Quiet day

Talked to Katie. She wants me to come get the cat tree so I should talk to Jeff about that.

369 words on TB

aqi is between 100 and 200 throughout the lower mainland. ABSOLUTELY no walking outside today.

Jeff wants to go schlepping this am but I find Sunday morning there’s nothing at Saveon and the veggies are really picked over but yes I will if he’s driving.

 

From a court case in the US:

“Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions. With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care, laugh-in-the-face-of-death, life-on-the-razor’s-edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins.”

— Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corp., Inc., 147 F. Supp. 2d 668 (S.D. Tex. 2001)

wendell pierce said this on twitter

Warning Maui Fire Victims: As a victim of Katrina, we saw the criminality begin at this point of the disaster. 1) Insurance companies will abandon you after years of paying premiums. 2) If insurance companies do pay out they will collude with banks and pay off your loan, not you. 
3) Commissions & Coalitions will be put together with government & corporations without your best interest at heart. Demand you are included in the process of rebuilding.
4) Beware of those attempting to steal and expropriate your property. 5) Beware of no bid contractors 
(6) The land grab will be disguised with the declaration you cannot return to the area and should be returned to “green” space, later to be given to speculators. (7) Beware of “land swaps” that give you temporary housing but your original property never returned. 
Survivors of Katrina have seen all of these tactics over the 2 decades since our disaster that we are still dealing with. You as Hawaiians know to well how precious your land is and the history of criminality to steal it. Nothing has changed. Beware of those who want your land! 
Demand that ALL public land transactions in the affected area be frozen until the end of the year. Private sales allowed. Federal funding will be following end to the area, don’t allow your government to give out no bid contracts to political friends. 
Demand that all contractors do“First Source Hiring” meaning hire all temporary employees from the community first.Demand ALL Americorp chapters from around the country be utilized for voluntary workforce for cleanup & distribution of donated resources. Your taxes pay for Amercorp 
Utilize Americorp, and the National Guard. Contact the community leaders in Puerto Rico who went through Maria, New Orleans organizations who suffered through Katrina, and NY after 9/11. Unfortunately you have joined us in the fight for survival and restoration of our communities 

festive meal

Paul, Ruth, John, Keith and I dined yesterday. It was a very pleasant and convivial meal and just as I was faltering in my eating I realized I was about to basically put my head down and start snoozing so I slithered off home in a taxi. Which reminds me, I have a sammy to reheat.

The Echo is serving them well, they say, and their Yukon vacation was stellar.

1581 words on TB yesterday, so that’s respectable. Coming up on the Ottawa trip in the story.

I’m really concerned about storm Hilary, but oh well. We’ll get our day in the climate sun again here in MST country soon enough I imagine.

89 hits 11 kudos 3 bookmarks

Mammogram results clear. Under a week to get results, awesome.

Quite pleased with the reader reaction to ‘Guy d’Angelique’ on AO3 and even more pleased that I’m adult enough to stop obsessively checking. ABSOLUTELY NO COMMENTS tho sigh.

Tonight we dine at Qwhite Spot with the fam. John and Ruth; Paul, Alex, Katie, possibly Dax, me and Jeff and the instigator is Keith (WHO VOLUNTEERED TO DRIVE JOHN AND RUTH TO THE AIRPORT and then bring the Echo back how do I deserve such a kindly child). He’s in an incredibly good mood these days, surrounded by Ben’s HORDE of friends who are all…. Keith’s age and a lot of them are neurodivergent bronies so…. He’s also thinking of making a run for the grandparents and sadly I have something happening on the 25th so I probably won’t be joining him.

Jeff and I have DELIBERATELY not posted anything about how godawful the ferry part of the trip to Bowen Island was so believe me when I say that the signage and guidance SUCKS GREYHOUND BUS STATION MEN’S ROOM MOPS.

West Kelowna fire may destroy the recently built 75 million dollar water treatment plant, the single biggest ticket item ever in Kelowna. The city’s been fighting with BC Hydro over how teetery the power infrastructure is, coming into town, for years now and the upshot is that if the fire comes through it may literally be months before the power’s restored and that means that chunks of Kelowna may end up like Lytton. Abandoned. No water, no power, no businesses, no jobs, no homes.

