Category: My bad

Grr

Here’s the list of shows and what’s happening.

BAD NEWS – Battle Creek is likely not going to make it, which cheeses me off because it was extremely entertaining and full of loveable characters.

WORSE NEWS – POI MAY not make it.  It could go either way; they say it will probably be renewed.

No surprise Big Bang Theory has been renewed for 3 frikkin seasons, but at least the best married couple on tv is still alive in the form of Madam Secretary.  Good Wife made it for one more season… without Kalinda that’s just as well! Castle got one more season.  The Simpsons got two more seasons.

Bob’s Burgers and Brooklyn 99 are coming back, probably to brO’s relief.

Marvel’s Agent Carter and Agents of Shield made it; candidly I’m much happier about Carter than Shield, which has lovely characters slopping around in a poorly constructed universe.

If I ever start to watch Supernatural, it just got another season, what is that 11 or 12 now?

CSI should be cancelled – it is old and venerable and not being particularly creative. But it may limp across another season.

NCIS and NCIS Body Count will be renewed.  I keep threatening to stop watching Body Count but I really like the characters.  It’s painful.

 

Oh, look what London looks like if you’re coloured.

52 words and 1.0 hour.  CT scan at 8 tonight.

Thunder

Just as I was waking up, I heard distant thunder.  Our little run of glorious sunny days is temporarily over.

3.4 hours, no writing, practicing Ain’t No Rest For the Wicked. Still messing with the chords, it won’t be an exact copy.

Interesting article about the Brit Royals.

This woman needs years of therapy,  but I suspect all she’ll ever get is jail.

Joss Whedon has been driven off twitter by criticism of his latest movie.  Marvel Avengers Age of Ultron.  Jeez, kiddo, can’t you just get your assistant to block and mute the assholes? I mean I totally get why you want to leave twitter.  I haven’t got my fill of Garret Dillahunt’s funny pictures, Jewel Staite’s twitter cocktails full of a limewaterish sarcasm, William Gibson’s powerhouse retweets, Alice Dreger and her Level 70 Snarkmaster comments about the state of sex education and many, many other mines of gleeful snark, Imani Gandy for her razorwire wit and bite, Lydia Shark because who doesn’t want A REAL GREAT WHITE SHARK on her twitter feed, all of the municipalities close by because they provide real information I can use in my daily life, News 1130 so I can laugh at all of the horrific things that happen in traffic every day in this clowncar of an assemblage of cities, Louisette Lanteigne the Metis/Acadian environmental writer and activist (her retweets are awesome), Katie Sackhoff for her dog pix, Matt Bryant formerly of Headwater who doesn’t even put his fucking gigs on twitter so I missed his Railway Club show in March (grr) and various filkers who I prefer on facebook anyway.  So I’ll be on twitter a while yet, it’s just too entertaining….

I didn’t even drink that much

Gosh it’s been ages since I was hungover, I really can’t remember – and I was tipsy enough when I came home last night I fired up the computer and wrote another 200 words on top of what I’d done that day, which was approximately 500.

Now I get to take this wackiness to church, oh doodie. Alex and Katie are threatening to be there.  We shall see.

This morning Katie ponied up incredibly cute pix of Alex playing in fingerpaint.  His expression makes him look like a tagger in training. Our little anarchist.

No cpap.  Freaking allergies.

If brO gets to the lawn this afternoon I’ll do the weed whipping.  It’s not for us, it’s for a) the landlord and b) the neighbours. I’d love it if the grass got tall, and so would the cats. Also the rats.  The deluge of vermin has halted – the last one was while brO was gone.

Yay, I have the chords for Ain’t No Rest For the Wicked.

 

Here are some deep philosophical questions by way of Mary Bennett, from James Hollis PhD:

1) Where do my dependencies show up in my intimate relationship?
2) What am I asking my partner to do for me that I, as a mature adult, need to be doing for myself?
3) Am I taking too much responsibility for the emotional well-being of the Other? Am I taking on his/her journey at the expense of my own, and if so, why?
4) In what ways do I seek to avoid suffering?
5) What fears, lack of permission or old behaviors block me from living my life?

