Author: Allegra

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

Flowers flowers flowers on my desk. Bwa ha ha!

Jeff and mOm and pOp sent me flowers. Oh, the convulsions of jealousy! 

Yeah, doesn’t take much.

ANOTHER two delurkers have emailed me.  This time it’s a bracing and unexpected and heartmelting serious of comments, and I just feel very loved right now.  You never know when people are going to be affected by what you do!  It gets better, etc. etc.  But as human beings keep going through the same series of emotions and trials, it’s necessary to be reminded.  And just in case – I AM SORRY I hurt anybody or caused them to lose sleep.

Because, yanno, sleep’s imPORtant.

Lurkers decloak

the rules keep changing…..

OMFG.  This is disturbing, and yet I found myself laughing anxiously.  Somebody I had NO CLUE follows my blog has emailed me something by way of comment.  I’m paraphrasing massively, but it went like this.  “Next time you’re having problems why don’t you do something useful and strap a bomb to yourself?  I can think of a few handy places to put it, and I’ll even help you with the technical side of things.”  The rest of the email was a charmingly spelled rant about how even insanity is not an excuse for suicide (??!!), it’s for elderly and terminal people neither of which I am and I should be ashamed of myself for talking about suicide publicly.  Oh, yes, I should definitely take your advice and not the advice of people I love, who love me.  Let me just sit with that a moment.

Man, I know a lot of strange people.  The idea of repurposing my private turmoil for a rather expansive (in the gaseous sense) comment on public policy has a certain amount of flair though.  I couldn’t do it, even at the height of my belief that I’d be better off dead…. my rights end where my skin does, and I can’t imagine taking somebody else with me; it’s against everything I still believe.

Anyway, I’ve been lurking in MY OWN blog, which is weird.  Over the years I have had it… have I really been doing this for years and years???? I have said less and less about more and more.  I have been afraid of offending people; afraid of hurting people’s feelings; worrying about what people who already hate me think.  I’ve been afraid of losing my job, making my parents stop loving me, or being the kind of person who gives Unitarianism a bad name.  (I’ve had it pointed out that might not be a bad thing).  I’ve been very very scared.

So I’ll decloak.

I am one opinionated mofette.  ça veut dire mauxfaits.  On va recommencer.  I am going to stop beating myself up and start kicking the verbal snot out of those who more richly deserve it.  I won’t talk about work except to say when things are going well or badly.  I won’t recount personal conversations without the informed consent of the folks involved. I won’t repost emails without permission, this morning notwithstanding and besides it was a paraphrase and further besides he was obviously upset at somebody who isn’t me.  I was just the… lightning rod?  Dude can comment directly on my blog any time he likes… if he doesn’t like, he can take a sex holiday in Enumclaw with my compliments.

Leaving horsefuckery behind…. and yes, I’m against the use of animals for the sexual pleasure of human beings because of this whole ‘informed consent thing’, I’m just being sophomoric and rude…..

Foremost among those I would hear praised, Jeff, Katie, Paul, my parents, Peggy, Tom, Lady Miss B, Sue, Rev Katie, Keith, Chipper and two people who have asked not to be named publicly.  Thank you thank you thank you.  You are wonderful people and I know that you will keep doing what you do, so it’s good to know you are there.

Katie, thank you for telling me that you are and you intend to remain childless by choice.  I was sure I’d never want children when I was fourteen; I wanted kids by the time I was your age.   I think you’re old enough to know what you want.  Keith, haw haw, the joke’s on you.  My dreams of becoming a successful organizm now rest on your creamed-animé-on-tropes-stuffed cranium.  And if I’m never a grandma I’ll be fine; there are enough neurotic white folks in the world already or so I scan it.  One of my other relatives will breed when I’m longing for a baby to spoil.  It’s no biggie.

Back to the real world:

Eddie is wandering up and down the house HOWLING for Jeff.  He cries upstairs, downstairs, and outside (freaked me out, I couldn’t tell where he was; he sounded like he was locked in something).

Yay! Canadian tech for a better world!

Jeff, there’s rice pudding in the fridge.  Maybe you’ve gone off rice pudding but this rice pudding is very superior, and even if you don’t want it I intend to eat every scrap of it before it goes bad; Rozo and Katie already extracted some for their own use at home.

Damn Paul but that was an awesome roast.  I’d forgotten how much I love carrots and onyums done around a roast beast.

