Category: My bad

Buzz is in da house (well, actually Paul’s ’cause that’s where the amp is).

With singing heart, I tell you that after a year long search, I have acquired an electric 12 string. He’s a solid body, glossy black, strung Rickenbacker style, and the action is so light I can play for an hour – bar chords even! – and his name is Buzz.  (The six string is Kehaar (cause it’s a Seagull, bonus points if you get the reference) and the mandolin is Edith).  Buzz sounds AWESOME and I’m very lucky that Craigslist Dude was downsizing his immense guitar collection.  Everything on board is super clean and all the bells and whistles work.

There are enough effects on board that I shouldn’t have to buy any additional gadgets for quite a while.  I followed Jim E’s advice about buying, and played for a while with the practice amp on, and once I had some volume, I got ze shivers.  I didn’t completely get into tune until I got it back to Paul’s so we could practice, and once it was completely tuned up, that was it, it’s love love love all the way down.

I left it at Paul’s ’cause he’s off today so he can mess around with it and I didn’t even let him touch it last night.  Mother’s Day SOUNDS VERY VERY DIFFERENT on an electric 12 string.  OMG.  I suspect I will be writing more tunes.

My transition to folk rocker is occurring!

Last night I dreamed I was at outdoor SF convention and the organizers had strung EVERY KNOWN SPACESHIP MODEL, some two meters long, above the audience at the bandshell.  I woke myself up going, Holy Ship!  where’s my cell phone camera!  and of course I was dreaming.

The TV show House came roaring back from it’s script battiness last night, and I’m very glad to see that.

Anyway, time for a shower and I’m off to work.  Oh, and I got a raise.  Yeah, this week’s turning out okay.

Lulu becomes something else

Lulu is a traditional African American tune.  lulu

So now I’m gonna do what white folks do best and STEAL IT.  To write about a different minority (your mileage may vary) member.

I’ll sing of Chang Apana / who inspired Charlie Chan

He once took out his old bullwhip/and arrested 40 men x 2

He had a wife in China / in Honolulu too

But he supported both of them / as the honest thing to do x 2

(alternate verse –

Young wife in Honolulu / China wife was old

But he supported both of them / cause that was how he rolled x 2)

He never learned to read or write / but he was a mighty gent

And the only thing that could take him down / was an auto accident x 2

Houseboy and a cowboy / and a policeman too

I’m telling you there wasn’t much / Apana couldn’t do x 2

His loyalty a legend / and when he came to die

A woman that he once had served / was sitting by his side x 2

Hard and fierce and upright / he feared not work or pain

You know that we will never, ever/see his like again x 2

Happy ranting Sabbath

Yesterday I had a number of unpleasant customer service interactions that left me so completely pissed off with the universe that I came home.  I gave the finger to my server, imagine that.  I hate it when people understand you fine when you’re handing them money and then can’t speak English when you want a refund.  That wasn’t the only moment of irritation.  Apart from the glorious sun and the library the trip was a loss.

I picked up a book (by, thank god, somebody Chinese who could do the research in both languages) about Charlie Chan – who was based on a real character so much cooler than Charlie Chan that it’s amazing.  Chang Apana once arrested 40 gamblers without backup OR A GUN – just a bullwhip – and if it the long arm of the law gets cooler than a five foot nothing illiterate Chinese guy deputized to the Honolulu police department busting 40 gamblers in 1904 with a bullwhip, I dunno what the hell does.  Jackie Chan, please make that fucking movie!!!!  Apana was also a COWBOY and wore a cowboy hat = STUNT POSSIBILITIES.  Damn fine cook and houseboy too.  Had a lotta kids.  More than one wife, but he sent money to the one that went back to China until the end of his life; he was not a man who took on obligations lightly.

This morning, homemade hazelnut chocolate filling for Finn pancakes.  Hope Jeff likes it.

Coen Brothers movie A Serious Man.  Meh.

