a little sad but also relieved

I note that our trip to Victoria this weekend is not going to happen, and I’m sad, but the hours of waiting with two bored children have been avoided, and that makes me relieved. Seeing on twitter that early morning vessels are cancelled due to crew shortages just adds to the feeling of horror escaped.

Saw The Artifice Girl yesterday. It has issues (the way auteur movies often do – Franklin Ritch wrote, directed, edited and starred in it) but as a full-court practical, emotional and philosophical examination of AI it works very hard and delivers its message with verve and precision.

Tatum Matthews as the title character, ‘Cherry’, is absolutely pitch-perfect. If you’re looking for an action fest, this is the exact opposite, it’s a very talky movie. SF movies like this are uncommon and should be seen. It’s also a feminist film, in unsettling ways. Combatting child sexual exploitation and trafficking is everyone’s business and the idea of making it an AI’s business and that it represents a moral hazard to the AI (in the film) is brilliant in my view.

Anyway, it accomplishes its goals and I’ll be thinking of a couple of scenes a lot over the next few days.

 

Hey mOm another character has entered the frame on TB. Her name is Lucie and she’s Omar’s step-niece. You’ll meet her in a couple of months I imagine.

a thot

I think one of the single biggest differences between the way cis boys and girls are socialized is that boys are not forced to become competent in activities they do not enjoy and girls are. The removal of agency from girls as they are trained into domestic servitude is quite consistent.

better today

Although my Lumosity scores tanked. I mean really, do I have a brain at all. Wordle in 5. 281 words yesterday on TB.

I don’t spend much time talking about it on my blog, but my despair and anger over the reproductive health situation in the US is immense, and I don’t really think the republicans WANT to tank the US birth rate even more, but I think that’s what’s going to happen. It all smacks of religiosity and panic and eugenics, and I find it horrifying. Anyway, so many young women instead of using birth control will be using a gun instead – self-reports of women under 30 going for bilateral salpingectomies are skyrocketing on social media. Women are sharing the names of US doctors who will perform this no questions asked without consulting spouses…. Can’t force birth on a woman in that situation, unless you’re kidnapping her and implanting the fetuses of wealthy men, which I suppose is the next step for these fucking assholes. I’m long out of the game, but I ask you to spare a thought for the women of reproductive age in the family who are feeling all this socio-legal grinding on the pillars of their lives with more dread than I.

I don’t spend much time talking about it on my blog, but I’m still getting the occasional kudo on AO3 even though I locked down my account so it’s only available to members.

Had a really productive and helpful conversation on the phone with Keith yesterday.

I am going to drink some coffee and try to get a little more cheerful and fold my laundry.

Apparently Putin’s so desperate for actionable intelligence that he’s authorized hacking into Ukrainian coffee shops’ security cameras.  Eye…. roll….

retraction without redaction

Johnny Depp is a violent misogynistic creep and his sole purpose in suing Amber Heard for defamation was to bankrupt her, which he has done.

Now various items which did not come to light during the suit have demonstrated that Depp has A LONG HISTORY of spousal battery, shit talking and bad vibes. His Hollywood buddies who stood next to him during the suit have started to ‘quit following him on Twitter’ which probably means they aren’t taking his calls any more, or they go through an intermediary.

I have mentioned him half a dozen times on this blog since it started nearly 20 years ago, praising his appearance or commenting on his performances. I’m not going to take those references out; I’m just stating that as of the time the Amber Heard defamation suit came to court, I fucking loathe Johnny Depp and wish him a long life of total obscurity, relative penury, and wrinkles.

