- United Church is the first denomination in Canada to elect an Indigenous woman as its leader.
- Métis from Batoche got some #LandBack
- Bear about town becomes bear into bin.
- Escaped farm pigs add to BC’s piggish sitch.
- Katrina Chen is now co-running David Eby’s leadership campaign. Given how much I’ve been peeing on Eby’s head (at last check Katrina follows me on twitter) this is amusingly embarrassing. Katrina also has a kid in the same school as Alex. hey at least it isn’t private school and Eby’s still superior to many of his cocontenders.
- People are very stupid about love. Just thought I’d mention it.
- practiced hard on my mandolin Otto, so glad he’s back.
- MIKE IS COMING tomorrow. yay. MUST GET TO STORE FOR DE-ALCOHOLIZED BEER.
- Mike Parker Pearson has a lot of archaeologists in UK upset (on twitter, what a row) over basically wanting to completely kibosh the tunnel that’s supposed to be DUG UNDER A UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE GOOD GOD Y’ALL. Yes indeed. However people like Raksha Dave and Paul Blinkhorn aren’t as upset as all that so it’s definitely interesting AND OF COURSE EVERY TIME THEY DIG there’s archaeology so bizarre they need to take months to check it out…. Anyway it’s a done deal; how much of the diggings will get sieved remains to be seen.
- Ben Affleck – demonstrating once more that you have to be in the same room with him to understand his charisma – has managed to marry the evergreen beautiful workaholic known as J-Lo …. I know, I don’t get it either. But I wish them decades of happiness and hope that he can at least keep it in his pants this time.
- SHETLAND SERIES 7 TRAILER HAS DROPPED. Yeah!
- There’s a street fair walking distance from here, mebbe I’ll go.
- Probably I won’t.
- Jeff got me brekkie at Foreshore Restaurant yesterday AND I STILL LOVE THEIR SAUSAGE MAN IT’S SO FREAKING GOOD
- I think there’s still coffee from yesterday. No peanut butter for me thanks, I’m finally back to not itching as much.
- 540 words and I READ THE ENTIRE THING TO mOm YESTERDAY which is terribly ableist of me she needs it in written form but she puts up with me and I love her.
- People are still reading my fanfics. Not as much, and never any comments, but it’s nice to know people are still reading.
- One little comment from the last time I went walking with Paul. THE ELECTRIC BIKES COMING THROUGH THE TRAILS AT 40 KPH ARE NOT CONSISTENT WITH FRAIL ELDERLY PEOPLE TAKING A CONSTITUTIONAL. I predict that shortly a senior will be injured by a cyclist who WILL UNDOUBTEDLY TAKE OFF AND LEAVE ME THERE.
Category: Ableism
roundup of trivia, opinions and news
- v21 on twitter made the following remarkable tweet yesterday, forwarded to my attention by Tony Fabris: today I went to a falconry show and the falcon just… fucked off. flew away and didn’t come back again.
- be free, falcon, vaya con food supply
- Ukraine’s jailing traitors and taking impressive supplies of drones from the US. The US is inching closer to doing all the things Putin was concerned that NATO would do and since he actually thinks that letting his minions talk on Russian TV about nuclear weapons as a tool in the kit, nuclear war is tiptoeing closer. Let’s hope it doesn’t, I don’t have a thing to wear.
- Weather was quite hot earlier this week – today’s high will be 19 C (in July?? 5 degrees colder than last year thanks el niña) so a great day for a walk.
- Trudeau’s haircut, which literally did make him look like Jim Carrey from Dumb and Dumber, made the news globally. Given that the most important thing about him (SIGH SIGH MEGA SIGH) is his, you know, appearance. Also, he’s gone greyer. No surprise.
- I’d like to kick Jagmeet Singh into the next block over (his constituency office isn’t far from here, and this is A WHINE ON THE INTERNET, NOT A CREDIBLE THREAT) and the reason why is that HE COULD GET THE ODSP rates up so that disabled people could actually pay rent in this foolish Canada where private companies are buying private homes and turning them into airbnbs. He holds the balance of power over the liberals and isn’t doing fucking much with it and is certainly doing squat about mask mandates. I growl in your general direction, sirrah. You have power you could use to help people who could really use a break. Speaking of which, I’m taking a break on donating to people with sad stories for the rest of the summer unless they’re living on MST land. I went a little luge last month. Which reminds me I still owe Keith money for his birthday.
