Category: Rhetoric / Logic

Well, it’s not my novel, but it’s writing

So, there’s an essay competition.  I wrote it, and now I think why the hell would I submit it even if I thought I could win…?  I have my own bully pulpit, thx.  The essay prize was a thousand dollars, but when I realized that all my good portraits of myself died with the last hard drive, that fixed it.  And so….

 

Why me? Why Vancouver?

For almost ten years, my husband’s request to be transferred to Vancouver by his employer sat in some HR equivalent of development hell.  Nothing happened, and given the desirability of the posting and Paul’s place in the line, nothing was expected to.  Then, three weeks after our family followed his employment from Montréal to Toronto, he got word to report for work in Vancouver in 72 hours’ time.

And he smiled.  He’d applied for three weeks of vacation at exactly the same time, and couldn’t be forced to start work until it was finished. Thus began our family’s transition.

We put everything we owned in a truck trailer — including the vintage motorcycle and sidecar that Paul later sold so we could buy a house – and sent it on its way. We grabbed the kids and the cat and flew to Victoria and dropped the kids off with the grandparents, and then we spent two weeks lining up a car, a place to live and schooling and drivers licences,

We laboured in that little golden slot of weather that we get sometimes in late October, when the days are deliciously crisp and cool, the air smells wonderful, and the sun on the mountains makes you think you’re living in a fantasy novel.

We wondered why there was a bird we could only hear at intersections.  We said Gag-lard-ee and Anna-kiss and locals choked on polite laughter. We found a house (after consulting an earthquake map for the safest locales) and got the kids settled, and began a love affair with Vancouver that continues to this day.

I can’t speak for the rest of my family, since time has kept us in the same city but no longer under one roof, but the shape and texture and beauty of the city has come to mean home as no other place ever has.  Memories bubble up.

The turbaned Sikhs teasing the waitress to bring them chopsticks in the Chinese restaurant, “What are we, uncivilized?” The silent explosion of flowering shrubs each spring, the lilacs, the rhodos and the cherries. The way people leave their Diwali lights up until Christmas. The Babel of accents and voices on the transit; the kindnesses I have experienced on the two occasions I’ve had car trouble and strangers appeared out of nowhere with cell phones. The ‘four o’clock stripe’ at sunset in the winter, just about the only time you can reliably see the sun. The hundreds of kilometres of lovely places to walk and ride; the hills that nearly gut you in the summer and cause articulated buses to splay out like drunks in the winter.

Watching my son do Winter Karate Training on Jericho Beach, marching in his gi into the water; paddling among the herons on the Pitt River, and then nearly dying of the effort required to get back to the dock when the tide was making.  Sunsets and sunrises of transfixing beauty.  Dealing with raccoons, skunks, coyotes, deer and bears, and once, the authorities had to tranquilize a cougar, mere blocks from the house.  Running into herons in every part of the city.  Once I startled one as I came around a corner on my bicycle and nearly fell off as a six food wingspan abruptly flung wide in front of me. The stairs at Wreck Beach and the 60’s vibe that greets you at the bottom.  Sadness at the ancient trees wrecked by a storm in Stanley Park; joy to see the statue of Lord Stanley the first time and read the beautiful words inscribed on it.  Asking Headwater to come play on the back deck for my brother’s birthday, and what an amazing concert that was.

 

There are things I’ve learned to dislike about Vancouver, but complaints are cheap.  I’ve learned to love my splendid city, to want to know more about her and the people who were here before the settlers came.  It was a happy accident that brought me here, and I’ll be staying here as long as I can.  Vancouver has given me a church community I cherish, co-workers whom I now consider my closest friends, and music and love and really phenomenal craft beer in abundance.

 

It seems strange to have been born on one coast only to find my heart’s home on the other, but Vancouver is a place that has taught me to respect the playful grip coincidence has on any human life.

An open letter to J.

who wants all the kinksters to stop promoting BDSM on the UU poly feed.  Best of British luck with that, darlin’.

 

letter begins…

I guess it all depends on whether you consider the uu-poly group to be a place to talk about kink.  I do, but it’s for the moderators to decide, if we aren’t a democracy.