Michael Sheen talking about what a joy David Tennant is to work with is giving me life today. Their families had babies at the same time and their youngests are besties see my heart eyes, I’ve got heart eyes. Now to channel heart eyes into TB.

Yay, there will be more Miss Scarlet and the Duke!

LOL I lied, 91 hits 12 kudos.

graphomania has stopped

I went for a walk with Jeff, finished “Guy d’Angelique” and posted it – it already has two hits, lol, I do have subscribers so they would have gotten a push email when I posted. It topped 12000 words and it’s DONE like the relief is unspeakable. MAYBE EVEN INEFFABLE. Anyway you can’t see it if you don’t have an account because I don’t want my shit scraped for AIs.

I’m going to drink tea and cry about something else now (I cried so much writing that but mostly because I’m still processing the end of GOmens2 and writing a story IN ANOTHER FANDOM was my styptic against all those fucking cuts). No I will not really cry, I think I’ll eat salad instead.

Recently learned that Al and Jen BINGEWATCHED Twisted Metal after we recommended it and so Jeff and I are smirking at each other every time we think of that.

My Singing Monsters

This ten year old Canadian game (no violence – The game is rated for players aged 4 and up and does not contain any inappropriate content or themes.) is Alex’s current favourite game. Check it out if you want to see something adorable. So for anyone freaking out about CARRION when I mentioned it please note that Alex has a very catholic taste in games and that the cartoon horror genre is just one of the kinds he likes.

Ryker was ACTIVE for the hour I had him. I ended up putting him in the room with Bluey and air conditioning and his brother, who continues to be the best big brother in the history of humanity, because it was hot af in the apartment.  (Alex has a cool detection unit and migrates to the coolest place in the house.) I ended up grabbing Ryker’s pants so he’d sit and watch Bluey and he just leaned up against me and was contented for TWO WHOLE MINUTES and then started doing his ‘everything in the mouth’ thing again. In a single ten second period he had a dinky toy, the ENTIRE FILK ONTARIO SHAKER EGG (except for one centimetre-across circle of blue to indicate that he had not INDEED BEEN ABLE TO SWALLOW IT or choke on it thank goodness) and then, for the pizza of resistance, his exceedingly dirty right great toe inserted into his face … and honestly it’s exhausting to even think about keeping up. The ‘snack’ he ate at 2:30 was the size of most of pOp’s meals and he ploughed through it like a goddamned combine. Pickles; cheese; freeze dried strawberries, a couple of baby carrots, a yogurt drink and whacks of vegetable crackers. We as an entire family are discussing in hushed tones how the hell we’re going to prevent him from starving to death as a teenager.

And because we were in a noisy room with the door closed Daddy Mike had to come into the house (normally he calls and then comes in but ‘nobody was answering’) and Ryker exploded with joy and left babbling daddy and bye GG! Daddy Mike said, “He is my heart,” with neither embarrassment nor exaggeration and gosh no wonder.

wrote 4660 words yesterday. Didn’t sleep as well tonight. I should probably just go do something else besides write today to protect my brain, but I’m also worried about not finishing it. And I probably will today. Just so I can get the hell back to what I really should be doing.

So Paul’s girlfriend showed up at Katie’s house (she was staying with Paul at Thornebridge) and was just WANDERING AROUND doin’ God nose what and Dax came in (he’s there about half time until the move) and asked her what (tf) she was doing there (likely wandering off with small items like fuckin’ Lobelia Baggins in the Hobbit) and he phones Katie and she’s like HELLLL NAW and Dax ejected her. (Thornebridge is walking distance even if she didn’t have a car). Dax mentioned that while he’s never liked her much the disrespectful way she talks to Paul really grinds him. Alex even said he didn’t like her but that’s what you get for making it really obvious that you find children inconvenient or actively loathsome.

I’m really enjoying THIS part of family reconciliation. Especially since I got a lift home with him and Alex. We all care about what we care about, right?

