Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
I can’t fly but I’ve learned to dance
I’ve got a mustelid in my pants
If I hold still maybe you can grab it
I think he’s in there after the rabbit
and if you ask how did a rabbit git
into the pants of my new outfit
I tell you I don’t make a habit
of being habitat for any passing rabbit.
There is fresh chocochunk cheesecake and I’ma make a batch of biscotti later.
On reading Virtualis.
The world is an urn and a flowerpot
whirled through a thousand fractures
presented as fresh each day
a new grief / a best guess
remonstrating with that first flame.
The catchment area of consciousness
manifesting without irony
ever pointing at pressure, heat & dispersal
no mouth, no eyes, and yet there is a record.
Sad to walk
under a pitted and still perfect moon
to speculate of other lives suspended
in that backdrop, radiant with stars.
For they are there, attending whirligig systems
and that distance can be spanned
with all these fragile linkages
the coded tithes of empathy
as my thoughts consent to be used this way.
I will imagine you, poet
perceiving me across this gulf
and lose all place and time
before a sky transformed into an altar.
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDAM
Until it happens to you
ventures close to your life
the flash of the scalpel
is entertainment
you do not see the cost of survival.shall I make jokes
call her an Amazon now
a soldier sworn to a particular battle?shall I mourn because my friend
has been reduced
by her breast
by her hair?the next time she sees me
none of this will show
I am a civilized person
given to mourning in private.
The newest character in Midnite Moving can be sent to sleep for a couple of hours by saying gay schlafen, which is go to sleep in Yiddish. Which is the kind of thing that happens when two people who are alien mad scientists who shouldn’t be having or raising children decide “I’ma risk it”. And don’t you wish you had THAT app.
Awoke far too early this morning. (boring SG1 reference) Amanda Tapping tweeted about her Bouvier, George, who’s 120 lbs of lapdog, and whose gas rivals that of Christopher Judge. These are the kinds of things I find teddibly amusing, which is as much as you need to know about the compos of my mentis these days.
I am arguing with myself this morning as to whether I really want to go to an all day church event about growth. I think it’s a waste of money, but I am curious about how this expensive Unitarian boffin – who just so happens to be the establishing minister for the church – is going to fire us up. I don’t want to go, as I am afraid I will ‘air my views’ in a ‘less than respectful or helpful way’. Maybe I should. Teach the controversy and all.
The waste of money part comes from the notion that growth comes from being an attractive church. Our Religious Education program, which is the magnet which draws young adults with children to the church, is fanTAStic in terms of curriculum and staff . no srsly . but badly housed. I mean, really badly housed. The space we’re renting doesn’t suit and most parents come in and see it and recoil in horror. We have tried to get this ameliorated but we DON’T OWN THE BUILDING, and of course unless every elder in the congregation drops dead and leaves his or her entire estate to the church, we never will own a building either. On the basis of my conversations with other churches this not having a building ain’t a bad thing. Church buildings get older than human beings eventually and there’s nothing like remediating asbestos tiles and leaky roofs and recalcitrant dragon-furnaces to put a damper on Sunday worship and cast a pall of gloom over the Board.
As it is, we can do church anywhere, with despatch and aplomb. We’d hate to move again, but we will if we have to, and church will continue no matter what.
Looks like Katie’s buying a restaurant. She’s seen it done right and done wrong, and I’m sure she’ll be fine. We do NOT have big plans. We have small ones. I am going to be the silent partner and biscotti baker, which I am very happy about, since I will finally have a space close to my house which is exactly what I want for baking biscotti, and the way the law works anything that’s baked there must be sold there in at least some quantity so it’s not a factory. I’ll be making a deposit on Monday (she’s at work even though it’s a stat) and Katie and I already have an immense list of things to work through. I want her energy and intelligence to be rewarded. Keith expressed reservations, interestingly, but I think he may be experiencing jealousy. Which reminds me, now I really DO have to change my will, so Keith and Katie get a more equitable share, and so Paul is no longer the executor.
We’re not planning on making any money for most of the first year, start up date April Fools (and you should have seen Katie’s face as we set the date). The easiest thing for me to do is to think about the money as being lost. Out of the gate. Something about this feels right though, there’s a weird ‘this will be okay’ vibe.
The Treasurer problem I had has been resolved. I crashed the chart of accounts somehow in Simply Accounting and reasoned my way out of the problem with a few adjustments. Now it’s time to MAKE RECEIPTS FOR ALL THE DONORS. It is a finite problem with a deadline, and it’s all good.