I used to take what I thought was a moral stance on the subject of other people’s wacky sex practices, in line with how I was raised, of course, but once I figured out that what ‘paraphilias’ are, is a normal human response to various kinds of stress, plus wiring, plus repetition, I quit thinking it was necessarily a bad thing.  The moral issue is not whether it’s healthy by a narrow definition, but whether there is genuine consent.  Human beings of their nature have long childhoods and are incredibly social, and so experimentation with hierarchy in terms of dominance and submission is not just normal, it’s inevitable. And along with inevitable, we will get extreme. 

Paraphilias have been defined as a trifecta of sexuality that is extreme and dangerous and abnormal.  Funny thing; I think of rape the same way and yet we have a large constituency of people, both men and women, who think rape is part of the normal course of events – and a desirable one too, as it allows rapists to provide tools of social control for the society at large.
If we want to travel down the path of having our sexuality defined by those who will profit by othering us, then we’re getting off the UU train entirely.

In that regard the kink community has been leading the way for a number of years with an emphasis on consent for scenes. Humans contain a multitude of sexual possibilities and as long as all parties are able to give and obtain agreement for activities my opinion on whether those activities are harmful is just wind.
Paraphilias concerning those who cannot by nature give consent (children, animals, unconscious and disabled, as examples) need a better class of scientists and therapists to figure out what’s going on so it can be controlled for the benefit of all, because the people who came up with the DSM have harmed our culture almost irreparably; each successive iteration has been an object lesson in legitimized othering. I could start raving about the drug companies too and how long it took to get queerness out of the DSM but that rant’s been done better elsewhere.
Paraphilias involving consenting adults who play in safe spaces and in a fashion that isn’t a menace to public health are not my concern. Which is why I choose to call THOSE paraphilias kink, and will use the freighted medical term for people who get off forcing their violent imaginations and lust on those weaker than themselves.  Solitary paraphiliacs I just feel sorry for but I always was a softie.
I don’t want to other people.  Draw the circle wide, friends. We all need love and acceptance, and we have to model it, whether we feel like punching each other out occasionally or not, or want the (pick a minority group) – oops, I meant kinksters – to leave the room while we’re talking about our serious matters.
Letter ends
At least I didn’t say tone troll, evoke Hitler or tell her to go fuck herself, so there’s that.  I didn’t have permission to quote her letter, which was a masterpiece of liberal uptightness, srsly.

They warned me

They told me what would happen.  I started following racism eradication activists on twitter, and they told me, down to the last squeak of privilege and bleat of illogic and roar of cognitive bias and growl of hatred and whine of misdirection and concussive threat of personal violence and siren of tone policing, exactly what would happen to me when I started confronting racist speech in others, in public.  In a three round conversation, I got it all but the threat of violence, including how the other person’s spelling and grammar devolved as (I assume from the name) he completely lost his shit.

I’ve spent a lifetime avoiding conflict and trying to talk pretty; this is going to make the friendships I have with people who want to help me with the work even more important.  It already IS ugly.  Up until this point I’ve had no skin in the game.  That’s what privilege does.  Now I want to have skin in the game without getting my feelings hurt, and that’s just not going to happen, and I have to get over it, and I’m scared.

One of the things that is helping is learning about the Japanese-American and African-American troops as they served their country fighting in the Second World War.  They wanted to prove two things, their patriotism and their worth. Many made the ultimate sacrifice to demonstrate both.  As they fought in their campaigns, they encountered the worst of what human beings can do to each other, and helped destroy the engines of fascism and racism, although they could not eradicate those ideologies.  With their sacrifice in mind, I will get off my ass; I will quit whining; I will do the work.

An open letter to the Canadian Legion

Dear Canadian Legion:

In 1948 by Act of Parliament, the Canadian Legion came to own the Poppy as a trademark for marketing, advertising and fundraising activities.

These days, we encounter the poppy around the middle of October, usually outside a liquor store.

