Chlamyphorus truncatus
To own you as a pet would give me status
An insectivore from Argentina
And the cutest little critter ever seen-a
You’ll eat exotic arthropods by the pound
I’ll never get to see you cause you’re underground
You’ll never ever sleep upon my pillow
Chlamyphorus truncatus: Pink Fairy Armadillo!
You will never get much bigger than my hand
Pandas always get more press & I don’t understand
You have armour plates upon your back and butt
which are tinted a most pleasing shade of pinkFrom the list of squee you never shall be cut
You’re my favouritest animal I think
Smallest in the fam’ly Dasypodidae
Proud member of the order Cingulata
You won’t be long, & nor should I
Cause I’ve run out of interesting dataSpoken: Really, we don’t know much about this remarkable mammal, apart from it being really good at hide and seek.
Chlamyphorus truncatus
To own you as a pet would give me status
An insectivore from the Argentine
A-a-a-and the cutest little critter anybody’s ever seen!
Author: Allegra
The show we’ll never see
Someone had to do it, I suppose. I reckon I’d enjoy it. I provide the link for me mOm’s entertainment.
I made meatloaf yesterday. In case I don’t remember the recipe, it’s a pound and a bit of regular ground beef, four tablespoons of Heinz chili sauce, a good shot of black pepper, ditto powdered garlic, an egg and almost half a cup of bread crumbs. I think I’ll macerate an onion next time too. Jeff proceeded to abandon the leftover Chinese food for it, so I’d say that’s a good sign.
Today, I will be putting some effort into an interview between my main character and my newly hatched CBC interviewer.
The Jazz documentary continues to dazzle, likewise Attenborough’s Blue Planet. Wars between coral species are bizarre and disgusting. “I barf my guts on you and digest you on the spot!” “Aiyee! I am fixed to one spot and cannot flee!” Also, who knew there’s a colony species of shrimp? With a queen, and workers, and burly guards with extra large claws!?
I’m singing in church on Sunday, must practice some more.
Miss Margot thoughts
Two Miss Margot moments.
1. This morning Jeff and I discussed which characteristic defined Margot better, fluffiness or silliness. Silliness won, despite her striking degree of fluffiness, because she could lose ALL that fur and still be silly.
2. She comes and watches TV with us the instant she hears David Attenborough’s voice. So she’s silly, but she has excellent taste.
Jeff’s favourite pictures of Vancouver.
A drunkard’s walk through my most influential reads
I wrote something like this in December 2004, so this is an update for that unsearchable part of my blog. Some of it is stolen from the earlier post, but condensified and tucked up.
Ann Landers. When I was growing up, I read her column every chance I got. She asked people to be honest and kind, and OWNED UP when she did or said something stupid. I wanted every grownup to be like her.
Cynthia Heimel in Playboy. When I was growing up, she wrote a column about being a mother in which she said that having the ability to drop the pretense of perfection in front of your children was precious, and I took it to heart.
Jane Goodall – In the Shadow of Man. I came to understand what kind of primate I am, the importance of touch, the idea that no intelligence can be foreign to a truly self-aware person. And chimp babies are adorable.
Harlan Ellison – at a stupidly impressionable age, I read I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. His misogyny and manic self-promotion aside, he remains a very influential writer, and his stunt of writing in a storefront impressed me deeply.
The Time-Life book The Mind. There were illustrations in that book I still refer to. The science is now shot full of holes, but it started my life long belief that we’re everything we are physically, but mostly we are our brains.
C.P. Idyll’s Abyss. I read every word of it, about the strange and remarkable deep sea creatures, and it permanently affected me. When I write about Kima and the Oldest, I am thinking of that book as being on the shelf at my parents’ place, accessible forever in memory.
H B Liddell Hart’s History of the Second World War. I reread the part on the Holocaust compulsively, and anything about Hitler.
David J Dowker’s Machine Language. When I run out of things to do, I will memorize it. “Brain pan hammered into a pure sound butter melts across.” That takes me right into the National Geographic Gold issue, which is also a very important work to me, and contains a solid gold frying pan. Butter is gold! my brain has a pan! I am trying, in an airy and insubstantial way, to show how my own brain works. “Eat me if you dare”.
