Category: Writing

reserved police
2005-04-08— Posted by: allegra

In case the editor shrinks the picture past the point of readability, the license plate holder says Places to Go People to Annoy. Taken in the 6th and 6th mall parking lot yesterday.

enough sleep
2005-04-08— Posted by: allegra

We’re all home today because the kids aren’t in school. This means that I can concentrate on cooking and somebody else can clean, although that shouldn’t really be a problem – the place is still remarkably tidy from last Sunday’s cleaning binge.

Everybody is in a good mood… the sun is shining, and life seems pretty durn good. If you want to stay cheerful, don’t go to copvcia.com today… it’s the usual spate of bad news.

ANFSCD, Have a Camel
2005-04-08— Posted by: allegra

From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, all rights deserved, etc etc. Something about this struck me as being extremely Canadian, as well as Australian. Many things about the Australian character much appeal to me. We could discuss it over a lager sometime.

Baggage handler dons passenger’s camel costume

A man who had a camel costume removed from his checked-in luggage at Sydney airport says the event raises questions about airport security.

David Cox was waiting to board his Qantas flight when he saw a baggage handler wearing the costume on the tarmac.

He says he was shocked to realise his luggage had been interfered with.

It’s the kind of larrikin thing that an Australian would do but given the current situation, particularly with Schapelle Corby, the issues of airport security and privacy and your luggage remaining secure, it’s obviously a poor decision, Mr Cox said.

Mr Cox says the airline dealt with the matter promptly but says it raises issues about airport security.

I obviously was flabbergasted, my jaw dropped to the ground, he said.

I went to the customer service desk that happened to be right behind me and said, Look I’ve checked my luggage through … someone’s obviously been through my luggage, taken something out, now is wearing [it] across the tarmac, what’s going on?

The Transport Workers Union has renewed calls for surveillance cameras to be placed in the areas where baggage is handled at airports.

The union representative Glen Nightingale says an investigation is under way into the incident and he is meeting with workers and Qantas today.

Mr Nightingale says closed-circuit television surveillance would protect both travellers and workers.

We’re concerned about the security and the lack of security at the airport and we’ve been rallying for the last three or four years for the Federal Government for the appropriate screening, not only of the workers but also of luggage that comes through these areas, he said.

Because I can
2005-04-08— Posted by: allegra

Feeding folks tomorrow. Got a very nice slab of prime rib, hopefully it will be somewhat edible. Made lasagne and chocolate banana muffins for dinner… I think the kids could really get used to me not working, but it’s back to work Monday, and thank God, after all the appointments and the holter monitor and having to take Kira to the vet tomorrow afternoon.

Tomorrow morning Paul is taking me to drop in yoga.

Paul nearly caused me to expire from the effort of controlling my temper today. He appears to be under the impression that getting powers of attorney and representation agreements should be like 40 dollars or some reasonable amount of money. That’s four documents for two people for about 700 and taxes, and the RA MUST be drawn up by a lawyer – it isn’t legal unless it is. Since you need the same info twice, it’s actually reasonable, but the way Paul was going on about it you’d think I was planning on blowing 700 bucks on the frikking slots. The joys of married life.

However, I know perfectly well that he is capable of lifting a phone and asking a bunch of other lawyers for representation agreements and how much it would cost, but I was lazy and went for the first lawyer who actually called me back! Can you believe it? Between the two of us we called half a dozen law offices and only 1 had the courtesy to return the call. I said, He’s got the business; I prefer to deal with someone whose staff actually know how to apply their index fingers to a keypad in the effort to keep their paycheques coming. The rest…. well the pic tells the story, and my butt is damned near that big.

I must say I liked the lawyer. I always meet lawyers prepared to despise them, but this guy is fine. The last rays of the setting sun are bouncing off a building down on 6th street in New West, and it’s very beautiful, in a cubist sort of way. And that is one of my favourite colours, molten gold….

