Category: The Correction

Off to Paul’s today

Going to help with packing and take us for a walk.

Wordle in 5, 1646 words on ‘The Instructor’ yesterday, with none expected today because of my errands. Lumosity one top score the rest abysmal dreck. I made myself coffee and toasted a sourdough muffin. I’m pretty well used to not keeping cream in the house any more, sigh; my liver has thanked me.

Bakhmut’s still under siege. Putin visited military headquarters in Kherson and Zelenskyy visited the front in Avdiivka.

China’s mediated the first progress in the Yemen war in years; Saudi Arabia and Iran may reopen embassies. Given that 60% of Yemeni deaths since 2015 are directly attributable to the war (via food insecurity and zero health care) and that a million people there have been affected by the cholera epidemic the faster peace comes the better and I don’t care who brokers it.

There’s a yummy beef and tomato and onions mix for wraps in the fridge and also a very nice lentil tofu stew. Sounds bland, but with turmeric, ginger, half a lime, cumin, black pepper, cayenne and plenty garlic it’s anything but. The tofu got cooked in a spice mix but it all ended up incorporated in the stew and it is quite yummy. A bit salty for the diet because for all the veggie ingredients leading one to think it’s vegan, I cooked it in chicken stock (I didn’t want it going bad in the fridge).

Twitter is being really weird and gross and they just took the bans off dead-naming trans people (using what they were named at birth rather than their chosen name for transition) and it’s OPEN SEASON on trans people in a way that was obvious enough before but is now a tidal wave of bigoted speech. Trust trans people to know their own gender enough that you do not need to question them about it.

seven percent of parents regret having children.

one percent of trans people regret transitioning.

IT’S A VERY SUCCESSFUL SOCIO-MEDICAL PROCEDURE, quit second guessing trans people and spending all your chocolate coin attention on the ‘poor parents’ who have been ‘cheated’ of the ‘child they were meant to have’ BLEUCH I hate people who think like that NONE OF US FUCKING GET THE KID WE WANT we get the kid we get and whining about it is rude to everyone and makes you look like a gurning nithing. (gur-ning nye-ðing aka a facepulling poltroon)

I slept GREAT but not ENOUGH so I imagine I’ll be napping this afternoon.

So tempted to write Elizabeth Holmes in jail and mock the living shit out of her but better people have more claim to my time LOL. She honestly believed that people like her can’t go to jail well just ask Martha Stewart she did five months and is still proclaiming her innocence.

10 billion dollars and no water

Apparently they’re going to build a high speed rail line between LA and Las Vegas, 218 miles. Las Vegas’ ‘dead pool’ number is 895 feet. That means that if Lake Mead’s reservoir drops below 895 feet, there’s no water for the city.

The city is not projected to see those numbers for at least the next three to four years. Plenty of time to manifest some water from, er, somewhere, when they open the rail line in 2025 LOL.

Mega-projects are dead, when will people see it.

The ‘Cop City’ in Atlanta, which is going to tear down an urban forest to put up a training facility for the descendants of patterrollers, had the construction site set on fire yesterday. The cops have already killed a protester there. This is a generational conflict – in the sense that it will go for a generation.

I cleaned the kitchen counters, ran the dishwasher and ordered dim sum for delivery yesterday. NOM. Jeff was less impressed; we did after all grow up with Tak Sun. Mickey Dee’s for brekky this morning.  Otherwise I did not to a damned thing and I slept like a dead thing for half the day. Feel fine now, though. And I spoke to various family members yesterday and we’re all doing okay, which is lovely news all by itself.

Pedro Pascal said that Sarah Michelle Gellar was a complete sweetheart to him during their filming together in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the two of them getting on social media and being nice to each other was the tonic I needed this morning. Parasocial relationships, who can live without them LOLOL.

wotta burst

22648 words, Wordle in four when it SHOULDA BEEN TWO. Two top fives in Lumosity.

Yesterday I put off getting out the door for errands too long. Jeff got embroiled in a work issue and was no longer in a position to offer me a ride. I did a cognition check, decided that if I was literally going to be driving two blocks and back again I COULD DO THIS THING so I went to Burnaby Square and I got my damned meds and I got my blood work did (as always the vampire women at Lifelabs gave THE PERFECT STICK) and EKG (COLD AND RIPITTY SKIN COMING OFF) and I peed in the container (prob’ly not enough, I was dehydrated all day yesterday) and confirmed it would all be read before next Tuesday’s doc appointment.

