Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
So that’s sorted; they’ll go see the fOlks afterward.
I think I am going to compose a rant, a long, excitable and childish rant about parasociality.
I tried something new at IHOP- the breakfast biscuits are nice, but quite salty.
Esther the Wonder Pig has died of natural causes, surrounded by her human dad and family friends, aged 11, at Campbellville, Ontario. She will be missed. Her shop is here.
(with a Latin beat, (alas I could not determine which one, but I will eventually) sung by a single voice with guitar, trumpet and percussion accompaniment, and descriptively it’s the ‘Dah dit dit dit Dah dit dit dit’ rhythm, whatever the hell that is)
This song is, quite obviously, dedicated to the memory of John Caspell.
The moon is high and bright
It sheds a ghostly blight
Upon a battlefield
With chilling points of light
The little things we like to do
Will make us ever close and true
Oh how I bless the moon
For I will soon
go looting corpses with you.
Their boys put up a fight
You know it don’t seem right
But we survived the fray
And now sneak out at night
The CO will find fools to scold
until he sees that shiny gold
Oh how I bless the moon
For I will soon
go looting corpses with you.
It’s two in the morning, I just wrote and orchestrated an entire song in my head, and I’m crying so hard my snerking can be heard in the next county.
Herewith ‘The Parting Gift’ a bluegrass song for Creede Lambard
Opens with banjo and the bass sneaks in, other instruments following, everyone’s playing and singing together on ‘and now the train is boarding’ to maximize harmonies and audio density
Your voice gone from the room
Your song is a recording
Not much to lift the gloom
And now the train is boarding
bass really booms, all the other instruments wire weave; the voices on top are angry and desperate
I’m glad, I’m glad
that the batteries are dead
the times we had
always better in always better in my head
Instrumental break, starting with the bass, then to mandolin, then to octave mandolin, then to banjo, then a polyphonic explosion as they all try to outshout each other.
Much sparser accompaniment and vocal arrangement, with the voices taking turns.
I lost my final home
Soon after you had left us
And now I’m doomed to roam
With the dark songs that you gave us
Only my voice I lift
My mandolin is gone
It is your parting gift
I remember you in song
Much longer and more subdued instrumental break, everybody calming down and being sad and politely taking turns.
I’m glad, I’m glad
that the batteries are dead
the times we had
always better in always better in my head
for banjo, mandolin, octave mandolin, upright bass and at least four voices, all tenors and altos but if there’s a true ‘black hole’ bass voice I’ll allow it.
The sea brooks no casual sailors.
Putin and Xi have finished their meeting and sadly, China’s ‘suggestions’ for ‘peace’ are basically Russian eating Ukraine and shitting out grain shipments and rooting around for Black Sea oil while jacking off to dreams of Romanov imperial splendour, opulence and supremacy.
The Kyiv Independent reports:
Statistics agency: Ukraine‘s GDP down 31.4% in 4th quarter of 2022. Ukraine‘s GDP fell by 31.4% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2022, compared to a 30.8% drop in the third quarter, according to the State Statistics Service.
464 children – have been killed by Russia in Ukraine.
934 – injured to varying degrees of severity.
150,000 – were kidnapped and moved to Russia. – Source unknown but it matches everything else I’ve seen.
PLEASE NOTE 11000 CHILDREN HAVE DIED IN THE YEMEN CONFLICT. (In other words brown children are getting killed too; it’s just that Ukraine was twice the land of my foremothers and I feel a connection.) I wasn’t able to figure out which proportion of the 52000 civilians killed in the Tigray conflict (Eritrea) have been children. And of course there’s more than one way to run a genocide; China sterilizing Uyghur women at the rate of 250/100000 <—- insanely high for a country with a PLUMMETING BIRTH RATE, and budgeting enough money to sterilize one third of the women of Uyghur origin in a single municipality in a single year is also horrific. It’s easier to prevent kids than waste them I guess. Source, Vox.
Maxim Tucker reports:
In some battles, like Vuhledar and Bakhmut, the Russians have a 1:1 ratio of killed to wounded, Nato says. Ukraine’s medevac procedures have helped it achieve 1:9, KIA to WIA according to statistics it shared with Nato. Half of those rescued will be able to return to active duty.