Nudes of the world

    1. Just a reminder that I am a proud nudist (naturist sounds funny to me, sorry) and that if you really piss me off and I don’t have other recourse I WILL REMOVE GARMENTS. Starting with the legal stuff, and moving on. Since there’s apparently hardly anything that disgusts and freaks out bigots than fat old naked women, I’m keeping that one in reserve. Also, Peter Verigin LIVETH. (This last specifically so mOm can read it to her sister lol)
    2. Also, I did not order those copies of “Grandma Was a Nudist” they JUST SHOWED UP HERE.
    3. Jeff gets a hall pass. Poor guy. It is true that one of the first things I do when he goes away is walk around the house naked and yodelling (sometimes it’s kazoo, and it’s all very much sad for Buster, who has a demonstrated preference for me remaining clothed since I make a better lap that way and he loathes my music.) (Except in the laundry room, which has a security camera vs the raccoons and since Jeff reviews the security footage once a month I don’t want him clapping his hands over his eyes and going AUGH NOMAN HAS BLINDED ME.)
    4. Which is why, although I haven’t been over there for what feels like centuries, and so not recently, the first thing I do when I get to Mike’s is AUGH FREEEEEEDOM. (I even have a cubby for my clothes like at JJ Spa – and Mike’s place IS a spa, at least as far as I’m concerned.) Also he keeps his apartment about 28 degrees, summer and winter and he’s got it set up so you can sunbathe on the balcony year ’round. Sometimes I wave at the neighbours over by the Skytrain station. I don’t know if they’re watching, but you never know, and I don’t imagine anyone I know would ever tell me.
    5. Sigh, the salt room at JJ Spa. I MISS IT SO. But with this new COVID wave, nuh-unh.
    6. I should probably call Mike.
    7. I do very very very occasionally still wear a bra and pantyhose but that’s like a church/weddings/funerals/someone’s paying for a classy dinner scenario.
    8. I made Yorkshire Gold Tea for the household (which will end up in the sugar free iced tea, most likely), peppermint tea as a day-opener for Jeff, and coffee for me. Honestly, I don’t know how many more times I’m going to get coffee and sugar and cream all in once place again, so I really try to enjoy it while I can.
    9. I played with my Kaossilator yesterday and came up with an ABSOLUTE banger of a beat, 56 bpm / g20/ c_ key/EGY scale/94&96 percussion and yowza. In my life I’ve never spent that little money for a tech toy that brought me this much joy, and Jeff commented that a small child and an elderly adult can both enjoy it!
    10. Anyone doing waste water research says the balloon has really gone up for the latest variant.
    11. Suzanne’s computer has been scanned and will be returned to her shortly. She got a scare but it’s all good. THANK YOU JEFF.
    12. Tanya Basu reporting from Corpus Christi on Twitter: The harassment has real-world consequences. The Corpus Christi area teacher’s union president’s house got shot at earlier this week. School board members are being heckled online. Educators, mostly women & poc, are quitting their profession in droves. 
    13. There are rumblings of a NEW hemorrhagic fever out of Tanzania; it isn’t Ebola and it isn’t Marburg (so saith local testing with help from WHO) and it’s currently killing about 1 in 3 of the people it infects. Tanzania is one of the countries on earth most lethally affected by mosquitoes. It sure would be good to know what other mammalian reservoirs there are for this bug.
    14. Keith and Paul are on the Island visiting various and sundry folks and by reports a mellow and convivial time is being had and mOm was enjoying FOOD DELIVERY what a concept.
    15. I sent the first half of Totally Boned to mOm about a hunnert times yesterday. Finally I stripped off all the formatting and re-sent it and now I’m mentally hopping from one foot to the other waiting to hear back. Google mail barfing on a 30k word document just seems like bullshit to me.
    16. Forced birth advocates in the US seem to be under the impression that since they repealed Roe v Wade opponents need to shut up and be nice to them and it’s NO ACTUALLY WE’RE GOING TO PROTEST IN FRONT OF YOUR CHURCHES AND THROW RED PAINT ON YOUR VEHICLES AND RUN YOU OUT OF RESTAURANTS AND GIVE YOU AAAAALLLLLL THE CIVILITY YOU RICHLY DESERVE.
    17. Putin has signed a bill banning media outlets that don’t recount the Russian War of Aggression against Peaceful and Democratic Ukraine in a way he personally likes, for starters by mentioning that it is, you know, a war. A quote: The application scope of the law covers the adoption of measures against false information dissemination, smearing the Russian Armed Forces’ performance, or disrespectful manifestations towards the Russian Federation’s society, state, and official symbols.  
    18. LOL
    19. David Osland on Twitter this morning, retweeted by Potsherd Man Paul Blinkhorn of Time Team fame: Consider Britain and Saudi Arabia. One has temperatures that exceed 40 degrees, is ruled by a royal family presiding over a corrupt government that is militarily dependent on the US, and openly represses peaceful protest. But Saudi Arabia has its problems too.
    20. Wordle in four tries this morning, good lumosity brain workout. *here I am, sighing over having to do mental math* *here I am, trying to get my response time down under 1000 ms* *Here I am, measurably 20 percent less smart than I was in 2014 HEY NUMBAS DON LIE*  I find it funny that often, the less I’ve slept the better I do.
    21. What happened to US health care? Ronald Regan was elected
    22. Jeff reports that at 5 in the morning THE ALLEY IS CRAWLING WITH EXTREMELY LIVELY RATS. Small ones medium ones some as big as yer ‘ead! When he takes Buster for an alley walk he sees them. MANY MANY RATS. ZIP ZIP ZIP.
    23. Today I shall read the most recent Capilano Review. It’s a really good literary mag y’all.
    24. Weather most fine; a/c still working well.
    25. Stomped hard on a Facebook friend yesterday. Women contestants are tired of the pure whites of tennis, and he said IT’S A UNIFORM WEAR IT and I said FOOLISH HUMAN HAVE YOU EVER HAD A PERIOD WHILE BOUNCING UP AND DOWN AND FIRING BALLS AT A 105 FUCKING MPH AT AN OPPONENT yeah I didn’t think so. Siddown and shaddap.
    26. 33487 WORDS end of Part I. Part II – Blossom’s return, Steve and Jack get their asses handed to them, Richie shows up just in time to make things a) better b) more dangerous c) more complicated (THANKS RICHIE YOU LITTLE B-) AND MORE SHIT ABOUT EMIGRATING TO CANADA THAN ANYONE WANTS TO KNOW ABOUT.
    27. I love doing research, I end up finding out things that are both hilarious and realllllly unexpected, but I now know that the Fran’s closest to TGH is open 24 hours and then I learned something actually demonstrably useful about how horselaugh bad the March time change is. See below for illustrated figure.
    28. that cliff? that’s the cliff your body falls off when there’s a time change. I had never actually seen it represented and HOOO WEEE THERE IT IS. Now imagine you’ve gone to Iceland or whatever and the cliff is literally 8 times taller.  And do you know why I saw this data set in the first place? Because I wanted to know the angle of the sun coming in to the side of TGH so I could visualize a scene (last scene in part I.)
    29. I learned that plots of land are as low as $40K out by 70 Mile House and it sure would be nice to have a family campground. This is not compatible with my current political leanings so I am irked by my inability to be consistent. If someone else tees it up I’ll help pay for it.

