Category: Writing

Got back from the Puddle last night, where I regaled my poor intimates with the first two routines I wrote (I am still in the Aren’t they Cute rather than the Murder your Darlings phase) after Paul made a detour through Ratlands – still can’t believe he wanted a burger after working out, so I ordered two, knowing Katie would want one, and Katie is sitting at the computer when I come through the door saying, dreamily, “I think I’ve GOT something for you,” so I come over to the computer and watch Mosh. The tune itself is nothing special; I suspect that’s quite deliberate, because Marshall Mathers is one of the smartest people in show business; however the lyrics are a masterpiece of opinionated bile and the cartoon itself is brilliant. I had read the lyrics and had no idea how they were going to be integrated into a video. Poor Paul. Afterwards he is struggling to be kind about it and finally I helped him about by saying, equally pityingly “It’s not Dylan, is it?” and with relief he said yes, and I answered, “But Dylan never f&cking well bothered to explicitly tell black kids to vote.” Paul lives in a world where subtlety still counts. And it does… just not the way he’d like it to.

This song comes too late to influence the election, because voter registration apparently takes time, but what Em has managed to do is fuel the rage that will cause the post election riots I was warning everybody about in a previous post. Everybody was horrified when I predicted that. I may have guessed too low. On Halloween we’ll find out whether the Redskins will beat the Packers because that will indicate whether the incumbent will win the election or not. I know it isn’t true, but I feel comfortable using it as a predictor… it’s a very American way to predict the future, like Yarrow Stalks are the essence of China. Actually I just had a really hilarious idea… that somebody should invent an American I Ching which is all about predicting the future based on who wins what on Astroturf etc, and includes baseball, hockey, football, and celebrity divorces. The election is, of course, still too close to call.

Anyway, if you want to see Mosh, it’s on Launch, as is Just Lose It. Also very very very funny that he would put the funniest song on the album out first, and then a very angry one indeed. The only thing that scares me now is the notion of Eminem getting religion. Slim Loki, wherefore art thou Eminem? Well, it’s time to get my rear in gear and do dishes and haul Festive Biscotti out of the oven. By the way, if I refer to any recipe as Festive it’s because it has dried cranberries in it. One of these days I will provide my Festive Meatloaf recipe. Ya know what!? It’s good, ask my mother.

While I was in bed this morning I thought of the entire curriculum for an Adult Religious Education program. There’s just one problem. There isn’t a church in the lower mainland that wouldn’t tell me “You have great ideas, but we’re not ready to do X-treme Church yet.” Okay, I admit it. I’m an XUU…. Xtreme Unitarian Universalist.

 

Ap(parent)ly Mummy’s suffering from blogrivation so I hafta cough up a blog (haarf kuh kuh kuh haaarff) before now. But it’s only now, now, so it will have to be now, which will promptly turn into later. I’ve been told time is arbitrary, but I think time is a steely eyed bitch who gets ever grumpier; there’s nothing arbitrary about that, looks like a logarithmic curve to me. Anyway. Very nice congregational dinner last night. A bob of the bowler (nearly wrote blower, which would have been a very funny typo indeed) to Véronique for being the mistress of ceremonials and (this line deleted in 2019) (and a bowler bob to Carmen, the lucky woman who sleeps next to her), resplendently dressed in a tux. A big and public raspberry to that husband of mine who went into the dessert room, loaded five f*cking desserts onto his plate, ate them all WHILE Véronique was saying don’t eat dessert yet and then BITCHED FOR THE REST OF THE EVENING about how he ate too much. Ha f*cking ha. For ONCE I neither ate nor drank too much and YES I DID FOLLOW PAUL into the dessert room, but I grabbed SLIVERS of (okay, too wet to be slivers, what is the right word? Smidgens? Dollops?) two types tiramisu. And when the announcement came don’t eat dessert I tossed a paper napkin over my GROSS SOCIAL SOLECISM and ignored it until I got the okay. Damn but it was good. A big round of applause for the meal, which was a potluck, and really really really good. Whoever made those little meatballs, thank you three times. And the scalloped taters were AWESOME. I noticed my beef stew all got et. I had the sense to bring the last of Keith’s breadmaker bread and butter and salt and pepper as WELL as the Teapot I was originally requested to bring…. I think I behaved reasonably well and I had a good time. Oh, and thank you Bob for bringing the alcohol. It’s not the same as getting drunk around a campfire but it warmed certain areas nicely.

Let us pause indeed, Rev Katie! (Rev Katie held up a stuffed bunny rabbit to assist her in saying let us PAWS in our deliberations)….many and tuneful were the groans that filled the room.

Like a complete, self centered idiot, I hung out with the jr youth today and asked them to tell their favourite dreams rather than do anything like … you know… curriculum. Then we had a lively discussion of our favourite theme park rides and *then* I tried out my new routine on makeup on my unsuspecting victims. I have to admit that I thought it was pretty funny at the time I wrote it but their appreciation was quite unfeigned, and my mother liked it too. After I premiere the routines I’ve written I’ll post them.