Mary Prankster
2005-04-05— Posted by: allegra

John came home night before last from his eastern rambles, bearing (among other things) a CD with a couple of tunes by Mary Prankster. If Nancy White woke up with a potty mouth, a penchant for casual sex and a punkass band, she’d sound exactly like Mary Prankster. The first time I heard “The World is Full of Bastards” my jaw dropped open and by the second verse I was laughing helplessly. I can’t even post the title of the second song, but I was laughing even harder. As soon as Katie got home last night I sat her down and said, “OMG ya GOTTA listen to this.” Katie laughed! She thought it was funny. Well, now I have to go and get a holter monitor. My arrhythmias are going to go from legend to fact, or so I hope, and if you can frikkin believe it I got a cardiologist consult in less than a week, so it’s pretty bif bam boom in terms of timing. Still haven’t thrashed out the details of the representation agreement (living will) with Paul, but that will be today after I get back – and I’ve printed out the checklist. Thank God I am not yet so hirsute in the chest that I will have to be shaved for the holter monitor. The joys of growing older! The politician who wrote me back said, “Good luck getting any more responses, I get 400 emails a day.” This is a paraphrase, but true to the spirit of what he wrote. I had a somewhat better night’s sleep, but that might have been the beer. Still don’t understand why drinking beer makes my heart work better…. it all seems pretty strange to me. Okay, back to the dishes. Okay, not quite yet. Paul washed the comforter off the bed and hung it to dry in what appears to be the only good weather we’ll get this week, so the bed smells “line dried clean” right now. Ah. Domestic bliss.

first response
2005-04-05— Posted by: allegra

I got an intelligent and grammatical response to my letter already, actually written by the elected official – who isn’t even from my riding. I am thrilled. I responded and thanked him profusely. Since I don’t intend to make fun of him, I will include him at the end of this process and prior to the election as one of the angels, so that if you are so inclined, you may let it influence your vote.

letters to politicians
2005-04-03— Posted by: allegra

I have now forwarded the letter shown previously to the editors of the Sun and Province, and to 20 MLA’s including my own local one. I will be judicious about posting any responses; I am trying to establish dialogue, not demonstrate something about politicians and newspaper editors that most of us already knew.

Oh, by the way…. if any of the constituency office staff delegated to deal with my letter are smart enough to find this website (which is not easy to find because nobody can spell my name and I don’t do the live link thing) be advised that I only get 3K hits a month to this site, so you can cheerfully ignore me – media wise, I don’t even rate as a drunken heckler. And besides. I’m not left wing, I’m actually an anarchist or I CALL myself an anarchist, so I’m even lamer, politically, than those NDP warhorses you’re so bored with. I must state publicly, however, that my religious beliefs prevent me from being personally violent unless you actually hit me first. That means, essentially, that I don’t care about your spoken politics. I care a lot more about what you do. (It also means that other people who call themselves anarchists disown me, because I don’t have the chops to perform direct action. Give me a break kids, I’m 46 and my hip hurts! But I’ll hide you while the cops are looking for you, so I have my uses.) And I will cut immense amounts of slack for a politician, any politician, no matter his or her party, who gives me a response in a human voice, as per the Cluetrain Manifesto, quoted earlier in this blog. So dear constituency assistant, congratulations! I send you a big hug and hope you’re giggling to yourself, now that you’ve found my belated Easter Egg.

I light a candle for John Paul II. I really wish he’d been a little easier on the birth control issue (and I would have forgiven him, teeth gnashing, on both the ordination of women and homosexuality had he lightened up about population control) but he made a good death, and I have to grant him that.

Paul’s off at church. Good on him! I’m going to finish up here and start cooking for Rob and Liz.

FDR quotes
2005-04-03— Posted by: allegra

Dear (politician, newspaper editor, religious leader, business leader):

The world is running out of cheap oil, and this will trigger events that require a measured response, rather than whining or partisan posturing. What are you, personally and politically, doing about the end of cheap oil?

Sincerely, me.

