Category: Dumbassedness

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One of my favourite filkers played a drinking game with himself while watching the Democratic debate last night, and then live blogged it. He was pretty smashed by the time he stopped, and his wife was carefully hydrating him at last report. It was pretty funny.

Still no plan or commitment to end police violence.  Bernie is using all the right words, but they don’t add up to “We will take the following steps to end deaths during custody and confinement”. This is the standard that the black activists I follow on twitter are politely asking for, and it is not adding up to a plan.

When they point it out to white people (or wypipo, as it sometimes appears on twitter much to my amusement) the mostly male Berniestans LOSE THEIR CHEESE.  The stuff they say to people like Imani Gandy @AngryBlackLady (lawyer, feminist and CHRIST can she throw shade) and Elon James White (who is straight up one of the funniest, kindest, nerdiest and clearest thinking humans I’ve ever run across, while still being uncompromisingly stern with racist assholes) and Ta-Nehisi Coates (‘ta na hezzy) who is an awesome prose stylist and an atheist, and you try being an atheist in black culture, Abiyomi Kofi, the Gullah-Indigenous intersectionalist, and I dare you to say that when you’ve been drinking, and Wagatwe Wanjuki, activist against gendered violence — is absolutely disgusting.  All these people get shit from white people on the internet, in an ever flowing stream of bile, bad spelling, shitty science, gendered slurs, racial slurs, and yet they rise every day and try to hack through the thickets of law, media and custom to get to a place where anything but equality is unthinkable.

The Zika virus is unlikely to be causing the microcephaly cluster.  It is much more likely to be a previously unknown teratogenic effect of a Monsanto larvicide which started being added to the water in large swathes of the affected areas in 2014.

So I am looking at this horror show and thinking, wow.  Monsanto sells MORE LARVICIDE to get rid of the mosquitoes. The various government health bodies pay out money for larvicide and reap the hellish bounty twice: Once when the larvicides quit working and forever when microcephalic children are born.

The governments involved may say it’s a fair price to pay to keep the working population healthy enough to you know, work.  Screw the kids, they’re all poor anyway.

As for Zika virus being found in sufferers, it’s present in 75% of the population in that state anyway.  Not a clear signpost.

I DIDN’T LIKE MONSANTO BEFORE THIS.

This ol’ world sucks a mop.  But it’s the only one we got, and I need to help make it better.

 

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Paul managed to ruin Solstice dinner. It didn’t happen.  I begged Katie to let me step in, and she decided to place her trust where it was not deserved. We’re going to try again today but if I said the prospect doesn’t please would you be surprised?

Baby Alex of course was very wonderful especially at whining around his mother’s ankles when she wouldn’t hold him continuously.  He smiled as soon as he saw me, which was pleasant. He also kicked me in the face, which was not, but which I richly deserved and didn’t leave a mark.

The worst thing about yesterday was that, although I was the only person at the c******f*** who thought about Keith long enough to text him and say dinner was off, he came home and his house was completely empty; the car was there with the car seat and Paul’s bike was gone.

He was so shook up he called me, as distressed as he’s ever been when I talked to him. I explained what had happened and his dad came home in the middle of the phone call so all was well.

Conflikt has me on the reg page, which is nice since I registered in August.

I’ll probably be going to Victoria after Christmas possibly with Alex; Jeff is going in a few days.

 

countermeasures

What a fucking disaster of a review.

Eventually the movie review will be gone, so here’s a quote.

 

What’s it like for him to be alone for years? Is the sheer solitude a burden? Is the simple lack of human contact a cause of psychological derangement? Are there exercises that he does in order to ward off hallucinations, to control inner voices? And what are those voices? What does Mark say to himself? What does he think–or feel? Is there anything that he has to overcome in order to remain mentally sharp and emotionally stable?

oh my FUCKING GOD you asinine critter, don’t you think astronauts are SELECTED for their ability to stay sane in these circumstances?  It’s called WORKING THE PROBLEM.  They don’t show him masturbating, although disposing of the consequences would be a funny couple of minutes, and they don’t show him crying, or hitting things, or any of that stuff. Any sane person knows it happened; we don’t need to see it.

 

THE IMPORTANT THING ABOUT THIS MOVIE WAS NOT THE PERSONALITIES of the characters involved.

It was in their ability to work problems.

The author of this review, who’s a chump’s own chump, is under the impression that science fiction fans – a demographic that is rapidly approaching everyone who is not a religious fanatic, hermit or killjoy – want to see another movie with people talking about their feelings or their interior lives.  No, we want to see a SCIENCE fiction movie. Not a movie that waves its hands when it comes to science but one that says you have to understand orbital mechanics to link up with a flying object in the Mars gravity well. Where mass and math and persistence and grit make survival possible, make triumph possible, make the unification of the world in its concern for a single human being possible.

