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Has this ever happened to you?

Someone sends you a link on ‘the email’, but the site wants you to pay? Whatever happened to information wanting to be free?

Or you follow a link on twitter and PAYWALL hits you right between the eyes?

Copy and paste that puppy’s URL into textise.net, and NOT ONLY will all the poorly chosen ‘news’ photos disappear, but all the ads will too! just read the text of the article without being swayed by a deliberately bad photo!

THANKS TEXTISE.NET you’re the BEST

gorgeous day

I suppose what I should have been doing was mowing the lawn, but if it’s not raining today that’s what I’ll do. Maybe I’ll put my two loads of laundry away LOL PROBS NO.

Tested negative for COVID again.

Putin didn’t mention victory in his victory speech. Nor did he mention nukes. Soft good traitor tyrant.

12623, I think the writing drain is unclogged and I should be able to go. It’s hard to match the 4000 word day I had earlier on this story, sigh, but at least I have all the protagonists herded into one place psychologically for their life changing phone call.

Katie called first thing yesterday and PULLED ME OUT OF THE BATHROOM and then we howled laughing, thinking ‘MY TODDLER NEVER LETS ME POO IN PEACE’ and how that just never changes because THEN WE PHONED OUR MoM and got her away from her exercises so she’s PUFF PUFF PUFF it’s so PUFF PUFF PUFF lovely to hear your – PUFF PUFF oh that’s better – voices.  Katie and I also breathed sad and mad at each other about RvW because what the fuck can you do.

I didn’t hear from Keith but I heard he was playing with Ryker when I Katie called and that was good enough for me. Later in the day, Tammy, bless her, called, and we had a good long chinwag. Trying to time the market is a hard and always potentially expensive game. Paul and I got lucky, is all. Toronto is not a good market right now.

I got amazing feedback about my ‘activism’ from back when I actually was an activist and not just a keyboard warrior yesterday and it was lovely. I’m not going to repost it but to remind myself in future, 1100 reddit karma points for my welcoming congregation post was COMPLETELY UNEXPECTED and I cried at some of the comments. REPRESENTATION IS IMPORTANT and in this case it was an asexual saying ‘thanks for making me feel seen’ and that was a moment that made me feel THIS IS WHAT I WANT FROM LIFE.

So now I suppose I need to be more of an activist. I’m doing what I can given that I never leave my rental. LOL.

I miss my filking buddies. This is the ‘other’ Jeffrey in my life, lol, and what a lovely man he is, married to an even lovelier person, Jeri Lynn (well she makes homemade raspberry soft candies that taste like a trip to the Hesperides so of course I like her better.) Jeffrey gave me his dulcimer capo, can you believe it? what a guy.

 

Kyiv is still Ukrainian

Putin’s a month into his war and he’s achieved so few of his original objectives that some commentators, while not exactly mocking him, are starting to worry that he’s being thwarted, which makes him prone to lash out and be dangerous and threaten nukes, repeatedly. He’s already put at least two hundred children in the ground. Why, if it wasn’t for the wars on the populations of Yemen and Syria, which Russia’s armed forces have helped to prosecute these past many years, and previous Russian outings in Ukraine and Chechnya, I wouldn’t have anything to compare it to.

Learned about SKIF’s, the Ukrainian country/urban tank killer, whose name literally means ‘Scythian’. They’re ferociously effective in modern warfare, cheap like borscht compared to the arms it can kill. It’s a modern day crossbow in terms of its asymmetrical warfare effects – it can take down a person, a vehicle, a tank, a chopper OR – with luck – a jet.

Two kudos overnight, very surprised by one of them; one of the stories I posted to AO3 is a complete outlier because the central character dyad is not destiel, it’s a three person triad that turns into a polyamorous household full of kids, and all this while the lead character is dealing with CRUSHING depression, new fatherhood, and coming to terms with being bisexual. So it has a million feels and some very dramatic and technical sex scenes and it’s not like anything else I’ve posted. (SO it doesn’t get much love.) The other kudo, from another person, is for my most popular fic, which has more than 6000 hits now, and a 4% kudo to hit ratio.

Weather kinda miserable and damp.

very complex ‘tholian web’  migraine imagery just now. It’s probably pollen triggered, it’s just been HORRIBLE, how crappy the allergens have been making me and Jeff feel. I feel brain dead, and then I perk up a bit, and then there’s another puff of cedar pollen and BRAIN DED AGIN. Now it’s a square full of vibrating chevrons; now it’s fuzz. Now it’s fading. dammit I need coffee.

Report has come that one of the Dunnetteers from Toronto has passed of cancer. The kind words are coming in and people are speaking well of the dead; she sounds like she was a superior sort of person and we’re also told she was well cared for, and having been through sitting with Tom (even though it wasn’t much and I didn’t materially assist, not really) I am glad that she was, and that no one stinted on the morphine.

Wordle in three this morning. Somebody I follow on twitter made a hint, that the word seemed apropos today, and that really helped. Didn’t hurt that I guessed the first letter of the word right out of the gate.

R value across Canada has dipped way below one. We’ll still get another surge as the new variant comes through (BA.2) but it won’t be as bad. I feel safer and I’m not as worried about my loved ones, especially my immunocompromised loved ones, but you have to watch the numbers…

Laundry’s all done, now I have to haul it upstairs and put it away. The rug survived being laundered, thank god, often the plastic backing comes off and then Jeff has to disassembled the machine to clear it out.

Time to go back to the world of Omar and Brad and Blossom.

