Author: Allegra

Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.

RIP Herbert Lom

Died in bed at 95 in London.  May his memory be blessed with laughter and tears.

Stupid bill re recriminalizing abortion did not pass; the Minister responsible for the Status of Women should be escorted from the Commons in the electoral equivalent of chains.

Although the title and the illo are THOUGHTLESSLY hyperbolic, this is a good article about privilege. 2020 says Hugo Schwyzer turned out to be rillllly problematic, but I’m leaving this here as evidence of progress, and it’s amazing given the drubbing he took that this writing is still available

I have a very heavy day of appointments and church related work in front of me.

VCon starts, I’m not going.  All I will do is spend stupid amounts of money on clothes.  Hilariously, RobW called me last night to complain about the Vcon website; this does not bode well for how good the con will be.

Paul and Katie and I had a lovely walk in Deer Lake Park on Wednesday; we saw a dozen frogs, a juvenile eagle, a Douglas squirrel and possibly a baby bunny, who did not linger to make our acquaintance.  I got some video of the frogs but it’s basically a streak heading for the rushes.  I also got a pic of the Douglas squirrel but not at very high resolution, even though the little guy POSED in TWO SEPARATE POSES for me.  We also picked up a hawk feather, which I stuck in Margot’s fur when I got home and resulted in a couple of charming pictures, one of which I posted to twitter. 2020 says that was a flicker feather, not a hawk feather, no kidding.

I’m going to ask Jeff to help me figure out how to post pics directly to my blog through WordPress, although possibly not today.

After many months of being okay, my temperature regulation at night has gone off the rails.  I have acceptably ordinary physiological reasons for this but waking up poaching in my own bed a couple of times a night is harshing my mellow.  This too shall pass.

Yet another sports figure is being accused of sexual and physical abuse of youngsters in his care.  The way it’s being reported in the press is quite bizarre.  I guess we’ll let the courts sort it out; the reporter had more than half a dozen affidavits detailing misconduct in hand before writing the story, and while we all know that there are false abuse allegations, it’s not the way to bet, especially since we’re talking about a Catholic residential school for falsely imprisoned young aboriginals.

Raincoaster just tweeted that an alarm went off close to her and a stern voice is speaking in German.  Helluva way to get woken up, unless of course she was already awake.  She and I trade tweets in the middle of the night fairly often.

What’s up on facebook:  18 billion reposts from reddit, mine among them, and people commenting about the things that make them upset – relatives dying abruptly in car accidents leaving young children, angst about how this is the first time her only child is out with the non-custodial parent on a football game day, the fact that 27 million people globally live in slavery, and me attempting to get a copy of (this poster). 2020 says it was something cool by Matt Danger but now it’s gone.

The RCMP have nothing better to do?

Here’s the item.  (RCMP attempt to ticket woman in Nanaimo for leaving her windows down).

http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/LOC/freeside/–%20M%20–/45_Motor%20Vehicle%20Act%20RSBC%201996%20c.%20318/00_Act/96318_05.xml#section191

And my response….

I left my car running in Toronto back in the day while I dropped the kids off at daycare. (It was 25 below among other mitigating bs – I make no excuses, it was a dumbassed thing to do and it’s one of the *many* stupid things I did while feeling time pressured as a parent.) Came out to find a cop writing a ticket for the same offence (me wah wah I’m already late for work bitter tears). Took the kids to the court date to show them how justice was done and the judge was so anxious to get them out of there (they were noisily inquiring if I was gonna go to jail) I got off with the frowning of a lifetime. The cop was CHOKED. I wished her a pleasant good evening and showed her most of my teeth.

Forskolin

So I’m poking around my favourite joints on the internet, and run across a Eurekalert reference to erectile dysfunction research.  Everybody knows that nitric oxide is what triggers the onset of an erection, but nobody had nailed down – sorry for the choice of words – what sustains an erection, which is the other half of working on ED.  Turns out that you need a continuous cascade of nitric oxide to keep the jolly happening, some of which happens in the penis itself.  At the very end of the article, there’s an offhand comment about how forskolin assists to keep this nitric oxide cascade flowing.

I’m thinking, Darwin’s Beard, a compound that assists with ED that’s called Forskolin?  I mean, it’s like hiding a foreskin in plain sight.  So I look up forskolin on wikipedia, and it sounds like homeopathy, it’s been offered up as a treatment for so many conditions.  But no, science.  And the molecule looks like Oh Ho Ho with a boner at both ends.  But that’s just me, I can derive amusement from almost anything.

 

 

what?

