Month: September 2022

Omnibus of suck Part the nth

Pierre Poilievre is the leader of the conservatives in Canada. Proud supporter and handshaker of Nazis, when asked what he’d do about COVID-19 he said he’d lower taxes. He’s sucked on the teat of the taxpayer since he was 24 years old and worshipped Stephen Harper.

I hope he experiences all the electoral success he deserves.

Article from Ed Yong about ‘brain fog’. Interestingly it mentions the Montreal test. Please read this – and remember that all three of my immediate family have had COVID already. I don’t have any proof I got it in March 2020 but I’ve had to deal with what felt like brain fog, and cognitive crashing, for years now. My apparent intelligence does not match my functional intelligence. And the fall of my writing output is no surprise. I do what I can on a daily basis, but even the small array of techniques I had for managing my output doesn’t seem to work any more.

I am starting to read for pleasure again but I have to not do it for more than about 15 minutes at a time. I am also rereading books, not reading them for the first time.

I am starting to understand why the internet suits my cognitive deficits right now. I feel like the mom, Hazel Bergeron, in Harrison Bergeron, that story by Kurt Vonnegut.

The amount I sleep has abruptly gone up by 1.5 – 2 hours a day, and I’m doing my best not to nap any more during the day. So really I’m sleeping the same amount but doing it all at night.

Jeff and I looked at each other around 6 pm last night and realized that the worst of the ground smoke had lifted, and it was such a relief. We didn’t even run the a/c yesterday so the house is kind of sticky this morning. It didn’t help that there was a recycling centre on fire in Vancouver for most of the weekend. On the way back from Bowen we crested one of the many hills coming into the city from Horseshoe Bay and at one point we could smell burning plastic all the way down to our navels, it was just a horrible sensation. AS IN we should be driving away, not toward.

Buster trained HARD but briefly this morning. He did the headbutt on my left leg thing repeatedly to indicate that he was HERE TO TRAIN. He doesn’t normally do pawclaps ‘backwards’ ie with his back to me, but he did it twice this morning, then did some run and chase, and then VWIP out the door (Jeff left the back door open for the cool morning air.)

3979 words. I think I’ll have some to send mOm in the next couple of days.

on Bowen Island

We are having the most lovely time.

We played spotify rounds last night and thus it was I found out I love Junior Brown and Paul Anka’s 2005 album ‘ROCK SWINGS’ where he frank sinatrafies modern hits. like black hole sun and wonderwall. IT’S FANTASTIC. Jeff and I laughed until we cried. “Und dis is ven I learnt that I AM AN OLDT FARDT!!!”

Our hosts are empty nesters. A human and dog friend came over and we watched Bear hump Maple until she got bored with it. Bear and Nelson are good friends with Maple.

The wifi connected instantly, I slept 9 hours last night – I literally faded at the stroke of 8 and woke up at 5.

Barbecue and summer squash from their garden for dins. SOOOO GOOOD

We’ll be grabbing a ferry home soon.

Brief visit

Fridge is still busted at Katie’s place – landlord swears he’ll buy and have delivered a new one (old one taken away I expect) since Paul and Keith refuse to move a fridge and it’s the landlord’s job to replace it. Paul is mildly pissed since he spent half a day lining up a good used fridge.

Keith dropped by to return a container which was now full of YUMMY YUMMY lentil stew. Absolutely superlative. That man can cook now.

Enjoying this season of Archer.

3895 words I wanted to see how many bombshells I could deal with in 800 words and Brad has managed to talk Omar into two impossible things before their tea is cold.

The pink dawn faced off the yellow moon and sent it away.

We’re getting smoke from fires in town today – Bowen will be worse if the maps are anything to go by.

It was 20 years ago today
when Buzz Aldrin punched him in the face
And I really really want to say
that he had to be put in his place
So let us all assert for you
Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon and said it was a BEAUTIFUL VIEEEEEEEW

intersectionality is a cognitive aid, a tool, glasses so you can see what is happening

it’s not meant to be gamified by white guys who think that because they live at the corner of Lonesome and Hardup they get an option to score points without flak from the racialised commentariat

Suzanne hits a dinger

Aw jeez I’m dying here; Suzanne saw Janice on the sofa the other day at Caspell Junction and said (because her filter doesn’t always work) ‘WHO’S THAT???’ Janice did not acknowledge Suzanne’s existence. Suzanne was here today for the Enshinening and I laughed immoderately.