Al-Jazeera has been added to our roster of cable stations.  I watched, with amazement, a documentary that didn’t even have a single Arab name attached to it; who knew I’d get a very damning picture of the Latvian forest industry, with lots of lines drawn between the first world’s desire to greenwash everything and the destruction of the last pristine forests in Europa?  Honestly, I want to send an email to the Latvia PM telling him the satellite pictures of the Latvian forests are calling him an asshat and a full bore liar.  Latvian politicians and functionaries are disturbingly smooth voiced and calm, they all seem to speak idiomatic bureaucratese English, and the bigger the lie the calmer they look.  And they are destroying the traditional sustainable forestry operations which are family businesses.  The guy who won the international farmer of the year award was foaming at the mouth showing how all the ‘scientific’ forestry immediately around him – clear cuts all – are causing blow downs on his property and destroying the margins of his sustainable forest.  This is sustainable forestry in Canada.  That’s pretty much what it looks like in Latvia.  Anyway, at the current rate of clear cutting in Latvia- which is going to subsidize DIY homeowners in England, who get to buy wood that has a sustainably harvested sticker on it, sticker purchased by the Latvian forestry ministry from a fucking scam non profit in Britain – they won’t have a forest let alone a forest industry within ten years.  The habitat destruction of rare species is blandly ignored by the politicians because it’s all about employment.  Forestry sustains 40 percent of the Latvian GDP.  They are going to kill their economy.  One wonders, when forestry collapses, what the government will tell their unemployed young men to do.  A social, political and ecological disaster in the making, I’d say.  When the young men of Riga rioted after the economic downturn in 2008, this was the response of the government.  Clear cut Latvia.  Can’t even blame capitalism.  It’s state socialism that is doing the job, ably assisted by the English demand for board feet.

I think of the Ukrainians who froze to death rather than cut down the trees in the parks in Kiev during WWII and I wonder what the hell happened to the Latvians.  Shame.

Deftly borrowing a suggestion from Lady Miss B

Katie force fed me internet puppies until I gave up.  I declare myself, if not sane, then at least not at imminent risk of sucking on the wrong end of a nitrogen hose, slurping back a castor bean smoothie or committing abutment graffitti with my vehicle, my current top three most favoured methods of self slaughter.

Then the minister showed up and said she’d stab me in the eye if I didn’t cheer up.  No, of course she didn’t do that.  I thought of that afterwards. She showed up with hugs, a piece of church birthday cake and the Beacon blankie. Sitting in a quilt that is specifically for Beacon members who are feeling porely is actually quite therapeutic.

Paul has arrived, having traversed the thickets and brambles of me being just completely fucking crazy over the last three days, bearing a standing rib roast, which you’ll have to admit is a very nice way to get me apologize for being irrational.

I’m just going to keep taking painkillers and apologizing, I guess.  It will be my new hobby, popping methocarbamol, averting my gaze and apologizing.

When I phoned my mother to tell her not to quit worrying because that really WOULD be insane, she said many encouraging words and some actively evil ones.   And that is why she is my mother.  Jeff said, “Are you telling me I don’t have to move?” and started giggling.  I was giggling too.  So surreal.  Long car drives suit me, even if they make me hurt. Then he gave me advice on how to fix what was fucked up with the tv.  Then I dug my dad in the ribs about his suggestion to volunteer at a soup kitchen.  That candidly got my poor tethered goat, seeing pOp has always considered volunteering for suckers (this a guy who volunteered for the Air Force and served during the Bay of Pigs) and so I had to take the suggestion as pOp considering me a sucker…. but it was kindly meant.  Overbooked already pOp, and I simply am too much like Sheldon Cooper to do well with really disenfranchised people.  Something about not really having a clue about my own privilege.  As for his further suggestion to get a dog, I already have one insanely demanding creature, I don’t need two, although having a reason to go for a walk is good.  I will use their largesse to buy myself some mental health, in those expensive installments that are only partly paid for by the plan at work.

More goodbyes

Driving around Vancouver in the rain in February – how evocative! How jam packed with pathetic fallacy, derp. I said goodbye to Wreck Beach and the Museum of Anthropology; goodbye to the Botanical Gardens and the Nitobe Gardens. I drove by friends’ houses and dropped off stuff I’ve borrowed; said bye to John’s Jukes and Big Purple and various eating establishments and drinking holes. I said goodbye to the Cambie Bridge and then drove across the Burrard Bridge to say goodbye to it too.

The friend who got me to see the psychologist two Mondays hence called. He tells me I’m not seeing straight, but I remember what somebody said. When you’re smart, it’s easier to see the future, and if it looks like this. Except not so funny.

Daughter Katie will turn up shortly and we’ll eat junk food and kvetch about things.