Dear Mr. Kenney, and by copy to Mr. Julian,

Look, it’s really very simple.  If you don’t want an abortion, don’t have one.  If you don’t have the equipment to ever need to make that decision, stay out of it.

Do not attempt to legislate the recriminalization of abortion in Canada.  Although there is a substantial minority of Canadians who would applaud the recriminalization of sodomy, gay marriage and abortion, we live in a modern pluralistic liberal democracy and the majority of Canadians don’t support those stances.

Recriminalizing abortion is regressive, mean-spirited and an assault on women’s rights.  It’s bad medicine, bad politics, and bad social policy.

I say this as a woman, a tax-payer, a church-goer and a voting Canadian.

Kill M-312 as soon as possible.

 

Yours truly,

 

Allegra Sloman

phone and address redacted

May ludicrous things happen to Jason Kenney

O, FFS.  Jason Kenney is trying to recriminalize abortion.  The war on women has officially moved north of the border, kids.  You’ve got a day to move on this.

If you have had an abortion WRITE YOUR MP AND COPY JASON KENNEY.  If you think women have the right to legal safe abortions, as well as the contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancy in the first place WRITE YOUR MP AND COPY JASON KENNEY.  If you don’t want to live in a country where your daughter or friend or sister or coworker is forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term after she’s been raped WRITE YOUR MP AND COPY JASON KENNEY. TELL THEM TO VOTE NO ON BILL M-312.  http://www.canada.gc.ca/directories-repertoires/direct-eng.html#mem is how you get hold of them. FOLLOW UP WITH A MAILED LETTER – you may send it at no charge to http://www.parl.gc.ca/Parlinfo/Compilations/Addresses/ParliamentaryHOC.aspx

Miss Margot watches the screen

A couple of days ago Margot was sitting on her tuffet in the den while Jeff was copying files.  She watched intently as the files flew between the folders, and then for yuks Jeff started shifting the dialog box around, and she watched that too.  Eddie never watches TV although occasionally he responds to sounds from the speakers.

Margot needs a bath, she’s getting a bit pee-ie, and it’s Jeff that has to put up with her rank rear end.

I have a new phone, an HTC One S (I bought it on Thursday last but it was DOA so I replaced it).  I am very much liking it but I’m still getting used to the keyboard.

Rantoglot

The new Kside word is for the weird almost English raving that shows up in youtube comments.  Also known as trollspeak.

Sue’s dad died.  He was over 100 years old, and she was planning on visiting him this week.  Now her mum and dad are dead, her mum passed last year.  She’s not the only person I know who is over seventy and lost a parent.  mOm I am glad you made that scarf for her.

I09 talks about epistolary novels today.  In SF format.

I am actually working on an epistolary sf novel.  In my family there is a cousins’ letter that rotates between numerous people over the course of about three years. The cousin will write whatever he or she wants to and then send it along.  Once it gets back to the origination point it is collected by mOm and the next iteration fires up.
The novel follows the cousins as they a) attempt social work with a trispecies gang in an orbital (blocked out) b) sell tickets to the only real tourist attraction (but it’s a doozy) on a fleabag planet (in process) c) found a Unitarian church on a wholly-owned planet and accidentally become the lightning rod for a debate on interspecies marriage (this letter is written) d) join the Forces to see the galaxy, kill monsters and blow shit up real good (this is in process) e) have boring lives on Earth (anything but, climate change and volcanoes)  f) get old and have themselves uploaded so they can continue to work on family history projects they didn’t want to die in the middle of, thus becoming the de facto all purpose family elder.

 

Lovely!!!

Had a wonderful visit to Victoria with Keith.

It took 7 hours to get home, but it was a nice visit.  I am not very happy with BC Ferries right now, and having to drive Keith to his meetup afterwards because he was running late wasn’t a problem but it did add a lot to the drive.

I traded up phones and have still not been able to activate it.  I am seriously considering taking it back to the place of purchase and letting them know that if I have to spend three days trying to activate a phone there isn’t much point gamely staying with the same company.  The chat on line help has sucked as well.  Very disheartening.

I have to get a job, and the market is very poor.

I decided that since being conscious was actively causing me pain that I should take refuge in sleep.  As soon as I was decently unconscious, and far away from my back pain, BC Ferries and the utter pointlessness of life, the phone rang and it was somebody from church reminding me to bring the checkbook to service.  Serves me right for going to bed so early.

It is now 2:35 in the morning.  This is not a good time to be writing blog posts as they are likely to be rather grim.  Oh, sorry, too late.

I hope today will be a better day.  I’m going to get a glass of water and go back to sleep, if Morpheus is kind.