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!
Ate brekky with Katie and Alex on Saturday. Alex crawled under the table and tickled my leg. It sounds gross but it was charming, and we laughed our heads off. I also showed off my optical calcite crystal to him and he played with it briefly.
as for the rest I’m working on a few tunes and doing a lot of anarchist reading
A fine response to a dictator’s rally.
I think I am getting used to the meds. Still not much movement in my blood pressure; as far as I can tell I’m taking half the correct dose to ensure I tolerate it and I’ll likely be taking more when I go back to see the doc on the 29th. What is definitely lower, ever minute of ever day, which is reducing strain on my heart, is my pulse, which is actually close to being that of a normal adult for a change.
I’m not feeling super sleepy or depressed, two of the things you’re supposed to watch out for.
And Peggy got more biscotti and updated me on the refugees.
The men of this family simply do not pay the slightest attention to people who tell them not to smoke indoors unless they are six foot five. The concept that they cannot smoke indoors – which even the most hardcore smokers do not do in this burg – is entirely opaque to them. This means their desire to all live together in a rental house is not going to happen (they are refusing to live in an apartment, and insisting on a house, which is very funny in that poke in the eye way) since no sane landlord would rent to them, and the so person currently housing them has eight people including 1 pregnant person and four smokers living in her smoke free house.
No fuckin’ good deed eh fOlks.
I’m going to turn those bloobs into pannnncakes.
Do not read this lyric, it is rude but when I came up with it last night I could not stop laughing. It’s me making fun of Supernatural YET AGAIN. There are 800 wingfic stories on AO3 – a subcategory of either romance or smut – and heaven knows how many elsewhere…
This shown below was updated 1 august.
Angels in their true form are big and stern and feathered
To look upon us in that state makes humans come untethered
Gender is irrelevant to Heaven’s fighting squad
Taking orders, smiting demons, ever faithful to my God…
Who then gave me Dean Winchester to reconstruct from hell
He spake, “Start with his mouth, because you’ll get to know it well.
And please don’t ever worry about anything I’m plannin’,
‘Cause gay love saves the day, you know it’s absolutely canon.” <— I had the quote wrong, OF COURSE
Spread ‘em, spread ‘em, spread ‘em up to heaven
I’m gonna spread my great big wings for you
Spread ‘em, spread ‘em, spread ‘em up to heaven
I’m gonna spread my wings for you
I bet you’ll like most everything they do
Interspecies romances are always such a trial
I don’t know what I should feel and Dean’s good with denial
And yes I non-stop worry about what dear Chuck has planned
And so should you until the very last episode’s in the can
Spread ‘em, spread ‘em, spread ‘em up to heaven
I’m gonna spread my great big wings for you
Spread ‘em, spread ‘em, spread ‘em up to heaven
I’m gonna spread my wings for you
I bet you’ll like most everything they do
I’ve been told I’m fun when I rant, but this will be softer than a rant, so it’s a ramble.
Now I believe I’ve mentioned that I have music constantly. Having other people’s music is good, for it drowns out my own, (see previous comments about earworms) but there are times I do not wish to hear anyone’s music but my own, as it is an act radically invasive of cultural space to just not bother to learn a lot of other people’s tunes because a) your own are so much better and even if b) they a-really fucking are not, they’re yours, and explicitly and publicly acknowledging how men really own most musical space and are pissed and contrary about it unless they self select not to be ‘wads that way, by hanging about with women and making music with them.
I’m enjoying Spotify because I’m finding stuff I wouldn’t hear otherwise, no longer dependent on various gentlemen to find me interesting new stuff.
It’s making me think of how songs are constructed, how a lot of songs have all the percussion required by law and sense built into them, but it’s often overkill on acoustic songs.
I don’t mind people in new music using autotune if they leave it for exaggeration in the choruses and don’t chuck with the vocals too much during the verses. Choruses are supposed to be arresting and catchy in pop music. Robert DeLong’s Long Way Down is a worthy exemplar. Whether the lyrics are about the ‘rough patch’ of a relationship or a literal angst fest about the end of the world, it hardly matters. The crunchy, precise sonic palette is entirely too tidy… it’s the end of the world with a Perfect.Fucking.Soundtrack.