I send special fond greetings to Peggy the Piewoman (jeff there’s still pie in the Caspell Junction fridge shall I THIEVE IT LOL), Dax the Defender, Ryker the Toebiter, Alex the DJ, Dave the Poet, Sue the Actor, mOm and pOp the Archetypal-Cute-Couple in a house full of light and plants and books (sorry, Good Omens has eaten my brain), Jeff the Resuscitator, Blind Lemming Chiffon the Filker Extraordinaire who celebrates another spin around the sun today, Keith the Chef, Katie the mOmmaBear, Ruth and John the Vastly Helpful, Leo and Linda the Coming Attractions (they are visiting soon) and Cousin Gerald the Moose Handler (because he’s the one who handles sending me more pictures of Moose.) And Paul the Forgetful, must remember him too.

 

Inshanity

Wrote 5500 words on a new fic yesterday. Slept until SEVEN AM in consequence. And the little rat is nowhere close to finished. It is so freaking angsty and cry baby and poor communication that writing it is like ripping dime sized chunks off myself, but it all came out so fast.

Because I got enough sleep – at least four more hours than I usually do – I’m actually not doing too badly this morning. Tiny little migraine signs.

Looking after Ryker today.

533 words yesterday

Very hot yesterday, but it’s supposed to not go over 30 for the rest of the week.

Very apprehensive about Ryker care. I do be like that tho. It will be fine, same as last time.

I’m reading about 50 year olds becoming unhoused and asking where they sign up for free housing. As far as I can tell an entire cohort of Canadians paid no more attention to politics than was required to sort of take in the promises and denunciations at election time. When it comes to the instantiations of politics, they’re living in a spun sugar world which is abrumptly getting the ol’ firehose of climate driven events. But I thought welfare bums get errything for free they will cry. What chumps oh well.

However, I’m going to stay cheerful as long as we’re all together on this side and the ac works.

Oh Jaysus I just thought of the title of the next one in the series thank you Dave. Also you said it could all be converted quite nicely to a screenplay and you’re right. That means I have to go back into the completed project and chop it into 13 minute segments with stingers teasers and very high stakes. So to write that new title down I slipped away from writing this, wrote 244 words on the Guy d’Angelique fanfic and forgot to write the new title down. Leaving briefly to fix that, okay I wrote it down but I’m now up to a thousand words on the fanfic. Honestly I’m just going to drag the characters to a hotel room and get them sweaty, I haven’t got all day for conversation!! I have to get back to TB and get the next instalment out to my emotional support editors.

Heavy sigh. It’s a good thing I’ve got Scrivener to keep all this shit straight. Scrivener is what took me from being a writer to being someone who can complete long form multiarc fiction. It is THE BOMB. It is simple to use on the daily with a depth of features that’s abyssal.

Ha ha I EYEBALLED IT Jensen Ackles IS the same size, almost exactly, as Errol Flynn. Same height, weight and shoe size. This is important to the fanfic. This is the level of research I do. I don’t want you to be impressed, I just think it’s hilarious that I PULLED AN ARCHETYPAL HERO ACTOR out of the pile and went yup he’s the same size and shape as Jensen Ackles and THEN I DID THE RESEARCH. Because I wouldn’t want to put it in the fucking fanfic if it wasn’t true. Because facts make light and light makes atmosphere, & suppositions make assholes like me make easily avoided mistakes.

Damn the coffee was good this morning. Must …. have …. more. So I did and now I just deleted the toilet joke I was about to make, so I’ll tell Jeff instead.

Do I sound giddy? I’m in writing mode.

I just found a cartoon that completely describes Brad and Omar and I was going to send it to mOm but here it is. From Foxes in Love on Tumblr

Foxes in Love

scattered

Feeling very disconnected and scattered, not that it’s stopping me from writing. 285 words so far today, 386 yesterday.

Apple pie and coffee is what I had for breakfast. Forty years ago the father of a friend of Peggy’s said PLANT JONATHAN APPLES and he did, and this year the crop was three hunnert pounds and I ATE APPLE PIE because Peggy. Plant a tree, it’s a beautiful thing, plant a fruit tree, feed my greedy face!!