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.

 

creeping progress

12409 words (creeeeeeping)

Had an absolutely lovely and heartening phone convo with Sue, my friend from church. She has an ongoing part in a TV show here in town! which we had thought about watching but now we’re rethinking it. At least I am. An IMDb listing, good golly y’all. I’m sure she’s fantastic. Also the entire series is CRAWLING with Stargate series alumni, I was snorting at the cast list, Paul McGillion makes an appearance.

We spoke of many things. Renee Spakowski passed. She was a truly amazing person and a really good organizer. I knew about Jean Donaldson passing away. Other people from church have died, and I haven’t been making phone calls because I’ve been very wrapped up in myself.

I told her about my spot in Guest 23 magazine (thanks to Dave, being the editor lol) and she was very kind about the poem I read at Tom’s memorial service. She said that in the first few lines the congregation knew where they were and what was happening and I said all I wanted to do was write something honest that other people could relate to and she said I succeeded. That was good.

And we talked about R v W and we talked about the state of the world and we talked about what happens when you have to end a friendship and so I talked about the friendship that I had to end and how years and years later I’m still so SORE about it, because it’s a personal failure, or so I feel. But one sets boundaries and tries to live accordingly, and it’s damned hard.

and she asked me about Ryker the wonderbaby

Allegra and Ryker aged 4 months
GRANDMA AND RYKER

I send morning greetings, hope you are all doing well today!

Naming a rapist – Sean Rust

Sean Rust, of Muskegon, professional names DJ Deadlock or DJ Submit (classy) is a rapist. He raped a woman at a music festival in 2018; she got a rape kit and wanted justice and the local police OF COURSE told her it was all her fault and refused to do a thing.

The fucking cops, may their hinder parts be smote with extra-pulmonary tubercular lesions, banged on the survivor’s door recently and told her to take down the facebook page in which she named her rapist. Fine, you fucks. I’ll put the information here instead.

Lick my grease trap if y’all don’t like it, and if Sean is reading this, LOL. You deserve everything that’s coming to you.

China seeks to ban effeminate men from TV

Yup, that’ll really help the fucking birth rate dudes.

So the “You can have two children” plan does not work because no sound woman living in China wants to have one child let alone two, and what do the old men of the CCP come back with? HAVE THREE KIDS. UNLESS YOU’RE A SINGLE MOM.

Just watch, within a few months they’ll be saying that there’s a terrible shortage of birth control and forcing women who are ‘politically sound’ to get pregnant because. Just because… they’ve seen the demographic future and know they’ll lose control of their country if they don’t get the birth rate up.

