Category: Urban living

Ratcatcha

Buster caught a teeny weeny rat outside the building this morning, then took it inside and either ate it or let it go. Hopefully it’s not curled up dead someplace, I find dead rat odour to be one of the most trying things psychologically.

Storm Ida had a few things to say about rats too.

If the link disappears, apparently the storm drowned almost every rat in NYC.

That’s what happens when you get too much water. How about just enough?

Above noted link is about how reintroducing water to a dried out river in Tucson has had stunning ecological effects. I prefer dragonflies over rats.

Ever notice how white ladies love to steal Indigenous ancestry?

WHERE IS YOUR KOKUM, KIES. I prefer people who don’t lie about their ancestry over rats.

 

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Jeff and I were just desperate for coffee yesterday so we picked up brekky at IHOP. I mean we would have been fine with coffee alone but I insisted. I think it will be a while before we eat out again. AND we got coffee this am.

The Mu variant is in Vancouver, apparently. Now we wait to see whether it drives the Delta variant off the pitch.

Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short have a new show called Only Murders in the Building and apparently it’s really funny. Looking forward to it.

The story, obviously, (4563) is continuing to come along nicely. I have also started another story which is tentatively called ‘The Haunted Sideboard.” It’s about a guy who tries to give away a cursed piece of furniture and the neighbourhood man who convinces him to salt and burn it instead. Then everyone else in the neighbourhood decides it’s BURN YOUR CURST OBJECT DAY and well, you know, shit gets both weird and romantic.

Fuck the police. Seriously. I mean I’d settle for them wearing masks but they don’t want to do that either.

RANTING ABOUT 10TH AND CANADA WAY

oh FSM, Parking Goddess, anydeity on this frequency, aid me now and for all time to come https://newwestrecord.ca/local-news/opinion-someone-is-finally-trying-to-fix-this-gong-show-burnaby-new-west-intersection-3904159 YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW BAD THIS INTERSECTION IS
Opinion: Someone is finally trying to fix this gong show Burnaby-New West intersection
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1/ within the first 90 seconds of my brO having a dashcam, we watched a black suv go through this intersection southbound through a red light at 70 kph while stopped in the next lane over.

2/ there are three *heavily* trafficked driveways and two bus stops within metres of the intersection so you are continuously making evasive bumpercar/whackamole maneuvres with the most rancidly incompetent drivers in the lower mainland

3/ the advance green lights are wrongly bad and they should run all four ways, this is a busy intersection!!

4/ it’s at the bottom of a 150 foot elevation drop (over 6 intersections) people come screaming down that hill hoping to get through both the pedestrian crosswalk light which is two blocks away and the intersection itself, so drivers are routinely going 20 over the speed limit

5/ There’s a 7-11 + gas station on the corner and this weird fucked up fake lane that is basically how Mr. Audi and Ms. Accord get to know each other as one smashes the other trying to sneak around to the right while the other’s doing the same thing from the 7-11

6/ I’m not blaming the teens who go to the high school next to this intersection, they don’t usually seem too intent on throwing themselves under cars in my experience, but gawdam some of the wildest ad lib pedestrians on earth stroll adjacent to these crosswalks

6/ continued… I mean brO and I are happy if they make eye contact, mostly they don’t.

7/ every pole for a block around pleads for witnesses to accidents

8/ IT’S A SHARED JURISDICTION intersection. So the Burnaby RCMP (eye twitch) and the NWPD (shrug) get to share the duties when the blood/debris crosses the intersection. I don’t know how they figure out who does what but I’m sure it doesn’t make things sparklier

9./ I’d need a contour map and some dinky toys to demonstrate some of the ways in which momentum, gravity, common sense and, provisionally, space/time itself, fail to operate normally at this intersection, so please I beg you just take my word for it.

Further comments: I travel through this intersection an average of 4 times a week during the pandemic and more like 10 times otherwise. I live close enough that I once heard a collision there. This is on the bus route I mostly use.

So I read with interest that they intend to spend a quarter of a million dollars on this intersection, and this would be great except for one teensy problem. Not a single intersection ‘improvement’ I’ve seen in the last 20 years actually made things better.

brO and I are going to watch them spend a quarter mil to make it worse. The banging and construction delays will be horrific. and in the end…. I’m prepared to wager twenty bucks that it will be distinctly & measurably worse.

And I haven’t even MENTIONED the truck traffic, which is heavy and continuous during the day and steady at night because the biggest food storage depot (400 SQ METRES OF BUILDING and much more for truck parking and storage) in the lower mainland is a kilometre west.

Tragedy in London

As far as I can tell I’m not reacting nearly as hard to the shot as I did the last time. There’s a hot raised spot on my arm but nothing like the last time.

I’m just so happy to be fully vaccinated. I CAN’T HURT SOMEONE UNINTENTIONALLY now. I can be disgusting and homicidal some other way I guess.

I have a new favourite dessert: cold home made rice pudding, done Jeff style (he prefers it more gooey than I do), with mascarpone layered on top and then home made chocolate sauce dribbled on top. I invented it last night and then promptly got up and ate another dish of it. LOL.  Possibly I should run the dishwasher now before everything gets too crusty.