I got back in the car and decided that Jeff, after bringing treats home various times of late which perked me some considerable, needed to have something treat-like so I went to M&M Meats and bought two chookity pop pies, one lazzyggna, one breaded shrimpity thing, and a box of mini creamitypuffs. We had cream puffs and shrimps for supper, WE RAGRET NUFFINK, especially when we contemplate the amusement this will prompt in our elders….. On the way out of the M&M’s at The Royal Square Mall (not the Royal City Centre, which is also in New Westminster 2 km away) IT HAILED.

I thought it was graupel, but it was round, and it beaned me, and stung my little head. I thought, OW and put the food in the back seat and then ran over to Sally’s and grabbed more emory boards since Jeff is continually frowning over how snaggy my fingernails are any time I hand him something. After pricing meshuggas (I am sorry, but I didn’t mean to reenact the entire drugstore scene from ‘What’s Up Doc’ (“How much is it without the …”) while out for a shopping jaunt – they tried to charge me $43.95 for an emory board and I’m, like, haaannnh???) I paid the 6 bucks total for my self-care order (I’m just trying to meet MINIMALLY APPROVED GIRLY STANDARDS THOU MISERABLE GODS OF GENDER CONFORMITY BOOOO) I went outside, received the continued icy blessing of hail-strikes on my bean, and departed for home; the hail stopped before I even left the parking lot of the mall.

Stopped watching Station Eleven. Any time an episode ends with two small girl children appearing to voluntarily blow themselves up killing a family member at the behest of a post-apocalyptic prophet I am going to fucking check out because I am already well aware of the extent to which #notallmen will destroy things to assert control over them and would prefer not to have the point made in the story with shrapnel-laced chunks of what should have been the carriers of our future.

Jessica Wildfire’s most recent post is one of the hardest and most necessary things I’ve read lately. You don’t have to read it and I’m not linking to it because it’s very very bleak, but you can search for it under her name and ‘Behavioural Sink’ on substack. It confirms in me that Keith laboriously helping to build community in his own way IS the way out. We must all community build or die. We find what we can do for that community and we build it. It also explains why reddit is full of straight women who’ve stopped dating….

 

mood

All I did yesterday was change my clothes, post to my blog, roast all the remaining almonds (fit for three batches of biscotti), do the Wordle, complete Lumosity training for the day, get Jeff some tea and a fried egg sammy (I just had the eggs with the bell peppers I roasted the other day), take my pills, throw out some compostables, empty the sink, train the cat with paw claps and running catches, police up my eyebrows, run the dishwasher, watch TV including the most recent TLoU and Vera, talk to Aunt Mary on the phone, work on Totally Boned, post shit on twitter and facebook, and order Japanese food (finally got the amount right, we had virtually no leftovers.)

I also read a lot of stuff on the internet about long COVID. Anyone reading this has survived a mass disabling event, and we’re either irritable or transfixed with our grief. When will we come to an understanding that we’ve globally:

Normalized people dropping dead from cardiovascular issues…. at any age.

increased the number of children who will never be able to pursue gainful employment in a fashion that is useful to end stage capitalism due to thymus collapse; as adults they will be immunocompromised for their entire lives.  You know how in Victorian times there were ‘delicate children’, well, this kid over here will have had a stroke at age three and have a withered arm; this kid over there will die if she doesn’t get her allergy medication and her albuterol; that kid over there had a series of mini strokes in utero and will never take herself to the toilet unassisted; this kid over here will move to the city with his parents at the age of five and never be healthy again; these kids will catch fungal infections from playing in contaminated water after an earthquake and slowly die as their lungs turn black from the inside out; and all these kids here and there will die of childhood ailments because no group of people is consistently vaccinating against them any more and water treatment will get harder and harder as there’s less and less water.

reduced the fertility of the smallest upcoming generation in history and so we will thus be subjected, over and over, in family after family, to our own little version of the ‘children of men’. The current fertility data for younger people is horrifying. Many young men simply aren’t producing enough motile and healthy sperm to be able to count on fathering children if they get the opportunity. For young women, the problem will not so much be getting pregnant (although anecdotally this seems to be an issue) as maintaining a pregnancy for 8 months and then not dying of the consequences of gestational diabetes, like eclampsia, or losing the child late in the pregnancy. Eclampsia events during pregnancy have increased (according to the CDC (US)) by 30 PERCENT IN THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS. (If you don’t hear the original Star Trek klaxon at this point you’re not getting me, here.) Since the pando started. COVID hides in reproductive tissues as easily as anywhere else in the human body. Fertility gods and goddesses are planning a comeback.

