Letter to Globe and Mail published 24 November 1993

I offer my gratitude, my sense of indebtedness and my daughterly respect to all those men and women who and lived, or fought and died, so that I may enjoy freedom in Canada.  It is right and proper that those who benefit from something should acknowledge it.

However, I think that Michael Coren dishonours the dead of many wars when he says, “There have also been atrocities in war, but only a tabloid historian would argue that this was common.”

I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it is hard for me to do.  How is he defining ‘atrocity’? How is he defining ‘common’?

I think of the bombers raining death upon the children of Baghdad not so long ago, the slaughter of East Timor, the firebombing of Dresden, the siege of Leningrad, the Trail of Tears, the levelling of Coventry, the 40 million (estimated) dead of the Chinese revolution, Andersonville, the internment of the Japanese and Italians (among others), the horror of the Eastern Front, the piles of skulls in Cambodia, the napalm and chemicals of Vietnam, the children playing with severed heads in the streets of El Salvador, the starvation of the Ukraine, the open-eyed children lying in the makeshift morgues of the Balkans, the legless children in Angola, and the tons and tons of buried death chemicals all over the Wets, and enduring legacy of war that may yet rise from the ground like an unquiet ghost.

And I sorrow for these dead with at least the same intensity as I respect those who knew what high ideals they were dying for, whoever and whenever in time they may be.

Are these not atrocities? Are they not common, indeed, pervasive? Are not atrocity and war bosom companions, however we may honour those who fight on our behalf?

Two new songs

Let’s go Swimming (working title (December 2020 says this song is now called ‘Grateful’)) I haven’t written down yet mostly because I can’t figure out what key it is in AND it is not finished, and A Filker’s Life for me is written down but I’m still messing with the notion of verses.  I may leave it as is and ask people to write verses.

I sure hope the smayellllll of deathhhhhhh is gone from the kitchen.  Jeff hit the one by taking out the trash and I hit the two scrubbing out the trash can which was VILE.

Songwriting tip of the day.

 

You canna write if you dinna noodle!  Noodling is bonny!

 

Alternate song writing tip if you don’t like that one.

Say what you want to say in plain English.  Pull out the words that are easy to rhyme and stick them on the ends of the lines.  Backfill.

Welshidoc and the three quarks From Jaxamicus, a commenter on io9


Welshidocs and the Three Quarks:

There was once a family of quarks who lived in a cozy cottage in the farthest reaches of space. There was a great big Papa Quark, a medium size Momma Quark, and a little tiny baby quark.

One morning Mama Quark cooked them some unaccounted-for mass for breakfast. As the mystery-breakfast was both hotter and moving faster than predicted, the three quarks decided to take a walk in the darkness while it cooled.

They had not been gone long when a physicist from Cardiff named Welshidocs came along. He had been picking Bosons and had wandered into the depths of infinity. When he saw the three quarks’ cottage, he smiled and clapped his hands. “How elegant!” he cried. “I wonder who lives there?” He stood on his toes and peaked into the Computer Model. There didn’t seem to be anyone home, so Welshidocs opened the door and went right inside!

The first thing he saw was the table set with three bowls of unaccounted-for mass; a great big bowl for Papa Quark, a medium size bowl for Momma Quark, and a tiny little bowl for baby quark. “Oh, that Nobel Prize in Physics smells so good!” Welshidocs said. Then, as he was feeling a little hungry, he picked up a spoon and tasted the mystery-breakfast in the Great Big Bowl.

“OUCH!” he cried, dropping the spoon. “That mass is MUCH too arbitrarily assumed to be spherically symmetric!”

He tasted the doctrine in the medium size bowl. But that chaos was MUCH too cold.

Then he tasted the ideas in the tiny little bowl. “Mmmmmm,” he said. “This set of assumptions is JUST right!” so he ate it all up!

Having eaten his fill, Welshidocs moved into the living room and climbed into the Great Big Superstring Theory that belonged to Papa Quark. “Oh, no!” he said. “That theory is MUCH too hard.”

Then he clambered into Mamma Quark’s Classical Mechanics Theory “Oh, no,” he said. “That theory is MUCH too soft!”

Next, he dropped himself down in Baby Quark’s Dark Energy Theory. “Ahhhh,” he said with a smile. “This theory is JUST right!”

Just then there was a loud CRAAACK! and Baby Quark’s theory broke right through!

Welshidocs stood up and dusted himself off. Then he climbed upstairs to the bedroom. There he saw three Gravitational Waves all in a row. “Oh,” he said, yawning, “I am feeling sleepy.”

So he pulled down the covers and climbed into Papa Quark’s Great Big Gravitational Wave. But he quickly jumped down. “That wave is MUCH too hard!” he said.

Then he tried Mamma Quarks’s Reasonably Observably Sized Gravitational Wave. But it was far too soft.

So he climbed into Baby Quark’s Curiously Perfect Gravitational Wave. It was JUST right. Soon Welshidocs was lulled fast asleep!