The ’emotional tenor’ of the movie is SIMPLE.

We’re going to take our feelings, and we are going to set them aside, and WORK A FUCKING PROBLEM until it is done.

And despite the whitewashing of the movie, and yes it’s true, ethnicities were changed and that’s notable, something was preserved that I think is more important.  A young black mathematician gets called a steely eyed missile man by the Hermes crew, which is, without a word of a lie, the highest praise you can give a technical man in a space crisis situation. A generation of black kids will be dreaming of Mars based on this one sentence in the movie.  May the great parent of the Universe give a line of reasoning to Richard Brody, since he could really use one.

The emotional tenor of the movie is simple.  Why do people rescue other people.  BECAUSE WE ARE SOCIAL.  Now leave me alone, I’m working a solution that’s going to help other people.  You can assume I have an interior life. Because we all do.

Deleted Chipper

Chipper, if you’re reading this, quit sending emails.  Talk to your friends.  Quit reminding me how lonely you are by sending detailed lists of how fucked up I am.  It’s quite as crazy as it sounds, so stop. Remember you yelling into the phone at the American Express telemarketers?  While Paul and I had to listen?  Yeah.  I’m asking you to stop in a much quieter voice.

For the rest of you poor sods, some of whom have known her longer than I have:

I have very regretfully had to delete her user ID, as she’s threatened to use it as a soap box to announce my failings to the world (as if I don’t already do that in double handsful on a reg’lar basis, but whatevs.) She has her own blog, that she pays for, that belongs to her. But I’ve had to take that off my sidebar, at no loss to her.  She’s never gotten a single booking referred from this website or she would have phoned me to tell me.

I have happy memories, and I’m going to hang on to them, because they are part of the family lore.

I’d say that one of my issues is setting boundaries, but now that I’m post menopausal and feeling my calling and surrounded by a working model of adult friendship, I’m learning how to do that.  What I experienced was abuse, and nobody else ESPECIALLY NOT THE ABUSER gets to call it civil discourse and gracious hospitality.  If she wants to try to talk me out of how she abused me by sending abusive emails, that’s heading over to the place where the judge gets to make the call, and I don’t want to go there. She said it was very convenient for me that Paul witnessed most of the yelling.  Yes, being yelled at while there was a witness was er, convenient.  Definitely convenient.  That’s the word I’d use.

I should not have visited her while she was sick.  But colds go away. Boundaries stay in place.  I should have rented a cabin and left her to yell at her house (she does that a lot.)

And maybe I was depressed when I went, but I really don’t feel that way now.  I have communed with the spirits, I have walked in the woods, and I feel like helping someone who has helped me. I’m going to help Paul with his Restorative Justice talk, and then I’m going to start writing again on Monday, since I’ve had a nice long, weird, horrible, exciting, heartening and thought-provoking break, and on Tuesday I’ll spend part of my grandson’s first birthday with him, and I’m going to paint a picture of the dream I had, where I was climbing Moore’s Falls.  I will practice my mandolin and cook for my household and try out Terry’s cookie recipe which is so good I could DIE. I will write down more songs, and keep adding to the book of kind words (wrote some more in Cornwall), and prep Theo for surgery (not really but almost.)

I will check in with the editrix of awesomesauce and make a list of friends to call. I’ll do my taxes, although not before I put them off some more. I will continue to live a satisfactory life and when life hands me difficulties and worries, I’ll have friends and family who trust me, and who reciprocate my love and care and trust and appreciation with deeds of shining worth. And words spoken at a conversational volume, because candidly, that was the best thing about going to Cornwall and then getting back to town.

So, about the couple ‘living Victorian’.  Three comments.

As you may know, my mOm is transcribing our ancestor’s diary. He was a lower middle class Victorian Englishman with pretensions, since he was an antiquarian and took tea with Carlyle (more than once, I’ll have you know.) He spends an inordinate amount of time diarizing about the weather, and how they had to break the ice on the wash basin in the morning, when they had infant children in the house. Damn right skippy, it freezes hard in jolly old England. Comfort was hard to come by and made much of when it occurred.

When people want to live their cosplay, I have no objections and am in fact quite envious. When I find out about their lack of technology in an article she wrote for the internet, I laugh quite heartily and my envy melts away, unless I missed something and she’s powering her server with a steam-engine. Then I’m envious again, although not of her neighbours.

Victorian birth control. Until you’ve done nappies the Victorian way (ancestors did vaccinate their kids, for what it’s worth) you have a contortionate and dreamily inaccurate view of a Victorian married woman’s life.