 

and so ….in sum …. we’ve fixed it so that we’ll, as a species, have fewer kids and more of them will be born disabled, or sacrificed to disability after they’re born because of terrible public health policies.

The people who will bear the brunt of all this are women. Because we carry children. Because we birth them. Because we care for them. And because the patriarchy would rather that we women die and the children be born.

So my mood is bleak, on this day after ‘family day.’

 

 

The return of the catfather

Buster was waiting on the back stairs for Jeff upon his return, which made for a pleasant moment. Jeff has recovered from the grab bag of indignities that ferry travel subjects him to. Before his arrival I managed to get all the food containers and compostable trash dealt with so the kitchen wasn’t armpit high in trash.

Continue reading The return of the catfather

New poem – the sieve

This is not a suicide note:
I’d bang on my brother’s door and waken him
rather than leave him my corpse ***on purpose***
ew, I mean, ew

my consciousness wrote the suicide note to you
but the smelly part is still here

I know that my procession
through these eroded markers
was foretold
but the weeping was tiresome
and I had no patience with the acidic streams
for – did you know – your tears become more basic
over the course of the day, and it’s 2 am here

I pull a stray hair out of my mouth and continue
in the present tense
<<< fly back and forth
destroyers of narrative >>>
I cry as if I could be cleansed
rather than imprisoned
behind bars of vapour

quit potchkying around and write this damned thing

it is my salute to those I love who live still
and everything they taught me, all of which
I will take with me to my niche
in the columbarium
for everything I’ve learned is nothing
compared to what is coming
it’s the brutal and the lucky
who will live
another sieve for humanity

I passed through one, today
Most days I don’t know
how close I came

but I do today

miscellany of

The US has declared a cold war on China with a recent move to cripple Chinese ability to make integrated circuits using the latest technology.

The timing

  • (10th anniversary of Xi Jinping’s ascension to power, Chinese ‘support’ for Russia (which has softened remarkably in the last few months),
  • tensions in the South China Sea in general and Taiwan in particular,
  • a 30% collapse of the housing market, the shakiness of rural Chinese banks (facing tremendous pressure from angry mortgagees),
  • continuing genocide against the Uyghurs (although China easily knocked down any attempt to discuss it at the UN level earlier this month),
  • home-grown activism (not well reported in Canada) about the continuing COVID lockdowns,
  • worst youth unemployment in many years (always a contributing factor to both war drums and civil unrest)

looks perfect unless you consider how many lives are at stake and that none of this is a freaking game.

I uphold the lives, worth and aspirations of the Chinese people and honour their revolutionary martyrs, cultural figures and great artists. The CPC including the army and its foreign agents currently active in Canada can go fuck it/themsself.

Walked in Deer Lake Park with Paul yesterday, came back for chicken barley soup and iced tea.

I got a fantastic night of sleep; practicing proper sleep hygiene made a sound difference.

6561 words on Part II

Lovely pile of kudos from AO3 in the inbox this morning.

Totally enjoying Sharpe’s Stories!

Hope to call some friends on the phone today and catch up.

I need a picture of the Camaro for Suzanne.

