Month: August 2022

in Victoria

Ryker is charming his great grandparents with everything he’s got. He’s inches from being able to walk so that means he falls down and cries a lot. And then he promptly stops because he’s extremely cheerful.

Alex is also being delightful.

Trip over was nominal.

Back in Van tomorrow afternoon.

pOp showed me the two most important books in his collection. A science fiction short story omnibus with some brightly coloured and horrifying aliens, which he first ran across when he was reshelving books in the kids section of the main library in Saskatoon in the 1940s, and a Mickey Mouse book which was the first book he was ever given at the age of four, and which he had re-bound because the cover was trashed.

mOm found and donated to me and Jeff our old Viewmaster. FIRST ONE I PICKED UP WAS OG Addams Family IN COLOUR god I love my family. She also gave me Shirley Obuobi’s ON ROTATION because I told her to buy it and give it to me after she read it and SHE DID she read it and now I have a brand spanking new romance in a medical setting to read when I hit the bunk tonight YES.

lots on my mind

  1. much of it isn’t my story, so I sit by the side of the road
  2. Housefilk has been moved up to today. I wish I could stop feeling this bleak – Jeff got me CHEESE SCONES and COFFEE and both are excellent.
  3. weather remains fine
  4. The Russians keep providing the Ukrainians with proof of war crimes and the fact nobody on the Russian side seems to care indicates that they don’t actually believe any international justice apparatus will still be standing when they’re done.
  5. At this point I think we’ve got about 6 months left of ‘normal’ so it’s time to batten down. Start keeping more cash on hand, among other things.
  6. Anne Heche died of her injuries. Addiction is a terrible thing. I hope her kids have people they can trust with them and aren’t exposed to too much vileness. IN DECEMBER 2022 IT WAS REVEALED SHE DIDN’T HAVE ANY DRUGS OR ALCOHOL IN HER SYSTEM.  Lesson… don’t speculate on CoD until the coroner rules.
  7. preparations for camping trip have commenced – I need to find Jim E’s old camping list. Suzanne has already told me to expect to do as much driving as I can stand because ‘she wants to look at the view’ and I am HERE for that.
  8. off to Victoria soon for a flying visit more deets later
  9. I am hoping for a breakthrough on totally boned so I guess I’ve got a date with some 3×5 cards current count is 1663

  10. allegra sloman 13/8/2022 ‘Doing it badly’

Suzanne has been here

  1. The Enshinening has occurred, the kitchen rugs are clean again.
  2. Finished the Sandman. After one horrible episode in the middle it got WAY better again and I loved the last two eps for this season.
  3. YAY we get to watch more Shetland, because there is more.
  4. Having lots of insomnia.
  5. Steve Bannon says that ‘the Deep State may try to assassinate President Trump’
  6. LOL
  7. The documents the FBI was looking for at Mar-a-Lago had to do with American nuclear secrets.
  8. The internet is ablaze with the notion that it was Melania who turned him in.
  9. Sadly, the picture of Melania standing over Ivana’s grave is photoshopped. I almost fell for it.
  10. 1594 words. Suzanne got her copy of the first 6 chapters of ‘Totally Boned’. She’s four chapters in and loving it so far.
  11. Spoke to Mike yesterday. His 36 year old boss dropped dead while on vacation and his only remaining report’s niece just died in a brutal car crash that orphaned her 10 year old son, so abruptly Mike’s answering the phones again which he swore he would not do. Christ knows when he’ll catch a break.
  12. Enjoy the following anecdote.
  13. man shoots himself in head
  14. “Health is the finest thing for mortals the second finest is to bear noble children, third to win riches without fraud, and fourth to be young among one’s friends.” Not 100 percent sure but I think that’s Plutarch.
  15. I feel sad and have no reason to.

better today

  1. knees much less sore, swelling gone down, bruised area is still very hot to the touch. The place I hit my head is hurting today, but not enough to take pain killers.
  2. You now aren’t supposed to drink rainwater anywhere on earth. That’s a hell of a thing.
  3. wordle in 4, haven’t done my lumosity yet this morning. Sorry I’m late, I had a very upset night sleeping wise
  4. CNN referred to Elon Musk’s increasingly bizarre and market stampeding behaviour as ‘antics’ is ludicrous. Four year olds stacking chairs to get at cookies is antics, for the love of god.
  5. Hoping to see Mike some time this week, even if it’s to drop by and have some takeout.
  6. Officially starving, I’m off to get some breakfast.

my knees are bruised and abused

and I appear to have subluxed one of my finger joints during my sleep, again, but I am awake and aware enough to get the wordle in 4 this morning.

