Category: Deaths & Obits

RIP Meat Loaf

He was apparently once referred to in the NY Times as “Mr. Loaf”. Most famous for his association with Jim Steinman the songwriter and producer, and for his star turn as Eddie on both stage and screen in Rocky Horror, he did a lot of acting on network TV in the last ten years of his life and I for one was always glad to see him. He didn’t get vaccinated against COVID (there’s no evidence he did, anyway) and that’s what he died of. The talent is not bigger than science alas.

Jeff’s all over his post vax discomfort. Today I’m going to feed crows, load dishes, run laundry and enjoy this brief moment during which my room is tidy again. Thank you Suzanne. SHE FOUND AN APARTMENT IN BURNABY I’m so happy for her.

at wit’s end

My doc was a no show for my last appointment, when I was supposed to get my prescriptions updated, and I got victim blamed after half an hour of trying to get through to the clinic for not realizing she doesn’t do phone renewals. I knew that, I just COULDN’T GET A FUCKING APPT and now I can’t for FOUR WEEKS.

I’m about to run out of meds that, if I don’t take them, will cause me to be at risk of stroke or brain bleed so FUCK MY BLOOD PRESSURE DURING A PANDEMIC, RIGHT?

ANYWAY if I die, please ask Jeff who my doctor was so you can send her my regards posthumously. I’m so angry and scared I’m losing it, hard.

AND I WAS SUPPOSED TO GIVE BLOOD TODAY and I can’t because I was reluctantly given an emergency appointment that my doc may very well bail on that falls at the same time. I’M TRYING TO BE SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE HERE and fuck my life, seriously.

 

RIP bell hooks

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. – bell hooks

“No black woman writer in this culture can write “too much”. Indeed, no woman writer can write “too much”…No woman has ever written enough.” – bell hooks

Endlessly quotable, humane, tough and loving, bell hooks has gone to her ancestors and the hall of remembrance knows her name.

Sadness and memory

I last saw Ville, Susanna and Jarmo’s son, on August 2. I gave him a slider I’d just ordered at Subway as soon as I saw him; he looked like he could use it. He looked a little underslept but otherwise fine. We had a family meal with Jarmo and Susanna and Mike, at Earl’s on Lougheed. We were laughing and talking and almost giddy with being out of the house and SOCIALIZING.

He’s passed away.

He was about the same age as my kids. He was good-looking and kind and musically gifted and smart.

The tainted drugs on our streets are killing people.

I’m meltingly sad for his parents, who must be in a terrible state.

Raining hard today

Tom’s memorial service is today. I gave him that hat. Yesterday we gathered at Peggy’s to rehearse and eat Chinese food (I brought home Singapore style noodles) and I got home about 8:30. It’s almost giddy making to be experiencing SOCIAL INTERACTION and then I got home and had a panic attack for about an hour (thought I was having a heart attack until I realized that the pain went away when I was breathing properly).  Talked to Brooke about how to wean off of Inderal, which was super useful.

Jeff C GAVE me his dulcimer capo but I got him back by paying for dinner. It’s so lovely to be able to sing in a group again.

Sad news

Tom died today – yesterday now. I wept briefly but now I just feel numb and my heart quails thinking of the weight the kids and Peggy are bearing.

I am so glad I went to see him that last time, he was close then and I made sure there was a little laughter in the room, and I played my uke for him. And I’m glad I didn’t go after that. Minutes are precious.

I have so many thoughts and they are all very good thoughts I’m sure but they never get very far, and even if they did they wouldn’t belong here.

He was a good, kind, funny, hardworking man and we may see him echoed in his children but his vices and his virtues will never be assembled in that way again, and it’s so fucking unfair I can’t tell you and I’m up way past my bedtime and I need to try to sleep again.

 

 

Ten year anniversary

On this day ten years ago, my first husband Phillip passed away in Toronto of complications of diabetes and kidney disease.

I think about him all the time but I don’t talk about him much. My last conversation with him was kindly, but very sobering. I saw what happened to a man who gets sick with a disease that requires a lot of management, but who has an executive dysfunction (like me, Phil had terrifically bad ADD, but only time has allowed me to look back and see it.) It’s easy to be drawn to someone who has the same bent and creative fire….

He was a remarkable man, and if he could forgive me for my cruelties, and I forgive him for his, I won’t beat myself up too hard for my failures in being his partner. I hope you’re listening to T. Rex playing new music and working on model cars, while wearing a special outfit covered with cats, wherever you are, Phil.

Not a single photo of him appears to survive on the easily searched part of the internet – I’m assuming there’ll be something on facebook, but I don’t attend there any more.

Interesting

Norm Macdonald is dead and the only people I can see who are mourning him are men on Reddit…. quite interesting. Waiting for a woman celebrity OTHER THAN SARAH SILVERMAN who really is a Sspecial cKase to praise him.

When Robin Williams and George Carlin died there was an incredible outpouring from a huge range of people and with Norm… just men. And Sarah Silverman. Makes ya think, don’t it?

I have started taking the medications. I’m not experiencing side effects so far, bar being a little off my feed. The real whoopsiedoodle will be the ADD meds, but I’m going to wait a while to start those.

PLEASE DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE.

Ken Burns made a documentary about ‘the greatest athlete of the 20th c’ – Mohammad Ali. That’s funny, because by many objective measures the greatest athlete of the 20th C was Babe Didrikson, and she sewed her own fucking clothes while she was winning.

 

about to leave the house whooooppeeeee

Paul’s arriving shortly for masked walkies and pho.

Jeff and I are halfway through “Swan Song” an Udo Kier film. I’ve already cried six times I’m sure I’ve got some left in me but GAh I’d better take water in a bottle.

Gene Roddenberry would have been one hundred years old today. He was a massively imperfect human being and sexist af and Star Trek is an important cultural inflection point. We can think these things at the same time, because imperfect beings are always thinking about imperfect beings, and think they can still get it right.

Corpse flower

Uncle Fester, Bloedel Conservatory’s titan arum or “corpse flower,” bloomed on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021. (YouTube/Vancouver Park Board)

RIP Colleen

Colleen Savitzky, a member of the PNW filk community, passed away on July 12. I remember her as being the linchpin of her family and just always being a very superior and cheerful kind of person, and I was moved to tears by Steve’s description of her last hours, which I won’t cross post because that would be quite inappropriate.

May we all be so good that we leave a hole in life like that when we go.

I sent an extremely brief private note of condolence to Riley. I can’t imagine his loss either.

lovely productive day with a dark ending

Leftover Desi Turka takeaway for breakfast. A couple of loads of laundry done. A little bit of planning for writing. Practicing musical instruments. A lot of CBD gummies, my back was scandalous.

Steps from where I got takeaway on Wednesday after the cleaning at the dentist (the mango lassi was SO.DAMNED.GOOD) someone was shot dead last week in broad daylight.

Last night someone was shot dead steps from where we get donuts of a morning. He was sitting in his car, a young East Indian man, eating a hamburger, and pop pop pop.

It doesn’t make me want to rejoin the world.

Hives continue

Lost a good chunk of sleep last night to them. Topical creams help a little but it was kinda rough.

I’m going to try not to doomscroll today, even though Horgan is doing his best to try to kill me.

It’s possible that what I’ve got, hive wise, is actually a mild and late reaction to the AZ shot. If so this will slowly pass. Sigh.

Jeff’s doing a timmy ho’s run and then we’re going to watch Time Team in our LA-Z-BOY CHAIR. Did I tell you folks that we set it up? I had to mess with my half, but it sure is comfy.

RIP MICHAEL COLLINS. You were, as Phil Plait remarked this am, the ultimate team player.