Does the dog die

  1. that is the name of a website. People are sensitive about animal loss. I told a bunch of people on reddit that the dog DOESN’T die in the new Predator series movie, “Prey” and my inbox this morning is full of thanks and praise for saying so.
  2. Time to brush my teeth and have a shower.
  3. Burnaby is going to have a festival of glowing pumpkins, 6000 of the hand carved suckers. Once we hit August it’s all Halloween all the time around here.
  4. Somebody must have put one of my stories on a list; one particular fanfic is getting all the attention these days. It’s an okay story, it’s got pacing issues.
  5. Still no joy on Part II of current story. Some extension of a fanfic.
  6. We’ve now blown through 1000 cases of MPX in Canada. It was 957 on the 5th August, what do you think?
  7. Can’t raise Mike, his phone doesn’t seem to be working.
  8. Lovely walk with Jeff in the morning, it wasn’t TOO hot. Actually walked up the hill with some speed instead of puffing and blowing and pausing the entire way.
  9. Hexavalent chromium spill into the Huron River, which would impact the drinking water of millions of people, is getting zero airplay / pixels / print space in the media. Hexavalent chromium, necessary (they say) for many industrial processes, is the single most toxic form of chromium. Staring at my Toronto friends hey you might want to move before it’s in the drinking water of Toronto in Lake Ontario.
  10. Made Jeff peppermint tea and smoked salmon green salad wrap for brekkie.
  11. The Russians have mined the Ukrainian nuclear plant they took over a couple of months back. It is apparently their intention to destroy it.
  12. I have Reddit Cute Animal disease, every time I see a video of a cute critter on Reddit I want to run out and buy it. Today’s heart-eyes – hognosed snake.
  13. Did not practice yesterday, but at least all the instruments are in the same room again.
  14. “Reddit Double Shot” – THERAPY and BREAKUPS all ’round. (AITA posts only)
  15. I got the wordle in three tries this morning. However I used a solve site on line to help me once I got to word two.
  16. That doesn’t always work, depends on how common the consonants are.
  17. I am thinking of the time I did the Grouse Grind. It took me 2.5 hours and a single human being lapped me three times; he was wearing nothing but pale metallic blue booty shorts and athletic shoes and carrying a water bottle.
  18. Doug Ford is still an asshole who took four billion dollars from the Feds to fight the pandemic and as far as anyone can tell is obscuring where it’s being spent as fast as his bean counters can hide it.
  19. I have had a poem written for me?!!! Colour me blushy.
  20. And now I shall cease with my morning raving, knowing that my fOlks don’t have internet right now so there’s no point getting this posted before six.
  21. reconnecting with an ex on social media (facebook, I believe I mentioned that I left instagram and climbed back up on facebook) is always fraught with hazard (he was my first bf from around the time the planet cooled) but so far all we’re doing is sighing heavily over what a fucking idiot Roger Waters (OF PINK FLOYD) (he’s FUCKING CAPING FOR THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA SAYING TAIWAN BE OWNED BY THEM WHICH IS A BIG SURPRISE TO THE PEOPLE WHO FUCKING LIVE THERE) is, and posting youtube memories of songs gone by. Weird to see him all old and bearded though.
  22. and as a visual codaImage

a remarkable corporate emission

added later: Jacobin article about just how shitty Air Canada and other airlines have been to their employees.

THIS IS A LETTER FROM AIR CANADA TO ITS CUSTOMERS FROM THE END OF JUNE 2022

My comments in red 

At Air Canada, we know how important travel plans are. This is even more the case today when many are taking their first trip in years following the pandemic. Whether for long-anticipated vacations, visits with relatives and friends, or for business, we are grateful and recognize our responsibility when people like you entrust your travel to our airline.

is this an apology? this sounds like an apology

Regrettably, things are not business as usual in our industry globally, there is no shit here, whatsoever, Sherlock, to be sampled or detected, and this is affecting our operations and our ability to serve you with our normal standards of care. Sample previous tagline “Air Canada, we’re not happy til you’re not.” The COVID-19 pandemic brought the world air transport system to a halt in early 2020. Now, after more than two years, global travel is resurgent, and people are returning to flying at a rate never seen in our industry. BECAUSE LIKE THE IRRESPONSIBLE SHITHEELS RUNNING PUBLIC HEALTH ACROSS THE GLOBE THEY’RE OF THE BELIEF WE CAN GO BACK TO JAMMING OURSELVES IN PRESSURIZED INFECTIOUS DISEASE CONTAINERS AMONG PEOPLE WHO ARE RICH ENOUGH TO TRAVEL AND YET SOMEHOW HAVE DECIDED THAT THE MICROBIAL WORLD HAS NO IMPACT ON US. Wait until the flight where Monkeypox, Cholera, giardia, COVID, and hemorrhagic fever all come out to play. you’ll be shitting through the roots of your eyebrow hair and praying for sweet death

