Category: Masks

slime bunny

Giant African Snails make great pets, said no one ever, except some people do keep them.

r/aww - The Giant African Snail. It's a slimy bunny

 

I made an online order. They said they delivered the printer ink… it was a yoga mat. I did actually order a yoga mat, but the one they sent is the size of a bum imprint. I am not confused and angry! I am just confused!

r/Art - Maskissing, Johnson Tsang, Digital, 2020

This image shows two offwhite masks, formed into human faces and kissing. Maskissing, Johnson Tsang, Digital, 2020

 

Bee democracy. I think I want to read that book. Did I tell you Lois and Bob have bees. They had an empty hive and put attractant in it a couple of years ago, no dice. Then this year a swarm appeared and moved in. Now we know how they made the decision! By consensus!

a baby hummingbird drinks from a raspberry while in a woman's palm. It has just voided onto her hand.
Baby hummingbird

Baby hummingbird drinking from a raspberry and peeing cause that tiny bod ain’t got no room to store anything

stolen from @ddoniolvalcroze on twitter

Image

LOLOLOLOL

Okay so in this picture of two merged transit ads, there was a KFC ad underneath and a VW car ad on to…. the mashup, with the corporate logos on either end, reads as follows:

A car powered on ~ free range chickens

& designed by a team ~ of hand picked potatoes

Experience driving on ~ Mushrooms & Coke

Stolen from @ghostwoods on twitter

Image

I died when I saw this. It’s a picture of a man dressed in  ice cream cone – as in, looking exactly like a man sized cartoon-eyed ice cream cone –  taking a selfie in the BR store bathroom with the legend “How tf am I essential worker”

I stole from @dannolan, goodness alone knows who made it or how he tripped over it.

equilibrium

The president of Belarus shut off the internet in his country to prevent the spread of a viral video in which a large audience of workers started shouting at him to resign. (apparently he said the only way you’re getting rid of me is killing me and he got the response he oh so richly warranted.) The tankies are sad for him. What is a tankie? It’s a fascist who wants statist communists with brutal regimes to be perfect and powerful. They defend governments like North Korea. No, I’m not joking, I wish I was.

I have re-achieved emotional equilibrium. I wrote another 700 words after I finished the last edit to my blog yesterday. Jeff took me to breakfast. I wear a mask at IHOP whenever I’m not at my own table. I know it’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing. My current fave mask is the one I got from Vancouver Aquarium. Next fave is the first one I made, the white one. It’s very comfortable and the most adjustable. Next fave is a standard medical mask. I ordered a bunch more cloth masks from an Indigenous supplier; one of them is a brilliant blue with Coastal art hummingbirds all over it so I bet I know where that one will end up. The other ones I think have stylized orcas, I might be wrong. Kima would be pissed.

There is fresh tea. I make a couple of pots a day and transfer most of it into the iced tea container, once it’s cooled off.

Operation Pee Constantly is still going well. The last lingering wackiness amidships from the kidney stones and the mild infection afterwards is done, thank glob. I’m still getting used to exactly how MUCH more water I have to drink every day to keep this happy state of affairs going, but hopefully I will retrain my body to properly experience thirst.

I am still drinking black tea, but it’s not recommended for a kidney diet, so I’m trying to have at most two cups a day.

Katie recommended bocconcini pearls for cheese and no sodium cheese is a wonderful damned thing, let me assure you. I’m also drinking the low sodium V-8, which tastes weird, which makes me want to put Worcestershire sauce in it, which vitiates its low salt status. La la la. Change of habits continues. Jeff hasn’t minded the not buying treats regimen – we have a whole line of treats we bought pretty much every time we went out to Save-On but I’ll have to make do with home made cinnamon buns, scones and cakes, what a tragedy.

There’s a Buy-Low opening August 26 walking distance from here; they’ll have in house butcher and bakery, among other things. I know people who dislike this chain but they are distinctly cheaper than Save-On, and possibly they will deliver, so we shall see. Anyway it’s close enough to walk. It will be interesting to see where to park for this critter and which roadway one exits from.

Glucose tolerance test on Friday. This will be the fourth time in my life I’ve taken it. This time it’s likely that the DIABEETUS DONE GOT ME although of course I can always adjust my diet (not really, but).

Used the word vitiate in a tweet today. Thought I was using it correctly, looked it up anyway, I was.

mood crashed again

after a couple of days of feeling better I’m feeling iffy again. I think I’ll force myself out of the house to go to a farmer’s market up at Brentwood this morning. Jeff hasn’t shown any interest in going, so I’ll suit up and take the bus, since it’s just one hop.

The pumpkins and the two surviving sunflowers are doing well, and I did get some carrots.  Everything else in my garden sucks because you have to water things. My mOm knows about how to get things to grow but I’m forgetful and lazy and those are two things a farmer cannot be.