Finished the Songwriter input for “Bob Dylan’s New Years’ Day.”  I thought I had it before, but when I listened to it I was like “No, no, no, that’s all wrong, that’s screwed up.” Sounds much better on playback now.

I think my toe – this is March, right? – which has been screwed up since the last pedicure in November (and no, I am never going there again) – has finally healed up.  Ingrown toenails have been adding to my complete and utter crabbiness; it’s one of the reasons I sleep downstairs as I don’t wake myself up kicking the ladder on the bunkbed and screaming and writhing for a few minutes. Restless leg syndrome is just another one of the ways my body chooses to up the ante on “fuck you”.

I tidied up the yard yesterday; I’m sure the neighbors across the street are happy they no longer have to look at the fucking newspapers that blew all over the front yard. I don’t want the damned things anyway but some underpaid fool keeps bringing them.

Eddie doesn’t seem to mind getting his toenails cut.  All he did was mew quietly a couple of times when I trimmed him yesterday. Cats are not supposed to click.  Predators are supposed to be silent.

Margot watched Nascar and Stargate Universe with us yesterday.  V strange watching her watch tv.  Watching Nascar with Al Jazeera running next to it was the ne plus ultra of weird juxtapositions yesterday.

The justice thing for John was supposed to happen this weekend and didn’t.  Another annoyance – nobody said anything to me about it.

Now I’m going to go to church and see if I can get this mood off me.  Soup lunch today.  I have to go buy buns, I forgot to yesterday.

 

Why it’s been bally ages since I posted a decent moose pic

I just had a giggly notion to google Moose Porn but I don’t want to see cheerful and inebriated white people in moose headdresses having at each other (for, brethren and sistern, think ye not that would be my portion in so googling?), so instead you can have this perfectly safe for work newspaper article courtesy of Cousin Gerald.

 

While you were looking at the safe moose pic, I went off and googled Moose Porn.  Now I can say, “Oh god, I’ve just seen a cam pic of a moose’s ass in rut.”  I told myself don’t go there, and I went there, and I’m sorry, and that’s how I know I’m not old yet, I keep doing entirely dumbass shit like that.

Pork chops with a crust of hazelnuts, dijon mustard, maple syrup, salt and pepper, lightly broiled, with nuked red potatoes and corn for supper.

Tonight I said, “Colin Ferrell’s accent when he’s not acting sounds like he’s trying to barf up the Blarney Stone.”

clouds of depression and anxiety

Well sheeeeeit, that’s no fun for readers, so perhaps I should just recite bare facts.

Spent most of the day Saturday prepping for what turned into a non event. The one person I figured for sure would come got lost and didn’t make it; a couple of other people who promised to come didn’t show, and it was a very thin crowd indeed. Fortunately the mountain of food was consumed in short order by the folks who attended church the following morning.

I had to open at nine and I couldn’t close until one, so it was another long blank church day.  I am so tired.  Still tired, and work is like a tsunami visible at the horizon, being held in check by the machinations of a government body that isn’t even in Canada. Such are the joys of international commerce in these parlous times.

Came home and Keith was pulling up just as I was and we went to the The Wire-land and stayed there for about four hours as we (Keith Jeff and I) blasted through the last third of the second season.  My goodness.  What an awesome show.  Chris Bauer, who plays Andy Bellefleur the new sheriff of Bon Temps in True Blood, is phenomenal as Frank Sobotka.

Katie called and asked if she could come over and we said sure and then Paul asked if he could come over and we said sure, and we all hung out and Katie and Paul and I went for a walk.  Paul and Katie both stayed over.  I made Katie chocolate milk with whipped cream.  What a weird household I run to be sure.  Anyway I got about thirty seconds left on this before I simply must get going.

I’m so stressed out I’ve started smoking again, but if it’s any consolation this is day three of no beer.  I imagine I’ll stop smoking again when this deck is done, I always get disgusted and stop. Paul just looks at me and Katie with a worried face – nothing could tempt him to smoke again.

