Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
Number 1: Thirty-odd COVID studies and links.
Number 2: Twenty-odd studies regarding COVID and the immune system.
Number 3: Immunity ‘debt’ is NOT a thing. 20+ links.
Number 4: more than twenty studies about HOOBOY masks.
Number 5: Mask purchase links.
Number 6: Air quality 20+ links.
Number 7: ze whole shebang.
In clinic appointment tomorrow.
Enjoying season 3 of Jack Ryan. It’s copaganda on a global scale, and still I like it because this season we have the Russians to kick again.
Started Season 3 of Farscape. The weirdness continues and we’ve lost/are losing one of my favourite characters. (Virginia Hey playing Zhaan. She had to quit the show because the makeup put her kidneys into failure.)
Twitter’s functionality and algorithms continue to circle the drain. They changed it so you can’t control what you see in your feed so it’s non stop stupid advertising and actively right wing propaganda. AND VERY OCCASIONALLY a social media flare sent up by a dear internet friend.
So I’m more on tumblr, which I enjoy, but I have to go roust the spambots every morning (BlockAndReport).
Just learned that all of Thandiwe Newton’s forays into parenting resulted in home births (besides a new generation of actors) (say nepo babies and I’ll whack you, I already explained nepotism in my Upsun books and I’m just going to tap the sign) and I’m quietly squeeing to myself.
Jeff brought dinner in last night from Earl’s. We do enjoy the blackened chicken.
Life proceeds; all is calm here. There’s a leftover pancake in the fridge from yesterday – I made strawberry blueberry pancakes. Texturally they put me in mind of a great poem from my youth, but Jeff and I had no difficulty with them.
Ginny made some donuts / she made them by the peck / one rolled out a window / and broke a horse’s neck
You know the feeling when you’re lying in bed like a slug and your brother’s emptying the dishwasher?
In no particular order,
Yesterday morning I spent a happy few minutes playing with a tiny jumping spider, who was exploring my computer displays. At first I just watched him walking around, gathering himself for a mighty leap, then vanishing and instantly reappearing a few centimeters away. Occasionally he would pause, turn to face me directly, and stare at me for a while. I waved at him, wondering how I would react if he waved back. He eventually wandered onto the display surface of one screen, and I noticed that he seemed to be reacting to movement on the screen. I moved the mouse pointer towards him, and he reacted immediately, turning to face it. He tracked its every movement as long as it was within a few centimeters. Every once in a while, he attacked, springing forward to grasp the pointer, then pausing with his forward legs splayed out. Much like a cat playing with a laser pointer. At one point I led him to the part of the screen where my music app shows a series of bars representing frequency bands. He stopped moving and seemed transfixed by the hectic motion of the bars. “…jumping spiders have been shown by experiment to be capable of learning, recognizing, and remembering colors, and adapting their hunting behavior accordingly.” (from Wikipedia.)
/ the great Guilt Trip. more on that later.
He brought a bag of perfect mandarins and little oranges for new year.
We ordered from Fusioncore Japanese, the three of us, and watched some TV and hung out and talked. After Jeff went to bed Mike asked the my uke that he just restrung with very plangent strings and he played (in rapid succession) about ten tunes that I had no idea he knew on ukulele, all the way from Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out to Who’ll Stop the Rain. I mean, he only just BOUGHT a uke. He’s absolutely loving the instrument.
All in all a good day, even if I left a message for Paul and never followed up so I never got him out of the house. And slept more than I should. And didn’t pick up my inderal.
And after Mike handed the uke back I said, I have something unpleasant to say and I have to get it over with.
“I tried so hard to love the Blue Lava guitar you gave me. I tried playing it, playing with the cool electronics, compose on it. I couldn’t love it. I know usually when I get a new instrument the other instruments are mad and they are left alone while I have New Instrument Energy with My New Fave. But it never happened with this guitar. May I give it back to you?”
And he said thank you for telling me.
I knew where all the bits and bobbles were, and packed it up along with the Instant Pot insert and Bouillon he left her from New Years. I felt so relieved because Mike just didn’t take it the wrong way.