- Everybody is heaving great big sighs about the photos from the Charlotte’s Webb Telescope – like, everyone – and doing remixes and slow closeups and putting music overtop. BUT REMEMBER even when you look across the room at someone you love, you’re looking at the past, as your brain remembers it, and the stuff UP AND OUT THERE is so long gone that it defies the ordinary thought processes of humans to encompass it
- Monkeypox infection levels are doubling in less than a week in the US and heaven knows what it’s doing elsewhere. Canada shows 539 cases as of two days ago, mostly in Quebec and Ontario. BC has 32 cases. The following was lifted wholesale from canada.ca:
- “The Public Health Agency of Canada is working with provinces, territories and international partners, including the World Health Organization, to actively monitor the situation. Global efforts are focused on containment of the outbreak and the prevention of further spread.Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer of Canada is in close contact with provincial and territorial Chief Medical Officers of Health to ensure that any cases of monkeypox occurring in Canada continue to be rapidly identified and managed in order to protect the health of Canadians.
Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory is performing diagnostic testing for the virus that causes monkeypox. In addition, the laboratory is also conducting whole genome sequencing, an enhanced fingerprint analysis, on Canadian samples of monkeypox. This sequencing will help our experts understand the chains of transmission occurring in Canada. The laboratory is working in close collaboration with provincial and territorial public health laboratories to provide testing guidance and to increase testing capacity for monkeypox.”
- Not a sausage about where to get monkeypox vaccine or who’s at risk. THANKS CANADA
- wordle in four, excellent brain training session this morning, 33822 words (from editing; I was clarifying, dropping plot breadcrumbs in existing conversations, etc.) Suzanne’s read the first chapter. She says she’s enjoying it, but I won’t hold her to it. She’s got a life.
- Lovely convo with my Swedish twitter pal Pebble regarding how Ireland was not at the end of the world but in the early medieval period was fundamental to the operation of the Catholic church because of how educated the monks were and I wouldn’t know that without Dunnett. As I said to him good fiction makes one seek facts.
- Spoke to Alex on the phone yesterday and told him his GGMa was very happy to get his phone message.
- The batteries on the Kaossilator are dying, so once again the ‘voice’ at 75 on the dial is skipping and doing Max Headroom vocal tics and if you get a fantastic beat going (per my post the other day) you can put on top of it this artificial voice yodelling and yelling and going ik ik ik ik or beyaaaaa beyaaaaaa beyaaaaa wup wup wup boodiwoo boodiwoo boodiwoo and it’s CONVULSING. I so wish I could record it but I still haven’t figured out how. I’d love to share it with you.
- I am very irritated with how Otto is with the bridge sliding around and putting out the intonation so I’m going to take him to a luthier next week and try to get it fixed. I’ll get the goddamned frets carved down too while I’m at it, some of them, like the rent, are too damned high. Cindy recommended someone, hope it’s all good.
- The screw drilled into Jeff’s skull for his new tooth is causing issues and as we all know tooth pain’s a BEAR. He loathes taking the antibiotics but he’s keenly aware that the alternative is much, much worse.
- I’ve taken my drugs, poured my coffee, eaten my brekky and think I’ll play waffle for a while. Haven’t come close to beating my previous record yet….
a tiny bit of slack
Jeff has accomplished much in his consulting work recently and he’s slacking off a wee bit, just enough for us to binge the most recently available season of ‘Shetland’ (with a seventh season coming in the fall of 2022.)
Us, heard calling at the screen at Season 6 so far: (more or less)
“Jesus, Sandy, don’t you ever do a vehicle check?”
“Sandy, fChrissakes.”
“Jesus, Sandy, try to be a little more subtle about committing career suicide.”
“Sandy, do you ever call for frikkin backup??”
“Aw Tosh you’re adorable when you make that face.”
“Go, Donny!”
“What an excruciating way to die, bleugh, shudder!”
“She’s lying her ass off!”
“Textbook way to deal with someone with dementia.”
“His first emotional reaction to things is often wrong.”
“What a cow, what a total cow, she’s pure fucking evil.” <— yes I do still use gendered slurs, this one came out when I wasn’t looking.
“Duncan, you idiot, she’s winding you up.” <— yes idiot is a ableist slur. I am trying very hard to cut that one out but idiot, moron and cretin are still in rotation.
“Will you look at that view.” (every episode)
Not too much about Ukraine
It’s terrible. The Russians are being indiscriminate with the bombings, but so are the Saudis and the Americans right now. The hypocrisy is thick as jam, and as sticky.