But I hate the thing. If I had a dime for every time I’ve stuck myself with a poppy pin, I could recover all the money I donated to the Legion to acquire one, usually once a year because they fall off.  It’s like they are designed to fall off and inflict pain, which certainly encourages remembrance, but I’m not sure it’s the right kind.

Since they are identical every year, cheapskates I know (including a member of my tribe) reuse them every year. I don’t, but I know people who do.

Please redesign your trademark so that you put the year on the center green bit, to encourage people to buy new ones.

PLEASE fix the fastener OR start making enamelled versions of the poppy.  It would be an effective year round fundraiser, especially if sold with branch numbers so local members could support their local with pride.  And instead of being, effectively, somewhat hazardous trash, once no longer worn, it would be beautiful jewelry.

With love and thanks to Canada’s veterans, and sincere appreciation for the work of the Legion,

AR Sloman

The funny things the characters say

Jeff took me for breakfast… the leftovers will make a loverly brunch.  We also did a shop, including two for one standing rib roasts.  Nom.

Teaching the homeless to code.

I said I wouldn’t, but I did volunteer for something at church; I’m doing esthetics for Sally’s birthday (which is also a choir day so she can’t sing and set up at the same time).  I will be talking to Sue about what she wants, since the Board is doing the service that day. Sue returned my steampunk hat and we had a lovely visit.  It was weird; I thought of her because I knew she was back from vacation and I hadn’t talked to her in yonks, and she rang me up within seconds of this thought occurring.  Ah, the message in the wind.

Trip to Toronto is not yet booked, but it is tentatively 26th Nov to 5 Dec.

Good news for prostitutes and women at high risk of HIV everywhere.

I just had a character whisper in in my ear “Shiny is health, sparkle is magic”.  It made sense in context. (Kima, if anybody cares.)

Jeff and I are watching Cheers.  Shelley Long as Diane makes me want to alternately slap her and make counted crossstitch samplers of her dialogue, but the rest of the characters, especially Coach, are so funny my occasional cringes are worth it.  It’s one of the many shows in my tv blackout period so I never watched it the first time.

I am reading Foucault for Dummies.  There’s probably only one person who reads my blog on a regular basis who will find this amusing.

We are also watching Caprica, which is way, way better than I expected it to be.  As I remarked on another subject, all this and Bear McCreary too.

pOp is feeling poorly, so I am sending him a big hug and a wish that he recover his normal level of grumpiness with all due speed.

 

 

 

 

Marijwhatnow?

The Seattle PD responds to marijuana legalization. pOp you MUST read this, it is the single funniest statement to the public evar by any PD.  The tone, the tone.

A friend who’s otherwise entirely left wing doesn’t support legal marijuana on facebook.  I disagreed with him, but not by taking issue with one substance.

My response:

 

Legalize everything.

The problem with marijuana legalization is that the state removes a tariff (essentially) and the profit from a wildly lucrative trade.  It is lucrative for those who build prisons and put disproportionate numbers of POC in them, lucrative for bad people with automatic weapons, and lucrative for state sponsored terrorists from foreign climes.

When you pull insane amounts of profit from the hands of bad (mostly) men, their response is not to roll over and play dead, it’s to find something else to profit from.  In this case it would be refined opiates and meth that they would now be trying to extract value from. Or they’ll push human trafficking instead, since the demand by men for teenaged girls seems to be entirely limitless.   I will be fascinated to see if the rates of meth use and reported human trafficking bump up, along with intergang carnage, in the places marijuana has been legalized.  It may be the revenge of unintended consequences all over again.

The Portuguese model of across the board treatment of drugs as a HEALTH issue has been running for 10 years and their HIV rates have plummeted, their societal costs for drug use are minimal, they’ve unclogged the courts and drug use across the board has been reduced especially in young people, and what sane human being doesn’t want to see drug use rates in teenagers fall.  I would be willing to hazard a guess that human trafficking is worse though, although I have no proof of that.

(That’s what I put on facebook – I could have said MUCH MORE).

Gendered slurs

Crikey, it’s not like I needed another project.  So here is what you might call a ‘substantially complete’ list of gendered slurs.  I don’t want these words coming out of my mouth, so I’m trying to find replacements.

