’; I also know what bands she likes….

Did you hear the one about the cork-soaker, the sock-tucker, the cup-stacker, the coke-sacker and the mortar-forker?

Paul took me for a brief walk in the park at the end of the street yesterday, and he hung around for a cuppa. I GOT OUT OF THE HOUSE YESTERDAY.

 

Socialization report

Yesterday, Keith came over and cooked us lunch, (essentially a super fancy grilled cheese, fresh mozza on a crunchy ciabatta bun) and it was delightful. He mentioned among other things that he’d gone to visit Peggy. Then Mike came over and watched TV and consumed food (fish and chips from Cockney Kings) and I got to look at his Mitsubishi Japan steering Delica. That will be an amazing vehicle for the zombie apocalypse. So I … did not do any cooking yesterday, see this smile? Goes for miles. And I drank ONE 3% beer. Jeff asked me what the other 97% was.

Since I’m feeling well rested perhaps I should work on some projects.

SO GOOD to see Mike recovered from his plague.

Keith and Mike

Keith is coming over to feed me and Jeff lunch,THE NEXT 150 WORDS DELETED. I’m really looking forward to it, whatever he produces!

Later, Mike’s dropping by and we’re going to go for a car ride in his new used Japanese work truck. I am thinking about making up a snack to take with us. I am very interested in where we might go. I’m thinking we’ll end up sort of all the way up in Squamish or all the way down in Steveston and either way I LOVES ME A CAR RIDE and I’m looking forward to it. Mike’s lived in Vancouver his whole life and he really knows this place well. I always see corners of the city previously unknown to me.

He says he did have COVID but he’s two weeks past symptoms so we should be okay. Poor guy was sick as a dog, but not enough to come to the attention of the health-care system.

I’m finally writing letters again, starting with Auntie Mary.

It would be amazing if Mike and Keith actually SAW each other.

RIP Meat Loaf

He was apparently once referred to in the NY Times as “Mr. Loaf”. Most famous for his association with Jim Steinman the songwriter and producer, and for his star turn as Eddie on both stage and screen in Rocky Horror, he did a lot of acting on network TV in the last ten years of his life and I for one was always glad to see him. He didn’t get vaccinated against COVID (there’s no evidence he did, anyway) and that’s what he died of. The talent is not bigger than science alas.

Jeff’s all over his post vax discomfort. Today I’m going to feed crows, load dishes, run laundry and enjoy this brief moment during which my room is tidy again. Thank you Suzanne. SHE FOUND AN APARTMENT IN BURNABY I’m so happy for her.

Boostered

Jeff got his booster shot yesterday. So did the cashier at Save-On, and believe me, both of them are not fit to be working today. She had to open though. Sigh.

We did a small schlep this morning. Schlep means journey, it’s only in the 20th c acquired the meaning that you’re always carrying things as you schlep.

later…. I survived on hot baths and hot water bottles after my vaccinations, so I was glad enough to fit one up for Jeff.

Twitter is now providing hexagonal NFT icons. Imagine showing your whole ass in public, day and night, about how you’re the latest suckr for tulips and south sea bubbles. Imagine paying for that.  Heaving sighs, I am.