I am so fortunate in my friends.
everyone have a hellafine day. Wordle and Lumosity done, I’m in good shape today.
COVID data resource for Canadians.
14678 words
I got my metformin and learned because my pharmacist is a mensch that I’ll get my inderal today. I wanted to pick up treats at Timmy Ho’s and there were 14 countem 14 people in the lineup, so I picked up meat instead at Farm Town. FORGOT MY FRIKKING BANK CARD and my credit card was declined. (It’s variable, haven’t been able to figure out why.) So whoopsy doodle in the car. The car seems fine except that it’s idling at a bit higher clip than previously.
Finally Paul and I get to go for a walk! I’ll call him at some point this a.m. and we can find a mall to go walking in if it’s raining too hard for the great outdoors.
I’m in a good mood for whatever reason. Who knows why, it’s all super weird.
14,672. Finished with the phone scene, on to the cuddles
Paul insisted on paying for half of it. It was the rear O2 sensor. Parts and labour were well under $400 which was fair. Keith, because he is wonderful, took care of driving on the ‘picking up the car’ end. I am fortunate.
Suzanne is very much enjoying Lucky. Like many Russian Blue coloured cats, Lucky enjoys playing fetch.
I have to run off to the pharmacy this morning. I didn’t note that I was out of Metformin so I’m taking care of that as soon as it opens. In the meantime I think I’m going to make myself an eggie on toastie.
Just wanted to state that Jeff is a peerless housemate and my good fortune in this last decade plus of cohabitation CANNOT be overstated. He knows why I’m posting this now, but it need not be the business of the world.
The Echo is in at the krankenhaus, Paul is all wanting to drive again, and I’m going to tell him the same thing I did last time; Don’t. Unless your doctor okays it, no. The CT happened and we’ll know more when the film’s read. Keith picked us up after we dropped the car off. Keith is being such a dear one these days.
Then I got a return call from Tammy and we had a lovely phone call, chugging through the ever changing panoply of tasks and concerns. I am very happy she called.
Suzanne is here and the rugs are in to be washed.
I carried Kevin (the vacuum) downstairs. He is a very substantial minion and awkward. I wanted to be reminded.
I think it is possible that I am gestating a poem. Could be gas. Could be the samosa. Could be that Magpie (twitterfren’) was talking about how a poem ambushed them with a philosophical demand that (as they currently construe themselves) was antithetical to their wellbeing.
This means that my friend has identified something interesting to me, of which I was not previously aware, in my poetry.
If you read David Dowker’s poems, and you should if you enjoy being bewildered in a very high-toned way, only to be poleaxed by a phrase which welds itself to your sensorium, you will not come across a single one that would require the modern day ‘scourge of both literature and the flow of ideas in virtual spaces’ by which I mean (and for the one person reading this who’ll enjoy it) the TRIGGER WARNING.
A content or trigger warning is the signed, finger-signed, audible or readable advisory that potentially painful, objectionable, psychologically harmful due to pre-existing conditions, or just plain offensive to contemporary acceptance of decency wat dat content is imminently inbound.
I think the poet has to consider the audience. If you want your poetry widely accessible, that means actually taking accessibility into consideration. Oh, one possibly probably almost certainly says, such a small part of the market.
fiendish grin
I am not marketable. Oh my offense is rank, it smells to heaven – that I have RSD and CAN’T FUCKING BEAR TO BE EDITED or even gently remonstrated with regarding usage. Of course if it’s dead wrong I don’t have a problem, but anything with wiggle room and a slice of daylight a photon wide and … I be the spiny puffer fish stuck in the throat of my own self-improvement. So I’ll never be a commercial author. I won’t improve as a poet. My best songwriting days are behind me anyway and I’m fine with that. When I have a back catalogue like what I’m sitting on… ? just staying on top of my own top 40 compositions in terms of performance readiness is all I fucking need to do. Everyone who likes my tunes already has the sheet music or a recording and nobody else matters. When Tom Lehrer, one of the greatest song writers of the 20th C, PUBLICLY POSTED HIS ENTIRE CATALOGUE, I thought I don’t even need to say anything, I’ve been vindicated with the kind of vindication that counts, one artist heart sending up a flare to another while putting the audience first. WHO ELSE could respect his audience that much? Who is unbossed enough to do it? Of course he’s not a perfect human but it’s the single most amazing piece of direct cultural action by a white guy I’ve seen in fucking years, it’s amazing!