1594 words

There’s a dead rat in the alley that you can actually see from the end of the alley. Disgusting, but I’m not touching it, that’s what the crows are for.

Jeff is currently having a low key sneezing fit. I am not low key about sneezing. When I was young and impressionable I read that suppressing a sneeze is bad for you. I know how, I just don’t. KACHOOOO change the airpressure in the room lol.

Exchanged an abso hilarious note with Alexis this morning but I cannot alas share it with you. The kids are all right.

 

to the right to the right

  1. I must start today’s Symphony of Yeesh with the observation that Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property has been raided (right down to the safe) by the FBI. Hear now in the ear of your mind an opening blast of strangely discordant horns, resolving into a mixed chorus of voices swelling in triumph, followed by a faint rippling echo of ‘Yakety Sax’.
  2. Someone’s serial killing Muslim men in ABQ. Apparently he attended the funeral of one of the men he killed, followed an attendee home and killed him there. This along makes me think that it’s an unhinged member of the community. LATER: CALLED IT.
  3. Putin seems to think shelling one of the biggest nuclear power plants in Europe is a great thing to do with modern weapons.
  4. had a medium length phone conversation with Keith yesterday. He wants a conference call with mOm at some point and I said sure.
  5. Absolutely loving Neil Gaiman’s the Sandman. It’s not an exact take on a thirty year old comic but things have changed since then
  6. This paragraph deleted as too enraging / clickbaity
  7. I love speculaas cookies. They are bad for me.
  8. 1581 words on Part II
  9. blew wordle this morning
  10. Taraji P Henson’s ancestral kin was the first man at the North Pole! her family must have the most amazing stories
  11. Must go one last time to the Swiss Chalet before it closes.

Does the dog die

  1. that is the name of a website. People are sensitive about animal loss. I told a bunch of people on reddit that the dog DOESN’T die in the new Predator series movie, “Prey” and my inbox this morning is full of thanks and praise for saying so.
  2. Time to brush my teeth and have a shower.
  3. Burnaby is going to have a festival of glowing pumpkins, 6000 of the hand carved suckers. Once we hit August it’s all Halloween all the time around here.
  4. Somebody must have put one of my stories on a list; one particular fanfic is getting all the attention these days. It’s an okay story, it’s got pacing issues.
  5. Still no joy on Part II of current story. Some extension of a fanfic.
  6. We’ve now blown through 1000 cases of MPX in Canada. It was 957 on the 5th August, what do you think?
  7. Can’t raise Mike, his phone doesn’t seem to be working.
  8. Lovely walk with Jeff in the morning, it wasn’t TOO hot. Actually walked up the hill with some speed instead of puffing and blowing and pausing the entire way.
  9. Hexavalent chromium spill into the Huron River, which would impact the drinking water of millions of people, is getting zero airplay / pixels / print space in the media. Hexavalent chromium, necessary (they say) for many industrial processes, is the single most toxic form of chromium. Staring at my Toronto friends hey you might want to move before it’s in the drinking water of Toronto in Lake Ontario.
  10. Made Jeff peppermint tea and smoked salmon green salad wrap for brekkie.
  11. The Russians have mined the Ukrainian nuclear plant they took over a couple of months back. It is apparently their intention to destroy it.
  12. I have Reddit Cute Animal disease, every time I see a video of a cute critter on Reddit I want to run out and buy it. Today’s heart-eyes – hognosed snake.
  13. Did not practice yesterday, but at least all the instruments are in the same room again.
  14. “Reddit Double Shot” – THERAPY and BREAKUPS all ’round. (AITA posts only)
  15. I got the wordle in three tries this morning. However I used a solve site on line to help me once I got to word two.
  16. That doesn’t always work, depends on how common the consonants are.
  17. I am thinking of the time I did the Grouse Grind. It took me 2.5 hours and a single human being lapped me three times; he was wearing nothing but pale metallic blue booty shorts and athletic shoes and carrying a water bottle.
  18. Doug Ford is still an asshole who took four billion dollars from the Feds to fight the pandemic and as far as anyone can tell is obscuring where it’s being spent as fast as his bean counters can hide it.
  19. I have had a poem written for me?!!! Colour me blushy.
  20. And now I shall cease with my morning raving, knowing that my fOlks don’t have internet right now so there’s no point getting this posted before six.
  21. reconnecting with an ex on social media (facebook, I believe I mentioned that I left instagram and climbed back up on facebook) is always fraught with hazard (he was my first bf from around the time the planet cooled) but so far all we’re doing is sighing heavily over what a fucking idiot Roger Waters (OF PINK FLOYD) (he’s FUCKING CAPING FOR THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA SAYING TAIWAN BE OWNED BY THEM WHICH IS A BIG SURPRISE TO THE PEOPLE WHO FUCKING LIVE THERE) is, and posting youtube memories of songs gone by. Weird to see him all old and bearded though.
  22. and as a visual codaImage

