Category: Urban living

Tetris made of people

Quite literally, what it says.

It’s snowing again. 

Daughter Katie’s coming over this afternoon and We Will, We Will Deadwood.  Hopefully the transit system is up to the task of getting her here.

I found a hilarious critique of Libertarianism on line.

Last night I dreamed I was back in the High Park area of Toronto.  I guess I’m sick of looking at stucco houses.  I miss many things about Toronto; I miss seeing the CN Tower and I miss a lot of the friends I have there (Tammy, Catherine, Dave, Jan and others).  I miss Kensington Market the way it was, I miss the colour of Lake Ontario on a windy fall day, I miss being able to ice skate outside in the wintertime.

Sometimes I wish I could live in three places at once, because there are things I miss about Montreal too.  I miss the Dorval circle and the absolutely craziness of the town when the festivals like the Jazz festival and Just For Laughs were on; I miss how people dress with more style and drive with more verve (and frankly, consistently better than the unwashed hordes of incompetents who adorn the roads in Vancouver); I miss being able to hear Inuktitut spoken in the street; I miss skating in La Centre de la Nature in Laval, the best outdoor skating venue in Canada; I miss the wild variety of the weather, even.

Lusty Neighbors and Pimp Primer

Tea and cookies and porn this evening…
Lusty Neighbors and Pimp Primer –  those were the titles of the flicks we watched at the November meeting of the Royal Vancouver Pornographic Society.  They were grindhouse.  Words cannot describe how execrable they were; they were about as erotic as a panhandler, as aesthetic as an airport washroom, and as well performed as a public school pageant.  The dialogue raised hoots of derisive laughter at every turn.
Porn sure has changed.  Nowadays everybody gets everything depilated and bleached; then, performers did their thang with visible bruises and scuff marks, pimples and back hair.  And dirty feet, yeeech.

Anyway I was welcomed with cries of glee (I made biscotti) and was made to feel right at home.  Things broke up around 10:30; I had the car until one so I gassed up, grabbed some groceries, unloaded them, and then took the car back to its stall (I had the Hyundai – the Prius was engaged) and walked home, where to my disGUST two younguns saw me coming and ran away so as not to be doing dope in front of me.  I halfheartedly chewed them out and told them this is Vancouver and it’s your god given right to smoke drugs in public here.  They offered me some but I declined, although I thanked them for being neighbourly.  God almighty!  Do I LOOK that old?  I was walking briskly enough….

There’s a party next door.  I was invited but I’m not attending. I took biscotti to thank them for inviting me earlier this evening.  I will have enough left over to feed some coworkers tomorrow.  Hey Paul if you read this do you want me to make a batch for your coworkers?

busy day

Today I clean up a bit, run a couple of errands, head for the Spit and clack and ear flap with the Menopausal Posse, and then run home, change, attempt to whip my hair into submission and go to the company holiday cheer partay.  Then, collapse. Tomorrow, more cleaning and laundry and then, if the fates are propitious and the winds kind, I will see daughter Katie in the evening.

Katie K and I are through 2 episodes of Deadwood.

Tattoo you

My mother has a tattoo. Don’t worry, she didn’t have a Raging Granny fit and have Fred Astaire in a top hat engraved on her bosom; it’s the merest few dots for the siting of the radiation. My father has now had occasion to ask an uncaring universe why it is that he is now sleeping with a tattooed grandmother. Age spares us no indignity, as a great man once remarked. Continue reading Tattoo you

Quelle Journee

I really DID NOT want to go to church today, but I decided, since I had booked the car, that I might as well run the errands and go to church as planned (actually, I didn’t even want to leave the apartment – but I’ve realized that this way lies madness).

SO.

First I get the trip logs out of the two cars at SFU. Then I go to church and cough up my pledge (and a mighty big hairball it was, too, and I still owe for last year). Then I go to Long & McQuade out by the Port Mann, and it’s closed. Then I go to the liquor store on Lougheed that’s open on Sundays and learn (yeep yeep yeep) that Winter Ale is BACK. I will leave it in the fridge for my return from Santo Domingo. Then I realize there is a Tom Lee (OPEN) on Barnet and poke my head in and leave poorer but with lots more mando stuff and a thingy that will allow me to put a strap on my guitar… and I bought a strap, too.

Then off to West Broadway to pick up travel stuff for the trip (inflatable cushions for the long damned trip, packs to hide passports in, Spanish phrase book, Lonely Planet Dominican Republic), then I dropped the trip logs off at CAN at Granville and Hastings, then I went home along Hastings and realize that I still haven’t ordered daughter Katie’s other other other birthday present, which is the complete Strangers in Paradise. They had 2, so I picked it up, and order the other trades 1 through 6. Came home to find some asshat had parked in my spot and had to put the Prius underground. Grr. Anyway, twas a busy day of much expenditure.