I used to think I’d have to die first, to be a successful author, but everything about modern publishing culture is done thanks to climate change; the industry is too busy doing an HR Giger style cannibalizing fetishistic blowjob on itself and offering its youngest workers to Moloch to have it sussed yet. Publishing is yet one more of the many things that won’t survive climate change. Books that haven’t already been digitized will disappear, burned for heat, burned in fascist and religious purges or repurposed as tp or recycled as paper for other purposes. Everything that survives will either be expensive or pirated, sometimes both depending on local bullies’ attitudes toward the arts. So yeah, I’m going to keep my dignity and not wade out into that swamp. Am I making a virtue of necessity? It’s neither virtue nor necessity. I just don’t want to get any on me when it’s a swamp I can’t win.
Having given ‘the market’ all the fcking consideration that it currently deserves, and probably to all of your minds much more than it deserved even before I wilfully dragged it out of its niche in the columbarium of western thought (barf gag), I return to the issue of the consideration of the audience. I will in future be providing content warnings for my poems. On the page, the CW will state “CW is at the bottom of the poem.” People can then choose to skip ahead or read the poem. CW are often for sexual abuse, self-harm, violence, eating disorders but since I hardly ever write poetry about that, it won’t be necessary. But sometimes I mention things like death and going to the hospital, and yes it would be good to either make the title the content warning or give sensitive people a heads up. I wrote a poem about a dying man called Tom in Hospital. So easy to do. I could have called it something else. But anyone walking up to the poem who just had a relative or friend die will know: I rilly don’t need to read this right now. Or I must read this right now. But at least they know!
I identified an artistic problem with the help of a friend. I identified a number of ways to solve it. I will take the rest of my musings on the subject off line, partly because I need to pee but also because I rilly want another samosa and a smoothie to go with.
Got out for a walk yesterday – it wasn’t much but it broke the monotony. I went north and Jeff went south because he wanted a longer walk in the nicer park at the other end of the street. What a foolishly lucky pair we are to have someplace pleasant to walk so close.
Energy levels are bobbing about but I’m still doing better.
Suzanne comes today.
14320 words.
Lovely phone calls with both Mike and Keith yesterday. Talked to Mike about the stuff he left here after the meal since fo sho he didn’t mean to and it turned out of course he’d been looking for them. Keith cooked a meal for Peggy and famille at her place and that made me very happy to hear. Paul’s test was accomplished SO FAST that Keith says they were in and out of Burnaby Hospital in 20 minutes. I ain’t heard of such a thing in a lifetime of stooging around hospitals. Frankly amazed.
Jeff Beck has passed at 78 of bacterial meningitis. And if you want proof God checked out, Henry Kissinger is still alive (he’s 99 and I can only imagine how that monster smirked when he realized he’d outlived Elizabeth.)
Does Andrew Tate (gleefully known as ‘Taint’ among the ruder orchestral instruments of the great twitter symphony) have any clue at this point how much trouble he’s in, or does the fact he gets a full 30 days – at leeeeast – of pre-trial detention in a pokey in Bucharest give him enough time to percolate this through the miasma of misogyny that renders his brain impenetrable to softness and long term thinking? I pity his lawyer, I pity his co-conspirators, and while there was a rumour he was assaulted in prison he actually went to hospital so the authorities could testify what shape he was in when he was incarcerated. As it is he gets an hour a day outside his cell. Your booooogatti won’t save you now you verminous clownbag. You rape and exploit women and then sell your precious ideas about how to treat women as ‘entertainment’ for men who already hate women and want a rich celebrity to tell them that their fantasies can all come true. That women want to be raped and it’s their fault if you give in to your extremely normal masculine urges. You are one of the single most hateful excrescences of the New Misogyny. I hope you lose the ability to communicate.
