Author: Allegra

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

Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for literature!!!

Here’s a pic of the dear old thing.

I don’t really fly my literary rag too often on these pages, but Doris Lessing had a big influence on what I think is important in literature.  She said things like “The way they teach literature is verkockt, and here’s why,” and “Read any book that comes in front of you and unless you’re being forced to read it for school, put it down if you don’t like it within a few pages.” And she blew off the top of my head with the Golden Notebook, and the Marriages Between Zones Three Four and Five, and Briefing for a Descent into Hell, and then Love, Again.

I dunno how Harold Bloom (the pompous arse) could trash her winning this award so hard.  Love Again was so AMAZING, the whole book rang like a gong in me, and I’ve reread it half a dozen times now because I keep finding new stuff in it.  He says that the Nobel Prize was for pure political correctness, and that’s bullshit.  It’s for a body of work that will stand for a long, long time.  People are still reading Kristin Lavransdottir… why not Shikasta, a hundred years from now?

When I stand at the entrance of a new book, I say, “Take me someplace I haven’t been.”  I’ve gotten that in multiplicity from Doris Lessing.

Google – is stupid the new evil?

Google is sucking these days….

A reason to go to Ottawa….  (I mean, what the hell kind of country pays for public art that will scare the bejasus outta small kids and arachnophobes).

Words to live by. 

In family news, the elephant has decided to sit on pOp’s chest again.  This means medical attention, which entirely sucks.  In further family news, the surgical drain has been removed from my mother, who’s damned happy about this improvement in her well being.

I watched Stargate Atlantis for the first time last night.  The script had me pecking a bit, but the charm of the personalities shone through nevertheless.  Finished up a re-rendered copy of Robinson Crusoe on Mars (does Paul Mantee EVER have nice body hair!  Yowza!).  Watched a Family Guy episode all the way through (1st time ever) and laughed my ass off.  Hitler juggling three fish on a unicycle?  Instant hysteria!  Why?  Mostly, says Jeff, it’s the snippet of music that goes with it.

We finished de junking the kitchen, dealt with the linen closet and itemized all the furniture for Geek House, as well as figuring out some stuff for storage, Craigslist, etc… I hardly took any cooking stuff when I left the Augur Inn, so I did grab a couple of small boxes of stuff – they will all get merged back into Geek House but I can use it in the meantime.

Today, we see Unca Barry and Auntie Mary and go for dinner with my parents – if they can lever themselves away from the emergency room.  Yeah, I know I sound like I don’t give a shit.  I am concerned and anxious, but how does that help?

Still in Victoria

Watched Blackhawk Down, The Machinist, a little Robot Chicken, (scroll down on link for pirate humour) and nothing else because we actually did work yesterday.  Now it’s the crack of noon and I’m finally out of bed.  What gives?  I was in bed by 10 last night!!?  Maybe I’m lying awake in bed for hours thinking dark thoughts.  Dark thoughts which I cannot commit to my blog, lest they be used in turn to commit me.  Sorry, the paranoia is lying deep, and deep, upon me right now.  It’s hard to watch a movie like The Machinist and not go to a dark place afterwards.  And this was the movie that Joe at work has been bugging me to watch since the day he started!  Now I’ll have to watch it again.

I know it’s really really sick, but Christian Bale at 121 pounds is the hottest thing evah.  I normally don’t go for extremememes in male shapeliness, but the idea of (ed.: Cut that shiat out, right now!).  Aherm.  Yes.  So to recap.  Skinny Christian Bale equals teh hotness.  That is all.
One more cup of this extremely fine coffee, and it’s back to the dejunking.

Wish I had a backchannel

There is somebody I really, really want to communicate with at the moment.  This person never reads my blog.  I have no useful email addresses, the phone doesn’t work, and in person it’s impossible.

On a positive note, I just watched Christian Bale in The Machinist and I can hardly wait to tell my coworker, who has been bugging me to see it since the day he started on his job.

In Victoria

Movies: Pink Floyd Live in Pompeii;

Children of Men

and we got half way through a CHERRY print of Robinson Crusoe on Mars

GRRR there was something wrong with the actual DVD; it stopped in the middle of a closeup on Mona’s face.

Yesterday, in church, bad puns broke out. It was very, very bad, mostly because Lady Miss Banjola and Dr Filk were not there to raise the insanity to ever higher levels.

Now I’m going to see if I can drag my bro out to breakfast. Nope – he’s made me oatmeal. Then the food shop….
The trip here started repulsive and got better and better; the weather was so much more clement it was very pleasant to stand it in while waiting briefly for Jeff. When I left my place at SFU it was howling a gale and slanting rain, and I lost my bus pass on the ground, and so missed the first bus retracing my steps to see what the hell I had done with it. I found it right out front of my apartment building (thank guh) and then spent three hours alternately waiting for a bus and riding one. It’s an $85 cab ride to the ferry terminal from my place (I did it once, partly to see how much it cost and partly because I was feeling quite worn out) but I don’t think I’ll be that self indulgent again if I can help it.
Jeff’s kitties are doing famously. They were both sitting in the window of the computer room this morning intently looking at something of cat interest.

Homily went well (see Thanksgiving…)

and now I am off to Victoria for a while, back Thursday night.  I will probably not be posting nearly as much, so try to stay out of trouble while I’m gone.  If you can’t at least have the decency to invent a new kind of trouble.

I light a candle for Daughter Katie, whose niece Sapphire has been stolen by the Ministry.  I light a candle for everyone involved, including the heartless pricks whose idea of a good time is scoop a baby after tossing the mother into handcuffs the Friday before a long holiday weekend.  The child in question was NOT AT RISK.  The parents are young and stupid and to put it vaguely but tellingly “multiply diagnosed”, but Sapphire is not being physically or emotionally abused, she’s entirely on target for growth and developmental milestones, and Katie got to watch this go down, and it’s not turning her into ‘a better citizen’ if compliance and unquestioning patriotism is the desired end state.

Okay, NOW I’m going to Victoria.

Fight the power and may God rain down judgment on the Ministry.

God is a capricious lover

Sometimes you text him twenty times and he doesn’t answer and sometimes he expects you to do all the work and sometimes he comes on so big and so mean.  Other times he seems way more interested in other girls, and right in front of you.  Sometimes he comments that you really aren’t doing it for him anymore.

Okay, lightning will strike me but hopefully after I deliver my homily this morning.