‘we can’t get higher than we get
on the long way down’
I would cut myself to have written that.
I am enjoying Better in Blak (the tune, not the album) by Thelma Plum. The first words of the first verse are like a gut punch, delivered in a deliberately blank, emotionally dialled-in expository voice, and then the rest of the song is a joyful reclamation of rage and agency delivered in infectiously catchy power pop. She’s Indigenous from Australia (no national affiliation I could find).
I’m listening to “Albaki” again, and it’s just wild. I WANT TO DANCE LIKE AN IDIOT TO THIS MUSIC. STOP ME FROM no don’t bother, I’m just going to have some fun.
I ha’e toasted almonds mither and likewise procured eggs and butter, and further adventures in biscotti await.
I got Paul twicet yesterday; once for a walk at Fraser Foreshore, which, I hate to say, after our lovely discovery, turns into a goddamned construction site for a bunch of industrial buildings, and was extremely sad except for the one lonely great blue heron, but we sat in dappled shade and read to each other from the anarchist books I just got in the mail, and then again at supper time, when the whole family but Jeff went to Edmonds pool.
Little Alex was exceedingly well behaved until he got out of the pool, at which point he completely melted down because he wanted an eating treat. His mother made nice with promises of grilled cheese sandwiches.
Jeff took me to breakfast and then we did a mini shop. Now must finish baking biscotti!!!
Soon the aroma will be driving us both spare.
Biscotti dough is in the fridge chilling. I’ll bake it before dawn tomorrow by the full moon when it’s still cool, every supposing I get up at a decent hour. My sleep cycle is all over the place, although to me it feels like I’m giving up the afternoon nap in favour of staying up later at night.
Tomorrow I’m supposed to poke my head in at the doc’s to report my current feels. My pressure has not gone down, although damn, my anxiety is almost knocked back. You’re supposed to watch out for depression on this stuff, so I am.
Season two of Lucifer, enjoying the hell out of it, haw haw. It’s good-hearted and cheesy and melodramatic and sweet and autistic (smart people being too honest for their own good) and procedural and scary and at least a handful of buffed-over vampire slayer style fighting scenes plus karaoke. It should not work, on paper it’s an abortion pulled through a shrapnel hole,
It is also, in spots, really funny and that part I like too.
Alex promised he wouldn’t splash me this time… and he didn’t.
Katie got a couple of minutes in the hot tub, which she richly deserved.
Brekky with the kids, practicing, a little bit of writing. BP is terrible but my heart rate is down.
There’s a brigade of bots and people who, when you put something on the internet, weird or cute or sad or triumphant or a snapshot of rape culture, will say, It Never Happened. These are the people to whom I refer. Many are bots. Of the minority who are people, the majority are men. A minority of them are attested (blue check, as in that account is valid) ‘authority figures’, ‘journalists’ and ‘celebrities’ on twitter.
It’s gross. My response:
The revenge of unintended consequences is coming for the It Never Happened crowd. These gammon-adjacent persons invite closer scrutiny of what’s on their resumés, and the truth will set them free of having any decent future prospects, while schadenfreude sounds in the air. <ting>
People may get strapped in to this ‘subvert the narrative’ drive because they probably need to divert attention from their own truths, almost all of which might possibly involve not being believed by an authority figure. Note how I allowed doubt to permeate every phrase of the foregoing sentence? A hagfish couldn’t make that thing slipperier.
Anyway, I think they might be powerless people with crappy sex lives and frowny faces. You might think I say this to be rude, but I have never met a person that had a good sex life and a cheerful countenance who spent a second calling a total stranger, who was amiably relaying an anecdote about her six year old, a fuckin’ liar and attention whore, sometimes in as many words, always couched in a cold piss-bath of hate speech, completely out of sync with whatever was posted.
If we were all adults — I mean I’m in my 15th instar and I still haven’t pupated, Christ… anyway — were we all adults we’d feel pity and offer support, but eventually some angry young coder is going to doxx the living shit out of one of the It Never Happened types. There will be public shame for lies, because anyone who spends their cognitive pennies on calling truth-tellers liars and gets caught spinning porkies on the ol’ resumé — especially to do with titles and academic claims— will be fried like the gammon rasher they are.