And they’ll ban abortion. Except when you’re an enemy of the state.

just watch

I am calling it.

35611

I’m full of assholery today and it’s only clicked over midnight.

One of my favourite on-line anarchists (how I wish John was alive to comment) said a bunch of stuff about two contrasting lines of thought in anarchism – one side being all glowy about the collapse of civilization but thinking there will still be social markers of hierarchy and the other looking forward to there being no social hierarchy either and I’m like “WHAT THE FUCK DUDES quit sucking your own exhaust!” My contribution was “none of you wankers have tried to raise anarchist kids under capitalism and your arguments are invalid.”  Anarchist philosophy which doesn’t sound like it would last ten minutes at the toddler breakfast table is shite. PURE AND SIMPLE.

My take is that social hierarchy is natural, but we have to find ways of controlling the worst excesses of discipleship to individuals. PNW peoples had the potlatch, the cultural creation which allowed social hierarchies to do their thing while flattening the number of possessions rich people had. <—- white lady one paragraph oversimplification, but honestly the potlatch is one of the coolest things humans ever invented or were given as medicine to the people, whichever way you want to parse it.—>

If you haven’t raised children it’s hard to fit into your philosophy that some people are leaders and some people are followers in their bones; from the time they can walk. A proper culture is one in which their gifts are developed without one of them turning into an MBA in corporate raiding and the other into the unwilling mother of fifteen children.

It snowed 4 inches overnight and it’s cold enough I’m wondering if the salt I just staggered out to apply at 12:30 am will fix it so’s I don’t have to shovel that shit.

Delightful trip

So, I was in Victoria yesterday because Katie and I could not STAND that Alex was so amazingly verbal these days but mOm had not received a demonstration.

We had yummy food and Alex drove toy trucks over mOm’s feet and called her ZiziMa. He likes ZiziMa house. He used to like the Flying Pig but now it almost scares him.

I chased him all over deck 5 of the Spirit of British Columbia yesterday.  My feet are still singing.

I have to take the car back this morning, but I’m going to run some errands first.

Putting this here so I can find it later.

Entire quote from facebook this morning.

Indigo Nai, who lives and works in New York, wrote this

 

Yo.

I am abandoning the world of men.

I am abandoning the world of men because masculinity is a sinking ship, and it is loaded with leaking, toxic drums, and it is sinking while we watch, and it is my belief that the men that do not escape it will drown.

Now, I’mma tell you a little story. It’s a long one, so feel free to flake if you start to fade, but here it is:

On my last day in the Bay area, a small gang of us agreed to meet at a local bar to hang out, take in the late summer sun, and drink a healthy amount of bourbon. It’s a warm summer day, and the patio of the bar is crowded; friends and acquaintances of both genders join our little group every once in a while, stay for a bit, and then wander off, but just before things kicked off, our little group is four women, myself, and another male friend. Over on my side of the table we’ve just started a conversation about rape culture and how to help redefine the ways men view themselves within it, because me and my friends really enjoy light conversation. The dialog in our part of the little circle is going great, but at one point I look over and notice that my best friend has been cornered by the other guy in the group, and it’s clear that she’s having *exactly* the kind of conversation that you don’t want to be stuck in; that one conversation where a guy is mansplaining to a woman about the ‘slippery slope’ that prosecuting everyone accused of rape inevitably leads to, in the kingdom of toxic masculinity, at least. My friend is trying her best to be both polite and to be heard, but she can’t get a word in edgewise, so I decide to leverage my own privilege; the next time he interrupts her, I interrupt him, and say, “Hey brother, you know what’s sexy? Letting a woman finish a sentence”. I then turn away, good deed done, to rejoin my own conversation. Unfortunately, this causes me to miss the warning signs as the guy begins to grimly stew on the indignity of having his privilege publicly checked, because masculinity so fragile.

A moment later, he calls out: “Hey, I think Shannon is done talking, so I’d like to share my thoughts, if that’s all right with you, INDIGO”. Now, I admit, I’m obnoxious to the bone, so I toss a quick and merry “That’s fine!” over my shoulder. This, inexplicably breaks him; that simple comment sends him right over the edge of man-child sulking into the abyss of beast-mode rage, and before you can say “can’t hold your liquor” he unfolds from his seat, all 6’3″ and 240 pounds of him, and bellows “Do you want to have a fucking go then, man?”

