happy Halloween! I light a candle for our precious dead and the ancestors crowding close…. This post is LONG so I’m going to shorten it.
Fireworks are banned in Vancouver but not in Burnaby, so it’s been a freaking war zone here for the last three days. That plus the rain and Buster’s been in no mood to go outside except cursorily. I’ll be staying in with him tonight, which reminds me I have to turn the porch light off this afternoon.
Buster is more like a roommate than a pet. He’s so transparent and communicative and easy to get along with it’s very charming. They’ve done research and cats can usually tell when their humans are talking to them or other humans. I don’t have to say his name. I couldn’t find him in the house yesterday (he was napping on the living room sofa) and he mewed in response to “Where’s the kitty?” so I could scan his whereabouts.
He got a little extra wet food yesterday as an apology for Jeff’s absence. He’s ‘okay’ while Jeff’s gone, but just okay, and dreffle needy. He’ll be all over Jeff (within a few minutes) when he gets home tomorrow. As discussed with Jeff I’m hanging around here. The explosions and fireworks bangs didn’t stop until very late, and then I’m getting up at 2 these days because I’m going to bed early. I can only watch TV that Jeff’s not watching and only one ‘new’ show appeals to me at the moment (Gentleman Jack… I have issues but I do like it. The kitting-out montage at the beginning is awesome and I do enjoy the music.)
The single biggest issue I have with it is that however badly the show-runners want it to be about Anne Lister, the ‘first modern lesbian’ —- it’s sad that the ‘first modern lesbian’ is ALSO a) white b) rich c) well born d) literate. The first modern lesbian – which I dispute as being non-inclusive. The only reason we know about her at all is from her diaries (partially in code, they *were* scandalous and when the code was broken in the 30’s by a Lister cousin his best friend advised him to burn them, but instead he hid them in the walls of Shibden Hall which is actually where they did some shooting, isn’t that wonderful and thank goodness he saved them) and candidly, she was a bit of an ass. I mean that’s part of her appeal as someone in fiction, but (shakes head sadly) she was a RAKE. I’m sorry I’M VERY PARENTHETICAL TODAY and every damned day but whatever.
Russia is launching a huge missile offensive specifically aimed at civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Slava Ukraini.
Thank you votors of Brazil for reelecting Lula after that fuckwit Bolsonaro, who OF COURSE is claiming electoral fraud – it was a freaking SQUEAKER but he won. Lula posted a picture of his 77 year old hand resting on the flag of Brazil with the single word “Democracy.”
Celebs are fleeing twitter in droves. I already got drove off so…
I was working on bits/routines in the bathtub the other day. One of them is about lipomas:
I really think old people need to be honest about how much aging sucks. I mean, you get lumpy! Yes, also fat, but lumpy! I run my hand over my arm one day in my late fifties and there’s a lump. So I call my mother in hysterics and she says, “It’s a lipoma, it’s harmless.”
LIPOMA …a word that sounds like death from within! LIPO equals fat, and OMA means (Schwartzenegger pronunciation:) TUMOR!
And Metformin!!! let me tell you about my relationship with this wonder drug….
Okay that’s enough for this morning.
ten degrees C and light rain this am
the ‘New Guy’ 1920 words – sad to relate this will be angsty schmoop.
Part II 9060 words
As insight into my creative process, here’s an edited and somewhat expanded extract of an email to my mother about the latest poem I posted.
This poem is a meta-critique of the artist interacting with contemporary culture and its consumers.so: I come up with an idea. I want to ask people how they would “SCREAM FOR JESUS.”That’s a simply terrible idea. No quarter given, it’s a stupidly offensive idea and should be roundly criticized as such. An immense number of people would find it offensive in the extreme. So the first choice given with respect to the art IS DO NOT ENGAGE DO Not look directly in the eyes of the artist ….back away immediately.So I politely ask the question about screaming for Jesus, having already given the choice not to engage.But there are always people who want to critique the idea, for whatever reason, and I’m making fun of them too. Because I have the inalienable right to make art however I see fit, I just don’t have the right of the support and admiration of others for it. Simple!I know it was cryptic but it is really not more meaningful than that.Futurama, an adult cartoon, has a memorable scene in which our roundly stupid characters want to demonstrate wealth and sophistication by buying art, thus ONE ART, PLEASE. This poem is ‘one art’; ‘buy it’ (by this I actually mean ‘intellectually support the premise, because you can buy art too’), or ‘debate it’, or ‘refuse to engage with it’,….. apart from destroying it those are your choices.