Sadly, the bots will remain.
The bots and humans that are doing this have a horrific, parasitic relationship that reminds me of the mechanical grip and stab of a wasp positioning and deploying her ovipositor. The bots pump up the volume of comments and embolden the humans. The humans are inspired and emboldened by what they feel is an entire army of angry humans at their side, and make original content, some of it quite witty, all of it fucking hateful, and the botfarms steal their content and cross post, sometimes millions of times. The identifash and trolls who are their prey make content and amplify messaging for the parasite.
For all this hate bubbling and burping and foaming and frothing in the lava lake known as social media, it takes live human identifash activists to shoot up mosques, and while a certain craggy faced oligarch rains money down on bot farms, it’s nose-led white kids from red states who get hamburgers on the way to a life sentence. It’s parasitism from across the sea. It’s absolutely terrifying, and yet, oh so natural. The host pays the price,
but sometimes the parasites run out of biomass and the whole shebang collapses. Given that one is being born on the internet every second, or so it seems, I think there is still a lot of biomass for the botfarms.
Note. Gammon-adjacent is an enlargement of gammon, one of the British terms for neofash. A gammon is a large ham, and a large ham is Pink, Large, Slightly Sweaty, held in disfavour by Muslims and vegans, Salty and did I mention Pink, also very histrionic in the thespian take of the word ham, so there’s a lot in there. It has nothing to do with the foregoing but I thought I’d mention that another thing these folks get called on twitter is wâš“ï¸ (wanker). I haven’t heard anyone called a gammon wâš“ï¸ yet but I’m sure it’s coming.
People who draw a paycheque as journalists and columnists and think piecers participate in this behaviour. Alex Jones, for example. If you don’t know who he is, don’t bother.
Mike called a couple of days ago and asked me to sit in his apartment for a while to let workmen in and I did, and now I’m going to walk home again.
I have errands to run on the way home, so that’s convenient.
BP down about ten points, systole and diastole both, but it really needs to be lower than that, and she started me on a super low dosage – I probably need to double it after the wear-in period. (Dosage is half the normal recommended, but given that it has a lot of potential side effects, I can see her point).
my blood pressure this morning was 118 over 78
Needless to say I am energetically happy this morning, I’ve been doing laundry and hanging up clothes and running the dishwasher and making oatmeal.
Took my first dose at 6. The next couple of days are expected to be a write off, and I need a medic alert bracelet if I stay on it (paramedics need to know you’re on it.)
Productive day, went to the bank, got myself a nice lunch, saw the doc & filled the prescription, found the only public washroom in the Brewery District PS NEW WESTMINSTER U SUCK, came home on transit even though I was desperate to take a cab and to my amusement found a cheque from the BC government for 100 bucks in my mail.
For overpayment of MSP (health insurance), which will be paid for starting in January.
Leedle beet writing, not much but a couple of hundred words.
Yesterday morning was so lovely.
It started with us jumping in the car to go down to Angelina’s for breakfast. They’ve moved into a much nicer space around the corner from where they were at the Quay, and their fruit cup was WORTH 13 bucks. (also get toast and cottage cheese). On the way down the hill, Jeff’s eyes travelled across the Old Spaghetti House sign and he said, in a conversational tone, “I wonder why they’d build a factory to make old spaghetti,” an observation which briefly left me speechless. It was too good to last, however, and after some meshuggas with the parking we arrived, and Paul and the kids arrived shortly thereafter.
We all pretty much cleaned our plates. Then the five of us walked along the Quay toward Annacis Island and it was so absolutely lovely that I felt myself shiver with happiness.
Later Katie came and I bought another set of trainers at Metrotown, also a bra and socks. She bought shoes too. Mine are only for when it’s not raining, though.
Jeff had gone to visit a friend on Bowen Island when I got back so I’ve been practicing and daydreaming and making biscotti and cleaning my room and snoozing with Buster and now I can’t sleep.
When I wake up this morning I’m going to run laundry and in the afternoon I’m going swimmin’ with Alex and his momma.
I’ve started working on a comedy routine again, starting off with all the ways I’m not like your mom.
I just got Finale running. I’m amazed.