I wish I had asked these questions of myself 10 years ago.

 

Ça fond dur, cette poème-la

Ah, but it’s like cat’s piss

this regret, weighing worse in the air

in some rooms than others

.

you are missed with a ferocity

that yet may crumple me

and then, no fucking meme of bitten lip passed over

move from memory to a place

where I can at least look at you

in my mind, where else

and recognize that I must thank you

.

rarely do I remember how

.

this is no sea of troubles

.

I ride life in a barque

partly of your design

these seas I lately conjure are

a hypothetical

My beloved heartsblood ideas

are ripe for satire and me

well I’m ready to be rendered

into literary cracklin’ baby

.

I have been watching the culture war

and I have sent my

smelliest rubber boots a wandering

here and there upon it

Rustled my jimmies and parsed

my arse to the stenosing bones

while dealing with blues &

unemployment, learning to breathe

with a cpap machine and fuck it

I did it anyway.  That was the point.

The work often takes longer than we’d like.

 

 

 

 

 

Justice for Cindy Gladue

I am very sore today because merely standing triggers my pelvis pain to the point where I drag both my feet.  Also, Paul very efficiently tricked me into mowing the back lawn, so I was really, really sore by the time I was done. 2.0 hours on the cpap – keep forgetting to put the mask back on.

I wrote this in my notebook over a rather lavishly irrigated lunch yesterday.  I went to the rally, which was triggered by this.  As is my custom, I did a square search count of the crowd. It was never fewer than a hundred people and swelled to 150 around 11 am.  Knowing that we were gathered in 20 cities across Canada (including Saint John’s NFLD, where it was ass freezing cold and blowing snow) made me very proud.  And sore, as I mentioned.  I am going to pick up another one of those mini-chairs from Lee Valley, I simply cannot stand for an hour and a half without problems.

So I was angry when I wrote this.  I am still angry, but it’s the quiet, smoldering kind.

Edited for errors in usage and kindness Feb. 20 2021, the day I learned Bradley Barton is going to jail.

April 2, 2015 unceded Coastal Salish land. MST LAND

Canada is the kind of country where a sex trade worker deserves to die for being a sex trade worker.  If she’s Indigenous, and ‘somehow’ ends up with an 11 inch stab wound which is paraded through the courtroom in a specimen jar in a grotesque parody of a ceremonial object, she had it coming.  Somehow the fact that a misogynistic piece of sh*t named Bradley Barton murdered her in a drunken stupor gets dropped from the equation, and he left the trial a free man.

I’ve been angry at the Canada ‘justice’ system before. Lots.  But I don’t normally get off my ass to protest.

Cindy Gladue did not deserve to die.

She didn’t get justice.

Her children and her family and loved ones did not get justice.

I am enraged that Cindy Gladue and her 1200 and counting indigenous sisters are being treated by the justice ‘shitstem’ as entirely disposable human refuse.  The UN has asked Canada to investigate.  Harper says it isn’t even on his radar.

F*CK THIS RACIST SEXIST ENTIRELY HORSESH*T SYSTEM.

It’s gotta come down.

Let it come down.

With unity of purpose and steel in our veins, let us BRING IT DOWN.

There were 150 of us in front of the Courthouse yesterday. Indigenous and white and mixed and ‘other’.  We were men and women and non-binary and children. We wept and drummed and sang and screamed our disappointment and anger that Indigenous lives are forced to be so far from justice, or even its prospect or possibility.

Justice for Cindy Gladue.

No mask for me

The mask pushed into my gums where the dentist assaulted me yesterday, but I should be okay for tonight, and I did get a lovely sleep with all that acetominophen chasing through my sensorium.

Agents of Shield is so boring, confusing, and emotionally trying that I just don’t want to watch it any more.  I keep hoping that there will be cool CGI but no dice.  Comic book plotting is hard on the nerves.

Justified, on the other hand, serves up plot twists and turns that you don’t see coming and couldn’t actually foresee and yet feel more true to life and more emotionally accurate than all the bushwah in Agents of Shield put together.

So, not great to watch the two shows back to back.

There’s only one episode of Justified left and if it’s anything like the last one it will be a wringer.