Being a middle aged fannish woman looks like this

“Oh we’ve never seen anything present with those symptoms before, and candidly if you lost 40 (gained 20) pounds most of the problems – which appear to be in your head anyway – would go away, and here’s an antidepresessant and here’s an antipsychotic since I haven’t destroyed your ability to complain about your imaginary symptoms and there’s another test I’d like you to try. I wouldn’t be using that word iatrogenic in quite that snippy tone my dear.” Rinse, repeat with different doctors, 15 years later get a diagnosis from literally the FIRST DOCTOR WHO TAKES A PROPER HISTORY OH MY GOD. I wish I had heard this story only once. I have heard variants of it at least once a year for the last ten.  I only dodged it by stopping with the prescription mood drugs. I know I would have had a smoother time of it this last while, but life with the mountains ground down to a Vancouver lawn in July and the deep rolling waters turned into greasy holes full of algae ten feet deep / across is no place I want to live.

 

Also, god damn child abusers.  We need to end this scourge.

 

Finally

Six hundred forty-five words yesterday, all praise to moving around and trying to write in a different location.

Sad news, Joe W’s dad died this week.  He was a frequent guest at parties at the old place and part of the Trent/Joe/Mike gang.  It’s very sad and Mike will get me funeral details.

Also, the son of a friend who was in rehab checked himself out by destroying property and making threats, and I feel so sad and sick about it that I’m almost on the ground.  But we must rise, and rise and rise again.

Swimming with Baby Alex tomorrow, plus mamma.  Today I’m thinking about a trip to the New West Farmer’s Market this afternoon.

I made tomatoes and scrambled eggs and toast this morning for brekky.

Now to find something to either write or edit.

whatevs

I am in a super strange mood, as I often be when the migraine (atypical) is pending (which it can do for weeks and then go back into its hole).  I shall make no decisions heavier than what to order for dinner (Mike’s treat) for the next 24 hours, and somebody please shoot me if I start making meeping noises about how nobody loves me, cause it just ain’t true.  Also, I’m doing laundry, because no matter what I do I get food on mah clothes.

Bwa ha ha, mistook Mike’s voice for Keith’s on the phone today.  I blame my brain chemistry.

I made word count yesterday (500 words a day is the recommended minimum) but continue, even after cleaning it with serious thoroughness to rassle with the cpap.

Wrigley!!!! omg Chipper you are the best.  I wish you could have heard me scream when I read that, you would have laughed your ass off.

Sometimes the cops have to use deadly force.

But sometimes it really seems like they don’t.

Back to naming babies.  Michel is NOT THE PERSON FOR THIS JOB.  Which is why he volunteered for it.  And of course he has ulterior motives, which add up to “The sooner the babies are born the sooner I can go back to making time with Kima hurrr durrr.”

Paul is supposed to collect me mid-afternoon to go walkies.  I am having trouble even making 2 k, but I suspect if I stick to someplace flat I’ll be fine.

 

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.

 

Some progress

Used CPAP last night.  The Liposic allowed me to open my eyes without creaking this morning (still dreffle dry, but not the :spend twenty minutes thinking sad thoughts to get my tear ducts to work so I can open them: dry of yesterday morning, which was a horrid start to the day). My new routine is Liposic at night since I can’t see a ****ing thing when I put that stuff in, and Systane in the morning since it is much runnier.  I am also going to start supplementing with evening primrose oil again and start monitoring how many hours a day I am at the computer and watching tv, which will probably horrify me into a neurasthenic stupor.  Also I have to drink water or tea instead of coffee, GRRR.

The congregational dinner was absolutely lovely and I sang Tapioca, but my almost new medical problem (self-diagnosed from symptoms, so YMMV, and almost certainly triggered by my slip and fall in the shop although the broken shoulder got all the attention) fixed it so that by the end I was barely able to walk, drive or lift anything, which given that I was on the cleanup crew didn’t halp.  I am good for about 2.5 k of walking before the pain is so bad I start to waddle (which is characteristic) and all the strength goes out of my legs, (ditto). When I got out of bed this morning all the bones in that region of my body grated and popped like a ship’s rigging in bad weather.

As this is almost certainly the consequence of not having proper foot support and wearing the same shoes day in and day out (which Chipper has warned me about many times) I need to drag myself off to the doc and get a scrip (again, I lost the first one) for  foot support and to quit walking barefoot in the house, since anytime I put my foot to the floor without arch support I’m just being an idiot and making it worse.