This surge in travel has created unprecedented and unforeseen strains on all aspects of the global aviation system. I’m so worried about the baggage retrieval system at Heathrow I mean, have you seen it? bags ERRYWHERE. same like hundreds of other airports. Around the world, there are recurring incidents of flight delays and airport congestion, resulting from a complex array of persistent factors impacting airlines and our partners in the aviation ecosystem. He’s not wrong and that’s an interesting way of putting it. But governments ERRYWHERE dropped the mask mandate and he doesn’t fucking mention that. Similar effects are being seen in other industries too, where companies and suppliers are struggling to restart, unclog supply chains and meet pent-up demand. Sadly, the fact that airports are pest holes means that the people who WORK THERE GET COVID, AND PEOPLE WHO GET COVID aren’t supposed to work – but they do – and at the same time are really encouraged by the company not to stay home, which means we get the maximal mixing of variants in airports while not knowing who’s infectious while mask mandates drop, a less than ideal situation for both travellers and staff.

At Air Canada, we anticipated many of these factors and began taking tangible action during the depth of the pandemic to be ready for a rapid restart. Yet, despite detailed and careful planning, the largest and fastest scale of hiring in our history, while basically telling those people they weren’t getting a raise, better benefits, better working conditions or better management, so that they were returning to work after two years of income stoppage to a stagnant paycheque while housing, fuel and food prices soar so maybe a little less use of the self congratulatory language bub as well as investments in aircraft and equipment, it is now clear that Air Canada’s operations too have been disrupted by the industry’s complex and unavoidable challenges. It’s the other guys what done it and we could keep busting ass but something terrible/interesting/black swan happened. This whole shivaree of shit corresponded to the fucking Russians booting fuel costs through the troposphere so they’re now going to make a virtue of necessity, sacrifice the employees ONCE-A-FUCKING-GAIN. YOU WILL NOTE that none of these ‘challenges’ mentions that the people who just got hired back will in large numbers be laid off again while the chaos and kinks work their way through the system. Sadly for Air Canada, a lot of people are just going to say fuck it and not come back to the company when the economy comes back, and I see many very troubling signs in the economy that it won’t be coming back at all, not for anyone who doesn’t have at least 50 million dollars’ worth of insulation, including real property, not fucking NFTs. The result has been flight cancellations and customer service shortfalls on our part that we would never have intended for our customers or for our employees, and for which we sincerely apologize.

In response, we took a number of important steps, including introducing flexible ticket policies, new travel self-management tools, improvements to airport operations, as well adjustments to our schedule – all to strengthen operational resiliency and to give customers more options. However, to bring about the level of operational stability we need, with reluctance, we are now making meaningful reductions to our schedule in July and August in order to reduce passenger volumes and flows to a level we believe the air transport system can accommodate. Yikes

This was not an easy decision, as it will result in additional flight cancellations that will have a negative impact on some customers. But doing this in advance allows affected customers to take time to make other arrangements in an orderly manner, rather than have their travel disrupted shortly before or during their journey, with few alternatives available. It will also enable us to more reliably serve all customers. If you say so, I’m staying out of the expensive disease canisters for the time being.

I can assure you Air Canada is also working in close cooperation with airports, government, and its third-party service providers, who all are striving to return our industry to pre-pandemic standards of operation. One awkward shift in the China Sea, maybe a dustup between China and US vessels, or a full scale attack on Taiwan when ‘none are looking’; one small nuke in Europe as Putin’s fury is unleashed, and the global travel industry will collapse as the banks who’ve loaned money to the airlines start calling those loans when their cash flows collapse. Pre pandemic is GONE. it has to be understood. It’s gone and it’s not coming back. Things are operating at zero bone.

We are convinced these changes will bring about the improvements we have targeted. But to set expectations, it should also be understood the real benefits of this action will take time and be felt only gradually as the industry regains the reliability and robustness it had attained prior to the pandemic. You mean you’re finally looking further ahead than this quarter? AMAZEBALLS. Too late chuckles.