My only question to myself is whether this is in my own Midnite Moving Co Universe or in the Firefly verse or the Stargate verse. Because I would like to keep it consistent. I’m thinking row II or column II. au means alternate universe.
| fuck or die | rivals to lovers | amnesia | mind control | au: neighbors |
| immortality / reincarnation | telepathy / mindmeld | secret twin / doppelganger | au: daemons | snowed in |
| au: cop / detective | food porn | FREE ★ SPACE |
au: college / highschool | au: hooker / porn / stripper |
| game night | animal transformation | de-aged | bodyswap | slavefic |
| au: fantasy | genderswap | kiss to save the day | alpha / beta / omega | au: were / vamp / supernatural |
Today, churchy stuff to do with bookkeeping. I know that voluntarism is the root of civilization but GADZOOKS sometimes there seems to be a lot of it.
Perhaps an inch of dense wet snow fell yesterday, and is still here. Given that they weren’t much use in the car I’m glad I moved the crampons indoors where they will hopefully prevent my brother and I from skidding around the back deck like very bad acrobats.
There is nothing like having an appropriate midnight snack in the fridge. I mooshed up the overcooked veg from Sunday’s roast beast dinner with the leftover cheese sauce and it was nommerly.
I really think at this point it’s time to change my ring tone to something less annoying than a fax squeal. It went off in church on Sunday – the Leonard Cohen service, and how good it was, less the stupid phone going off.
Jeff and I had a Tom Hanks fest yesterday; we watched Joe vs. the Volcano and Cloud Atlas. I have to say I loved both movies although obviously for different reasons. I am definitely interested in reading the book of Cloud Atlas.
I have joined (hopefully) some form of trope bingo; I will be writing songs instead of stories though.
I have a job lead that I am working. I would be so happy if I could be working before the stipend from being laid off runs out.
I’ve seen both of my kids within the last couple of days so that little bit of soul hunger has been satisfied. They are thinking of tag teaming on a trip to Australia; I would love that and would even make with a subsidy.
Okay, time to make a list of all the things I want to do today, mostly so I can feel guilty when I ignore it….
1. Jeff says he’s paying too much money for rent. In Vancouver that is not true but he sure could pay less rent elsewhere in the province, someplace on the Island for example. He says he’s going to give me plenty of notice so I am very relaxed about this. Not having in house tech support would just about kill me, as would giving up the flat screen and cable and the PVR, but life is full of interesting times and changes. It definitely means I might end up with a different roommate though, and that raises the specter of a whole other series of maddening things; Jeff is/was the best roommate evar, as I believe I have stated a number of times. I can see his point though and we all have to take care of our own needs.
2. The new Galapagos BBC 3D documentary from David Attenborough is ABSOLUTELY STUNNING. Highly highly recommended. Don’t forget to watch the “making of” too.
3. Signed off on my taxes for the last 4 years. I should get a large amount of money back, but of course the feds will have to look at the returns before that happens. I remain sanguine.
4. Job hunting is interesting. I got a lead from my network of contacts, and it is wonderful that it happened BEFORE I started instituting the new job search parameters (working the network).
5. South Fraser Unitarian Congregation may get me as a speaker for Easter. I’d whip out my previously provided Jesus service. We shall see; I have not yet received a response.
6. The sun is out, and I walked around in it, and of course the world seems like a better place.
7. (link removed for safety) This. Oh, this.
8. I came up with a really cool idea for a science fiction story and forgot to write it down. It has something to do with old people and robots, and damn I’m mad – I have a pad downstairs for all the ideas I get while I’m watching tv and there are tons of them so far. Why, o why, blarp blergle. I could have just written it down. That’s what pen and paper FOR, SILLY APE.
9. Did I mention I am on the waitlist for the Translink busker program? If I’m still not working, I may do that to raise cash.
10. I’m going to have some of the roasted squash and roasted garlic soup for lunch and then back to the job hunt.
11. I’ve been sleeping downstairs and completely NOT HAVING ANY SCREENS in my sleeping room. As a consequence my back is much better.
12. WOWZERS. Great news for deaf people.
I am currently reading Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein. Which is, textual evidence to the contrary, about memory and memory palaces and the history of memory.
He has provided a phrase I find particularly memorable. On the day of his bar mitzvah, he was a ‘parrot in a yarmulke’ which essentially means that I will not ever be able to think about a bar mitzvah ever again without this mental image.
I was writing cheques for church this morning over at Sue’s place (she also joined me for breakfast) and her cat punched a hole in a letter I have to send. Most entertaining.
It’s now up to date…. check out Home, from 2010.