Bills all paid.

A massively unpleasant hour and a half

I have a temporary crown and get the real one in a fortnight. He froze me up solider than Mr. Freeze in liquid nitrogen, and then I was gagging for about half the time because the freezing was going down the side of my throat and a bit into my tongue and I quit being able to swallow with comfort.  Then of course they put a succession of chemical goos in little plates and they tell you to bite down and you know because this ain’t your first tooth-wrangling partay that you actually have to do what they say or the ****sucker will never fit properly in your mouth and even then there will be mighty hammerings and pryings and sawings and filings getting everything just so. But for the five minutes and other minutes that the gooey trays are in your mouth, there’s this impression that you’re sampling ‘the verrrry best a toxic waste dump can offer in the way of chemically goo!’ And I bit myself when frozen, one of my least favourite feelings because you have no way of knowing how bad it is until the freezing wears off.

Now my mouth hurts and the afflicted/treated tooth hurts so FRICKING BAD I am going to get up and get painkillers, and I don’t usually.

And all of this complaining must be set against the balance: that I needed to have the work done, and my family helped me, and I’m really, despite all this colourful whinging, most seriously and abjectly grateful.  Thank you.

Oh, and I biked to (in the middle spent time sunning myself at Paul’s, and also, sweeping, as the floors at Planet Bachelor Rev 1.3 needed them, and there was an apple and some San Pellegrino in there too) and from, so please, plaudits for getting off my ass.  It too is God’s handiwork, and only needs the chance to shine.

So happy Paul has retired.  I certainly think he is happy too.

What a thing it is to have friends

A friend called me at 9:30 last night.  I had to take my cpap mask off, and completely wake up to get the call.  My heart rate leapt into the Empyrean, as it always does when the phone rings and it’s pitch dark.  Has one of the fOlks suddenly taken ill?  Is one of my children trying to get a lawyer subsequent to an incident of some kind?   As I settled into dealing with the fact that I was now awake, my friend said, “Oh I’ll just let you get back to sleep then.”   And she hung up.

This is a person who is familiar with my current sleep wake cycle.

Just so we’re clear, her error was not in calling me.  My friends know they can call me, because I’ve said so, repeatedly.  Her error was completely waking me up, rejecting my offer to communicate and denying my agency to do so because ‘I was already asleep’, and then hanging up on me.  This filled me with a bilious fury and disgust during which I reviewed whether I even want this person as a friend at all, despite everything we’ve been through.  As the night crawled on, I consoled myself with the thought that with any luck I’ll be given the opportunity to wake her up on the eve of an important event and completely screw her sleep cycle, but be too polite and thoughtful to actually, you know, do it.

I have an interview today and I didn’t get back to sleep until after one, and I was so messed up I couldn’t put the mask back on, so I’m underoxygenated and underslept.  Jeff advised a nap, I’ll see if I can.

What a thing it is to have friends.  I wish they would find other ways to test our friendship  than messing with the few blissful hours each day during which I have no pain, and no worries, but when I think of how many people have no friends at all, I know I’m being quite unreasonable.  Not everybody lives in a household where sleep is sacred, and I can’t expect the world to conform to my needs.

Finally done with the address to the troops, now comes the stitchery to put the second part together and a push to get 4-6000 words for the goodbyes and the beautiful crowning achievement that the whole book has worked towards, which will completely turn to dreck in the first two paragraphs of the sequel.

I got reddit gold a couple of weeks ago for a comment.  Maybe two people who read this will care.  It was about childlessness by choice.

I found the extension for my Mac charger.  Life is somewhat more convenient.  See what cleaning your room can do?

 

 

Colonialism rant

The crowning achievement of colonialism is how it has tapped into the human genome to recycle itself. The finely woven threads, the self-repairing structures of racism and sexism, fear of the other, the urge to destroy that which is experienced as diseased and loathsome, they all belong to colonialism, which I am now going to conflate with the human tendency to devalue other human beings based on feelings of disgust rather than facts. Now science brings us the truth behind the experience of conservatism, that it is based in physical disgust.