The mirror writing of Leonardo Da Vinci. When he wrote of the wind, he called it the breathing of this terrestrial machine; when he wrote of the moon, he said, it has no light of itself and yet is luminous. To stand in front of his words, as written in his own hand, from his own journal, was like going to a shrine.
Brief insert for recent humour. I was asked to write a seven word autobiography, and I came up with “Spectrum girl walks world banging her shins.” Not bad for a thrown together affair.
Dorothy Dunnett OF COURSE.
JRR Tolkien OF COURSE.
M. Scott Peck’s People of the Lie, and also his work on consensus.
The Lost Queen of Egypt by Lucile Morrison. Someday I will hold a copy of this children’s classic in my hand again. It’s about the tragedy of being happy and the glory of true friendship.
The Mary Poppins books. Never mind the movie, which is good in the Hollywood way, if you ignore the classism and the ongoing travesty-cum-wincefest of Dick van Dyke’s accent. The books have racist and classist overtones as well, but they are also marvellously subversive and really imaginative.
The Kingdom of Carbonel, a wonderful children’s book.
The Vorkosigan novels by Lois McMaster Bujold – yet a new hero to worship. If you like humour, action, dastardly villains and I mean DASTARDLY and deeply flawed and brilliant heroes, look no further than any of the Vorkosigan novels. I started with Cordelia’s Honor and that’s not a bad place to start, as it has the single most memorable exchange between a happily married couple in all of English literature. Suffice it to say that the word “Shopping” is involved.
Wade Davis, One River. Find it, read it.
Edward Shlain’s Sex, Time and Power. Some of it is just plain wrong, some wrongheaded. But where he got it right, he got it very right indeed.
Elaine Pagels’ the Gnostic Gospels. Poetry, Mystery, God.
Deborah Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand, Men and Women in Conversation. Hasn’t stopped being useful
First Things First by Stephen Covey and a couple of his acolytes. Trenchant, useful, right end up in terms of moral compasses.
The Four Agreements. It’s another self-help book, and in parts it’s psychologically rather cack-handed, but parts are pure poetry and singing with truth.
Kerri Hulme’s The Bone People. I don’t know what to say about this Booker Prize winning novel except that it is such a rare and crazy book with such deeply memorable characters, that the flimsy plot means nothing compared to how it’s written. Easily one of my top ten favourite books. Started my love affair (long distance it will likely remain), with the people, history and landscape of New Zealand, whose former denizens keep finding their way into my life, much as Finns do.
Blind Voices by Tom Reamy. I remain alternately hopeful and terrified that it will become a movie; the rape scene is spectacularly gross, but the special effectsy stuff will be glorious.
Paul Blackburn Collected Poems. I dedicated the long poem In Colours Unsuspected to him.
Marion Zimmer Bradley’s the Mists of Avalon. The ultimate read in the bath book. Makes magic and myth and real life into something truly great. It doesn’t dodge the grosser aspects of being female in an Iron Age culture.
Sorrow and anger
Should you divorce your family?
Dr. Michelle Golland suggested a sort of checklist of traits that are warning signs a familial relationship is unhealthy and may be worth ending, including: “You feel drained when associating with the person. The person continuously makes you angry. The person is manipulative towards you to get what they want.”
Trying to be ‘the bigger person’ didn’t help. Trying to ‘fake it til I make it’ didn’t work. Pulling out my wallet to paper over the cracks didn’t help. I don’t imagine for a second that it will help anybody but me, but exhaustion won, and I am slowly and painfully crawling away to someplace safe. In the best of all possible worlds I’d be rational on the subject, but since I can’t, I have to protect what little sanity I have.
Wrote 750 words this morning, practiced, did my Lumosity, ran the dishwasher and tidied the kitchen. Keith is coming over shortly.
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We watched Jazz – Keith very much enjoyed it.
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Katie is coming over to extract some of her clothes and toiletries. Hopefully there will be enough gone that I can establish some order in the guest bedroom, which looks at the moment much like the den of a hibernating bear.