dear ones

Long … long talk with Paul yesterday about his life changes, and then home made sugar free iced tea, tuna salad and a small serving of chocolate ice cream for lunch.

Buster has been in a weird mood of late. He’s been asking for stuff at odd times of day, at times when there are other people in the house, which he very rarely does. Training or ‘sitting pretty’ for brushing usually takes place under specific circumstances or times of day. I think he’s got one hell of a furball parked up in there somewheres.

Watched 13 Lives – the dramatization of the rescue of the Thai soccer team from the cave. Viggo Mortenson is AMAZING. Colin Farrell quietly disappears into his role. Viggo embodies a highly intelligent, very autistic and brilliant technical diver; the script is fantastic. The Thai people and government aren’t represented as ‘needing rescuing’ they are ‘asking for assistance on something they don’t have the expertise for’ and the way people come together for the outcome is better than any fiction. Congrats Ron Howard on another great movie and RIP Saman Kunan and Beirut Pakbara the Thai Navy Seal divers who perished at the time of the rescue or afterward from an infection acquired during the rescue.

retraction without redaction

Johnny Depp is a violent misogynistic creep and his sole purpose in suing Amber Heard for defamation was to bankrupt her, which he has done.

Now various items which did not come to light during the suit have demonstrated that Depp has A LONG HISTORY of spousal battery, shit talking and bad vibes. His Hollywood buddies who stood next to him during the suit have started to ‘quit following him on Twitter’ which probably means they aren’t taking his calls any more, or they go through an intermediary.

I have mentioned him half a dozen times on this blog since it started nearly 20 years ago, praising his appearance or commenting on his performances. I’m not going to take those references out; I’m just stating that as of the time the Amber Heard defamation suit came to court, I fucking loathe Johnny Depp and wish him a long life of total obscurity, relative penury, and wrinkles.

Robot Chicken and Alex Jones

  1. after years of saying we would, Jeff and I are finally rewatching Robot Chicken to make a goodies reel. Jeff, we need to include the danceoff, I changed my mind.
  2. Picture if you will a man who lies for a living. After 9/11, he fused the internet as we mostly now know it to lies about how 9/11 was a ‘false flag’ operation. Many people mostly on the right decided that there was no way 9/11 could have happened UNLESS high government officials and the standard issue global cabal had CAUSED it to happen; this man made money selling dietary supplements (which are also bunkum) to the people who took comfort in this worldview. Many millions of dollars of income later, he said that the shooting deaths of a bunch of children in a school shooting (Sandy Hook) was a false flag operation. That those kids didn’t die. Now, those kids did die, and even though the man who lies for a living knew they didn’t die, and said they didn’t die because people who are against the right to carry guns wanted to change the laws, his attitude toward the truth was not all that great, so the parents sued him for defamation.
  3. he lost. Total amounts owing along the lines of $50 million. Two more lawsuits in a similar vein are coming. His total net worth is in the vicinity of $150 Mil.
  4. perhaps he lost but he’s still very popular, as per “What does the Internet Think” website. 
  5. and in case you think this is bullshit, I give you Lee Pace’s results from the same website, BECAUSE NO ONE IS INDIFFERENT TO LEE PACE (ALSO I DO NOT APPEAR ON THIS WEBSITE LOL I CHECKED):
  6. while he was losing his lawyer’s employee accidentally (OR DID SHE LOL) sent two years’ worth of text and email messages from his phone to the plaintiffs’ lawyers. The lawyers promptly asked the January 6 committee if they wanted the messages, which was truly inconvenient for the man who lies for a living.
  7. and his ex wife Kelly probably will be getting them too. She is – quite rightly – in a custody battle, and now his utter unfitness to have access to his children will soon be a matter of public record. She calls him “truly mentally ill” and a danger to society but what the hell else can you expect from an ex wife hunh?
  8. to recap, Alex Jones is a foam-flecked liar, and now he will be paying for it. It won’t stop him, and he’ll fundraise on it, but at least someone slowed him down for two seconds and between his wife, his involvement with the January 6 traitors and the Sandy Hook parents his wealth will get a shellacking.
  9. Watched ‘Prey’ which is a new film in the Predator franchise GODDAMN I LOVED IT. It’s set in Comanche territory in 1719. The French are the bad guys, just like life’s supposed to be (this is a family joke, not reality.)
  10. That dog was not trained. They had to use that dog because it’s very close to what an Indigenous dog would have looked like at the time, so holy shit the director had to put up with a lot from that dog.
  11. A version completely in Comanche is available.
  12. Watched the new Minions movie. It had a few good laughs and was about standard for the franchise.
  13. I’m feeling quite a bit better, but the weather’s gone hot again so the next couple of days will probably be uncomfortable.
  14. There’s a cat rescue outfit in Vancouver which would rather EUTHANIZE a cat that adopt it out to a transgender person. Infuriating, like it’s a REASON.
  15. 1207 words on new section, still going very slow also worked on fanfic ‘landslide’
  16. Watched the Frontline about the people living in Kharkiv for the first three months after the Russian invasion. Very scary, moving and the people there seem admirable in their resolve. The impact of the war on the elderly and disabled is just gross.
  17. For settler saturday consider a donation to Indigenous language revitalization.