Ballbreaker – woman

Ballbuster – woman

Bimbo – starlet

Bint – woman

Bitch – crank, meanie

Bitchy – cranky, spiteful, malicious, mean, nasty, cruel, unkind, snide

Bleeder – woman

Boob – jerk

Breeder – woman

Broad  – woman

Chica – woman

Chick – young woman

Cocktease – sexually unavailable woman

Cow – crank, jerk

Crow – crone

Cunt – cloaca

Dick – jerk

Dickwad – jerk

Dickweed – cloaca

Dog – not to my taste

Douche – jerk

Douchebag – cloaca

Dyke – lesbian

Feminazi – woman

Fish – woman

Frail – woman

Gigolo – sex worker

Girl – This one is troublesome.  If for a female under 14, yes.  For a female between 14 and 18 I prefer young woman or teen.  Over 18 – woman.

Himbo – attractive young man

Ho – sex worker

Honey – woman

Kitten – woman

Mangina – feminist

Minger – woman

Munter – woman

Pussy – schlemiel (in the sense of being ineffectual) coward (in the sense of being easily frightened or timid)

Putz – jerk

Real girl – as opposed to what, but prefer woman

Rentboy – sex worker

Scrote – timewaster

Scrotey – trivial

Sexkitten – woman

Shemale – trans woman

Skanky – unhygienic, dirty, unpleasant

Skirt – woman

Slag – not to my taste

Slut – enthusiast

Streetwalker – sex worker

Sweetie – woman

Teaser – woman

Tit – woman

Tosser – idler

Tranny – trans woman

Twat – jerk

Wanker – incompetent

Weiner – jerk

Whore – sex worker

Witch – woman

 

I left homo, queer and faggot off the list as those words appear to be in a state of flux regarding usage.  I do use queerfolk as an inclusive term.

 

Kittle cattle

This is an expression I was exposed to in reading Lucy Maud Montgomery.  I only got through the Anne books once, and not attentively; most of my Montgomery reading was the same two books, over and over again, because that’s what I did, when I was a kid, was to read books over and over again, like the Mary Poppins books and the Hobbit and the Narnia books, and then Lord of the Rings and then Dunnett, ah, Dunnett.  I obsessively re-read Blue Castle and A Tangled Web.  Like, a lot, and repeatedly, to the point I memorized great chunks of dialogue.

When I’m trying to be warm and funny and chumpathetic with human foibles and vices, it’s to Montgomery I look for the blessed tone.  She gave me characters of occasional dignity and variable worth; all more or less attempting to be good while surrounded with the potential for thunderous criticism inherent in a small Prince Edward Island town early in the 20th century.  Where people really cared about what their neighbours did, having no tv poor things, rather than strangers living in Babylon several thousand leagues away and anything you saw them doing happened three months ago, which is good because it keeps you in perspective.

In this environment kittle cattle means – easily spooked or set awry.  The descriptor from the text is “so intense”. To me it’s a combination of being easily startled and self-willed, ‘difficult to manage’.  Not fun to be married to, as I construe it.  A troubling person, perhaps with genuine mental health difficulty.  Liable to stomp off.

 

I’ve got rants in my pants

I called somebody out on using a gendered slur recently and he paused & adjusted his speech. Sometimes it’s that easy.  Now if I could just stop using my own slurs and replace them with something better.  I am in search of a few good words, to replace a few slur-ry ones.  I’m looking at YOU r-tarded and p-nsy, two words which shouldn’t even be coming into my mind, let alone leaving my mouth.  If the action is stupid, I’ll use ‘ill-considered’, and if the person is stupid to the point of being a threat to life, limb and body politic, ‘witless’.  P-nsy is more problematic.  I am thinking ‘mollescent’ or ‘mollusc’ or ‘spineless’, although if I use mollusc I am afraid the Old Ones will cotch me.  I’m working on replacing “Thank G-d” with “Thankfulness!” and I’m already well into replacing the exclamations “C—-t!” and “J—s!” with “Darwin’s Beard!”

 

What kind of man are you, Robert?

Here’s the offending document, from Skepchick.