This disgust results in things as various as the relentless offering of young men to death in warfare, and old men fighting against young women guarding their fertility as they see fit in consequence. Generation after generation of old powerful men, in whatever culture and of whatever colour, offer young men into the maw of war and conquest, having dragged them from their parents’ arms and essentially from the mother’s womb. Kind people on the sidelines weep with loss as this happens generation after generation.

I have been struggling all my life with this fundamental flaw in human nature, the place where the sociability of human beings, which is quite remarkable, breaks down. Now I see it. It is in the rock-crusher of our capacity to feel deep, emotional, physical disgust that we are broken into pieces and fed into colonialism. It seems circular, and it is. There is a constant value, circulating in the human genome, of persons who feel disgust more readily, inbuilt and coiled in every cell. They will, being of a certain neurotype, congregate, and then they will amass resources and make of their disgust a common, noble reason to make war on anybody on the outside of the group.

Jesus God.

Working on songs

I have found (I think) most of the songs I printed out before my hard drive died, and am now going to put them in alpha order and scan the ones I don’t have digitally.

Sisyphus is done, and I also turned it into an MP3 and shipped it to mOm. As a song it’s quite fast; as a repurposed, slowed down, dropped more than an octave piece of soundtrack it’s actually very cool.

I need to do a lot more dejunking. I finally freed up the guest room, which was a staging area for clean clothes, and I hung everything, which would help if I didn’t keep stuffing my room with things that don’t belong in the rest of the house but have no appropriate storage.  In the end, apart from kitchen and bathroom stuff, I hope to be able to get everything into one room; that’s the desired end state as it’s obvious I won’t be living in this house for the rest of my life although far from obvious when I’ll move.

Tomorrow night it’s Theology Pub!  I will be taking a friend to supper and then hanging out afterwards; I wouldn’t miss it as it is at the Heritage Grill and their back room is a treat.

Cpap last night.  No writing.  My mood is very dark and angry, which is great when you’re writing dark and angry scenes, and not so good when you’re trying to do the sf equivalent of the St. Crispin’s Day speech.  I keep losing the thread after a few paras.  Cazart.

Keith came by yesterday but I was still feeling very wobbly so I didn’t hang out with him much.  I ate the burger he brought me though!

Well, I suppose it’s time to shower and ingest vitamins and painkillers, drink some coffee and suchlike.

Katie is coming over on Friday to do some recording.  Blink!  She wants to do an album of songs for Alex for when she’s not around.  I personally think it will make him cry harder, once he figures out not to believe the lie that she’s there and singing, but what the heck. I’ll try anything that doesn’t involve running.  When I was rolling over in bed last night my pelvic joints made so much noise you could probably hear them across the room.

The hypochondriac in me

I fucking hate it when somebody on facebook says “I meet most of the diagnostic criteria for X HORRIBLE INCURABLE UNTREATABLE DISEASE”.  Because, lalala, I run off to the dreaded Differential Diagnosis Machine that is Google and go “ARGH MY GOD I HAVE THIS DREADED DISEASE and it isn’t fatal  BUT GOD HOW INCONVENIENT.”

No, I don’t have this dreaded disease.  I am just complaining about how the ‘monkey see monkey do’ part of my brain seems to be hyperactive.

Keith and Paul, bless ’em, have gotten me out of the house for walks over the last couple of days.  Oakalla was gorgeous, as always, full of lovely dogs.  Whom I respected from a respectful distance, but Paul never saw a Samoyed he didn’t want to manhandle.

Inherent Vice is a sterling example of how you CAN film a Pynchon novel.  Joachim Phoenix is remarkable, as is the rest of the extremely well chosen cast.  Josh Brolin is a standout.

I have met Keith’s girlfriend!  She exists.  L. is a charming young woman with a most infectious laugh. I gave her a lift home the other night and so had a chance to interact with her.

Buster is remarkably blithe for someone who’s been castrated. He leaped up onto the pinball machine less than 24 hours after the operation.  If he keeps this up he’ll rip out his stitches.  Remarkable feline. Hopefully his remarkable aim, persistence and bladder capacity will be put to more pious uses in future.

Today’s walkies will include tomaters.  Jeff needs tomatoes for BLTs.  Also, I must cook bacon.