Private post

I just posted something privately to my blog complaining about a life situation that isn’t mine to talk about publicly but that is wrecking me. mOm knows, Jeff knows, I’m not alone but I have many yuccccky feelings.

I owe various people phone calls and wish they’d call me for a change but it’s easily fixed.

I can’t find an online obituary for a friend of mine who died back in 2004/5. So that was depressing.

Today I learned that acrylic nails aren’t just for show. I just learned that a small but vocal subset of acrylic nail wearers USE THEM to help control their OCD, self-picking and trichotillomania symptoms. (They literally can’t pick at their scalps, eyelashes, eyebrows, etc. if they’re wearing them.)  I hate them because I think they’re hideously ugly but now Billie Eilish wearing 7 cm nails all the time makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE and I’m going to stop commenting on this aspect of other women’s appearance. Thank you Reddit.

This is a photograph of UK soldiers from WWII interrupted during rehearsals for a drag show to SHOOT AT NAZIS.

WWII soldiers interrupt rehearsal of drag show to shoot Nazis

 

boot to the head! (wah, wah)

  1. today’s blog post title is a call back to a famous Frantics album from 1987
  2. Because today I administered a social media boot to the head to the GAWDAM Canadian Blood Services. You may or may not be aware that the GAWDAM Canadian Blood Services ended the mandate for mask wearing while you donate.
  3. yup you heard me
  4. give blood and catch covid
  5. what a draw, what a pull, what a crowd pleaser!
  6. anyway I told them until they restored the mask mandate they can do without my blood.
  7. because they said burnaby needs 300 donors now and I’m like IF YOU COME TO MY HOUSE THAT WILL WORK FINE TOO. DEY VANT MY BLUT DEY CAN COME GET IT
  8. still stalled on story – all stories.
  9. baseball sized hail fell in southern AB August 1, I watched video of people pulled over and screaming inside their cars, it was scary af
  10. my schadenfreude over Alex Jones’ troubles at his defamation trial is great. Finding out yesterday that his ‘defence’ lawyer sent TWO YEARS OF TEXTS on accident TO THE PLAINTIFFS’ LAWYERS made Jeff and I smile quite rudely
  11. Russia keeps almost hitting Ukrainian grain shipments. Putin Khuylo! (usually translated as Putin is a Dickhead!!)
  12. heat map of the US and southern Canada on July 31 2022 shows solid red and you wonder why I’m all apocalyptic  darkest is highest temperature - us heat map 31 july 22
  13. Jeff and I remain very very happy that there’s a functioning air conditioner in this house.
  14. I have too much laundry both dirty and to put away.
  15. words cannot describe how happy I am that my mOm reads my blog posts to her sister almost every day …. and so sometimes I put stuff in that I think will make Mary laugh