Now, this is unexpected, since he’s an old friend, and we’re surrounded by a handful of other old friends, and we’re in the middle of a bar that’s run by Family, and we’re there for an unfortunate friend’s fundraiser, so it seems a little strange that he and I have suddenly started doing the man-dance right in the middle of of a crowded patio on a Sunday afternoon. But he’s Scottish, and I’m Irish, and the story of a wee Irish guy scrapping with a great Scottish hulk is a tale as old as love itself, and besides, I’m always one for a story, so I call back “Sure, brother” and stand up.

Before I can even get my arms up, I have a giant meatpile of angry, drunken Scotsman throwing his fists in my face. I hear/feel My tendons squeak a bit as his weight came down on my knee, so I know my knee was wrenched, and at some point I saw stars so I knew he got a good kiss in, but mostly I just kept grappling with him and tried not to worry too much about the damage already done in order to try and minimize the damage that was yet to happen.

Some colder, more removed part of me was also laughing its ass off because I suddenly found myself climbing Mt. Slappy McHaggis when, less than ten seconds before, I had been drinking bourbon and chatting with some very old friends about the nuances of feminism, rape culture, and male privilege.

Trust me, the irony didn’t escape me, even at the time.

It was also, in some sense, tragic: this was someone I had been friends with for fifteen years, someone whom I had always considered Family. This was a man I had always thought would have my back in a fight, not someone who would suddenly be trying to bury their fists in my face.

It was also, in some sense, inexplicable: this was a guy with a six inch height and a fifty pound weight advantage over me, who I know for a fact thinks of himself as honorable and chivalrous.

And finally, in every sense it was hideously dangerous: physical fights are terrifically dodgy ideas to begin with. I mean, I have anger issues, and I’m a big fan of consensual violence between men, but fighting is chock full of the potential for really shitty consequences; come in at a bad angle, you can crack the zygomatic bone and blind someone; land wrong after a takedown, you can tear tendons and lame them; knock them off balance, and you can crack their head on a curb and there you are, in prison for the next two decades of your life, and the guy who was looking at you funny that one night in a bar is shitting into a bag.

I mean, who knew, but physically beating someone into submission is really hard, and pretty risky when it all comes down to it.

And over what?

The perception that you’ve been disrespected when a friend suggests that you stop interrupting another friend while they speak?

The perception that you’ve been disrespected when someone calls you out for rude behavior?

On the masculine side of things, it makes me very sad for men as they grow older; go through divorces; lose their businesses; have their children taken away. As men, we’re never taught to build communities, or examine our feelings, or build genuinely intimate connections with other men. We’re taught that we can share two emotions: lust and anger. And we’re taught to use those two brutal, clumsy tools to solve every challenge that we experience in our worlds. This is the price we pay for our privilege.

But on the feminine side, my experience makes me much sadder. See, I’ve been thinking about that fight ever since it happened. It’s been a long time since I was in a real fight, and a long time since I was in a fight with a real fighter. And that means it’s been a long time since I had to really think about what it must be like to have to be constantly wary of the rage of men. I did well for a wee Irish guy, for the few seconds that our scuffle went on, I held my own; but those few seconds were enough to earn me a black eye an d weeks worth of limping. And if we hadn’t been in a public place, surrounded by friends, I would have been fucked. Right proper fucked. Rabbit in a hound’s mouth fucked. Fucked like every abused wife in a trailer or McMansion is fucked. Which, ironically, is what the conversation we were having to begin with was all about: when that fight popped off, we were discussing the reality that about half of the world’s population has to process that the at any given moment, some member of the other half of it could go savagely violent on you with no warning, rhyme, or reason. And this reality is something every woman I know has to deal with every day. The irony is remarkable: simply discussing the topic of male rage and expecting equality from all participants was enough to provoke this guy to violence. What I experienced in that brief window of time was being punched right out of my privilege for a minute. In that moment, I was reminded, very briefly, what being assaulted by someone much bigger and much more aggressive than you are is like; what it’s like to go toe-to-toe with someone to big for you to resist, let alone overcome. And it reminded me why I care, why I fight, and why feminism is always worth fighting for, with our words, our tongues, our fists, or a goddamn barstool, needs must.

So, yeah. I’m abandoning the world of men. I’m abandoning the idea of egos so fragile they can’t bear criticism. I’m abandoning the idea of size as strength, might as right, and women as an audience. And most of all, I reject the idea of using your power as a tool to enforce your will, rather than using it as a tool to protect your Family.

Always punch up. Never punch down.

We’re going to win this.