Here’s my response.

 

Dear Robert,

I was interested to read your email to skepchick.  I have a number of questions.  I am sure that your email box is full, so I’ll give you a couple of weeks to shovel your way out from under the uptick in mail volume to respond.  There is always the possibility you were pranked, so I am keeping my questions civil. Here they are.

Are you implying that your reaction to a woman’s appearance is more important than what she has to say on the subject of atheism?

Are you implying that because you do not like a woman’s appearance you have an obligation to ask her to stop commenting on atheism?

Are you implying that your personal preferences regarding a woman’s appearance should factor into whether she continues to make comments about atheism on youtube?

I ask to confirm that you were indeed serious.  If so, kindly direct me to your youtube account so I may critique your videos regarding atheism in the light of your personal appearance.  If you have none such, allow me to express disappointment, as the world of atheism would undoubtedly be better off with your contribution to it more readily accessible.  If you weren’t serious, please advise how I was supposed to know you were joking from the context of the email.

In the spiriit of tolerance and inquiry,

Allegra Sloman

The war on vegans continues

Holy flaming balls of purulence.  I inherited John Caspell’s entire library of anarchist works – if I lived in the US I’d be subject to a Grand Jury indictment just because I lived close to some government building that was vandalized.  Here’s the link.  Or should I not be worried because I am not young?

I salute thee cherished female progenitor

My mother kept an email correspondence going with her cousin Reck for about ten years, until shortly before he passed this past spring. I have just edited 150 pages of it (it’s 800 pages in total) being the portion just before and just after Obama was elected. IT IS AMAZING. They talk about politics and family history and philosophy and ethics and Reck casually mentions that he emailed Malcolm Gladwell regarding an idea – which may have contributed to his thinking when he wrote Outliers. And my mother defends atheism with a verve and trenchancy I could only dream of emulating. Just feeling blown away right now.

travelling woman

1.  Excellent and wondahful visit with the parental units.  I got a photo scan of the old homestead in SK, had my traditional coffee and cinnamon bun (best commercial cinnamon buns ever) at Dan’s after a lovely ride in the country, communed with some skunk cabbage, watched the hummingbirds, who are quite active these days (three sucking back syrup with another circling, occasional flashes of the O My God red as the sun hits them), watched a quail peck a pileated woodpecker while the woodpecker ignored him, cooked a couple of lovely meals for the folks, which my mother quite appreciated, watched some nature programs, and felt pride as Katie passed the 48 hour mark of quitting smoking.  Fingers crossed she makes it this time!

2.  RUDE FUCKING START TO THE DAY.  I had to yell at the cab driver.  I will post a copy of the letter

 

Dear Sir,

I am a long time and mostly satisfied customer of Bonny’s Taxi, whose
services I have been using since 1998.

I am complaining in the strongest possible terms about the complete
disregard for the safety, comfort and wallet of the customer
demonstrated by the above-named driver.

This morning I got a cab to the airport from Bonny’s.  I SPECIFICALLY
TOLD THE DRIVER NOT TO MOVE THE CAB UNTIL I WAS BELTED IN.

The reason I did this is because my daughter just got a 147 $ ticket
because the cab driver she selected took off before she was belted in.

The driver verbally agreed to stop and then immediately sped off again
prior to me even being able to get the belt anywhere close to secured.
I had to yell at him to get him to stop the cab, which I am not proud
of, but he disregarded my clearly stated and lawful instructions.

As you are no doubt aware, the fine for not being belted in is borne
by the customer, not the cab driver.  I understand that time is money
but when your driver’s anxiousness to make some money potentially
costs the customer money and the aggravation of a court date, there is
something seriously wrong with the safety training and customer
service ethic of your drivers.

I would like a refund of my $44.30 cab fare and a reprimand on B.
D—–‘s file.  To be clear, apart from running a couple of yellow
lights and failure to make legal stops under the HTA, the fines for
which would have been borne by the driver, there was nothing else
wrong with his driving.

I look forward to your prompt response, which will factor into my
decision whether or not I complain to the licensing agency.

Thank you for your time.