D.Y.I.N.G.

Anyway Paul drove her to the train station so she’s left town. I’m assuming Paul told her his medical news, but who knows.

Bowen this weekend.

Queen’s dead

I note it, but I’m turning the rest of my thoughts on the subject private, and will release them when the furore dies down. I’m suggesting white people in Canada stay still and listen for the other voices – to whom her existence was the worthy face, the nice conformity of colonialism, inescapable, unthinkably pervasive, destructive, violent and everywhere, dirty. Hold still, be still, be absorbent, and don’t be defensive. When you see what happens – the global party in colonial lands – you will realize in tiny portion what colonialism has done.

plenty of nothing

Queen Elizabeth is fixing to die at Balmoral Castle. Her dying in Scotland during one of the biggest blooms of separatism in ‘Alba’ would be quite a punctuation mark to her reign. No English monarch has died in Scotland since the 16th C.

She cooed over me in my crib at Pion-Era in Saskatoon in 1959.

Her dying is going to cast me down for a long time; I’ll try not to trouble anyone really anticolonial with my feelings, but it’s hard to have two English grandfathers and not have those feelings.

Each time I think I’m being too lazy I remember my foremothers busted ass on housework and clothing construction/maintenance every gd day of their lives, so if I read novels and eat nuked cakes in a cup (my own recipe) they are smiling down on me. They wish I’d accept Christ though, and that’s a tough one.

3005 words.

Buster killt him a rat day before yesterday. Jeff has already dealt with the corpse.

Keith bopped by with two coolers full of frozen food a couple of days ago since the fridge over there died, and I took stuff out of out freezer to put theirs in. SADLY the ice cream horns touted as treats ARE TOO GROSS which is awful because Jeff and I both enjoy them, so we’ll have to throw them out. Anyway, it was good to be of service to the family.

https://martinkendell.ca/my-platform – I guess I’m voting for him. He just cleaned a hunnert pounds of trash offa Boundary Road.

 

 

unapologetically oldfashioned

That is how I would characterize the Top Gun: Maverick movie. The flying sequences were intense and well shot, but everything on the ground took longer and felt longer than it needed to. The script hit the creaky/hokey/jingoistic trifecta, too. But a good thing to watch with friends.

Mike and Jeff and I had an otherwise quiet time and got sammies from Big Star for supper. I do like their turkey sandwich.

Four loads of laundry yesterday…. and still more to do. Mike tried to do his and found out that they’d changed the amount of money they charge in the laundry room and he literally had no change because he…. never leaves the house.  What a life.

 

 

No filk, just earflapping

Lovely visit with Peggy. She even drove me home. Never pulled my guitar out of the case! (Did noodle on Otto.) I am glad I went; I showered and otherwise got myself in shape for a public event and then we drank lashings of tea, (I got the water on to boil and figured out where everything was in her kitchen to make tea while she was gone) considered our children and our recent losses and retrenchments. Is she still going to be living in that big house five years from now? Ten? I told her to stay put but I can see that a summer of overseeing a bunch of in-some-cases completely unexpected and ferociously expensive house repairs has shifted her opinion on being old and owning a house.

2609 words plus sketched out a confrontation scene while at Peggy’s waiting for her to come back from walking her son’s s/o’s dog Callie who is a very nervous rescue with a rangy frame and a patrician nose but who decided to like me.

Still no word about whether Janice is still in town or how she’s going home. Very hard to have discussions with your ex which desperately need having when he’s got his bodyguard with him. If he’s driving her home that puts the discussion off again for the best part of a week. Peggy’s face as I mentioned this was a study.

The ‘real filk’ is next weekend but in the meantime I have had a proper earflapping with one of my most beloved and respected friends. And I left the house.

Mike is coming over tonight! Hope to hear his tale of work, just brushed up against the subject on the phone the other day.

HALLOWEEN IS COMING

austrian art nouveau bat chandelier

Someone else’s poem, but relevant to both my life and my mood.

221b by Vincent Starrett

221b
Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears—
Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five