I have nothing to be anxious and depressed about.  However, we live in an age of anxiety, and I certainly am feeling my share.

An anniversary of sorts

Twenty-nine years ago today I left my then legal husband, Phil, and moved in with Paul on Springhurst Avenue in Toronto.  It was during the CNE, and with the casual rain of coincidence that marks every part of my life, there were fireworks every night; we’d sit on the third floor balcony overlooking Lake Ontario and watch them.

Three years ago this past spring I moved out.  Our friendship is now more solid – and more civil – than it ever was.  But we had to go through a lot of dross burning off first.

Cables….

I thought I found my camera cables, but I hadn’t, so I paid a flying visit to the Sony Store in Metrotown…$100 and some odd dollars poorer (I bought a spare battery) and poorer in digestion (I bought a burger in the food court) but richer for having seen Mare and Tom U and Brian C, I emerged.  PS I FRACKING HATE THE PARKING LOT IN METROTOWN, WHEN GOD GIVES THE WORLD AN ENEMA THAT’S WHERE THE NOZZLE GWINE GO.

I also got a case for my Blackberry, which will reduce the amount of time I have to charge the poor little sucker.

Must find an alternate source of income, toys are gonna bankrupt me.

Saturday round up, occasionally unsafe for work

Religious persecution quiz, scanged from a facebook/filking buddy.  Who himself was reposting it.

Statins have much worse potential side effects than was previously believed.

Wretched excess meets explosive cuteness.

I’m not posting a link, but one of the church women posted a youtube link to her toddler doing the Hokey Pokey with her, and I just wanted to mention that that’s what it’s all about.

We live in a culture which has little use for our basic instincts, and is thus breeding / punishing their existence out of us as fast as it can.  One can only wonder what the hell will take its place.  These days I wonder how some people manage to feed themselves.  As long as we are where our instincts don’t serve us, many of us will feel alienated.  I think church is a kind of hamfisted way of addressing that alienation. I can’t help thinking that we’re a step away from ‘customized religious experiences’ and I’m not just talking about going to rural Peru to have a drunken shaman pour ayahuasca down your throat and then count his money while you trip endlessly into a brightly painted bucket of existential horror.  I’m talking about thinking, “I want a religious experience that includes singing and labyrinth walking and drums this Sunday,” and if you live in a big town, actually being able to get it.  Virtually, perhaps.                  but if we do not breathe together…. if we do not conspire….. what are we?  That’s why we live from con to con, from dance to dance, from concert to concert, from gig to gig, from (please do NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK AT WORK or IF YOU THINK Lesbian or BDSM sexuality is icky) hookpull to hookpull, from Sunday to Sunday (or whatever your religiously mandated gathering day is).  Re hookpulls, I personally know two people who have attended and participated in these events, and I like ’em fine, so if you want to remonstrate with me about how sick it is I’m just gonna make a sad face and change the subject. You wouldn’t catch me dead at one of them though, I ain’t going anywhere like that just to be a voyeur and I don’t need any additional pain in my body at the moment, thanks.  My complete incomprehension does not include disgust.

Extra solar planets for the win. Every time I look at it, there’s more.  Everything is on fast forward.

Of course, if I fail to mention the artificial life, people will wonder if I dropped off to sleep.

As I type this I am looking at the handwriting of my ancestor Henry Thomas Wake, and wishing I could have handwriting like that.  Copperplate. He actually made money from designing lettering.  mOm says he would be a blogger if he was alive today.  He records in his diary, March 1859, that we went to Euston Square Station to determine the cheapest way to go visit Carlisle, and also that a friend has kindly lent him a book on double entry bookkeeping.  (He was demoniac about self-improvement).

I’m going to take my chalky and somewhat premigraineous brain out for a drive now.  I want a drum.

This tickled my funnybone

I really have to work harder on the second Unitardian principle of respect for everyone.  But when I’m not feeling respectful, this little squib applies. 