I think the next stage in my psychosocial development with respect to politics is to really examine how I am untrue both to my grandfather’s approach to other human beings, which should, since he was gentle and helpful, be a guide to me, and to my sparse and weedy ethics, infested as they are with my own version(s) of gender essentialism, ableism and libertarianism, not necessarily in that order on any particular day, and I’m sure in almost 20 years of doing this I’ve revealed enough of my other bigotries to hang myself twice, were such things possible.
I mean if I’m going to bust it back to first principles. Is it a material universe – the commonality of detectible ‘reality’ – or is it an imagined and engineered projection, taking place in real-time, or is it a natural phenomenon which one can interrogate without ever knowing the full truth of, or is it God’s Creation, or (all the Creation gods’ names)’s Creation or something else entirely? I mean, I know which way I play it, every time, but is it a material universe? Should it make a difference? Should I be ashamed that the best argument I’ve seen for it NOT making a difference was from Buddy, in Free Guy? Anyway, can’t have a philosophy without taking that one one.
Sorry about the late post, I had yet another disturbed night of sleep and when I went back to sleep I slept late, it’s now almost 10 am.
2249 words on story thus far. I think I’ll try and go back to finishing the landslide one.
Yesterday was wonderful.
We went to breakfast at IHOP (it was deserted), came back here for some TV. Paul called and we went for a walk in Fraser Foreshore (I masked, he didn’t, I drove) and I took my camera, secure in the knowledge and belief that I WOULD GET PICS for my mOm, and I sat in the appointed place at close to the regular hour, and Paul and I couldn’t even hear the tweety birds, let alone see them.
Much abashed, I trudged back to the car, grousing in a desultory way at Paul, and then I saw one of the other unofficial feeding stations and put down a handful of non salted raw Styrian sunflowers and next thing I know, there’s a chickadee in the bush on the other side of the trail making the excited food song, which is the same as their regular song but buzzier, louder and with an extra DEE in there. I had put away the camera.
So I got my disney princess moment, but didn’t get a picture. BIRDS YOU ARE ANNOYING. But cute.
CW Picture of Tom Lunderville; Paul and I went to Peggy’s after that, to pick up the hat that I gave Tom after wearing it for a while. Now I’m getting it back again. He ruint the crown but I’ll reblock it. We got tea and soup. We chatted for a long time. She’s in relatively good shape all things considered and coping as best she can with how different her life is now. We talked about Ukraine a bit.
We left to go pick up my library book from the main branch of New West Library (‘this is how you lose the time war’) and then came back to Geekhaus to eat – soup Peggy gave us and borscht and lentil soup. I also showed Paul some of the stuff online that I’ve been telling him about Ukraine.
Then I ran a couple of loads of laundry and napped and cleaned out the microwave. It was a lovely sunny day, and I’m glad I wrote about it, because I was happy yesterday and I needed a reminder.
Looks like another nice day
Jeff emailed me late yesterday with an update and advice to ‘let it rip’ as far as giving Buster his can o’ food. So I fed him about an hour ago. I think he ate the entire can in two goes, it was quite remarkable, his slurpy dedication, although he eyed me each time I passed. I made him sit pretty while I said, “What day is it <<<INTERROBANG>>> SUNDAY!” and put the cat dish down.
Wheat toast and a single slice of havarti and lashings of tea to break my fast. I need to do yet another load of laundry, haul the two clean loads upstairs and put them away. This makes me sad because my clean clothes have expanded like land office gits and now even though there are FEWER clothes in those drawers the clean clothes in the return hamper now need more room like Burnaby developers. I had enough room for my clothes and I did laundry with gaiety and pride when I had SAME FLOOR ENSUITE LAUNDRY. I fucking hate being considered lazy when the world isn’t made for me, and I’m whipped for it. But this situation is of my own making, so I don’t get to make that argument. Unless you want to actively think about ableism, which at the moment, I don’t. And then…
My INCONTINENCE UNDERWEAR arrived last night. I’ve been tracking its approach with disquiet, for Apple Delivery said they were going to get it to me by 9 pm Saturday. Some (statistically, most likely a) dude is not getting a Saturday night or very likely a union paycheque to bring me something that will bring positive peace of mind and negative trails of urine. But such watch? the timing?? I’ll have to get out of bed to get it? ooo I did in fact pull the plastic wrapped package off the porch in the dark, having checked less than an hour previously. (This was about 8:10 pm.) Almost a weeks’ worth of underodoureater – must say they are not exactly Wonder Woman like. I fancy I could break the internet, in some tiresome way, if I posted pictures. I quite like the colours and the style. There’s a misty twilight colour but of course I wore the black one first because I only buy beige and navy so I can claim not to wear black all the time (that’s a lie – my tshirts are hella colourful – but a point about my evasively inadequate couture is being made.) Confidential to mOm: (I chickened out and sent it to her directly – the internet’s forever)
I would like to read a newspaper headline through your breast
Said the mammogram technician. Anyway, I have booked one for May, and it’s relatively local, so all is good.