Who gives a shit about nepo babies? Nepotism is how a social system under capitalism works because WE HAVEN’T INSTITUTED ANY SOCIAL, LEGAL OR CULTURAL TRADITIONS TO PREVENT IT! And one can argue that hereditary and traditional culture carriers in Indigenous nations are nepo babies, but just herding those words into an English sentence made me want to pop a gummy and lie down for a while. Cause it’s a racist thing to say. Yes, there was enough food on the west coast for some of the Indigenous nations to develop (deep breath) a class system (yeah, sorry, as long as you keep slaves YOU GOTTA CLASS SYSTEM and I’ll be interested to hear the opinion of someone closer to the research than I am) because there was surplus sufficient not only for culture in the making of things in the wintertime but surplus sufficient for people to sit around doing nothing but enjoying other people’s output while eating the last of the berries that were supposed to last until spring. AND YOU KNOW WHAT THEY DID? Potlatch. Here’s a cultural issue, here’s the cultural collective response. Also, re class, in most traditions slaves weren’t allowed to either host or guest. They had ten millennia at least to think about it. Capitalism scorns such a levelling. Some houses got together and threw joint potlatches, imagine what that might have been like, hundreds of attendees from up and down the coast…. The Jews got to think about inequality too. What did the Jews do? Debt forgiveness and baked-into-the-calendar manumission of slaves. Things get unequal, ya gotta reset the table, shake out the cloth, and make sure the dice aren’t loaded. In the meantime, generational wealth transfer is a thing, and some of it is …. IP. One has the right to keep family secrets my dears.
I am pondering with happiness the arrival of series 3 of Miss Scarlet and the Duke. The first episode aired on PBS Masterpiece last Sunday but it’s not showing up in Duckie, the program Jeff uses to keep track of all this stuff. Whilst rooting around on the internet for that tidbit I also learned that there will be a series 2 of Miss Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries coming soon!
I am pondering trying to get back into the CRA website, but I have to enable javascript on Chrome first?? what
I am pondering the chili in the fridge. I consider eating it for lunch or dinner. If I’m not eating it for lunch, what am I eating for lunch?? I’m thinking EGGIES.
I am pondering phone calls and emails.
I pondered what info would be useful and put my eyeglass prescription in my online care sheet.
The Richter’s catalogue is here.
happy sigh. I probably won’t order anything, but they have the wildest (domesticated) stuff.
There’s a pot of veggie chili on the stove; I should probably go give it a stir.
later – It’s now cooling preparatory to going in the fridge.
Didn’t hear back. I’m assuming all went well.
Wordle in 3 this morning. I suspect that Suzanne will laugh when she gets it. I know I did.
Weather continues warm, overcast and intermittently rainy; no break for many days.
The Russians lied their way through the ceasefire and are fumbling their way through the Donbas attack. As the weaponry between the nations equalizes thanks to NATO Putin’s desire to use nukes must be well nigh insupportable. I’m sure his people, over whom the fallout will land, are right there with him. In the last episode of first season The Peripheral a bunch of kleptocrat Russians in London talk about the Putin diaspora and I involuntarily smiled. The show hasn’t been renewed by Amazon yet but it’s apparently just being finalized.
Jeff and I, despite our very commendable urge to stay the hell home, went to London Thugs yesterday. As we came down the escalator (I was wearing the highest standard mask that we own, Jeff had a KN95) we saw that we were walking into a store where no one including the staff were wearing masks. Needless to say we didn’t hang about. I purchased an alarm clock (a really nice one) and more importantly a proper charger and charging cable for the little non phone Nokia Jeff loaned me, since I was not consistently able to get a charge out of the old one. Once again I spent the money and got a two metre cable and a decent charger and glory be, all of my charging issues are done and the non phone charges almost instantly now.
We should probably go do a shop this am, got no more eggies.
