Author: Allegra

So Mike cooked tenderloin for me Sunday night but he overdid it with the kosher salt and it was almost too salty to eat. He got anxious; I ate mine, and then stole some of his.

I thought about all the times Paul just ate what I put in front of him, even if I couldn’t eat it.

Had a simply grotesquely bad sleep – I think I maybe got four hours in before I got up and started stooging around.

Then Mike fed me chik’n congee for breakfast, OMG it was so.frickin.good and this time he deboned it so the gwai lo chick didn’t have to deal with the congealed bits of bone end, etc. It was a superlative breakfast, with all the scallions and cilantro I could ever want to dump into it.

Balance was restored by the two and half hour nap that followed.

Keith and I are at loggerheads again. This time he hung up on me. What a pair of fucking children we are.

I told Jeff what I was arguing with him about (our argument consisted of him saying that Jordan Peterson is awesome and ‘saying things that need to be said’ while I want to die from being such a terrible mother). At the end of it I said four words and he ended the call. Jeff has already culled one friendship over Jordan Peterson (and since I know exactly what ceasing to talk to someone for political reasons feels like, I am sore on his behalf) and he’s not keen to make it two.

Keith says Jordan Peterson told him to clean his room.

I’m Keith’s mother. You know, of course, how it feels when you’ve told your kid to clean his room four hundred times (or thereabouts) but one fascist asshole tells him to do it once and he hops to it.

Fascism man, it’s hard to put down.

I can’t find out how to pronounce vápni in Icelandic and it’s pissing me off

I think it’s V-owp-nih but the internet for once isn’t helping comme d’habitude which is probably just proof a few more of my neurons let go with a ghastly scream.

I’d love to say why I need it but no spoilers.

The US sure is making it easy for western democracies to see how low they can set their expectations. Expect right wing tyrants, vastly increased domestic spying, pork barrels that span the planet and offer your choice of exit strategies if the locals get stroppy, all tied up with the best press money can buy while you’re standing on the bodies of dead journos and indigenous people.

I retreat into fluffy sf.

There are times – there have been times in my life when I wanted to be male. I was never unhappy with my body but I sure would have liked to swap it out once in a while. I do like this body. It made babies, and breast milk. It also made honking big gall stones and proved to be no match for alcohol, but them’s the breaks.

Referencing Altered Carbon:

My most recent gosh wish I wuz a boy moment was thinking to myself that I’d love to look like Joel Kinnaman and make a coat sway like that when I walked.

Further comment on the show. Dichen Lachman sure gets cast as the crazy martial artist villainess a lot.

I really liked the art direction compared to a lot of sf shows.

The show runner’s been trying for almost 15 years to get it made. Netflix made it possible. Also, the fact that serious star power has stopped thinking that playing a nude role is a sign of moral defect.

It’s a bingeworthy show. It’s also super super violent, so don’t, if you don’t like violence on screen.

An intelligence document about Trump…. purportedly.

Hat tip to Lorraine Murphy for pointing this out to me.

There are only four people on earth I hope to hear from on Valentine’s day and I heard from three of them so I’m feeling pretty okay this morning.

Also had a convo with one of them yesterday that was so amazing it is probably going to make me feel cheerful for a week. Or maybe it’s the new Vitamin D I switched to.

Despite me feelin cheerful I still want to bail on writing today and go binge on Altered Carbon. It’s SOOOOO clichéd (that darned Bill Gibson and that damned Ridley Scott) but I’d watch buffed-up Joel Kinnamon (whose chops I first recognized when we watched The Killing all those years ago) back up to a microphone and fart the Overture of the Burrito’s Opera so it’s all good.

Just told Jeff that’s what I want to do and I got the nod of approval.

36213 – so don’t think I haven’t been writing. Just wrote a scene in which Jesse lies his ass off to Michel in a good cause. (If we’re talking about getting the band back together).

I wanted to write a private post about how pissed off I am about something but it just made me look bad so I’m rolling my eyes and deleting all that crap.

Saw Coco, very much enjoyed it. A teensy bit more from our fave character.

I keep writing stuff in my novels that comes true, it’s fucking grossing me out. The Vancity council just eliminated view protection from the city plan SO UNLESS YOU’RE ON THE MOST EXPENSIVE LAND YOU WILL HAVE NO VIEW. I literally wrote, two months ago, the following line:

She lifted her eyes to what remained of her view of the North Shore, after two more condo towers had been built to block it.

Fuck this city, srsly.

I am having a ‘think about what is going to happen next’ couple of days, and I burst into tears when I came up with a scene in which two characters are reunited.

It’s going to be a long wait for it though, for the characters. But it will be absolutely amazing, and maybe that’s how I’ll end Honey on the Moon.

About halfway through printing Upsun for Tammy – the ink is fine but it’s pulling about every twenty-fifth page wrong so I’m having to reprint random pages, which is suckin’ the gumption right outta me. I should get right on that.

Lyrics for a Galway Bay parody Paul sings all the time

Maybe someday I’ll go back again to Ireland,
If my dear old wife would only pass away!
What luck to leave her legendary nagging
She’s got a mouth as big as Galway Bay.

See her drinking sixteen pints of Carling Red Cap <–(ed note Canuckicization)
And watch as she walks home without a sway;
If the sea was beer instead of salty water
She would live and die in Galway Bay.

See her drinking sixteen pints at Pat Joe Murphy’s
And when the barman says, “It’s time to go!”
Well, she doesn’t try to answer him in Gaelic
But in a language that the clergy do not know.

On her back she has tattooed a map of Ireland <— favourite song line of all time
And when she takes her bath on Saturday,
She rubs the Sunlight Soap around by Claddagh
Just to watch the suds go down by Galway Bay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_Every_Voice_and_Sing

FINALLY I am starting to see themes developing in Honey on the Moon.

I will have to cut quite a bit from how it is right now – I wrote one chapter twice and will have to consolidate it unless I’m going to time shift through the whole thing so the reader doesn’t exactly know which part of the space trip George is thinking about. Unstuck from time but fixed in place.

Very much looking forward to George pranking Michel.

For John Perry Barlow. He wrote the lyrics, which are quite beautiful. Since people will ask, the song is about how the death of Neil Cassady and the birth of a girl child named Cassidy intertwine, not in real life but in the imagination.

Here are his life tips:

• Be patient. No matter what.
• Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, not blame.
• Say nothing of another you wouldn’t say to him.
• Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.
• Expand your sense of the possible.
• Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change.
• Expect no more of anyone than you can deliver yourself.
• Tolerate ambiguity.
• Laugh at yourself frequently.
• Concern yourself with what is right rather than who is right.
• Never forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong.
• Give up blood sports.
• Remember that your life belongs to others as well. Don’t risk it frivolously.
• Never lie to anyone for any reason. (Lies of omission are sometimes exempt.)
• Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.
• Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that.
• Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun.
• Praise at least as often as you disparage.
• Admit your errors freely and soon.
• Become less suspicious of joy.
• Understand humility.
• Remember that love forgives everything.
• Foster dignity.
• Live memorably.
• Love yourself.
• Endure.

So much for taking the day off. Since I appear to have made word count I’m going to drink coffee and go tease Jeff into watching something mindless and fun.

Spoke to Tammy yesterday. It was wonderful to hear her voice.

I have a lot of anger and tiredness in my soul about the Stanley verdict. It’s now legal to shoot indians in Canada, how very tolerant of us.

For that and other reasons, which need not all be bad, I’m taking the rest of the day off from social media. If you want me call me.