On behalf of all of us at Air Canada, please accept my sincere apologies for any disruption you have experienced or may experience with your travel plans during this unprecedented period. I also assure you that we very clearly see the challenges at hand, that we are taking action, and that we are confident we have the strategy to address them. This is our company’s chief focus at every level.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. We certainly look forward to future opportunities to serve you and regain your loyalty at a time when we can better demonstrate our commitment to taking good care of customers such as yourself.

Sincerely,

Michael Rousseau
President and Chief Executive Officer

Air Canada

further comments

This is the correction, happening right in front of us. They say it’s just for the summer, but if they can PLAN TO do that in the high season, there’s nothing stopping them from doing it the rest of the year.

anyway, I’ve said it before. I’m not flying anywhere unless minimal conditions are met, including I fly first class, I don’t pay for it, carbon offset sufficient to cover is purchased and I don’t have to come back for at least two weeks. OR it’s not a jet flight and regional. Or it’s a helicopter. Or air ambulance. Anyway, it’s time to book that train ride I’ve always dreamed of; maybe a year out.

 

I don’t know their names

Fifty three dead migrants in a truck on the wolf’s mouth highway; dying of heat prostration in an airless container for a better life is a refinement of cruelty.  Six hundred have died making the perilous crossing from North Africa to Greece and Italy from Tunisia and Libya so far in 2022.

Now think about what happens when those fifty one are fifty one thousand. When six hundred are six hundred thousand.  Nothing will stem the tide of migrants, alive and dead. Between autocratic governments forcing people to starve rather than express their rights and climate change drying up water for even an inadequate life, people will migrate. Technologies will be made available for food, for light, for water, for shelter, but here’s the thing; the gap between what is possible and what gets done is going to be monitored and posited and funded and ideologically supported by and profited on by previously existing academics, disaster scammers, politicians and wealthy families. The best solutions will be stick handled out of the way at the top; we’ll be taxed like beasts to support solutions that actively make things worse and then be blamed for having supported it (however involuntarily) when things go wrong.

It’s why it’s imperative to think about local solutions for problems. No-one’s going to save us; there will be a million photo ops and no help, like Doug Ford everywhere all the time. Something weird is happening inside my brain. Maybe it’s the chocolate. Maybe I’m angry enough to feel really vengeful, but in a new way.

Maybe I’ll go back to write. I have a little bubble of energy left I think. And something else happened today that’s knocked me down, and I don’t want to feel this way, I want to shoulder it off.

 

 

First 2 eps of “Only Murders in the Building” were funny, VERY FUNNY in spots and embarrassing (as in I THREW MY BLANKET OVER MY HEAD IN AN AUTISTIC ATTEMPT TO SPARE MYSELF THE EMBARRASSMENT) anyway, quite witty and in retrospect pretty damned funny, oi the bleedin’ parrot.

R. Kelly American singer, songwriter, record producer, and convicted sex offender got 30 years in jail for raping and otherwise sexually abusing women, mostly minors. I don’t support the existence of the carceral state and believe he should have been forced to give everything down to his shoelaces away to his victims now and anything in future so he gets ten percent or a living wage, enough to keep a car running, and they get everything else and otherwise he’d be allowed to walk free. Jail just makes money for asshole white investors and asshole food service companies and asshole jailers. It’s no place even for a rapist.

I read to my amusement that ‘this here haunted doll for only 60 bucks can be yours because THE LAST BUYER BACKED OUT what no reason did I tell you this doll is haunted’ is for sale. Still, what a bargoon.

I think one of my favourite things about the Slash/Back script is how Canadian it was. It was cadenced completely differently than an American movie. Anyway.

Just in case you think I’ve gone off the deep end, a return to my normal levels of lunacy. I couldn’t find attribution.

KISS FM IN SOME KIND OF PUBLICITY STUNT or possibly because of angry fired people is playing RATM’s Killing in the Name of NON STOP and a) it’s a supremely kick ass tune and b) if it’s not a publicity stunt it’s an interesting choice of tune. anyway, this is six hours and a bit now they’ve been doing this. I think it’s very funny either way. oh well I HAVE NOW BEEN LISTENING FOR MOST OF AN HOUR if this is a publicity stunt I don’t get it and they’re going to collect a CRTC fine for this.