Kids have their own version of the principles:

  • Each and every person is important.
  • All people should be treated fairly and kindly.
  • We should accept one another and keep on learning together.
  • Each person should be free to search for what is true and right in life.
  • All people have the right to speak out and vote about things that concern them.
  • We should work for a peaceful, free, and fair world.
  • We need to take care of our planet, Earth, the home we share with all living things.

    • Mozart, moods and metal origami

    I was a complete frackup this weekend.  I did manage to get some cleaning and laundry done, and I did cook some meals, so I didn’t entirely lay about and do nothing – but mostly I did, while feeling sorry for myself.

    Saturday I bought work clothes for our dreaded new overlords have high standards in these things.  I even bought stuff that matched, which is just weird, and it was all solids or stripes, no tie dye. All of it makes me look older than my mother, buy which I mean that it’s all like polyester pantsuits.  Saturday night Jeff and I went to the opera.  It was a masterpiece but the chairs are BRUTAL at the Queen Elizabeth theater and the perfume was a-waftin’.  At half time, despite it being a superlative performance with amazing direction and one tight orchestra, we bailed.  If we could have watched it without being gassed by the fancy lookers in the audience, that would have been grand.  Jeff and I want to go back but we’re thinking a matinee.  The opera was Marriage of Figaro, and honestly, a better introduction to the opera isn’t possible.

    Sunday, despite the fact Joy sent me a reminder email that I was supposed to do set up for church, I forgot and came to church late and Jason did all my work for me.  I did a penance afterwards which consisted of drying every last dish that had to be washed out for the annual congregational meeting.  I came home in full bore collapsing mode, I was so upset, and watched Talladega for a while.  Many crashes and a nailbiter finish.  I finally hauled myself up and tidied a bit.  After supper Paul and Keith came over.  I got all weepy and tragic on Paul, who very sensibly responded by hauling out the massage table and working me over until I quit whining, at which point he tucked me into bed (trust a dad to know how to do that right) and went home and then I slept for ten hours.  This is so much more sleep than I normally get that I am thrilled out of my mind.  I haven’t had any beer in the last two days, either.

    And just to prove I haven’t stopped taking an interest in cool stuff.  …. metal origami.

    Not even with a beer in my hand and a few comments on social media

    A series of large losses can make a small loss feel enormous. I told Rob I wouldn’t cry until I had a beer in my hand, and I lied then too.  I’m crying now, but Jeff is meeting the situation with sympathetic noises and the welcome sound of the coffee grinder.  I was going to say more tender things about him, but he’s off in his room now belching so loud something in my room vibrated in sympathy…. still in keeping with the theme, I spose.

    There was a brief flurry of amusement last night at Robof9’s going away party while one party member commented to another, “We’re friends, right?” but in reference to facebook.

    I now have more than 150 facebook friends.  I have met and spoken to every single one of them.  Some of them are my dearest friends; some I barely know; some are more other people’s friends than mine.  But they are my facebook tribe and I follow their doings, their triumphs and tragedies, the way folks follow soaps. Not so much on the story arc, but man, the set pieces entirely rock.

    Livejournal is for filk buddies and church buddies.  When I realized that – that was the point I realized that filk is the religion-friendly portion of SF fandom.  Because all the most religious people I know who are also fans are also filkers.  Things that make you say hmm.  And when I say religion, I mean Judaism, paganism, UUism, and Mormonism.  We all get together in a room and sing our faces off, and we make sure that people’s dietary requirements, both allergy and religious, are met, and we don’t even talk about it because that would all be beside the point anyway, we’re here to sing and love each other.  Livejournal merely supports the meatspace- we are meant to be together, and LJ helps us do that.

    Twitter is for people who like the kinds of things I like.  Twitter is mostly people I don’t know, will never meet.  The most recent person to start following me had two midwife attended births, co-slept, baby carried, tandem nursed and looky looky, she’s a vegetarian. All those things in common, and then, clunk.  Uh, no thanks. Personally I fucking hate it when people say they are vegetarian and eat eggs and milk.  You’re still robbing babies and eating them, so how does that bring you to fluffy bunnyhood?  Either be vegan or be sparing in your meat consumption or be like me, the meat on meat inside meat, with meat on the side, kind of person.