Everybody have a lovely day now!!

 

Whineypants

I just backspaced over a thousand words of whining.  THE WORLD IS A BETTER PLACE.

Only one thing has happened recently worth reporting.  Keith came over yesterday.  I said, “I’m so happy to see you I’m going to clean my glasses so I can see you better.”  He’s rewatching Ken Burns’ Civil War with us.

 

 

All is merry and bright

  1. Paul gave me and Jeff motion detector lights; the upgetting to pee is now a lot easier.  Paul’s approach to Christmas gifts is to buy a bag of useful objects and let you pick which one you like – this year the theme was light, so it was headlamp, motion detector light or keychain flashlight.
  2. I was really resentful about ‘having’ to do Christmas dinner, and then I asked myself what it would take to be less resentful.  I immediately thought “If I don’t have to buy the turkey and lug it home!”  To which Paul happily agreed, and Keith lugged it over here.  Resentment vanished, I went to Granville Island with Tammy for the rest of the veg and happily lugged that home.
  3. I made vegan squash soup – there wasn’t enough for everybody and it was damned good.
  4. so much good beer – pumpkin ale, winter ale, shipwreck IPA! Tammy brought some nice wine.
  5. The turkey was good – the meat delicious, the skin like an advertisement – but what was really amazing was the gravy. I ended up eating it cold as a side for leftover pie, and it was SO GOOD.  It was pan dripping gravy.  I stuck the pan drippings in a blender, added a tablespoon of cake flour and about half a cup of milk, blended the shit out of it and then nuked it for a minute.  From such pedestrian beginnings came a voluptuously smooth gravy with a meaty and almost nutty flavour.
  6. Mike and Tammy and Paul and Katie and Keith and I sang and played afterwards, and Alex grooved along.  He really really likes music, and he is most fabulously strong.  He apparently likes his Christmas present, which was a stuffed T Rex. Paul introduced Tammy to Never Set the Cat on Fire, which was wonderful.
  7. Wine was spilled on Granny’s linen tablecloth… horrors! and it came out again the next morning with some Amaze.  Tablecloth is clean, folded and ready for use.
  8. Earlier this week I got the lobster dinner I have been drooling for, except it was lunch, and it was with Tammy, so it was pretty much perfect.
  9. Although the kitchen is once again the habitation of orcs this morning, I HAD cleaned up and ran a dishwasher and got rid of the empties and straightened out the living room the next morning and returned some sanity to the proceedings.
  10. Today I hope to get cat litter.  With two cats, more shit.  It is the law.
  11. Autumn is a boy.  He is now Buster.  Jeff and I are fine with this, but not fine with not noticing earlier.  He will be snipped in a week or so.
  12. He has been to the vet for suturing because he’s already gotten in fights. Margot was disturbed by him before, but with a cone on his head she is Miss Hissy each time he approaches.
  13. I am really enjoying everybody’s pics of how happy their Christmas has been.  The various traditions from around the world and around the various ethnicities of my friends and flist make me happy in their variety and conviviality.
  14. I am sad to have missed Christmas Eve service because it was the last time a certain church member will ever provide music for us, because he is awesome, but also sick.  As sad as I am about this, I made happy memories in my own home with my loves and kin.
  15. Keith was sober, and he was Mom’s taxi.  He: ferried Tammy to and from Edmonds, drove his sister home, drove Rob to Church and drove Mike and his Dad home.  As happy as I was to see Alex, Keith did a lot to make the evening perfect, and I am now considering (which I can do here, since he never reads my blog, haw haw) how I shall appropriately reward him for his service.
  16. A car was stolen from in front of our house at 3:30 am Christmas morning.  I spoke to a Burnaby RCMP officer about it… Jeff and I were asleep at the time, or in no position to see what was happening.  I thanked her for working Christmas Day and wished for her to stay safe out there.
  17. I made chocolate cake.  I am thinking perhaps cinnamon rolls later. The turkey soup is made and in the freezer.

This concludes my report….

Yay, it’s an Alexander day!