14223 words
Lovely night of sleep after a lovely bathe and brush-up. Finally recovering from a couple of ragged nights. Jeff got me a chicken breast over caesar salad for dins last night and it was nom. A couple of amazing pieces of garlic bread came with – it’s the simple things that make life better…
Blood pressure is fine.
Mike would probably hate us but that one last piece of slowly drying prime rib (literally all the other leftovers were long since eaten) in the fridge was cut up and given to the crows (with peanuts). GONE pretty much instantly. Curvebeak must have been reproductively successful, there’s another curvebeaked crow out there, a little bit smaller, showing the raven lineage.
Lumosity up next.
Anyway, I am definitely feeling much less like whining, fussing and crying this morning so let’s see what I can do to either make my life better or someone else’s today. Thanks mOm for the kind words. I try to write amusing things and when I manage it’s lovely.
The more useful my blog is to me and my family the less interesting it is to other people… down to five people looking at it per day, including someone I live with. I suppose if Buster could read he’d be in there looking for references to his cattly self too.
Wordle in five this morning. I am endeavouring not to cheat and haven’t for about a month now. Hard to believe I’ve been doing it for more than a year, seems like less time.
Keith is going to his G&G for part of the weekend and I’d go with him if I thought I’d be welcome. We are definitely on the mend relationship wise though so I’m gonna stay out of his show. He’s taking his pOp to an important medical appointment today. Last night I dreamed that Paul completely showed insight into his condition including that his vision isn’t great and when I joyfully said, “So you’re okay with not driving then?” he turned from where he was sitting on the floor at his place watching the same aviation themed movie Jeff and I watched last night (“Devotion” recommended for war movie and civil rights fans, directed by JD Dillard and score by Chanda Dancy (I did like the score)), put on the meanest facial expression possible (literally one I’ve never seen on him before because he is not a mean person) and said, “Of course not, I’ll be driving again soon.”
And then I woke up. Given that it was my own brain that dished out this ghastly bit of me attempting to work through my emotions on this (waves arms helplessly in general direction of undesirable events and outcomes) I guess I’m going to look over to my Ontie Mary and her life experience and pray for guidance. I try to do the right thing but I’m lazy and self-involved. He deserves the very best of care, the world knows he gave it to me many times when I needed it. Keith and I left it that I am ready to take Paul at 10:30 just in case for whatever reason Keith can’t and then we’ll swap out cars and I’ll take Paul. If I don’t hear from him by eleven I can assume I’m excused duty. So I’ll back Keith up but I’m going to operate on the assumption that I don’t have to today.
And I’m sitting here crying like a fool. Must get up and walk around today.
Echo goes to the Krankenhaus Thursday which is great because it’ll be out of the driveway for Suzanne. Suzanne FINALLY HAZ CATT His name is Lucky, he looks like Bounce, and he’s a rescue purr factory.
Jeff and I have both been having insomnia and ‘sleeping at weird times’ issues but they seem to be resolving. We were BOTH up at 1:30 the other morning.
Really enjoyed Brisco County Jr but we’ve finished our watch of the first and only season. RIP Julius Carry you were epic as tracker/bounty hunter/bon vivant Lord Bowler and I think I loved your outfit almost as much as I loved you.
Coming up to the end of season 3 Expanse – still an amazing show!
14151 words. We’ll see what I’m up for today, but progress once again seems possible.
Lumosity brain exercises up next. I am never going to achieve the same scores for them as I did in 13/14 but I’m getting close for some of them.
Briefly thought about adding chat to this website. That would be funny.
New burner to replace the one I melted Jeff’s container on has been installed. Oy me. Hey, it only took two weeks.
There was a rat under the sink last night. We may have to call an exterminator, Buster doesn’t seem up for the job.
Confidential to Glenn dangit I ain’t even opened it yet.
13388 words on Part II
Helped Jeff run errands yesterday, then we came home and plugged away either on media (we rewatched ‘The Day After Tomorrow”) or various projects.
Hoping to have enough energy to do some weeding out of stuff I never want to have to move. Or get a new charger for my non-cell-phone. A list! Time for a list!
Jeff’s up already with his peppermint tea.