Month: June 2022

a couple of changes

I made minor changes to Extracurricular Incoherence.

Blood work today, probably picking up scrips.

Got the corned beef sandwich from Big Star yesterday. It was fantastic. The woman who delivered it wanted to buy this house. I get asked once a week if I own the house or it’s for sale.

Lovely phone call with Dave yesterday. This was followed by an equally lovely letter from Lois. That woman is a family treasure.

24029. I’m letting the steam build up, more progress is coming.

 

Extracurricular Incoherence (new poem)

Perhaps this is the ‘now’ I have attended. Dreams mean nothing when the machine that can record them has settled into rust only imagination and the sun and X-rays can reassemble. I can’t remember my dreams because I am a brkn mchn. Sliver of mercurial glass! slide into my foot! assert yourself, the cold remains of another broken miracle. As a species we taught water and glass and steel to lie flat, hold still and do our will. When mirrors break it always feels like a failure.   The mirror is inseparable from the eye.   Parasite or epiphyte, the half-mirrored child appeared at a whim, then hardened into quotidian slots AND LONGER, hard seats in the ER smoking outside in the snow as far away as you can so’s not to bother the person you got a smoke from, standing someplace you won’t make shittier by weeping. There was nothing ambiguous about that moment, when I started to loathe flowers. Pretty flowers, death shorn and hacked is what you are – I see you in your unobjectionable patterned paper. What discipline will bring us flowers in the future; where will barley grow for beer? Everything good and decent is far apart and kept that way as fear and boot heels force their alarms into the collective breath. Carbon dioxide ratchets up, with it anxiety; it wasn’t in the syllabus; we’re conspiring in the dragon’s exhalation now – this is a vapour fit to kill.

New Beyoncé dropped

Yeah, so this is me right now. I have a crown made of pain and iron wrapped around my head and I think I’m going to have a very low key day. Also, expect the aforementioned song to be errywhere this summer, because it will be.

I am annoyed for other reasons this morning but there’s no point memorializing them for a censorious future, plus it could be argued that none of the fucking monkeys currently loose in my brain belong to MY circus. I will say that it has nothing to do with any family members.

no writing

took a day off to let my brain cool from the fiction I’ve been writing.

wrote a poem in response to a poem Dave wrote instead. I’m not posting it because he’ll probably ‘put something in there’ ie edit it (I don’t really think he can help himself) and of course I can’t post what I’m responding to. Anyway his original poem provoked a reaction, which was me riffing on grief and resistance and climate change.

Got a call from Tammy and how good to hear her voice.

I keep forgetting how much I like Burn Notice.

Dr. appointment tomorrow by phone. Prescription renewals.

low key day

23828 is the count.

Yesterday I wrote 870 words ran the dishwasher did my brain exercises got the Wordle in 5 played waffle half the day (it’s a game on the cbc website) watched a Burn Notice (season three summer finale, Michael finally shoots Strickler and joy was unrefined) gave someone 30$ on Paypal to honour my Settler Saturday commitment so she can get away from a bad domestic situation, skritched the cat and talked to Dave on the phone.

He’s got a book coming out and his description of the difficulties involved with punctuation was (probably not to him) quite comical. (Once upon a time I had an Anelia font Brother printer and I helped lay out one of his poems and let’s just say it’s better left to experts. And I don’t think he’s overly fussy about any of it, it’s a component of his greatness as a poet; I’m just not as particular and definitely not as internally consistent, go go Allegra ADD.) I spent rather more of the conversation than I should have telling him WHICH social media platform he should be on, of course twitter, and how he should go about ‘developing content’ for it now that he’s a luminary of Canadian letters. I even told him that if he felt like paying for it I’d jump on a train and come visit him (but he’d also have to pay to get rid of me, ALAS TIS THE ALLEGRAGELD which considering how I eat shouldn’t be too hard a sell) if he wanted to do a reading or (bless) won an award. He even riffed on an account name, which I won’t repeat in case he decides to actually do it, and I nearly laughed my lungs up through my nose.

I got a thousand karma points on reddit yesterday by saying something uplifting about someone’s stepdad for father’s day. Happy father’s day Paul: you were a good one. Things change. We get older and less useful to our children (in some cases) but the gratitude for the experience of having been a ‘working parent’ remains.

Happy father’s day pOp, you are one of the sweetest men ever. You were a little crusty when I was growing up and Liz was scared of you remember when I told you she said of you “King Fear gripped my heart with icy fingers” which is (truth be told) a quote from a Lobsang Rampa book (and DID YOU KNOW that after being hounded out of England as a goddamned phoney he moved to Calgary and died there in the 80s?, I mean what would an Allegra father’s day greeting be without a completely parenthetical comment?) but honestly, with mOm’s help you were the best dad out of all of the dads of all the kids I knew. I did have a few minutes when I thought you and mOm must have adopted me because you – ¿ARE YOU KIDDING? – set reasonable limits on my movements and what you spent money on for me but other than that, it was pretty clear you were . the . best . dad, and your continuing kindness and support for everyone in your family, is but one external token of how wonderful you are.

Did you know that there isn’t a single googleable picture of him on the internet? if I post pics of him I don’t put his name in the alt or the metadata

ALL PRAISE THE MASTER OF NOT CARING WHAT THE WORLD THINKS.