    I will be a vegetarian when I have to, and not one second sooner.  My brain doesn’t work properly without meat protein and it sure doesn’t work properly without animal fat.  Wish it were otherwise.

    Now I have to go outside and plant the saplings work gave me for Earth Day.  I have a funny story about that but I can’t publish because the inertnets are temporarily forever.  I hope Margot joins me.  There’s something very comforting about her watching me work.

    Time vs money

    I am SO tired of the commute, I’ve decided to buy a car.  Kat has one for sale and she said she would do the cv joint and the muffler for me if I buy the parts and I am very tempted.  It is not a particularly useful car, being, like the MR2, a two seater.  LTGW told me to buy a truck.  This was in the same week he told me I was wearing sensible shoes.  I ended up screaming “Want me to shave my head and start wearing overalls TOO” in the middle of the cafeteria, which certainly made Robof9 laugh.

    Robof9 is leaving the Tiled Cell on the Hill later this month.  I am just punched out about that too.

    The lights over my desk give me a headache every day.  My eyes are so tired by the time I go home I feel like I’m in a dissociative state.

    The weather is cold and windy.  I heard what sounded like ice pellets pinging off my window at 3 am this morning.

    Anyway, now that I know I’m getting a car I feel very bad at the same time I am feeling better.  It’s just that I can’t read, play games, watch video on my phone or do anything that doesn’t involve looking out the window to prevent motion sickness whenever I ride the bus.  I can spend two and one half hours a day commuting, or half an hour driving.  I’m 51 and I’ve only got so many hours left.  Translink is not bad for my part of the world, and it’s not their fault that there’s a fucking lake in between me and work.  I am tired of the asinine creature who takes up five seats on the bus with the rude way she occupies the front section.  I’m tired of the men who smell like pee and spilled stuff and the women who smell like air freshener.  I am tired of listening to phone conversations in a babel of languages; I am tired of hearing conversations that make me want to butt in and describe in detail the cognitive biases involved.  I am tired of fucking rude bus drivers (I’ve seen some good ones, but a couple of events in the last month have left me gobsmacked with disappointment and too disheartened to even complain.)  But I should commute because it’s better for the environment.  It would be better for the environment if I jumped off a bridge, too, but that is not in the cards.

    The house is shifting on its foundations with the wind.

    I want rainbows and unicorns and world peace, and I’m getting dying cats, blue relatives and friends, (this item deleted), (this item deleted), (this item deleted too, sigh), and a bunch of other stuff I can’t complain about.  Currently there are 18 items on the list; most of them I only wrote down so I could add one last item to the list & I FEEL REEAAALLY SHITTY about not being able to DO anything about the stuff that’s wrong.  Oh yeah, Mr. Cheerful Pants, I should just work on the stuff I CAN fix.  It’s all about reframing things.  Well how about I reframe this by breaking it over your head, how’s that work for you?

    The only good thing that happened this week is that Mike showed the pictures he took of Rozo in the woods – nude.  Unbelievable.  All that hair, and her standing on a tree stump in Robert Burnaby Park looking like something shot out of a New Raphaelite wet dream.  There was one particular pic, her figleafed with hair, that I want to carry around with me in my wallet so I have something pleasant to look at when things really fuck up.

    That’s not true, there was one other thing that happened this week.  I found a website with erotic photos and art that actually has about one in ten pics that I like.  I guess it’s yet another sign that I overshare that my first impulse was to email a couple of links to my daughter.  That’s not funny, it’s sick.

    Jeff cheered me up by loaning the car to me yesterday – he stayed home with Gizmo.  I went and got treats after work to cheer us both up.

    Now I’m going to do a Tarot reading.  The day can get worse any way it likes.