Katie’s making plans to go back to work; I think childcare is going to be split between Suzanne and the (humph, advised not to post this descriptive but possibly offensive soubriquet) other grandma, with me as a backup I guess. There are many advantages to this as one can see, and one can only marvel at Ryker’s good fortune that when so many kids have no grandma’s he ended up somehow with three.

March Madness continues, and I’m adding new words to my conlang, admiring the hairdos of the contestants and their ability to pluck balls out of midair, steal them from each other and otherwise perform feats of athletic magic.

Ted Cruz the douche extraordinaire, brandishing a book which he very obviously has neither opened nor read, repurposed by the lovelies at Working Class History (on finer social media platforms everywhere):

This was a possible Hair Sinister cover:

Kitundu took this picture

Image

It’s a song sparrow. Gentleman who took this is a Black birder residing in the US – among MANY other things, me calling him a birder is like calling Miles Davis a trumpet player. His website is kitundu.com, and it is full of wonders. Including the video of a phonoharp study. I had no notion there was such a thing as a phonoharp until today. It’s great music. Nature photos galore. A thought-provoking designer too.

Hannah Gadsby

Many thanks to Alex for taking me to Hannah Gadsby when her good friend C. couldn’t make it. Told her to make sure Darwin sees “The Compleat Practical Joker” the next time he’s at the fOlks in Victoria.

If you haven’t seen Nanette, her earlier show which took the internet by storm, I’d advise it, but pack tissues.

Funny fandom note; Misha Collins, whose graceful corpus (along with the rest of the Company of Mad Bad Boys in Plaid from Supernatural) has inspired hundreds of thousands of words of smut’n’otherstuff from YersTruly, mentioned yesterday morning on social media that he’d rewatched Nanette with tears rolling down his face and then about two hours later Alex texts with hey wanna see Hannah Gadsby, and I thought ‘that’s interesting, I thought I was going to the Heritage Grill for the Jam tonight but guess not!’

It was a fantastic show. Superlatively intellectual, emotional and FUNNY on all cylinders.

She doesn’t like antivaxxers. SHE ADDRESSED THEM DIRECTLY and it was SOMETHING I ASSURE YOU

Her little rip through art history, much as in the previous show, was fucking hilarious.

Alex and I didn’t spend longer than two minutes at any point during the show without laughing. HARD VERY HARD XQUUEEEEZE ME

Alex and I both contacted each other after the show to ensure we got home.

Went to see a feminist comedian…. yeah

the end of a perfect day

apart from misgendering Cade Tinney when I introduced them, yesterday, for which I apologized and was forgiven by them and the con com I had the best possible con.

Thanks to my fellow judges for the songwriting contest.

Daniela Festi was an amazing choice as an interfilk guest, like flat out fucking amazing. Her musicality, professionalism and versatility was mindblowing.

Vanessa Cardui has a beautiful voice and penetrating wit and verve as a lyricist.

Rhiannon’s Lark, aka Alyssa Yeager, a zero defect singer, a great and funny lyricist, a good guitarist and hoo boy can she run a harmony looper like nobody’s biz.

Eric and Lizzie of Cheshire Moon were great guests and entertaining as heck.

Sunnie Larsen IS A GODDESS fight me.

It was so good to see Beth Runnerwolf.

Hung with Chaos for a while.

Emailed Jesse my Cthulthu Mars Bar story.

JOHN AND JEN ON SOUND my goodness HOW LUCKY ARE WE as Paul said, on both sides of the mic!!!

Ecumenifilk was great, played Lift Every Voice and Sing on the ukelele AND when I talked about how I would never sing it (just play it) the only poc in the room thanked me for my sensitivity.

BEAUTY AND HAPPY MEMORIES ALL ‘ROUND.

gaw damn

So the government having spun and ground and popped its neck vertebrae has now coughtèd up another 2700 dollars this time for GST/HST.

Unbelievable. Jeff suggested sending fleurs to the woman at RevCan and I’m seriously considering it… anonymous, of course, so as to not have the appearance of a bribe.

Her voice – so peaceful and kind.

The exact opposite of what you’d expect.

Finally did a word count on HOTM can you believe it the rewrite is now almost 30K long!!!

Sad Puppies

A regressive bunch of almost entirely guys has hijacked the Hugo nominations so that their slate is most likely to win.

Info here, here and here (one of the puppies, just to be fair).

 

My response on facebook:

 

They can game the system for a couple of years, and then they’ll be back to crying. The test of their horsemalarkey will come from sales. If the almighty free hand of the market makes it rain for their publishers because the Sad Puppies widdled on the Hugos, then they get to gloat. If, as I predict, all this posturing means nothing to the bean counters, their victory will be virtual and ephemeral. In the meantime, it’s never been easier to find whatever kinds of fiction you enjoy, and even to find ways to avoid bad cover art, which seems to be a problem with the Pupsters.

I intend to write contemporary SF that messes with intent with every one of the Sacred Tropes of the Golden Age of Privileged SF, torches the evidence and makes sidewalk chalk with the ashes.

And my last word.

 

Ordination

I am still processing how beautiful the rite of ordination was.  UU churches ordain ministers, not other ministers or entire denominations, as is the case in other forms of Christianity. There were people from all over the Pacific northwest; the aesthetics team OUTDID themselves in coming up with a stunning, relatively inexpensive and mobile layout; there were enormous swathes of colour contrasting nicely with the shining wood of the hall.

Emotionally, it was a roller coaster.

Anyway, like I said, still processing.