The Muslim family killed by a 20 year old driver in London ONT …. I have few words.

– Salman Afzaal, 46 physiotherapist – Madiha Salman, 44 PhD student in Civil engineering – Yumna Salman, 15, grade 9 student – Fayez Salman, 9 – Grandmother, 74, family ‘pillar’

Struck down FOR WHAT REASON? Other than bigotry and hatred and ignorance.

 

The old lady and her memories

Today I was reminded that many many years ago I was the volunteer coordinator for childcare for a Toronto Pride, back in the 90s.

There’s a fight ‘in the community’ right now about Pride, all across the western world. Not so much in the parts of the world where being openly gay gets you beaten and murdered and being openly lesbian gets you ‘correctively’ raped. Anyway this first world fight is about ‘children at Pride’ and how a substantial minority of gay people who support Pride want the leather daddies and bondage enthusiasts and folks who whatever they sport amidships aren’t long on clothing to just…. cover up for Pride.

Now I think I established, with my childcare cred, that I do indeed care about children and want them to be safe while their parental units or some fraction thereof want to partay on the streets of the city; I also know that Pride started when among the most marginalized of the rainbow community, black transgender women, decided that they were tired of being subjected to raids and police harassment every fucking weekend, and started throwing bricks at the cops.

So for all the shrinking violets who have finished their days of LGBTQA+ activism and thus want all the rest of us to behave like tv housewives, this is le extended middle finger de moi.

For all the parents who want the leather daddies to cover up, fuck ya.

For all the parents who want to take their kids to pride, how about memorizing some easy answers about the costumes …. and lack of them?

The event is for ADULTS. Children are to be expected, and allowed for, and cared for in context of the parade and events, but they aren’t to be CATERED to. No more than the fucking cops or beer companies.

Having cops at Pride is bad. Having kids at pride is not. Having bigots try to tell activists how to dress is bad. Having bigots publicly struck hard in their rhetorical goolies is good.

Allergies

I’m getting hives, probably from the brazil nuts, heavy sigh.

Just ordered doubles and Chicken Roti and Shrimp with Rice from D Roti Shak.

SO DAMNED GOOD

Here’s a funny pic, courtesy of Liz M. shows two old people in a really old car in front of a building called St. Luke’s with a JUST VACCINATED sign like a just married sign.

here’s another funny one, it spells ACAB in cherry blossoms and is apparently from this week in Portland

OLD bugs NEW mental health

If it isn’t broken, don’t need to fix it.

This kind of technology has the potential to reduce human suffering on a planetary scale, but governments could also use it to hunt down and kill people with mental health problems to stop ‘social disruption’ so….

 

 

Also, regarding the shooting of a Black man in Brooklyn Centre MN

IF YOU ARE A COP AND YOU CAN’T TELL THE FUCKING DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TASER AND A GUN you should NOT BE ON THE FUCKING STREET

 

I’d Like To Ask all of the Smart People to Leave

This is the song you sing when the police are about to raid. It is not very cheerful about police. FULL DISCLOSURE I have never been injured by police, but I can name a lot of people who have been. I see you, Jan and Suzanne.

Lyrics:

I’m going to have to ask the smart people to leave / why should they stay here for this crap? / I’m going to sing some stuff like you would not believe / You’ve been warned, it’s a trap! / Why would you want to listen to anything silly / like me attempting to sing about an armadillo’s will he? won’t he? / I’m going to have to ask the smart people to leave / and when you’re gone we’ll all have fun

We’ll have some more when we are done / the drugs alone weigh half a ton / so if the cops come BETTER

run like hell, run like hell / cops are coming, run like hell

Broke my nose, ripped my clothes / cops are coming, run like hell

Cheap cologne / *BROKE MY PH-O-O-ONE* / cops are coming, run like hell

I’m going to have to ask the smart people to leave / and when you’re gone we’ll all have fun….

 

Two Daves

Two letters written but not posted today; it’s a Two Dave day.

Jeff’s just asked me to go downstairs and watch a Time Team. Hope it’s something Saxon or Roman. L8r Nope, medieval and Tudor. But really interesting if you’re crazy about remodelling castles for successive waves of improvements in warfare, boom goes the gunpowder.

Alex was here recently and I’m just remembering him being happy about getting a tube shot on the Xenon game and it made me happy in consequence.

Buster was past damp into dripping wet, and filthy when he came back in this morning…. must be horrible to have to clean that crap off with your teeth and mouth blech.

Indian food delivered last night. I was very happy with the quality and quantity for the price. It’s a new place (8 months?)  that does pizza and Desi food Pasifika style, which is like, so Vancouver, it hurts.

Chuck Yeager, RIP. His autobiography is most entertaining.

Letter from Onty Mary, and I’m so glad she enjoyed the paper art I put in with a recent letter, that was cheering.

Today has been set aside for One Grim Task. I do not want this task. I do not want the cascade of tasks that will flow from this One Grim Task. I AM DISGUST, SON.