Jesus Christ on a rubber crutch, I’m glad I’m not a Russian medic. This is Putin treating his troops with the ultimate disrespect. Medevac must be a joke to them. Ukraine at least treats every combatant as precious and the difference in how their commanders treat them must be VERY OBVIOUS to the guys taking fire.
Wagner Group is apparently having to release half of the soldiers they have left because they fulfilled their contracts and managed to survive the meat-grinder. So on top of everything else, Russia’s going to have another call up, and they’ll probably be sending reform school teens and the worst scum of the Russian prison system. Good thing the first thing you hear from the Ukrainians is how to surrender without getting killed…
His dad bought him a half-sized guitar and mentioned I could help him put new strings on it. While the strings were off I polished the guitar. Alex put four out of the six strings on and took to it like a duck to water, massively enjoying using the guitar tool for all of its uses. Handy little thing. Then I tuned it, warned him it wouldn’t stay in tune and then we fixed the guitar bag. The bag had two broken zipper pulls so I handmade replacements out of leather thongs I got during my “spend money on steampunkish things” days and a steampunk style heart and a gear (Alex picked what he wanted out of the pile and picked the thong colour so it’s to his specifications). Now all the pulls work and the guitar is back in the bag. It will go home so the folks can admire all the work he did, but come back here to live when he next comes over.
We made our walk to Timmy Ho’s but I almost didn’t make it – walking so close to taking my BP meds leaves me pretty wrung out. However I managed to rejoin my party after about ten minutes of lying down once we got home. I could hear Jeff and Alex talking and laughing, which is just so homey…..
My digestion right now is completely shot. I need to not drink coffee when I’m marginal, That Much I KNow for sURe.
In a second I’ll run back downstairs and fire up Peggle on the xBox. That game is almost twenty years old, amazing. It’s on the same disc as Plants Vs Zombies and Zuma.
Everyone have a good day, y’all, and if you’re feeling poorly remember you can always call me and I’ll say ‘there there’ to absolutely no effect, but I will say it.
Special love today for Sue G., who keeps crossing my thoughtways, Derry, who will be missed by our family as long as one of us remembers her, and Susie H, who was an awesome mother, grandmother and great-grandmother and whose kindness and skill is ever a beacon of memory.
He passed a couple of days ago.
I once went into a record store in Toronto not knowing who he was but I’d heard him at Dave’s place and I was asking if they knew who sang a song with the lyrics, “Tonight the air has teeth,” and right now I’m listening to “Breaking in My Heart,” and weeping helplessly because I know.
I called Mike yesterday. He wasn’t able to drop by and did not want a visit, but we checked in and all our peeps are safe.
Got out for a walk yesterday – it wasn’t much but it broke the monotony. I went north and Jeff went south because he wanted a longer walk in the nicer park at the other end of the street. What a foolishly lucky pair we are to have someplace pleasant to walk so close.
Energy levels are bobbing about but I’m still doing better.
Suzanne comes today.
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Lovely phone calls with both Mike and Keith yesterday. Talked to Mike about the stuff he left here after the meal since fo sho he didn’t mean to and it turned out of course he’d been looking for them. Keith cooked a meal for Peggy and famille at her place and that made me very happy to hear. Paul’s test was accomplished SO FAST that Keith says they were in and out of Burnaby Hospital in 20 minutes. I ain’t heard of such a thing in a lifetime of stooging around hospitals. Frankly amazed.
Jeff Beck has passed at 78 of bacterial meningitis. And if you want proof God checked out, Henry Kissinger is still alive (he’s 99 and I can only imagine how that monster smirked when he realized he’d outlived Elizabeth.)
I lookit evvywhere in the freezer aisles, no go. I imagine if it was in a more Chinese neighbourhood it would be different. Do I REALLY want to go to T n T? er no. I’ll keep my eyes peeled when I’m out though.
Jeff and I are still enjoying the leftovers from our SUMPTUOUS REPAST™. He really wishes he’d been in better shape for the main event, but leftovers rule!
Jeri Lynn broke a rib coughing. Story of our lives these days. Jeffrey her husband is being very helpful (it’s his default setting; he’s one of the dearest and kindest of men, not that anykind else would be worthy of her, lol.)
Very much looking forward to the new season of Miss Scarlett and the Duke. Yes, it’s Victorian copaganda, but we do so love the principals, and mOm enjoys making a recommendation for a show to us once in a way.