Tomorrow is a day that is banging on my door
when I didn’t get to deal with today
Visited with Sue this morning to help her download from her daddy’s funeral. He was 102. Meshuggas about the inheritance; waiting is.
LOVELY visit with Mike last night (funnily enough I’d been kvetching to Paul, with whom I was practicing yesterday, about how MIKE WUZ NOT RETURNING MY CALLS WAHWAH) and he called around 8 and I kinda forst him to let me come over. I brought Otto and sang Theo’s Theme and John Scalzi’s Blog and Compost and Grateful and It’s Just So Nice When Someone knows your Name, and Lemming’s Twofer, and the first verse of Wanted to Believe, and Mike sang the drop D version of Dylan’s Tangled up in Blue and another song, I can’t remember which. We talked about various things, including how trying work is for him right now, and how the insomnia really doesn’t help. BUT HE FOUND THE TAYLOR. His parlour guitar was lost in the move but he found it again, and so me happy. I was VERY BAD and drank two beers, which made me so drunk I collapsed on the sofa and slept from 10:30 til 8:30 the next morning. Two beers. I always was a lightweight, but this was ludicrous. Also worked on Rozo for a while, her shoulders were a reticulation of weenie little knots. While I was there Mike called Brian and I got to talk to him for a while. There is nothing like the sound of a friend’s voice, yanno?
This morning I came home and promptly started brekkie for Jeff, being melon and bacon and pamcakes, and then Sue called and I went off and had a second breakfast of more coffee. Also, getting checks signed so I can pay some churchy bills. Then I wandered into a sign shop and ORDERED the John Caspell Memorial Pinball Parlour sign for reelz this time, and then my other errands got shunted aside as I had to trot home due to the coffee.
Now I am looking up the language of flowers on the internet for a bouquet I’m buying for the minister tomorrow and as soon as I change my clothes – ew, slept in my clothes, what am I, frosh at some scummy college??? – I’ll be off to buy a floral bouquet, pick up some more spray paint, and buy some eggs and butter to get going on some biscotti. Roast chicken for dinner tonight. MMMMM chicken.
I cooked a pork roast the other night with basil and lemon thyme from Suzanne’s deck garden. It was nommy too, although Jeff owned that it was a little overcooked. We did agree that pork roast should be roasted, it doesn’t cook right in the crock pot.
Paul and Keith are off to Seattle for the long weekend. Katie is doing cat care this time; I should call her. The only reason I know she’s alive is from her facebook comments.
Miss Margot has been extra barfy. I need to brush her very very thoroughly and give her a lot of kitty malt.
SO LOOKING FORWARD TO SINGING NEW SONG FOR MINISTER. he he.
“Inflammation of the family, kinfolk”. You know pOp when the rellies have been in the spare room too long?
The word exists.
I may have mentioned Jeff and I are working our way through the entirety of ER (when we need a palate cleanser, 2nd season SG1). We’ve had 8 seasons of getting to know, love and hate various people.
I took a book out of the library about Must See TV, the part of the nineties when NBC had groundbreaking shows like Third Rock from the Sun and ER and Seinfeld and Cheers and Frasier and Will and Grace and Mad About You and Friends, shows that were ALL ABOUT THE WRITING. In the last chapter of the book, it was made abundantly clear that NBC no longer gives a tinker’s cuss about writing – sales and marketing runs the show and they run the least offensive shows that cost the least amount of money to make. In defence of the current iteration of talent management and development at NBC, ER had a 44 market share and a top ten hit show in 2012 has a 13 (Julianna Margulies was comparing ER and The Good Wife, her current show), and it’s because there’s a lot more TV happening especially competition from HBO and AMC and Showtime, so it’s harder to have a hit. But honestly, folks, without the writing and the courage to try something new, good tv DOES NOT HAPPEN. It’s happening on cable – that’s where the action is.
Well, in my little universe of time-shifted tv, main character Mark Greene just died of brain cancer, and I wept non stop for an imaginary character for 20 minutes. Under the circumstances, mocking the ability of other people to believe in God seems a tad uncharitable…. must resolve to quit every doing it. My imaginary friends…. sigh.
And Anthony Edwards, the actor playing Mark Greene, is back on TV, and the show description is so lame I don’t want to watch it.
Wrote 850 words of backstory on Midnite Moving Co last night. Oh lady of the deep waves, how I love you. Trying to write a human alien character who doesn’t speak is freaking hard…. But I now have the story of how she met George, from his perspective. Writing it from hers will be very hard.
Off to church now.
Zombifugal (running from zombies)
Leucophagic (only eats white food – common in children)