You know, I was thinking I should write a goddamned diatribe, but I can’t. The facts are now plain. I’m leaving out climate change and environmental destruction and all the other things I could throw into a letter, as that would just be me touching myself inappropriately in the hope of getting off (so to speak) some gonzo shots. It’s the oil that is going to break us… the question is, how badly, and at one point are the politicians gonna think about Franklin Roosevelt and Mike Pearson instead of Jeb Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Which reminds me. Somehow – books are like this – I inherited a history book called Pageant of Europe and I bought, at the amazing Renaissance Books, one of the best used book stores in the known universe, a book called Light from Many Lamps. Let me excerpt in large part from these books

These, quoted from Lillian Eichler Watson’s Light from Many Lamps, are the last words FDR wrote for public utterance. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage the next day. Think ye o readers of a day when men were elected President who actually *could* think and write like this.

“Let me assure you that my hand is the steadier for the work that is to be done, that I move more firmly into the task, knowing that you – millions and millions of you – are joined with me in the resolve to make this work endure.

The work, my friends, is peace; more than an end to this war – an end to the beginnings of all wars; yes, an end, forever, to this impractical, unrealistic settlement of the differences between governments by the mass killings of peoples.

Today as we move against the terrible scourge of war, as we go forward toward the greatest contribution that any generation of human beings can make in this world – the contribution of lasting peace – I ask you to keep up your faith. I measure the sound, solid achievement that can be made at this time by the straight edge of your own confidence and your resolve. And to you, and to all Americans who dedicate themselves with us to the making of an abiding peace, I say:

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.”

The passage in quotes is taken from Pageant of Europe. After asking Congress to agree to send munitions and material to the democracies fighting Hitler, on January 6, 1941, this is part of what FDR said, “In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in (his) own way everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world terms, means a world wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbour – anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.”

Setting aside the terrible irony inherent in some of his words, doesn’t it sound wonderful? You’d think he had actually read the Constitution and the Bible and decided to try to apply them in real life! <*?Anyway, I’m off to fax this letter to the unsuspecting opinion makers and politicians of the GVRD. May Cthulhu have mercy on all of us.

Thunder of God
2005-04-03— Posted by: allegra

It was very strange but fitting that the Pope died the same day I went to Chor Leoni’s Thunder of God concert. The Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring that they sang was dedicated to his memory. The organ at Christchurch Cathedral is awesome but new, and so a little ‘buggy’. But it was still a great concert. I kept thinking that both of my parents would have enjoyed it tremendously.

Calling Emperor Norton
2005-04-03— Posted by: allegra

By virtue of the power invested in me, with the assistance of the moon and a bad tempered mule, I issue a Proclamation Of Things That Shall Cease To Exist.

Ordnance larger than 50 calibre.

Disney retail stores.

Bill Gates, except as a legend to scare children with.

My arrhythmias.

People who spam indiscriminately.

Bedside clocks with alarms.

Bad Shakespearean ecktors.

People who think they are as witty as John Cleese, but aren’t.

Indigestion.

Starving children.

Big hair. I mean ARTIFICIAL big hair.

Duly witnessed by a dust mote exhaled by Caesar as he expired, I remain Dowager Empress Allegra, channeling my spiritual ancestor, Emperor Norton.

Global dog food sales in 1998 amounted to 9.237 million tonnes and cat food to 5.424 million tonnes, totalling 14.661 million tonnes.

Source, http://www.afma.co.za

Recommendation: with respect to consumption of resources, specifically meat, either start feeding your animal raw food, put it down, or don’t replace it when it dies. If you don’t already have a pet, don’t get one.

With the total value for the C&T market reaching new heights of US$228.9 billion in 2004, the list of products that fall under the personal care category are like wise incrementing in sales and variety. Brand developers are continuously launching new products that treat and pamper the consumer’s every real or perceived need.

Not quite sure what C&T stands for; I think it means cosmetics and therapy, source http://www.globalcosmetic.com/.