I stole Jeff’s Oodie after I gave mine to mOm and I’m practically living in it; if I’m wearing it I don’t need the heater on in my room at night.
Thinking with longing of my friends and family today; Dave in his east facing eyrie at Bathurst and Sheppard, the jasmine and the sandalwood. Peggy in her sprawling house filled with family and TOoo MucH sTUff. All the Dunnett folk across the country and elsewhere, madly sending greetings on the chat line. All the Statpower folks. I could have seen Jerome and didn’t. I’m not exactly phobic about public spaces but I ‘git anxious’ that’s for sure. Mike in his west facing eyrie along Kingsway. No sunbathing in December on his balcony, that’s for sure. Alexis ensconced in the family eyrie in the West End. Feeding hummingbirds; tracking our insaniam producendo weather. Jarmo and Susanna and Ninja the kitty, grieving still and always, since Ville (may his name be remembered) passed over the holidays. Tammy – it wasn’t enough, what I saw of her. Glenn – how I would enjoy just sitting and drinking coffee with you somewhere, to roll all this madness and sadness around and try to get a grip on it. Rob P, who told me YEARS ago to watch Farscape. Sue and Marylke and Katie S. and Ivy and Madelyn. Talks and shows and canoe trips and their deep listening. M&D and Ontie Mary. Missing Jim. I barely saw him these last five years, but I can’t think about his death without an inner wail that comes from my toes.
I should call Jan. There are a lot of shoulds. Too many.
This is my heart’s longing, that you all be well and facing 2023 with the love and equanimity we will all need. It’s gonna be rough folks and we need to be helpful and soft to counteract it all.
Feeling calm and rested. Suzanne’s car is toast so she paid for a cab here and I back – it all worked out.
mOm and Suzanne exchanged phone greetings via me, which was awesome.
One of Suzanne’s youngest son’s friends overdosed in jail this past week. This makes three people who have died of toxic drugs, known to our family, in the last two years.
I was going to have insomnia, so at 10 pm I took a Robax and slept until a little before 4. Done with my brain exercises. Time to face the day and run the dishwasher.
I want to cuddle Ryker and Alex but I am patient.
I have so many wonderful stories, lived so many wonderful moments with him and his family. Jan was calm on the phone but I was not. I made a donation to Morrison Headwaters and promised to send her biscotti.
I am so sad. I just feel gutted. He was the best of men.
I haven’t received official word, but it appears we’ve lost a family member.
Paul got to his appointment yesterday. It was dark when we got back and I realized it was the first time I had driven in the dark for years. Unpleasant; I managed to get lost in my own old neighbourhood for about two seconds (I turned right one turn too early, had to make a left turn onto 16th during rush hour. LOL no.)
It’s 3 am and I’m up so I’m making coffee.
Gosh I’m sad right now.
pOp is on the mend, word comes.
She forwarded a bunch of housefilk pics from The Dawn of Time, let us just say the best part of 15 years. That’s her, Tom L, not sure and Peggy on standup bass (probably sometime around 2007 but why let facts intrude.)
Emotionally the effect of seeing Paul every day for a week is difficult. However he was perfectly happy to be left at Peggy’s at 4 pm, which was my “I’ve been doing unpaid family related babysitting for two different generations for eight hours and I haven’t pull a full work shift since 2017 so I’m done” o’clock. Yes it was nice to see Alex yesterday (he showed off more pictures, and I loaned him the Kaossilator and Keith finally got home from his morning of difficult appointments) and I fed him and got fed on Keith’s tortellini stew (nice because Paul plated and warmed it for me) but I was ready to go home at one and I hadn’t even made it to Peggy’s yet. So he either walked home (1.9 k in perfect weather, well within his max cap) or Jeff C, being one of the good ones, gave him a lift.
When I got home Jeff had supper ready for me. I nearly burst into tears I was so relieved. Then we watched Farscape and Elementary and tried to watch Iké (a movie) but Jeff bailed.
It was delightful and sad to hear Jeff C. relate the circumstances around his father’s death and funeral (the sound system went berserk and yelled in God Voice BE NOT AFRAID while Jeff was at the lectern which is just typical Jeff; the world is an anecdote waiting to be recounted and his life is merely one strand of it.) He also talked about family history and it was very interesting. His father was abandoned by his mother to his grandmother when he was tiny. He had continuity of care but you never get over your mother going WELP DINNA CANNA. And he was organized enough to arrange to buy an anniversary card and sign it while he still could, so he was in the ground four months when his widow got the card…. very organized. Also kind of I don’t know what word to use, uncanny mebbe.