Today started well
Before 6 am I had 1350 words done on Midnite Moving, and Eddie said FEED ME NAOW in such a loud voice it was as if he’d never been sick.
Later on today we’ll go get some more Chinese takeout. The Singapore style noodles at Chong Lum Hin are so yummy.
YAY Jeff, he’s set up the wireless printer; we can now print from any computer anywhere in the house, which is very handy.
Watched the first half of Crumb yesterday evening. A great artist, and a very weird man. His life is full of old records. Following on watching the first 6 episodes of Ken Burns’ Jazz I noted some jazz clips that were in a big subdirectory on the media drive and watched them, including Stephane Grapelli and Django Reinhardt. Not all of it was watchable, but it was all interesting. Jazz really is an immense genre.
Now, Lumosity, practicing for church (I’m singing the compost song), and practicing for GAFilk. Lemming says that you get treated like visiting royalty at GAfilk. That will be an interesting experience, hunh?
No response from any potential customers. I’ll be going to the landlord tomorrow and dropping off the keys. There’s only so much I can do, and I need to walk away and quit spending money on a dream, when I need to move someplace where there’s actually some work.
Anti racism work in process
2013, don’t let the door hit you
It wasn’t the worst year of my life because I have more emotional resources than I used to. I think, after its long absence from my house, alcohol is going to make a reappearance. I think beer – it’s been too long since I had some Lion Winter – and some Jim Beam, so I have something in the house for when Justified comes back next month.
I will be praying for the Canadian Olympic athletes and officials as they to and fro from Sochi. There are going to be some damned big explosions in Russia in February, and the whole world will be watching. They won’t happen in Sochi itself, likely, as the security will be a leaden and oppressive blanket. But I pity the rail and airline passengers – it’s going to be a mess. The suicide bombings are already well under way, and although it isn’t well known yet, there’s a lot of missing explosives in Russia, something like 2000 short tons. It’s not C4, but it’s certainly enough to make hash of a lot of civilians.
Time for Lumosity and some shoulder exercises. Sleep has been conspicuous by its absence.
My Yellow Cab review
On December 24, 2013 at around 9:30 in the morning, Driver 10 picked me up from the stand at Granville and Georgia. I gave him the address and he didn’t know where it was. He HANDED ME HIS PHONE TO TYPE THE ADDRESS INTO THE GPS. With a rising sense of WTF, I did so. Then he proceeded to drive down the street looking at his phone. By the time we got to the bridge I was frantic. I told him, first in a calm voice, and then in my ‘yelling at the kids voice’, “What you are doing is unsafe and illegal. Please pull over, confirm your route, and continue.” I must have said this four times. He told me I didn’t have any Christmas spirit, and I repeated my request. Yes, I was yelling, but that’s what you do when somebody is being unsafe and thinking it’s okay.
He said, “Get out of my ****** cab you *****.” He stopped the cab and I got out. Another cab driver from another company appeared out of nowhere and got me safely to my destination, all the while apologizing, as if it was his fault somehow.
Under normal circumstances I would wait for a call back from the Manager, but I left an urgent message that day and another this morning, and the Vancouver Taxi Association complaint line voicemail is full (wonder why, snicker). I’ve been taking cabs in this town for almost 20 years and I’ve never experienced anything like this. The driver was not safe to drive, and should be disciplined at the very least. Something tells me nothing will come of this, but at least I have warned others.
I love Marilyn’s services…
This morning we walked around the darkened sanctuary with candles, while Marylke played her recorder. It was absolutely lovely, and the text was Gratitude as Light, so it worked out nicely. The youth will be handing out socks and sandwiches at New Years on the DTES and that was what the collection was for.
Hazards of going deaf…. At coffee afterwards one of my cocongs was talking about how all of her senses awakened when she was listening to live classical music, so that she was almost overcome and I said, “If you pee your pants you’re on your own” which is actually a classic family history line (back to Amedeo Garden Court days). Everybody else at the table thought I said, “If you Peter Pan, you’re on your own.” This is what they repeated back to me. About this time the woman realized what I had ACTUALLY said, and started to laugh, and everybody else told me what they THOUGHT I had said, at which point we were pretty much both reduced to spluttering incoherence. When we calmed down we explained the joke, at which point everybody ELSE laughed.