 

not another project, must be AU Monday

It’s called The Trust Issue, and it’s a nested set of received opinions about how to trust the ourselves, the world and how we move through it and eventually out of it. I am thinking of it in terms of being on three scales; personal, familial (via family history, which is basically me saying HEY MA I THINK I FOUND ANOTHER USE FOR THE GAZILLIONS OF PIXELS YOU’VE SLAUGHTERED), and linguistic, but not in any academic sense, just in the sense that I have to use English to actually, like, do anything. English as often noted has many limitations in terms of felicity of precision *and* metaphor, at least for me, so I must perforce be appalled at operating within its tiresomely inevident confines. I know I am stuck here, in English, for I have neither the life expectancy nor the will to become able to write with ease and style in another language. The very idea makes a mockery of trust in any degree, but so be it. I shall scale Mt. Impossible because I dare not leave my room! The idea of actually making it fit into any politics, including the increasingly deadbeat anarchism I claim to claim (know what I mean) is loathsome to me so I am avoiding the political or public sphere, and I don’t think I could do it in less than 20000 words and suspect it’ll be closer to 70K.

JEEEEEZ

 

There is so much misinformation, disinformation, cheerful lies, tankie mischief and plum bullshit out there about Ukraine and the Russian invasion that walking away from twitter feels like pulling your lips away from the firehose.

The war is costing Russia something on the order of 8 billion dollars a day, and they just had about half their access to the global banking system cut off. More sanctions are coming. People are protesting daily in every major Russian city (there were at least 5K in St. Pete’s alone !!) and through the entirety of the former Soviet Union, where the resistance of the Ukrainians has put steel in spines. Putin has announced that he wants the territories of the former Soviet Union back and guess what, most of the former slave states are not impressed. And from what I’ve seen there have been protests in every large city in soidisant Canada. If the rest of the sanctions come, Russia has funds for about a month more of this before they have to go to the international equivalent of Vinnie the Fish for the rest of the warchest. Germany spat in Putin’s face and sent anti tank/helicopter weapons to Ukraine. So much for Germany staying neutral! They spat twice hard when they blocked the pipeline from Russia, too, and announced plans as to how they’re going to get along fine without their gas and oil. The German public is not united in this but the poll numbers are high enough that the Ukrainians can continue to lean on them.

And Russian boys are dying in hundreds in Kharkiv right now. They ‘took’ the city and the Ukrainians took it right back.

Putin is now so desperate that he’s calling up the nuclear troops and setting them to do ‘exercises’ which is basically him grabbing his dick and saying LOOKEE HERE. Do I believe that he will use nuclear weapons? Maybe. But he’s already the kind of person who can’t wander out incognito because about a quarter of the population of Russia would be blithe on vodka for a week if they could have a chance to shiv him. To be the aggressor in a nuclear war would not cement his popularity. NATO is on alert which means that US branded troops are now free to move in Europa.

Jeff tells me that the space authority in Russia is threatening to drop shit on people they don’t like from orbit and once again, if it’s the Russians wanting to start a war from space they aren’t going to like the results any more than the poor bastards underneath whatever they drop. Biden’s as much of a Killocrat as the next one, but if ever there was a casus belli that would be it.

Of particular interest to me is the Ukrainians and Americans releasing intel that the Russians are planning an explosion somewhere in Russian controlled territory that they can blame on the Ukrainians so they can send more troops and really crush the resistance. Russians commanded by Putin did the same fucking thing for the Chechen war, blowing up apartment buildings across Russia in the runup to the Chechen War in 1999. The wikipedia article says that nobody really knows who did it but I’ve seen enough evidence to convince me, and if you need convincing please check how the timing of it is what catapulted Putin from the prime ministership into the Presidency just a few months later. NOT AN ACCIDENT.

Apart from Switzerland, which is landlocked, there isn’t a single European country currently allowing Russian flyovers.

On to a more pleasant subject. Jeff is a very good brother and roommate. After I lost my cell phone (coming up on 18 months) he loaned me his spare (non activated) cell phone, so I have an alarm and a clock and gaming platform and something to take into the bath when I want to play solitaire and soak. I dropped it numerous times and it quit. Apologetic and abashed I immediately took it to him and within minutes he had restored it to life. I do not deserve. But I am very happy.

50 cm of rain over the next day. BLOOP