It’s 10:20 in the morning and I am still not nerved up for this gd task. I am actually hitting the old moral GPS for a recalc from my new position and fuck me if it’s not taking a bit longer than any reasonable person might expect. What is it that a reasonable person following Stoic principles might expect? I said I’d write first PHEW AN OUT, I HAVE AN OUT.

With that I must now turn my attention to the real writing I need to do today, otherwise known as Quarantine Porn. And that works whether I’m talking about the UPSUN universe or my rapidly-winding-down interest in writing porny Supernatural fanfic. (Not all of it’s porn, some of it’s just fluff.)

And if I’m not going to write that, I have to go back out into the kitchen and either work some more on The Dark Book – current section is “the Calendar” and it’s fucking MOLOCH this and MOLOCH that, as he drives his diesel dick through history and messes us all up, it’s just standard issue eschatology schlock, that’s part of the point of the poem though, disjointing the specifically English language over and past and through its various levels of inanity, legalism and perverse vagueness through to a new horrific understanding about what ‘end times’ actually means for the people living through it, and you are among those people, and what the hell is this poem anyway (this last aside for my parents, who have long since given up on trying to understand what it is I’m babbling about and reached this question much earlier) — or work on my master grocery list, and I finally figured how I can get what my grocery list looks like in my head to my actual grocery list that I use every week and reinforces how I visualize and operate in the world, but I haven’t done it yet. So I have work to do to advance this project, which will assist me cognitively as my brain declines and I’m still shopping, and which may have applications for other seniors and TBI sufferers. (I certainly wasn’t able to find anything like it on line.) So yeah, projects, in order, depending on what I’m up for mood and skill wize.

Yup, I’m going to wander off and reconfigure my reality right now, be back in a day for an update or sooner if something interesting happens.

One last thing, the ‘writing light’ in the kitchen died and I asked for help from Jeff  (my shoulder’s frozen…. that was weird, realizing it) and he touched the apparently dead compact fluorescent and it illuminated and it made me think of pOp. Also Jeff is quietly amazing, the best kind.

writing back to the world

Yes, there was an election. No, it isn’t settled. Even if the worst happens, the world survived before, and it will keep surviving. My story isn’t done, neither is yours.

This is a long boring text-heavy oversharing post, ya been told.

Continue reading writing back to the world

Destiel fannage

Added later, watched the Supernatural from last night, it was adorable, there was just so much squee with the boys.

Mailed a letter to mOm and another to Barry. Yes I said I mailed it already. No I didn’t actually until now. Mild chest pain (completely normal at this point) on the way up the hill; the problem is that if I stop I fall down or want to, and it’s been raining, so no work in the garden. I think I’m going to have to get one of those stool canes. I had rocks to sit on in Mt. Seymour but they’re thin on the ground in urban settings. Best part of the walk was no mask.

I should walk some more later, perhaps I’ll be able to talk Jeff into coming. Maybe not so much hillage with the walkage

terrifying podcast about what canada should do in case of political instability before/during/after the election and during the transition period, if any.

 

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This is absolutely terrible but it made me laugh.

Welp, I’m awake. Guess I’m having a cup of tea and some breakfast.

Had a nice long talk yesterday with my mOm about my medical woes. I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine; but my body fell apart after that infection in March, and there’s one symptom in particular that makes me think it’s post COVID, but I guess I’ll never know and should get right with not knowing, while I’m working on improving things.

Here’s Jan M. as a retail worker in 2020

She’s been posting costumes every day on her ‘gram, and some of them have been awesome, why she even did a Castiel the other day. AND I DEAD NOW

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the wilds of Coquitlam

I wanted to just post the video of our trek yesterday. No comment, just the train wreck of ongoing wtfery.

Jeff said he wanted to drive somewhere for a client and I made a face. I know how terrible that part of town is (for driving, Coquitlam is quat nahss as far as greenery etc goes) and I wanted to help navigate, so I went in the car with Jeff and almost, but not quite, navigated us into a large scale portal of a Horror Dimension.

Jeff kiboshed the idea of sharing the footage with a right royal Kibosh, because essentially we didn’t do anything but swear at fate, the other drivers, and the signage.

Among other sweary things: the signage on Highway 1 as you drive just short of the Port Mann bridge. The signage as you come off 7B onto Lougheed, which just sucks in conventional terms; the signage that was COMPLETELY OBSCURED BY OVERGROWTH and it’s a fucking good thing I knew which way to direct Jeff to turn; THE FACT THAT NOT A SINGLE FUCKING PLACE OF BUSINESS ON LOUGHEED HIGHWAY BETWEEN THE 7B EXIT AND OXFORD ACTUALLY HAS ITS STREET NUMBER FACING THE ROADWAY.

The footage of us both cursing at all of this will be lost to history, and Jeff’s perfectly happy about that. The joint wail we let out when we saw the grown-over sign, though, that being lost to history mekketh me sad.

The client visit took about twenty minutes.

We solaced ourselves with Mickey D’s and Toim Tayeem.

Finding out that Phil’s ancestors were among the first to move to England – I would have bet money on that.