Jeri Lynn spun, using her extremely sophisticated modern spinning wheel (many bits to fall off, and they all tried to at some point), and I got to feel her skeins of unspun wool, including some baby alpaca MAN YOU WANT SOFT you will go into a swoon touching it. She was also previously baking, rolling out spice cookies with a complicated rolling pin when we arrived.
Cindy and Jas were there making Christmas cookies (the real point of the weekend) because Peggy causes someone to bring the spare stove upstairs and then they (the American Thanksgiving baking team) cook nonstop for a couple of days. I am subsidizing lunch today and it will be either ARGO or Big Star. I’m thinking Big Star and I’ll pick up a side salad. Jas was wearing a t-shirt that said ASK ME ABOUT MY HOST ORGANISM and I complimented him on it.
Brooke was in a corner doing a 100 pattern blackwork circle sampler (in multiple colours of course) and swapping Pokémons with Jeri Lynn, Greg was there ingesting hot chocolate and computer games (much as Alex would do were he there).
Finally put gas in the Echo Paul loaned me. I’m considering taking it to someplace to get the fluids checked. I won’t do it and I don’t know when Paul last did.
We didn’t bring instruments. It was my judgement that a) there are enough quality guitars in the house LOL and we haven’t seen Jeff and Jeri Lynn in yonks so let’s visit and do the music the next day (they leave today but later).
I’ll be picking Paul up around 11:30 and then we’ll drive over and I’ll order lunch for the folks. I’ll also pick up a bunch of side salads so we get our veggies.
I feel beat and I just woke up. It will be another long day; enjoyable, but it’s hard.
from theconcealedweapon on tumblr:
What an autistic person says: “How long is it going to take?”
What they mean: “I want to know whether to activate my short term waiting mode where I just wait and do nothing else, or activate my long term waiting mode where I occupy my mind with something else. I fully understand that both are possibilities, and I have no problem whatsoever with either one, but I want more information so I can best adapt to the situation.”
What neurotypical people hear: “I am impatient and demand that everything I want happen right now. Please scold me and publicly humiliate me for it.”
I’ll be talking to the fam about how much I can do with Paul and how many hours in one day/week I can manage, because if this keeps up I’ll get sick. These days I spend so much time every day crying I feel like I’m sick already.
pot8um on twitter:
So many things are out of kids’ control— uncomfy clothes, loud noises, icky food, confusing rules… As an adult, I make my own choices. I wear, eat, and do what I like, because if I don’t, I get overloaded. That’s why I don’t remind you of your 8-year-old autistic nephew.
Well I committed an emotional mistake in front of my grandson tonight and I’ll be lucky if I haven’t scarred him for life. Anyway I decided to show him video of what his mum looked like when she was Riker’s age and there is actually video of her, she didn’t get completely eaten by second baby syndrome and not have any pictures. He got to see John when he was slender and hirsute, and then there was Kaitlyn as a toddler and then Grandma Caspell. I backed out of that and then we watched Keith jump out of an aircraft in a tandem jump – had a video taken as a souvenir, and that was awesome, although thanks to the swipe of the passing breeze across his brow his expression was not always as dignified as he might have preferred in retrospect.
He got to see how red and enormous his mother’s infantile hemangioma was – and how it completely vanished. I had a hemangioma when I was born too.
Then I found the video, before in the brilliant sunshine taking off from Lake Weslemkoon, and after, of the crash at Buttonville Airport that nearly took the lives of Paul, Wally Solotow, me and both the kids – Katie in utero.
Hearing my own voice as Paul took video of the crashed aircraft at the darkened side of the runway, calmly saying that Keith took no permanent harm and that if he was experiencing discomfort he’d be crying, put me in no stable state of mind. I’m fine and I’ll be fine since I have a minor child in the house but I IMMEDIATELY changed the name of the file so I never have to watch it again without a goddamned content warning. Bugger me but that was awful. Of course I knew then that Paul was taking video, but the great river of time had released me from that memory, and now I was watching the lopsided aircraft in the terrible light and there it was in realtime.