Alex will be at church with Katie, or so it was arranged and I piously hope will come to pass.  I do coffee today so it’s even money whether or not I get to be upstairs for the homily portion.  Sue is taking me in early and I’ll do an inventory and see if there’s enough of whatnot for coffee etc., then cross the street and pick it up.  Happy daze.  Should be a good homily though. Marilyn asked me to do another homily for January 4 – one of the worst attended days of the year – so I’m going to do what I can to boost the numbers.  If you’re reading this, why not come to church that day!!??

THE GREAT YULETIDE COOKIEPALOOZA happens next Friday.  It will turn into a filk.  A messy messy housefilk, with crumbs and greasy thumbprints on the music.  Yes, indeed.  Thanks to Tom and Peggy for hosting.  We will also have the AMERICAN CONTINGENT, being the uber crafty Jeri-Lynn and the suavely geeky Jeff.  Who are just so awesome.  Cindy and possibly others will attend also.

It’s raining.  After yesterday’s glorious sun (which I got to walk around in, thanks to Paul not understanding that the Brighton Costco parking lot at 11 am is the worst fucking place in the known universe and how long precisely has he been living in Burnaby grumble grumble, but no harm done).  I drove through the parking lot and then drove back to Planet Bachelor and walked home from there, accompanied by Keith who just felt like continuing the conversation, which was pleasant, and made the walk back go in an eyeblink.  I needed the exercise.  I really wanted to pick some stuff up at Costco because there’s some bread there I can’t find anywhere else plus cheap butter and you know, baking, but perhaps I can borrer the car.  Apart from the walk and the abortive Costco trip I basically stayed in bed crying all day, but I’m feeling much better now.  Tammy is coming in December! Conflikt 8 (I can scarcely credit it…) is coming! And I still haven’t registered or figured out how I am getting there.  If I’m staying extra long I may need to like, bus it.  Bleaaugh.

I love my mOm and pOp.  mOm provided the correct stream of unfiltered bubbliness (occasionally going off mike to inform pOp of my responses) to assist with my bad case of the Marthambles – why, she’s better than a dose of Dr. Tufts finest elixir.

Still no cat.  I suspect what has happened is that the daughter has flung herself on the ground and pleaded her mom not to let Autumn go and the mom has been too embarrassed to tell Jeff she’s changed her mind, but perhaps Jeff is right and it’s just taking longer than expected.  Sometimes I think this culture is so indulgent to its children because these are the last good days and everybody’s trying to make them seem extra special.

I removed an incredible amount of hair surplus to requirements from Margot yesterday.  She was not amused.

Day five of Vitamin D, Vitamin C, B6, probiotics and MSM.  I am definitely feeling less achey, except for my hands, which is making me not want to play my Otto.

Jeff’s playing computer games on line with somebody, I assume Andrew – I can hear him talking to somebody on the headset.  “I think we just combined to kill one of our own tanks!” is the latest.

With sadness, I have cancelled the piano lessons.  He wasn’t listening to my course corrections and I’m not paying a man $35 bucks an hour to ignore me when I can have it for free any time I want on the internet.

My most recent painting is an unmitigated disaster.  I am going to paint over it.  I got the colours right but the design has much suckage – I think I’ll paint over it as a zombie heart.

Now to make a chocolate cake for church and figure out what I am going to wear.  And I have to remember to take a tape measure, for I mean to measure some crania, I do, I do, for future hatmaking endeavours.  Hats and spats. Cravats with cats. Fingerless gloves and pleather utility belts. I have to figure out how to make a living, and since there seems to be an inexhaustible interest in the steampunk aesthetic, I shall pursue that hobby for a while.

 

New song

It literally came into my mind – bouncing 70’s style pop music – all in one go, less than 5 minutes.

You sent me a pic
of your dick
and I don’t wanna see it
You wanna be my friend
with Warner Bros at the end
and I don’t wanna be it
The picture that you sent
that’s really kinda bent
it isn’t even of you
You wanna pay my rent
every last cent
and then you say “i luv u”
I know that you’re showing me
all kinds of affection
but maybe you could leaven it
with just some self-reflection….

You sent me a pic, sent me a pic, sent me a pic
repeat to fade