The family meal was beef stew and garlic bread and apple pie à la mode. Keith donned his new apron and flew around the kitchen on wings. I left the Echo there along with the key for Ruth and John and came home in a cab, everyone was conversating and I didn’t want to break things up.

I believe I have worked out the ending to TB after talking to my mother about it.

I am looking after Ryker on Wednesday afternoon so Suzanne can have an appointment.

 

at Al and Jen’s

Absolutely beautiful here. We have had a lovely day of rock and roll, yummy food (I brought the fruit salad, there were hors d’oeuvres and then ribs and corn for dins, SO GOOD) and Bear the dog nipped me when I dropped something and went to pick it up. It was no big deal but I’d forgotten he’s a reactive little dog.

Heard Ravens croaking.

Like I said, lovely.

The fannishness has been fanned

goodomensbutwrong posts today on tumblr, edited for typos and a word change

 

Aziraphale, excited to try out a new joke he heard: Crowley, what do you call a fish with no eye?

Crowley, not looking up: Myxine Circifrons

Aziraphale:

Aziraphale: …fsh

This is spot on for s2 and I found this very funny.

Coffee in hand. 450 words written. WHICH LATER TURNED INTO 2200 WORDS WHAT THE HELL BRAIN.

Subscriber, do you want the new words or do you just want Part II finished and Part III when it’s done?

Keith would like his embroidered apron, I am relieved.

KEITH embroidered in red on black

 

 

 

I was going to but then

I was going to talk about the death toll in Hawai’i. From the fires. Fanned by a storm. I was going to talk about the death toll of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which has been horrific, but I decided not to. I thought about reporting on the death toll of migrants drowned in the Mediterranean, which was considerable this past week, but I thought not.

Instead I’m going to comment on how, when Suzanne’s washed the kitchen rugs, Buster finds a moment and scoots a metre and a half across one, because as far as he’s concerned, we just washed his toilet rag. If mOm had known, crocheting that sucker, that it was going to be kitty toilet paper, she might have frowned, but kept going, cause that’s what we do, is keep going.

I have had coffee, and made tea for iced tea, and in about five hours someone’s going to flatten my breasts into machine readable tortillas and I’m going to feel sorry for myself.

I am rewatching S2 Good Omens with Jeff and trying not to squee at my favourite bits.

Michael Sheen, who plays Aziraphale (he was named by Terry Pratchett so it’s not a real hebrew angel name but it either means raphael’s strength or the helper in alt-hebrew) understands that some of the character’s hand gestures correspond to autistic stimming and actually tweeted “God bless the happy flappers” which given that I’ve stimmed (and been mocked for it) my whole life it was like being pushed into a chair when you’re about to faint.

David Tennant, who plays Crowley (more on that in a minute) has been known to sport non-binary and trans persons supporting merch and has a non-binary child (apparently part of his blended horde (any more than two is a horde, sorry) of offspring with Georgia Tennant.) Angels in the Gaiman-Pratchett-verse don’t ascribe to the sexual binary. So essentially both lead characters are non-binary but present male. Usually. So this global icon has been seen wearing ‘LEAVE TRANS KIDS ALONE YOU ABSOLUTE FREAKS’ Tshirts and the response of the exceptionally trans-hating UK press has been livid. LOL die mad ya salty beeches.

He had to wear dark glasses and contact lenses for the entire shoot and apparently was caught running into walls during takes since he couldn’t see what the hell he was doing. This makes his acting even more next level to me. I enjoyed Michael Sheen but it’s Tennant I can’t take my eyes off.

As in 2019, the fandom’s going insane. It’s also rescued me. There’s a fan theory about season 3 (if it ever happens) that put my feathers back in place, and it has to do with how Crowley…. isn’t who he says he is, or indeed who anyone says or thinks he is. The evidence was all gone through in a tumblr post and I am convinced. Therefore as sad as I am about the final scene in S2 I have decided to psychically crawl from my bed of pain into the toilet of relief, and possibly later visit the fire of collations.