Last night as I was driving home a passenger jet came so close to the ground as I was driving along 10th between 8th and 6th that I nearly drove off the road, and then it BANKED like it was heading into the ground.  I have no problem with jets flying over my house as long as they are 1000 ft AGL like they are supposed to be, but that close scared the bejabbers outta me.

Chili and buns for today’s meal has been prepared or purchased.  I’ll head over to Planet Bachelor at some point after church.

So tired… all I can think of is coffee, and I shouldn’t.

Just so you know

I don’t appreciate having ads for Kinder Morgan on my site, and am trying to figure out how to get rid of them.

Check it out!  Isn’t it great when men who will have access to date rape drugs make fun about date rape?

A friend is having trouble with a band council administration.  Colonialism has made a proper mess of First Nations life.  This story has alcohol, violence and threats of it, substandard housing, employment being contingent on who your cousins are, more alcohol, treatment centers that drive their their residents in to town to buy cigarettes (fuck you must be kidding), people walking into your house in the middle of the night and not leaving when asked, being fired for no cause when you’re doing your job properly, having to call the RCMP on your in laws, racism and more bullshit than could be shoveled in a month by ten strong men.

If I hadn’t heard from a dear friend today, who is doing fine, I’d be very much on edge.d

Back to my babies.  Literary, squidly babies, with large appetites.

NDP interaction

I’m on the Federal NDP mailing list. (So Sue Me.)  I think I’m going to unsubscribe.  I already answered the survey, and yet I got told I hadn’t answered yet.  This was my response:

 

I took the survey already.

Sending it to me twice is annoying, disrespectful and disorganized.
If I get three of these emails I’m voting Green and the Federal NDP, and that French passport holding man you have as a leader (still a better bet than a privileged twink and a fascist), can go pinch themselves.
When I was in my 20’s I gave money to a Parkdale riding NDP functionary for my membership, and found out later I wasn’t a member and the money likely went into the riding deficit from the previous election.  The NDP is skating on thin ice with me.
so…. while I have this open still I’ll mention that I have received TWO EMAILS from the NDP since I unsubscribed.  Starting to feel like I’m being stalked.

Autumn Cat

She has found two favourite hiding places and only comes out to eat and poop.  She is NOT happy about being rehomed.  Margot is actually starting to be concerned for her.  Very odd.

Very much enjoying the Danish Swedish German coproduction The Bridge.  The slobby but effective Dane and the ice cold and effective Swede make an interesting pair.

SUPER very much enjoyed an evening of frivolous drinking with SCARY CLOWN! Yes he has made a reappearance in my life and he gave me the most excellent compliment, “I had forgotten how much fun you are.”  Happy sigh!

Posted by me on social media this morning, re getting rid of friends because of their reaction to Ferguson.

 

I have friends across the political and social spectrum. I try to love them for the life they are and not hate them for what they believe. I am not going to use political events to tell me when to cull my friendslist. I am not going to edit my reality tunnel to make it more comfortable. I am going to accept that people are irrational and irascible and afraid, and I’m going to work on my OWN racism and shine a light on where that work takes me. I can’t hate a racist into being more loving, or ignore her into being more rational. I recognize that my response is from a place of privilege because I’m white, but I believe that it’s a moral response that balances the sad truth that as a white person I know racists, and that as a white person I need to eradicate my racist thoughts, words, attitudes and beliefs. If Ferguson was your wakeup call, exactly how long have you been paying attention?

Mercury in retrograde

Has absolutely no effect on my life.  I understand that.  In the last three days, two famous (in my circle) cats have died, including the one I wrote Kittens at Midnight for (RIP Fand, cross that Rainbow Bridge knowing you were much loved, however briefly) and George, the 23 year old therapy cat Catherine inherited from her mother (who didn’t learn he was a therapy cat until he was over 20 and learned a completely new routine, including being transported by transit in a box to and from, getting out and saying hi to all the dying cancer patients, getting back in and going home and then eating practically anything Catherine cooked, which list grew to be so long and so humorous it could be its own children’s book). Tom S. lost his car keys so he couldn’t go to OVFF. Alexander has a cold so bad he can’t travel and be the secret guest at Auntie Mary’s Eightieth Birthday Bash. The awning blew itself to ratshit, Ottawa was locked down while Harper cowered in a closet (as would I, candidly and without prejudice), a switch in the network verklemmt itself, my shoulder has been aching worse than at any point since I broke it and I feel like I’m limping along though life on the mitochondrial equivalent of impulse power. The only good thing about the last 4 days has been the Harry Potter 8 movie rewatch.

All of which has precisely nothing to do with mythical beings or actual planets.

But if I ever see that bastard Mercury, I’m gonna give him one sharp punch in the snoot.