I’ve been laying off posting about Ukraine, but check this out, open in new page if you can’t read it:

armed fucking standoffs between officers and troops on the white blue and red side? g’damn.

the lawn

Jeff worked very hard and did the mowing; I policed up/weed whipped the buttercups and weeds closer to the edge of the property except for the ones under the dogwood tree and the ones that were covering A FUCKING WASP NEST which reduced my joy at working outdoors about as low as it goes. We both got covered in grit and buttercup juice and I still need to do the very front that’s got tall grass coming up through the cedar hedge.

I couldn’t even move for about ten minutes afterwards and every time I raised my arms they shook which made tea drinking interesting. As Jeff remarks, we really should exercise more.

One more week until Peggy’s next mini house filk.

22970 words on Totally Boned.

 

Suzanne supports writers

Well she sure supported me yesterday. She was cleaning and I was writing my ass off. Normally we hang out a bit, but I was electrically charged or summat.

Current word count stands at 22164; total word count for yesterday is a hair shy of 3000 words. As far as I can tell there’s no drop off in quality. I guess mOm, who’s been reading it as it flies off the keyboard into a pixellated state, would have to weigh in on that.

The lads in the story are on an airplane headed home. I am already up to 250 words today.

Paul’s gone to the US for Father’s Day. There are memes to cover this so just imagine me staring unblinking at you.

big day

1600 words on Totally Boned. This includes TWO gunfights, a government coverup, a Burn Notice-worthy use of a chokepoint in a hotel, Our Hero #1 barfing all over the crime scene after realizing that he’s not used to shooting without ear protection, the fixer providing everyone with unregistered handguns AND GETTING AWAY WITH IT as part of the government coverup and our lads getting to the airport and getting away clean.

 

or do they???? mOm is ready for more, but I think I shall rest for a while. I sure wasn’t expecting to write like a fiend today.

total now stands at 20863 words

the people vs. the press

Despite the overwhelming hatred and bigotry being expressed in the daily papers in the UK against trans people, one in four Britons is reporting that they know a trans person and the majority of people surveyed don’t agree with their rights and health care being stripped away. I could bang on about the basic decency of people but I won’t. I’ll just say that it’s possible people are more resistant to Nazi propaganda than you often give them credit for.

A woman in my neighbourhood published a photo of a bus creep on NextDoor (which is candidly the last fucking place on earth I’d expect to see such a thing) and it didn’t take very long before two men bounced on her hard to tell her she ought not to publicly shame people. Ie women shouldn’t complain about men. Then a bunch of other people came out to flail on the misogynists including other men.

I JUST FUCKING LOVE HOW WHITE MEN ENJOY TELLING WOMEN OF COLOUR TO CALL THE COPS ON A MAN OF COLOUR. Because that was the reaction of the naysayers WHY DINCHA CALL THE COPS.

“OH YOU SHOULDN’T DO THAT TO THE POOR MAN, EXPOSE HIM TO PUBLIC SHAME… NOPE you should call the cops.” WHY should a woman of colour (Arabic 1st and last name, for all I know she’s as pink as me but I’m not betting on it) call the RCMP on a Chinese guy? If she’s a Syrian immigrant (spitballing here) what the fuck would lead anyone to believe that she trusts the cops over local direct action? Given how the local cops’ (VPD, RCMP) treat men having mental health issues in public, one might refrain from calling them for assistance when one feels threatened just so one doesn’t have a death on one’s conscience. The VPD shot dead a man having mental health issues at Clarke and Broadway and the RCMP are no better, I assure you. I mean, it’s never been proven, but I’ve seen lots of evidence that the RCMP on the Island shot an Indigenous man who was having mental health issues and WAS UNARMED in the head WHILE HE WAS KNEELING. THAT COP IS STILL SERVING.

Fuckin’ wild I’m telling you. SURE, call the cops. You’ll never regret it.

toasted sesame seed bagel, smoked wild-caught salmon, roasted garlic cream cheese, capers and red onion for brekky… Jeff’s response was a literal ‘nom nom nom’

I made coffee but Jeff’s just going to ignore that part. We have to end eating pizza before it ends Jeff’s end.

19300 words. I chug, I chug, I chug along.

I’m going to listen to Eminence Front (the Who) ON BLAST

Ghislaine Maxwell says she needs lenience in sentencing because she had a terrible childhood. NOPE

Zahn McLarnon in Dark Winds is AMAZING and the writing is 100%

I saw Ryker yesterday when I helped Katie with a Costco shop and he was crabby and nobody was wearing a mask who was under 50. FML. Katie doesn’t wear a mask in public because Ryker goes snake when she does.

 

mellow day

worked on a fan fic, 300 words (the ‘copaganda special deputy’ story. THERE WILL BE GUNPLAY)

Totally Boned is up to 18753 words. I am really having problems visualizing how to communicate Brad wanting to make a big declarative speech and then just… not doing it because he realizes it’s self-indulgent and tacky. I mean when I write improbable characters I pull out the stops.

Off to do a grocery shop later this morning.

There was a really long and interesting thread on twitter this morning about how autistics communicate and I’ll be sitting with it for a while.

Yesterday I slept a lot and felt really weird and had balance problems. Let’s see how today is.