A little while later the Three Quarks returned from their walk. They were feeling very hungry and were looking forward to eating the nice bowls of tasty unaccounted-for mass.

Suddenly Papa cried out in his Great Big voice, “Someone has been eating my spherically symmetric mass!”

Then Mamma cried out in her medium size voice, “Someone has been eating MY chaos theory!”

And Baby Quark cried out in his Tiny Little Voice, “Some has been eating my wild hokum. And they’ve eaten it ALL UP!”

Then the Three Quarks saw their theories near the fireplace.

“Someone has been sitting in my hypothesis!” Papa Quark said in his Great Big Voice.

“Someone has been sitting in MY hypothesis!” Mamma Quark said in her medium size voice.

“Someone has been sitting in MY hypothesis,” Baby Quark cried in his tiny little voice. “And now it’s BROKEN!”

Then the Three Quarks went upstairs to the bedroom.

“Someone has been sleeping in my Wave, which I can observe although the wave itself is inconceivably large!” Papa Quark shouted in his Great Big Voice.

“And someone has been sleeping in MY Wave of reasonably observable size that I have no evidence of existing!” Mamma Quark exclaimed in her Medium Size Voice.

“Someone has been sleeping in MY Fermi Paradoxical wave,” Baby Quark squeaked in his Tiny Little Voice. “AND HERE HE IS!”

Just then Welshidocs woke up! When he saw the three quarks standing around him, he leaped off the Wave and ran down the stairs and out the door.

He didn’t stop until he was wee, wee, wee, all the way home.

And the Three Quarks never saw Welshidocs again!

Dead loss

Yesterday was a dead loss due to a migraine – not much pain but violent visual disturbances including one quarter of my visual field disappearing before an onslaught of boiling, twisting, geometric-and-then-fractal rainbows held in a semicircle.

This morning laid out tarot…

VII Swords for querent, ow.

VII Pentacles for cross card, double ow.

Followed by The Sun (XIX), and Strength (VIII). ?!

Followed by King of Pentacles and The World (XXI).

Followed by

V Wands

X Wands (this and the next card emphasize the first two very nicely, just in case I wasn’t getting the message the first time)

V Cups

Knight of Pentacles

TL;DR:  Querent is lazy and intellectually dishonest and her troubles are much of her own making.  Some decks are tricksy and hard to interpret; my deck rolls over from a sound sleep, karate chops my liver, follows with a right cross to my face and goes back to bed.

 

Lovely housefilk

Tom, Peggy, Dina, Cindy and Brian C in attendance.  Singing and playing in the lovely sunset on the back deck.  NOMMY Food, everybody brought food and I made chili.  We’re thinking of rehearsing up 8 or so tunes.

I tried calling the band Band From Argo but Cindy said, “You are never allowed to name anything!” (a FREQUENT SGA reference).

Now I want to call us the Puddlejumpers.  Another SG universe reference AND we call our local swimming hole the Puddle AND we are Vancouverites who all came from elsewhere (like Atlantis) but it’s home now, and wet.  Or we can always fall back on Family Compact, Ruth’s all purpose band name.

Spoon-billed sandpiper chicks, family visit, other

These English birds are critically endangered.  However if you watch this video, the only thing that will be endangered is your ability to survive the cute.

Family visit went really well.  Me happy. We laughed, we bonded, we toured the garden.  As far as we’re concerned if Katie’s beau makes her happy (which seems evident “I’m gaining weight… I know I’m happy”  BF: “Well there’s always that gym membership you paid for and don’t use”) and they speak to each other lovingly and respectfully (which so far they do) nobody is going to complain.  They are now living together, and candidly I am very happy about it.  (“Don’t the young people marry these days?” I remember Grandma saying).

Saw Keith yesterday.  His response to a five minute long rant by the business owner where he worked was “I quit”.  I hasten to add that it was a five minute rant that combined racism and misogyny in such a toxic stew that he felt compelled to leave. (“If he had kept his comments confined to my shortcomings with respect to this customer transaction I could have sucked it up. But telling me that we should stop serving customers of a particular ethnicity?  blecchh.”) I am VERY proud of him.  He’s off finding other work now, and reaffirming old ties with previous employers.

On the ferry trip outbound to my folks’ place I sang and played Otto on the uppermost deck for a while, and three people thanked me afterwards, including somebody specifically calling out the Tapioca Song (and she ASSUMED I WROTE IT.  SCORE!)  But what really did me in was the little  girl in the pale pink dress who scooched up next to me and was trying to sing harmony along with me under her breath.  I wanted to pick her up and stick her in my pocket, but I’ll just have to content myself with noting one of the more beautiful memories of the last while.