Yesterday I did two loads of laundry, and thanks to Suzanne the bathrooms are shiny again. She’s settling into her new apartment at Kingsway and Gilley (SOOOO CLOSE) and is probably going to get Alex for an overnight soon, when her apartment’s all shoved back into corners. Katie helped her assemble all her computer-y stuff like a boss.
Slept FANTASTIC. Went to sleep just after 8, woke up around 4. I may not nap tidday, boys!!!
Jeff bought me a burger and shake from Wet Spot, and it was fantastic.
I am very close to being finished writing Mary’s letter but I think it should be at least another couple of pages longer.
No kudos this morning… what a sap I am. One must be motivated from the inside.
Recent uproars on the internet:
person 1 – I ain’t taking my shoes off in your skanky ass house cause your floors are heinous and I don’t give a shit about your cultural constructs appears magically on line. THERE ARE OPINIONS
(this is all part of the editors in NA on line venues looking for ways to shit on Asian people during the Olympics, how rude)
person 2 – I ain’t putting up with your skanky ass shoes in my house because you fucking people walk through broken glass and dogshit and then march all over my new laminate floors and you laugh when I point out the scratches
person 3 – (allegra) I brought orthotic slippers to help me keep my feet warm and keep my balance, if you prevent me from wearing my indoor slippers you’re an ableist fuck and I ain’t enterin’ your skanky ass house (I didn’t actually say this, I never found a venue, so here it is on my own site) and if your floors actually are dirty I won’t fucking care but if there is a shrine in the house of course I’ll take my fucking slippers off do you think I’m a clod, deaf to the songs of the gods?
Vocabulary review: skanky – cheap, dirty, slutty, low-rent, low-class; – ass – added for emphasis.
Got a comment hijacked by a comment bot on Reddit this morning. Didn’t even notice until someone picked it out of the crap pile for me. It’s one of the funniest lines I ever wrote so of course some witless algorithm steals it.
Jeff and I are continuing to enjoy Peacemaker (it is rude, it is funny, it is freaky, it is scary) and Leverage (well written, clips along, very very formulaic and light hearted, which compared to the grimdark we watch most of the rest of the time is GOOD).
Have some Ice from Iceland to go along with today’s fog. It was 5 degrees and rain blowing horizontal, if you wonder why it’s so dull, almost four years ago, May 2018.
ableism definition
click to embiggen
Therapy only goes so far
Good morning mOm
Check out the masks that Jan made with your fabric that I sent her!!!
VERY SOGGY and abbreviated walk at Oakalla yesterday. Brought Paul back here for Ciabatta/pulled pork and tea. The snow was all slush. No otters. Towhees though.
Paul wanted to make sure that you knew mOm, that we were walking out of the park, and talking about you, and just as we did so a pterodactyl (Dryocopus pileatus) called to my right, and its mate called from the other side of the woods, to Paul’s left. We both burst out laughing at the idea that you and p0p got represented for our walk… and as I say, Paul was adamant that I advise you.
Coming up to a romantic and emotional writing session but I’ve been working on it for about a week now in the background (thinkita thinkita). I am trying to write it without using ‘love’ or ownership words which is going to be brutally hard, but I hope to manage.
Radam Ridwan’s message on instagram this morning about beach bodies and fatphobia GIVETH ME LIFE. I love them so.
Learned this morning that a NYC police officer assaulted one of the Capitol police on Jan 6. You know that what we’re looking at is a civil war; it hasn’t been declared, but there are 500K in the ground already.