The amount quoted is interesting to me for several reasons. I don’t wear makeup largely because my mother doesn’t, and it didn’t stop her from ‘landing a good man’ and ‘having babies’, which after all, is all that women really want from life. I am being sarcastic, but anybody who really knows me, knows that I am not being VERY sarcastic, unless you’re gay, in which case I’m being an idiot stuck up on my heterosexist privilege, for which I humbly apologize; however, I am given to making broad sweeping statements, and this is just another one. Okay, I’m being more acidulous than vitriolic, if you want precision. And if I come on too strong about makeup, every tranny from here to NYC is going to threaten to kick my sorry ass.

ahem… where wuz I. It’s also interesting to me because the yearly aggregate dollar amount traded in the global cosmetics and pet food industries could put a) clean water in the mouth of every child on earth b) put birth control into the hands of every man and woman who wanted it and c) immunize every child on the planet against measles mumps pertussis and tetanus, with a side of fries.

Now since my dad makes Malthus look like a Dallas Cheerleader on crystal meth and he’s already going yeah, but, I have to interject at this point that YES I know that throwing money to third world countries on development projects is a mug’s game, we’ve all seen that on our TVs. I would add that small scale development projects controlled by locals using local resources work really well; unfortunately these are scarce and unevenly applied. The planet just doesn’t have a human distribution system that works without raping and killing the biosphere in the process of delivering goods and services. So supposing, just supposing that I DON’T want to throw up my hands and go, ya know, this problem is too big for one person. What would I do?

Well the first and most obvious thing is to sell the car. Paul and I are looking at our options about that, because the Soob, in every other respect a fabulous vehicle, is a complete frikkin gas hog. The next most obvious thing is to stop eating meat. The third most obvious thing is to support land and nature conservancy efforts, at least the ones that appear to be working. The fourth thing is to start growing as much of our own food as possible. Then there are a whole bunch of things that flow out of these things, but they are all really little. The big ones are gas and meat. Now I know that my consumption reductions, such as they have been, mean nothing. And I’m angry that private aviation and drag racing and muscle cars are going away, which means that I’m not really very grownup about all the changes that are facing us. But at least I’m past the point of feeling inert. I’m going to go around and be my true self. I’m going to be an unpleasant cow, and I will post the results here. Up next; letters to local politicians.

W
2005-04-02— Posted by: allegra

W, after work, on a Friday, in the golf course club house where we repair to suck back beer (and tequila shots) and eat nachos (and drink wine) means, not el Presidente, but work. Work this week has had a surreal, Gonzo quality that is hard to exactly describe. I just went back and read the terms of my employment, and with that sobering document seared into my cerebellum, I deleted the next two sentences. It’s not bad, it’s just… impolitic.

Tonight was amazing on So Many Counts. First, 3/4’s of the original lunch bunch, from the old days, reunited. Our 4th, the wonderful man, is currently in India wandering around by himself having epiphanies. I didn’t even think to raise a glass on his account, but that’s okay. Next count… I took my bra off without taking off my shirt. I love doing that. It’s so much easier to be that kind of extremophile than pay for tattoos – if you’re going to be extreme and bizarre. Count off the next thing…the twins were there. They aren’t twins, but they are dynamite together. And Jim drove me down and Jerome took me home. I FINALLY HAVE his nephew’s name, it’s Julian. All the Dunnett fans will snicker behind their hands, if they don’t pull a face, but before I knew about the House of Niccolo series, I thought Julian was a great name and I’m happy with it. And found out that Jim is thinking of girls’ names like Madeleine (or however he and his lady wife Carol wish to spell it).

Brief aside; I don’t think I ever explained, ma, what I mean by “your lady wife”. When I say that, in conversation or in print, I mean three very specific, linked things. I am saying “I respect your marriage”; I am saying “your wife/s.o./partner is worthy of respect” and I am saying “it appears to me that you treat her well”. So I am compressing many positive opinions into three words… but if I don’t explain what I mean by that, it’s hard to appreciate why I say it and why I never say it sarcastically, although I may say it with asperity. Ma, I know how you are about winkling the last shreds of meaning from the shell of every word, so I thought I’d be discursive.

What else was wonderful. The waitress. What a doll.