Dr. Jen Gunter’s latest newsletter says that

20% of all Ayurvedic medicine sold in the US and Canada is contaminated with lead.

Jaysus and his lady mother and his poor poppa. Mercury too, apparently. Ha ha, little joke for a friend. But yes, mercury. So

As Dr. Gunter remarked If 20% of all the creamed corn in the US and Canada was contaminated with lead, that would probably lead to public health action of some kind. My take is what is preventing this stuff from being banned is (checks notes) fear of accusations of racism and anti-religious (anti-Hindu) sentiment and a heftic dose of CAPITALISM CURES ALL I guess. However, putting lead OR allowing lead into the manufacturing process of supplements ‘medicine’ SPECIFICALLY sold for the use of pregnant women is a failure on the part of every link in the supply chain.

Herewith my comments on Bluesky, a Social Media platform established by the guy who started twitter. He stole a metric crapstack of twitter’s old employees, but elongated muskrate dood that hisself by firing them all.

bsky creeping up on half a million users!!
 
fun place – trans people welcome; still issues (which no one is trying to hide but the company needs a kick) for PoCs and Indigenous – you can autoblock terfs, antivaxxers and bad political actors with one click and the list keeps growing but you’re already subscribed, isn’t that amazing? autoblock lists on social media are the fucking BOMB
 
I see Russian, Ukrainian (once mistook the two, had to abject the apology fuck me that was bad)  and Turkish in my feed. It’s overwhelmingly an English speaking place.
 
not enough aziracrow content <—- (written or drawn, mostly drawn, so I guess I’m sticking with tumblr for now LOL and I’m there under my real name which REALLY makes me stand out extra LOL although to be fair writers which I am use their real names)
 
Not enough weather and disaster on-the-ground content (twitter’s shining star)
 
YOU WILL GET ‘NOTES’ if you DON’T ALT YA PICS – this is a fantastic norm for a social media site. “Hello, I love you, won’t you please alt your pic!” (Provide a description for people who can’t see).
 
extremely thirsty (current slang for horny), much nood, no gifs yet (DAMNATION PEOPLE GET ON IT), no DMs (direct messages) and you can’t chain ‘skeets’ which I call bleats because it’s not gun related. Also sheep look like clouds in a Bluesky, the name of the app!!!  Adult content asks if you want to see it. Thank you! sometimes I want to see (I am just as prurient as the next chump, thanks) and mostly I don’t care. The last thing I looked at was a man’s back. It was muscular and full of tattoos and while it didn’t make my day it did make me smile.
 
The MAIN GOAL is to curate your experience so asshats can’t get at you by blocking IMMEDIATELY. No discourse, just block. In consequence it’s almost entirely free of interruptions by asshats and when they do get through you just block them once with neither guilt nor backward glance. Lovely. No asshats, all genders, no huhu.
I have put the second letter on Keith’s embroidered apron.
Only wrote 31 words yesterday. I will lie fallow for a few days, try to get back at it on Monday.
chamomilegeode-deactivated20221 on tumblr five days ago said:

did you know that, besides the apple of knowledge and the pomegranate of life, there’s another mystic fruit, one that grants you a sense of purpose?

yeah, it’s the raisin d’être

conversation on tumblr – this kind of shit happens every day on tumblr so I’m sharing it because of how it illustrates and supports the hive mind in a super creative and positive way

person 1

Please retire the “we are made of stardust” phrase I am so tired of it

person 2

Stars are made of flesh

Person 1

I change my mind bring back the original phrase

person 1

If I remember correctly, elements heavier than iron are only created when a star dies.

This is interesting because 1) it places a lower bound on when life can evolve, and when life is most likely to evolve, assuming any of a number of certain chemical compositions are necessary and 2) it means that a significant portion of the matter around us was forged by the death of a star.

Stars, when they die, can create new elements and I think that’s cool as fuck.

Person 1

I looked it up, actually it’s like this:

Helium and Hydrogen were created by the Big Bang.