This starfish, snapped by @figureoutthesea on Insta, appears to be saying ‘fuck you!’ to the juvenile glaucous winged gull.
ableism
She really is an advocate for herself. Please read this letter if you’re a cCanadian, it’s about Bill C-7
right okay fine let me kick this in the goolies
JFC. This woman need a course correction, but I’m not giving her one in the comments. Here’s the skinnified version of what she said:
My being offended is a choice; take a few breaths before responding; consider the source; discern if it was intentional; interrogate the sense of being offended, is it you or the circumstances; locate the part of you that feels victimized; send yourself loving energy rather than going off; listen to the opposing perspective; release yourself of the duty to police other people’s views; wait 24 hours to respond; and I’m quoting #11 in full because it’s SUCH BULLSHIT I WANT YOU TO SAVOUR er EXPERIENCE ITS EXCESSIVELY SHITTY QUALITY: “11. Remind yourself that we are a collective, and that the person that “wronged” you is from the same Source as you. We all have the same “cosmic DNA”. So hating them is hating you”; see the lesson from the offence as a gift; don’t stay offended.
I’ll be simple, I’ll be brief. Imagine giving this advice to a Black person who’s reading about how Black people are terrible workers; to a trans woman who’s experiencing harassment from cis-magats on the internet; to a woman reading something about feminism and allyship from the man who raped her; to an Indigenous person being mocked for eating country food when they could be vegan and ‘save the planet’; or a Jew sent the long-nosed Pepe meme; or a disabled queer person encouraged to just die already and quit ‘draining the public purse’.
THE ADVICE LOOKS DIFFERENT NOW DOESN’T IT. Don’t tell me who I can’t hate, you peccary-approximate clickbaiter. Listen to the opposing perspective when THEY WANT TO KILL ME and or MY FRIENDS. GET FUCKED! NO, SERIOUSLY! AFTER YOU!
Kelly Albano wrote the above noted clickbait. I’d like to annoy her until she drops the pretence that she’s calm, but I have other shit to do today than tell another white woman that she’s totally fucking clueless about how this feel-good advice appears during climate crisis, fascism on the march, destroyed norms of media balance and public behaviour, kids incarcerated and separated from their parents for being brown and poor, and the future of our young people destroyed by crony capitalism. Fuck you, Kelly Albano. Stay in your bubble and quit posting crap.
Yes yes, Kelly, this is advice for something that ‘offends you’ — not for something that’s an existential threat. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, you oft-scratched scab, white women have this tremendous tendency to send shit like this to marginalized people. Yup, I see it ALL THE FUCKING TIME on twitter; they will repurpose this feelgoodery to douchewaddery in four seconds flat and some poor schlub who’s legit angry is going to get told to wind it in by a thirty-five year old white woman who’s never been stopped by the cops for anything and who thinks this shit’s a blessing on a troubled world, when it’s just going to get used to hurt people who aren’t ‘evolved enough’ – Jesus wept – not to get angry when someone’s trying to KILL THEM.
And I’m not talking on twitter about this. The idea that someone I know might forward this shite to a marginalized person who’s suffering is fuckin’ more than I can handle.
There are names for specific ableisms
Vidism is the bigotry encompassing hatred, fear and disgust of Blind people or people with differences in vision;
Audism – bigotry against people who are deaf and hard of hearing
Distantism – bigotry against people who don’t have senses which allow them to communicate when physically removed (hearing and sight)
Phonocentrism – bigotry based on perceived differences in vocal ability, fluency and timbre
bad joke
Been so long since I replaced my mattress my memory foam’s got Alzheimers.
cowriter, Paul
THIS IS KOYUKI
He is a ‘cat monk’ in Japan. Nice blink, Koyuki.
Brief walk with Paul yesterday. Weather outrageously glorious. Four hundred words of fanfic. No practicing of instruments.
Katie will never read this, or not likely read this, but this is for her.
SPRITES
PHOTO CREDIT STEPHEN HUMMEL MCDONALD OBSERVATORY FORT DAVIS TEXAS from an extensive wild storm in May of 2020
seven mutuals toasted
That means nothing to you but
I’m on twitter
I follow people on twitter
I find out that other people on twitter are following a writer who gives the most disgustingly ableist writing advice I’ve ever seen. Rants ensued. I read the advice READER IT SUCKÈD
So I found the person who gave the advice on line, found who follows me who follows her, and unfollowed them all (and I know one of them IRL, although I doubt like hell she’d remember me). They were all middled aged white writers.
that was easy, and I still follow hundreds of people
the Indigenous people I follow on twitter put baby Yoda beadwork and yawning bobcats into my feed, not pathetic ableism
the Black people (especially the disabled Black women, my god) I follow on twitter make me feel before I think new thoughts because I can’t hyper intellectualize my way into a better world
and that’s good because science says that white people are less empathetic than people who aren’t white, AND WHY WOULD THAT BE