I ordered mickey d’s for supper for Alex and then forgot to order Jeff’s burger.
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didn’t get the wordle this morning
sigh
Jeff very kindly got me a copy of ‘Road Food’, Misha Collins’ show about regional US cuisine. Really enjoyed the first episode. Jeff is no fan of Vietnamese cuisine, but I am; watching the show start with Pho for breakfast (when I used to have it after I got off midnights all the time at the 24 hour place (name keeps changing) on Kingsway) was MOST enjoyable, I could practically smell it through the screen. His former castmates have started a new ‘Winchester property’, it airs for the first time this month.
We watched ‘Catherine called Birdy’ and enjoyed it mightily. The closing credits are absolutely delightful, and everything beforehand was very well done; a perfect star vehicle for the inimitable Bella Ramsey (previously from Game of Thrones and Worst Witch.) I find it amusing that if I’d known Lena Dunham was behind it I probably would have given it a miss, but many of the writing and interpersonal lapses of her past incarnations are not seen here. A woman’s allowed to get smarter. I won’t infest my site with it, but if you care, google Lena Dunham controversy and be prepared to wonder if she has any friends who don’t share their drugs with her. I mean, I could easily say a hundred controversial things before breakfast but she acted like she literally didn’t understand what she was being called on half the time, and dissolved into tears at charges of racism.
Please note that if you’re a settler accused of racism, it’s probably true! Screaming about it doesn’t help. Sit with it and stay off social media until you can represent yourself as a person capable of self-improvement. Not saying I am that person. I have moved my views somewhat but I’m in the post-wallow stage of antiracism (sample of wallow: ah me! hoW CoudL I haveKN OWN … my PAreNTS did their best – there were only two people of colour in my entire grade school, blah blah blah yes I’m 63 and white in Canada, of course I bathed in racism and ableism erryday) in which I feel a brisk disdain for white crybabies and prefer deeds to words on the subject.
There are 50K Beavis and Butthead fanfics on AO3. Jest reviewing my life choices over here.
5278 words on Part II.
For Trotsky Tuesday, please enjoy the famous combination of anarchist ideals like free love and nudity plus scientific excellence embodied in this wikipedia article about ´Élisée Reclus.
I’ve gotten to the stage in the pandemic where I’ve now imagined all my friends and relatives dying of COVID (except Onty Mary because she just WON’T, THAT’S WHY! I DON’T HAVE TO EXPLAIN THAT TO ANYONE) or sequelae and gone to their funerals in my mind. Somehow I get to arrange all those funerals too so I get things how I want them. As you know I enjoy funerals and memorial services and do like a good one. Anyway, if I sound like I’ve been randomly crying throughout the day, here’s what made me cry.
A newborn calf with really bad respiration after a tough birth, dying in its owner’s arms. A Ukrainian woman making a video for her boyfriend on the front and her apartment takes a direct hit while she’s making it. Dozens of Canadian disabled people on twitter begging for food because they have nothing in their house for Thanksgiving. Not being able to do Thanksgiving with the family. Being too lazy to cut olives for pizza. Wondering if this phone call to my mOm will be the last one. Being glad that my daughter trusts me enough to talk to me about important stuff. Being terrified to lose this housing situation. (This place is literally 50% cheaper than any even close to equivalent housing situation in all of the lower Mainland.) Being so tired that I forgot my evening meds. Every time I go to the grocery store now, I cry. I cry about the abundance of food that’s going to disappear into the maw of climate change. I cry every time I put something like coffee or almonds or chocolate in the cart. Not much, I’m not sobbing, but I’m leaking.
The pandemic is dragging us all through a slow motion mass casualty event. We’ve been abandoned by politicians but the wise expect that. What we never expected was neoliberalism is such an indelible feature in our world that it has made the people we thought we could trust – the public health authorities and epidemiologists – into villainous murderers.
During and after the Great Mortality (as the black death was known at the time) people became much more selfish, lonely, profligate, violent and distractable (by contemporary accounts, anyway, as I read in Tuchman’s ‘The Distant Mirror’.)
It’s all happening again now, and I’m in the middle of it with everyone else. These moments of sadness are because it’s easy for me to feel sad. Many beautiful things are dying, but we must rush on regardless and be adults and hide our grief.