I lied

I am actively suicidal.  I have all the motive in the world but since I don’t really want to drive Ziva into a bridge abutment, (I was hoping to give her in one piece to Keith) I have to wait until I get the ‘exit bag’ and the nitrogen tank.  I have an appointment with some highly recommended psychologist, but I’ve had shitty, shitty luck getting anybody IRL to provide anything like service.  My ex’s girlfriend managed to get HER psychiatrist to give me a diagnosis – without seeing me, even ! what wondrous psychiatrists they have in the US! – and my ex’s counsellor indicated (without having a therapeutic relationship with me and on the basis of seeing me once) that he figured I was nutty. Anybody who actually sees me comes to the conclusion that I am drearily sane.   Does anybody besides me believe you can be drearily sane AND suicidal?

I am in constant pain, both physical and emotional.  I have nothing to live for, nothing to look forward to, my fear of death has evaporated and work is the worst of it but of course if I want to keep my job for these last few measly weeks until my package arrives I have to stay quiet about it.  My cat will be looked after no matter what I do, and my kids have another parent.   As Robert Ingersoll once remarked, at its worst death can be nothing more than perfect rest.  Ah, perfect rest.  Sounds like a plan.

I’ve been telling people at work that I’m suicidal AND THEY ARE LAUGHING AT ME.  Maybe they won’t find it funny if I choose to depart this life in the parking garage.

Fuck all y’all.  I am out of here; I’m going home to break the news to the kids and Jeff.

The Griffon song is coming along nicely

It’s a backstory song.  Griffons go back to pre-Hellenic times, but where did they come from?  Well, since it’s a lion on the ass end and an eagle on the front end (with tufty lion ears) , but has four feet (claws front, paws back) obviously there’s some seeeerious miscegenation goin’ on.  A lion and an eagle did the wild thang, but why?  How?  and what happened to the baby?  And what did the parents say?  (Hint.  Lions okay with it “My family can never be too big!”  “Huh, never figured I’d have flying grandbabies!  Kewl!”  Eagles, not so much, which considering teen pregnancy eagle mom popped one bigass egg, is no surprise.  “It looks like prey.  Gonna eat it.”  “Throw it out of the nest and let the carrion crows have it!”  “Mom! Dad!  As soon as she’s fledged the lions will take her in, so just leave her alone!”) 

Also, and I have no idea WHY, but I’m working on yet another tune about Lady Godiva.

I have now sung the zombie song for Jeff, Keith, Paul and Tanya

and Tanya’s comment was RECORD IT AND SEND IT TO BATTERY.  So I wills, I wills.

Next up.  Griffons (with bonus Hippogriff reference).

After that, 10 more in a dozen song song cycle of mythical, undead, fictional and legendary creatures.

Including:

Fairies

Vampires

Werewolves

The Phoenix

Pegasus (which the filk awards are named after, so I’d best be careful) with bonus Bucephalus and unicorn references

The children of Loki (with bonus visit from the west coast ogress from First Nations Legends)

Mermaids (or are they?)

Argus (the dog who waited for Odysseus and died upon his return to Ithaca)

Graboids

and either the Kraken or the Cadborosaurus.  I’m thinking Caddy.

The Church of Filk

If we want a better Unitarian church, we should look into the future and see filk for what it is. 

If we want a church that is friendly to the chemically sensitive (please no stinky cologne or perfume on Sunday!) and allergy prone, we should look to filk.

If we want a church that openly welcomes transpeople and polypeople and disabled folks and people who aren’t neurotypical and gay people and people who shred the gender binary with incy mincy knives, we should look to filk.

If we want a church that invites the wee-est in the room to help in worship, we should look to filk.

If we want a church that gets that sometimes people just need to go eat, or lie down, or look after their animal bodies, so that rationality can return to the discussion, we should look to filk.

If we want a church that is radically egalitarian and is always looking to dissolve barriers under a barrage of good planning and lots of hugs, we should look to filk.

If we want a church where music is, first last and always, the vine that holds it all together, and where learning and love and respect are what the vine is growing in, we should look to filk.

wrote this on the way back from Conflikt

Here they come (Left 4 Dead in Zombieland)

Here they come
by the threes and fours
Here they come
got my shotgun, my ammo
Here they come
better clear the doors
Here they come
reloading, reloading, reloading
Here they come

Before this I was a weak sister
before this I had never fired a gun
before this I cried at a blister
before this I’d never killed anyone

Chorus

Before this I had the reputation
of not really being all that exciting
before this I never would have wagered
I would soon say “I’m going down fighting!”

Chorus

Before this I didn’t even know ya
Now side by side we blast em all ta hell
Isn’t it strange and it just goes to show ya
Who will survive? nobody can tell

Chorus

Now I have drained the cup of human sorrow
But I’ll fight on though I feel so bereft
I may not have today, let alone tomorrow
(Spoken: Nice shot!) There’s two more on the left

Chorus and fade