Dennis recited Invictus during the service. Jean and I both memorized it when we were puppies so we recited along but silently, because only a fool would talk overtop of Dennis when he is in full spate and mess up that theatrical voice. I love Dennis to bits, even though he has to get right up next to me to tell who I am these days. I interviewed him for an I’m Not Dead Yet ceremony a few years back. He really is the most delightful old man; so full of joie de vivre and simple appreciation for people and art. I couldn’t hope to be as cheerful as he.
The work continues. I sure hope I sleep better tonight. I’ve been dreaming, and having nightmares. I just don’t DO nightmares so it’s always a horrible surprise. Jeff’s been dreaming like mad too.
It hurts because it’s true
May you find what you seek
In some cultures, that’s considered a curse. Anyway, to the point; I am looking up stuff on Afghanistan and Persia (now Iran) because I am following information about Rumi. Accidentally I land on the wikipedia page of the anti-Rumi, which contains a bunch of 14th Century dirty jokes. They are at the bottom of the page, you’ve been warned, etc. One of the jokes is so disgusting it could cheerfully be used by people who hate Muslims as propaganda.
We are watching Ken Burn’s Jazz, and it is uniformly excellent. I wish I could have watched it with John, too.
Off to the library today. I have a couple of other errands to run.
My request to have assistance in developing anti-racism curriculum is in the newsletter for church.
I can only wonder what my uncle, who got a PhD in Fluorine Chemistry, would make of this website mocking PhD subjects.
Loki lowkey Christmas
Showed the shop on Christmas day AND Boxing day. It will be a Syncretic Agnostic Festive Miracle if I sell the place, but I’m okay with what happens. Everything changes. Failure hasn’t killed me yet.
As part of our Syncretic Agnostic Festive Season, we acquired Chinese Food, watched documentaries and SGA, and bought zero presents, sent zero cards. I did go to a Christmas Eve service which was about the advent and deliverance of joy, love, peace and hope, framed by the story of the Christ child and Mary. (Joseph always gets left out… I’m gonna make a sermon for him some day).
One of the best things about filk is that if you change the lyrics to be less sexist nobody will comment. I say this looking at Uplift, a wonderful song written in 1999, but it contains Mankind. I will sing it as Humans. All will be well.
I’ve already blasted through the second hand book Tammy gave me for Christmas. It’s called The Forty Rules of Love, and I cried BUCKETS while I was reading it, but it is about the love between Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, and it is a very wonderful and sad story. In the end, Rumi is a poet, but everyone around him paid a high price for it.
Poetry doesn’t come from nowhere; for me it is language reaching through my emotions to a page; to the release and abandonment of expressing a feeling in the most charged and delicate way possible. Poetry is like the sprite that forms above a massive thunderstorm. So brief, so beautiful, and invisible unless you are looking RIGHT AT IT when it happens. She who has not seen will say it doesn’t exist. She who has seen will pummel words and rhythms, grasp at floating down, weave spider silk and daydreams, stare at bones, bond with discards, trace the impression of a car tire in tar, build launching pads of paper and foil. Her dissatisfaction is the human eternal, embroidered with a great ‘Ah!”
Lumosity, mando practice, paperwork. That is at least part of my day.
Full lyrics for Kick your Door Down (Burn Notice filk)
( Burn Notice Filk)
That Michael Westen is a pain in the ass
Thinks he’s a hero and his friends are no better
Oliver Peoples with the shatterproof glass
Fi’s drowning so he’s gotta go and get her
Average day, situation normal
Enemies smile and loved ones frown
Don’t need to be very formal
They’re gonna come back and kick your door down
Sam comes hard with the rolling guns and ammo
Michael doesn’t think his tactics are sound
Time’s up! Package goes blammo!
They’re gonna come back and kick your door down
Misdirection suited in Armani
Someone in the alley just chambered a round
Time’s up! It’s not our money
Gonna come back and kick the door down
Amateurs tend to get excited
When Fi makes a splash in a slinky gown
More than one kind of fuse gets ignited
and they’re gonna come back and kick the door down