Elements from Helium up to Iron are created by stars through nuclear fusion during their lifetimes (In a process called Stellar Nucleosynthesis)

And elements heavier than iron cannot be created except by Supernova Nucleosynthesis, by the collapse and death of a star, and elements from silicon through iron still are mainly created by Supernova Nucleosynthesis, since stars big enough to create them by fusion in life are pretty rare

The stardust makes you alive! It’s neat.

Person 4

This! Yes!

Okay, so, this is a thing we actually know a bit about.

While what you’ve brought up is the leading theory, and has been for a good while, there are some inconsistencies — particularly with the far end of the stable elements and the radioactive elements. The amounts produced in Supernova Nucleosynthesis would be far too low to actually account for the amounts seen in the universe.

So, how were they created?

The best theory we have is collisions between neutron stars.

When two neutron stars collide, they produce a supernova with the required energy density to create those ultraheavy elements, which means that not only are you made of stardust, if this theory is correct, you are made of stardust that was released when two of the most violent, extreme objects in the universe collided, possibly billions of years ago, hundreds of millions of lightyears away.

Person 1

You are the wreckage of a violent multi-star pileup

 

 

enshinening etc

one copy of the draft of Totally Boned off to a subscriber, yay.

Suzanne is here, I will have to pay her shortly before she departs

She tooke dovvn alle of coppewebs and foldit laundrie

Still having good feelings about my long talk with Keith yesterday as we were arranging things for his new place.

Saw Ryker briefly yesterday, my god he never stops

Suzanne says we should take the cat tree at Katie’s.

Two letters into my project to embroider Keith’s name onto an apron. It looks like it was engineered by a very delicate orangutan so far, so I’m hoping my plan to rescue it from looking utterly bush league and more ‘artsy’ works out …

Titty smash at hours ungodly tomorrow morning, by which I mean, I must attend at a mammography appointment.

 

 

 

bed desk achieved

Keith got his bed-desk from IKEA – we didn’t have to drive to the Richmond store, but they wouldn’t deliver to Richmond from the Coquitlam store. He fed me meatballs and salad there, which was kind. My only purchase was a rainbow IKEA bag because they’re great for laundry.

He borrowed half of the money for it on family terms (no interest, a time limit for repayment) and I gifted him the other half.

I bought an immense skein of embroidery threads and cannot find the sumbitch now, so I’m quite annoyed because I have an immediate project in mind.

(about two minutes later…. YARGSNARGLE WOOOO) FOUND IT exactly WHERE I LEFT IT which was SOMEPLACE I’D ALREADY LOOKED and it’s a good thing I labelled the box, eh?

THEN I COULD NOT FIND EMBROIDERY NEEDLES found them. THEN I COULD NOT FIND A NEEDLE THREADER. found it. BROKE THE NEEDLE THREADER. threw everything aside in disgust

I read a comment on the r/Guyana subreddit that justifies almost everything I’ve written about my Guyanese characters. I sent the comment to mOm this morning because it cheered me up no end. and I needed it given the embroidery sitch

If you want to read the 75K I’ve written so far in Totally Boned, let me know what font and type size you want it in and I’ll send it as a PDF. You can either beta read it (supply comments) or just read it, I don’t care. CONTENT WARNING. please be advised that while these appear in the novel they aren’t the point of the novel and in all cases personal autonomy is upheld as a non-negotiable value – Non-traditional homoromantic couple – child endangerment and child neglect – queer characters – absolutely unbearably bad family dynamics – sexual assault (in the past, never graphically described) – autistic and mentally ill characters – intersex character – sex-repulsed asexual character – gun violence, described – gun violence, not described – uncomfortable conversations about race and presentation – graphic vomiting and discussions of bodily functions – YOU KNOW, BASICALLY THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF MY HAPPY UPBRINGING – and about as much angst and humour as I can stuff into a story without it ripping ’round the seams.

Full disclosure – it’s at least 30K from the end; there’s a ‘happy for now’ ending in view but I ain’t wrote it yet. But it’s been fun so far!!! I’ve cried buckets over this one, so yes I am somewhat attached, snicker.