Five hundred words on the fanfic. Inexperienced character is being exposed to ETOH, hijinks ensue. (ETOH means al k hall)

Image Erica Henderson, Eisner-winning artist, made this

@ericafails on twitter

THE US IS A FAILED STATE

Image

Image

Looking Inside Myself, 2002, carved whalebone by Susie Silook, artist of Siberian Yupik, Inupiaq descent

Image

Rogers, 2012, Post Gazette

Rob Rogers was fired from the Post Gazette in 2018 because all mainstream media outlets in the US are owned by right wing oligarchs

ah the good old days – open in a new tab and it should be (just barely) readable.

featured-1918-pandemic-1597264987762.jpg

Family visit

Katie, sans Alex as he is with his father, is in Victoria with the grands. Paul is out of quarantine which effectively was the kids telling him he couldn’t live with them for fourteen days if he was going to the US for visits. He’s doing quite well, we went for a socially distant walk yesterday; I’m not wearing shields any more, I’m back to face masks.

After weeks of people wearing masks, Paul and I were the only people walking around in the 12th Avenue School park wearing face protection yesterday.

Bill Nye

Oh Jeff, I heard people banging metal super hard on the roof of the Catholic High School while we were walking around yesterday… maybe they’re fixing the THEM! ant noise coming from the roof of the school.

IT’S A STRIDULATING SOUND OF GREAT EAR PENETRATION so we’ll be glad when they fix it.

Statue of a Selkie from the Faroe Islands

shlepping trip

I am very happy that I’m home, but it’s also lovely to have FOOOOOOODICLES and treeeeeeaaaticles.

Walmart was a ghastly ordeal but I didn’t have another place to go for the stuff I needed.

My Vancouver Aquarium masks arrived (including one for Alex) but paypal refunded my money. I’ve now sent two emails to the address associated with the purchase but Pauline, whoever the fuck she is or isn’t, was only prepared to give me a website address WITH NO CUSTOMER SERVICE EMAIL.

 

faaaaack

as good a day as

at 5 am I walked the face shields over to Planet Bachelor and briefly saw our grandson (Paul got up to take a leak while I was there staggering across the eye like a zombie in the background, grunting at my greeting) and Katie, who gave me the joy of her company for a brief moment, and a lift home. Raining off and on all day.

Around 10 am Jeff and I trekked out and committed 6 WHOLE ERRANDS – me in medical mask and face shield, Jeff in his homemade mask; Shoppers Drug Mart, The eyecare place, Kin’s Farm Market, the bank machine in the Colonial City Mall, gas and treats at the 7-11. We parted ways to increase efficiency and achieved our goals in very smart order, retreating to the joys of Time Team and New Tricks, among other TV offerings, and things like laundry and dishes and making a lovely fresh salad and bringing new guys up to speed on the old server, for the rest of day. Cold chicken sliced over salad with a side of fresh corn on the cob for dinner.

It was a productive day, and the anxiety level in the house is way down.

I know that it is ludicrous that I feel safer walking around with a facemask but I really do. I’m shedding 95 percent less crap when I do, and I’m definitely less of a danger to the people around me, even if they look appalled and give me a wide berth as I pass. I’m going to double up whenever I go out now.

Miss Margot with a flicker feather in her fur

poem ‘the open tap’

fantastical lights from faraway places
retain their moment in time and I mine
settling myself into the gendered slurry
that is English

those lights
candles for my bath
as I stub the life from this lepisma saccharina

here’s a snapshot
it will be six months later
during a pandemic
when I finally stir myself
to clean up its corpse

grey in life, grey in death
almost indistinguishable from the grout

I can’t write today, I can’t
I’m a mote, should be mute, a little scrotey
blemish on the terrifying backside of English letters
all jealousy, a tunnel through inadequacy
reaching up through all this debris
for a garden of kindness
a shield against the noise

instead
a mask

over the top of my face
years ago I got the plague mask
years ago

and on the bottom of my face
a white rectangle, broken into diamonds
a fabric diamond on my face
I never had one for my hand
I am a metagraph of ‘something into something else’

my mind and my DNA

once I had a face and now
because I love you
I do not

schnitzel, not korean

Paul and I went for a walk. New Generations Grocery is closed except for pickup orders so that didn’t pan out, but Paul found the last of the Granville Island Lion Winter Ale and I succumbed to one and a half of them when I got home. We also picked up schnitzel from the Balkan House restaurant and so that was a 2k walk, half of it under load, so no surprise I was tired. We ate on the deck for social distancing (I got SO HOT in the mask, how will I cope in hot weather, I have to think of a dodge pretty soon or I’m going to be quite circumscribed in terms of what I can do and where I can go.)

I was fine for allergies for a while but I’m now feeling tender in the brain again.

Damn that schnitzel was good. Literally just got up and devoured some out of the take out container for late lunch or early dinner. The spuds were fine as well. NOM.

Painted on Oh! Zzhu Sam restaurant on Edmonds

 

 

 

still giggling

so…. Dave and I were missing each other on Skype and finally we connected. I spent… it feels like I spent the first ten minutes of the call going On and fucking On, as one does, about how intelligent Buster is.

Mookie, Dave’s cat, promptly got up on the back of his chair, put two paws up on the bookshelf, and then, delicate, delicate, delicately extended one claw AND YOINKED DAVE’S WATER GLASS OVER. It didn’t break but Dave had to get up and get a towel. I got to watch the whole thing and instead of doing anything useful like warning Dave I screamed with laughter because I am, not to put too fine a point on it, a total weeb.

Then he jammed his hairy little face into the camera and for one brief second I thought I was disappearing into a tiger’s maw.

There are no eggs in Toronto, at least not for delivery.

 

Image