And there was other stuff – crikey, I missed the new gal, who is an engineer. She seems really nice, but a bit overwhelmed by how we are. I mean, all this talk about dancing with Lashkar, nautch style, and then having my bra explode – this is the best part of ten years ago now, and I’m by no means as wild as I useta be – and it didn’t really explode, it kinda disassembled itself – is enough to put a nice girl off. And she’s a woman, OF COURSE, when I call her a girl it’s a backhanded way of saying I feel super old. But right now, I’m thinking good thoughts about good people, and we hardly talked about W at all. And I’m thinking about watching one coworker creep up the stairs to fart in another’s sleeping face. Actually, his boss’s sleeping face. That happened at the first party with coworkers at this company that I ever attended, almost 8 years ago now. They were both sitting across from me tonight, and they still know how to laugh.

Stanislav Petrov was minding his own business in a missile silo in Russia in 1983. The radar screen popped up five incoming missiles from the US, and the protocol was that he now had to hit the button sending some back.

A lot went through his mind, but, like Dietrich von Choltitz, the German army general who assumed personal responsibility for defying Hitler’s direct order when he refused to level Paris, he thought that he didn’t particularly want to be the guy who went down in history (such as it would be in the smoking rubble) as the man who escalated world war III. He figured it was a mistake; also, he’d been to a damned good military school, and it just didn’t make sense from a military perspective. The five missiles, displayed so convincingly on his screens, didn’t exist.

The next time somebody asks you to do something that’s just plain wrong, strap on your balls and think about Stanislav.

English
2005-04-01— Posted by: allegra

Yeah, well, anyway, I get home and call Peggy to see if she wants to go swimmin’ and she sounds like she’s expiring from a cold, except that her usual good humour hasn’t leaked away, so it was a brief but cheery conversation and I’m still sitting here instead of exercising. Then called my mother but kinda had to get off the phone in a hurry because pOp was working. So I kicked around the kitchen and ate a sandwich, and then thought I’ll look around my computer desk for that poem I was going to post, and there it is.

Keith is off to karate and Katie I think has found something to watch. I’ve got a hankering to watch one of the Mind’s Eye tapes. But I probably won’t. I’m still in mourning because the TV went downstairs. I didn’t mind having it upstairs, but Paul is really really adamant about it going downstairs. I miss us all being gathered to watch something. It reminded me of when I was growing up, and we’d all collapse around the phosphor dot shrine and gawk for a spell. The package arrived, mom.

Anyway, some of you may be irritated by all the poetry, but I do a lot of different stuff with words, and if you prefer the prose, I won’t kvetch.

Last night I was having palpitations again, in bed (and not in a nice way I hasten to add), and Paul and were facing each other, which is unusual because we’re normally in spoon configuration or back to back. The palpitations slowed and then stopped and I asked Paul very quietly if he’d been throwing healing energy at me and he said yes and I told him it was working. I could feel what I visualize as a column of golden warmth and light between his heart and mine. A very nice feeling – and I promptly fell asleep. I’m telling you, I’ll never be bored as long as I’m living with Paul, he never ceases to challenge and startle and delight and annoy me.

I light a candle to the memory of Terry Schiavo, may her life be a beacon in the darkness. Paul and I are off to the lawyers next week for living wills, which are actually called something else in BC. I think Paul will breathe a big sigh of relief once we do that, and after all this hoo ha it is a good and proper thing to grow something beautiful from soil richly fertilized by the bs that’s been spread so generously by the media. The lunch bunch and I had quite the discussion about it today at work. To cling to life when you have a fighting chance is an amazing thing. To be forced to cling to life against your will is a horror none of us wished to face. I have a simple dividing line. If I can still be of some use in raising my kids, keep me alive. Otherwise, kweccch (finger across the throat gesture).

I’ve been really down on the universe lately, so some good news for a change.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March05/grass.fuel.ssl.html

http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php?fuseaction=home.story&story_id=2346

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/PBD-follow-the-energy.html

http://www.hhmi.org/news/garcia_garcia.html

http://agnews.tamu.edu/dailynews/stories/HORT/Mar2805b.htm

I just love the notion of a purple carrot. I’ve had purple potatoes, and they were yummy.

Katie’s wall
2005-04-01— Posted by: allegra

This is something Katie has hanging on her wall. The wings and dress are adult size, so it’s quite the installation.