 

Seven failures of the American government, as sponsored by the American electorate

Seven failures of the American government, as allowed by the American electorate

 

  1. Reconstruction turned out to be a long term plot to incarcerate and disenfranchise American citizens
  2. Using predictable attacks on American soil as an excuse to lock down and infantilize an entire country
  3. Failing to heed Eisenhower regarding the military industrial complex
  4. Kleptocracy is now established as the permanent setting for government
  5. Not comprehending that America was founded as a country of free men, not free Christians
  6. Media driving and not reporting the news
  7. Lack of meaningful and results based education + inexpensive distractions = incompetent electorate

One thing and another

There are kestrels nesting across the alley, and DARWIN’S BEARD do they make a lot of noise when they are peeved.

Jeff is an evil, evil, man; without much effort he got me addicted to ER, and there’s ONLY 15 seasons of that. (Keith, sitting in for a while, “Clooners gotta Cloon” with respect to the unholy young looking George Clooney, who takes three facial expressions and plays them hard.) So far my fave character is Haleh, with Drs Greene and Carter in rapid close order.

Jeff, Keith and I are catching up in Breaking Bad and should be caught up to the new seasons (they are calling it seasons 5 and 6 even though it’s two lots of 8 episodes each, coming out at different times). What an intense show; but when it’s funny it’s truly gutbusting.

Hosting a housefilk on Saturday. SO looking forward to it!

Everytime I think there can’t possibly be another sign of the apocalypse, Eris run amok in my metaphors & slimes the goalposts.

New Baddies in the Midnite Moving Co. universe. The Nosoi! The demonic embodiments of human illness.

“Like a human plague!?”

“Cue comment about all your ex-boyfriends.”

I’m thinking of offering Atheist Tarot Readings. Would anybody buy that? How about Steampunk Tarot readings? Well, sheesh, forget I mentioned it.

Gotta go outside and turn the keys over and spray the other side of them now. Got a lovely assortment of steampunkin keys.

I hope you all have a lovely day, it looks like it’s going to be a good one.

Saturday housefilk Lazy Sunday

Sunday wasn’t actually 100% lazy, we put the awning back up in the back deck. They did SUCH A SH*TTY JOB of power washing. Water POURED into the house and soaked some rugs and wrecked some laundry soap. Jeff exposed me to ER, which I never got to watch because Paul and I didn’t have cable for most of the time we lived together.

Saturday, the housefilk was totally amazing; Jeri Lynn and Jeff came up from Seattle and so there was CELLO and BASS and DULCIMER AND 12 STRING and BANJOLA and OCTAVE MANDOLIN and 6 STRING and OCARINA and BODHRAN and we sang played ate drank mint tea, rinse repeat, until almost 11 pm. THANK YOU TOM AND PEGGY FOR HOSTING, my place next Saturday. Cousin Lexi was there and she choked with laughter when we played a Habitrail named Klein.

Today I’m going to have lunch with Dustiny (I am joking with his name) and I’m looking forward to it as I am already planning to order Butter Chicken with extra cilantro.

Today I am baking biscotti and working on some other money making stuff. Also since I’m in the mood, more song notation. (It goes much faster when I am not forcing myself).

Everybody have a lovely day!

Friday teh 13th o noes.

Today the horror of the landlord’s minion coming to pressure wash the back deck, which will probably disassemble, it’s so rickety (or at least parts of it are).

Last night the horror of the evil across the street black and white cat whom I narrowly missed ejecting from the house. He came in and started fighting with Eddy, who has taken to guarding the cat door with Margot sitting about three metres back from him. Margot is showing signs of developing a healthier regard for her skin than has been evident previously.

Saw Brave yesterday with the kids and Katie’s beau, who was much distracted by the transmission on his month old car crapping out. I really enjoyed it. Lovely animation with some awesome sight gags.

Had a fucking uninspired and oversalted meal at Ihop yesterday, but Tamara’s company more than made up for it. We caught up (it’s been AGES since I saw her, like 10 years or something equally ludicrous) and LAUGHED our faces off. She looks radiant with health and enthusiasm and that is a special privilege to be around.

Too hot to bake today so I’ll go off and do other business related things, god knows there’s a list a mile long. I’ve already practiced and I’m just finishing up the instrument case for Otto so it will be ready tomorrow. I need to find some upholstery tacks.

Lunch happened dinner didn’t.

Thank you LTGW for a superb lunch and the even more amazing and gratitude inducing pep talk afterwards.  You da man, I loves you, blah blah blah woof woof.

On another subject entirely….

After many years of sober consideration, aided by being up Too Fracking Early, I have come to the conclusion I should no longer use LOL.  Instead, this serves as a public notice that if you have amused me with your ideas and posts and pix and whatnot, I will in future being SVQ – Snickering Very Quietly.

Today, Lunch with Tamara, movie with the kids.  Me happy!

Long and McQuade solved my closure problems!  For twenty bucks I got 10 feet of 2 inch gluebacked black velcro.  Also more straps, guitar cleaner, and OF COURSE I FORGOT TO GET A HEADSTOCK TUNER, the one thing I actually NEEDED from the store. Estupido, muy estupido.

Lovely to talk to Tammy (different Tammy) this morning.  She saw Gaudi’s Holy Family in Barcelona, happy sigh.