Weekend wrap up.

I can’t believe Pukka Orchestra didn’t make this list.

– this list will be food for arguments for the next dozens of years.

The church supper went great – as we are a caravan of faith at the moment, with no settled home (besides the Gathering Place), I now have dishes from the banquet to do. Fortunately I have a dishwasher ;). I also performed The Tapioca Song. The Beacon Home Companion was even better than last year, and that’s saying something. Don Hauka is a genius… There, I said it! And everybody else was wonderful too… Derek’s antics as “The Chalice” (the Unitarian Superhero) were wonderful as always.

Sometime today I will be getting the Quicktime version of the Tapioca Song video, and THEN I’ll post it to Youtube. Stay tuned, as they say. Katie K saw it yesterday and pronounced herself entertained.

Katie has moved back in with Paul and Keith and now is a resident of Planet Bachelor. She has her own bathroom too, the lucky stiff. I suspect she will greatly appreciate her new digs.  Her boyfriend… for such he is, still, alas, has a couple of three inch souvenirs from the cop dogs who took him down last week.  He has sworn to mend his ways.  And I’m going to lose forty pounds by Christmas.  I have seen Katie’s new tattoo, or at least the start of it.  It is a foot long snake wrapped around a heart.  (Fanboys note… it’s modelled after Katchoo’s tat from Strangers in Paradise)
On a happier note…. last night the four of us (me Paul Keith & Kate) did something we hadn’t done in the best part of a year. We watched a movie together! Cats crawled all over us purring happily! It was Les Misérables with Liam Neeson. I had to extend my booking on the car and then *&$^ forgot that I had to put gas in it, and then *&$*&! forgot to get a receipt so had to dash back for it. Didn’t get home until almost two. My weekend has thus far been enlivened by the existence of the progressive lenses perched on my nose. Driving was, as they say, interesting. I suppose I could have extended the booking and driven out to Richmond to participate in filking at VCon but not even the prospect of vixy and Tony performing her stellar “Mal’s Song” could make me want to drive out there. I’ll get a report in the fullness of time from Tom and Peggy.  Vcon of course has been rendered more interesting, at least in terms of GETTING there, by that 82 year old dude flying his plane into a building three blocks from the Con hotel….
My apartment is a disaster but unfortunately, as I was trying to wind down from my yesterday in the wee sma’s this morning, I picked up Gene Wolfe’s Shadow of the Torturer and, well, like that. I’m not sure how much housework I’ll be doing today. Especially since my laundry’s done. At first the book annoyed the snot out of me, and now I can’t put it down. There’s one of the most succinct arguments for atheism I’ve ever seen in it. Hey, this is fair use, isn’t it?

From Chapter VIII of the Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe, 1980. Thecla, a courtesan, speaks:

“One can’t found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great successes of the past – they say their deities are the masters of all the universes, and yet that they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it.”

As soon as I hear from the videographer, I’m going to head off to RCH to visit somebody from work who’s in hospital, unless she’s home already, in which case I’ll try to call her.

Today the whole world blogs about the environment

Allegra’s tips for the environment.

Join a car co-op – sure works for me!

Join Freecycle.org to get & recycle an amazing variety of goods in your community.

Join Bookcrossing to recycle books.

Keep your spent batteries in a jar and then take them back to places such as The Source or, believe it or not, many cell phone kiosks in malls.  At a pinch they go to the toxic recycling facility locally.

Stop using paper tissues.  Recycled cotton clothing works great for hankies, ‘sexwipes’ (WAY nicer than tissues, blecch), cleaning windows and mirrors, etc etc.

For those still ‘running with the moon’ buy a cup instead of killing a sequoia with every period.  Works great, and now that I know you can clean it with tooth whitening gel I’m the happiest woman on the planet.

Quit dying your hair.  That stuff is gross, stains everything in the bathroom like a bastard, stinks to high heaven and is not nice for the water supply.

Quit using makeup.  Almost all of it is toxic crap with horrific amounts of plastic packaging.

Learn to cultivate and save seed from heritage plants.  I especially recommend corn, beans, squash, wheat, barley, hops, tomatoes, potatoes and medicinal perennials.  Mmm.  Beer.

Use vinegar to clean and deodorize things.  It’s gross, but only momentarily and it doesn’t make horrible aerosols.