I am now working on a routine called why my sex life is better than yours, mostly because while I can’t guarantee my sex life is better than yours, the fact I complain about it less is instructive, and besides, EVERY SINGLE F{CKING FEMALE COMIC – except Watermelon who likely has neither time nor reason to complain – who got on the stage the other night, complained about her sex life. Now I don’t know about you, but if I’m trolling for new lovers, I am NOT going to complain about my sex life. I am going to make it sound like the single best place in the universe is within reach of me. Or at least I’m going to hint, intimate (in both senses of the word) and otherwise suggest that I am enthusiastic, inventive and skilled. I am going to suggest that I stay on good terms with people I’ve slept with and don’t hold it against people (in both senses of the words) who have said no if I propositioned them. I was going to say people who have had the bad judgement to say no, but John says that’s just plain arrogant. Whaaaatever. Anyway I feel a compassion which cannot be measured for anybody who would rather be pitied by strangers than worshipped by lovers; girls, do yourself a favour and whine about something else. As John says, what you whine about is what you’ll put up with. If you don’t put up with it, you say, F*ck ya, and then you don’t have to complain about it! Yeehaw.

What was I thinking. Writing like a fool, church okay, dinner okay, oh THAT’S right I popped into the Shiloh church after service because Peggy, may the saints and angels take her in their particular care, VOLUNTEERED to help me do the childcare after the service for the parent meeting and there is NO WAY I could have done it without her, because while the kids were reasonably well behaved there were too many for me to deal with, which meant that Tom left without her, which meant she needed a ride home, which is right around the corner from the church so we poked our heads in, saw the car and realized Tom was still there and then we got a very abbreviated tour, the details of which I may not reveal except to say DON’T DO IT WILE E COYOTE! This is the Acme version of a church.

Then went shopping in my matrix coat. Sigh. I love the effect it has.

Daughter Katie is downstairs being very quiet with her friend Scott. Matt seems to have evaporated, or done that weird phase change that people do when they act like they like you very briefly and then act very clearly as if they do not. I suppose I could go bust the door in but that would be prurient, rude, and probably not turn up anything interesting anyway. Gotta phone Paul and see when he wants me to come get him. Another weekend shot. Ah well.

My dad turns older than Cthulhu tomorrow. Actually he doesn’t because the first Cthulhu story was published before he was born, but I thought I’d say that. Happy birthday POP! Many healthy returns of the day! I am going to be mentioning you in my “Blasphemy!” routine. I’m not sure I’ll ever have the guts to perform it in public, but oh well, still have to have your permission first. Will forward under separate cover.

Forgot to mention that I did a participatory Harry Potter reading the other day. You encourage your audience to BOO NOISILY when the Dursley’s get mentioned, and substitute “Brain Damage” for Mr. Dursley, “Horse Face” for Mrs. Dursley, “Piggy” for Dudley and “Child Abusers” when they are mentioned collectively. This makes the first three pages of the Philosopher’s stone excrutiatingly funny to read, highly recommended as an antidote to sorrow and woe.

I am enjoying my Matrix coat so much. And I still haven’t posted a picture.

Lexi you okay?

Jim P sorry I haven’t emailed pix I will remember tonight or bust.

Paul is the bestest spouse in the universe, until the next time he screws up. That’s married life in a nutshell, folks.

I never screw up. I deliberately introduce carefully metered amounts of chaos into the lives of others in the hopes that people will be led to understand what is important in their lives.

Bright blessings to all the depressed, off to work now.

http://www.snopes.com/sports/football/election.asp

Pop, please call me after the Halloween game winds up. I suspect the Skins are going to take it. Maybe I should check with Hunter Thompson.

This morning, I have a number of comments to make about the state of my universe, and they include a review of last evening’s Women of Comedy show at Inferno, two comments about Air Canada, several comments about the US election, and a description of a dream.

I’ll start with the American Election. This bitterly contested and divisive election is going to be a lot worse than anybody except the goddamned drunken posse comitatus types could have predicted.

It gives me no pleasure to predict this, but there will be between 20 and 30 dead in post election riots in the US.

How could an election contest between two rich white men result in a ‘win’ for the working poor in the US? They are demonstrably worse off than they were 4 years ago… it won’t matter who wins, they’ll be worse off yet. I don’t even think that Bush has to steal the election although he certainly has the mechanisms in place for an able theft… on the ground, chopping off the right to vote, in the proces, voting machines that do the right thing for Republicans and in the judiciary, with a packed Supreme Court.

I just wrote an apocalyptic jeremiad but I deleted it because I bored myself. I will predict a couple of things else. The Canadian dollar will be higher than the American dollar for most of next year. We’ll never see 40$ oil again.

Comedy show. With Watermelon, Ardell Fitzpatrick & Kristina Agosti. Featuring Dana Alexander & Laurie Elliot.. Headliner: Erica Sigurdson. They were all good. Watermelon did a bit on ‘vaginal rejuvenation’ that had Paul and I flopping around like landed trout. Dana Alexander is black, and apparently from Edmonton. When she said she plays small towns and people say things like We Really Like Black People in Slave Lake I just about died. Brought me back to the Racism 101 I lived through when I was living with and married to a Canadian born black guy. Then she talked about buying a vibrator. Service person says, no problem, I’ll help you get it onto the roof rack. That is the kind of humour I like. Ardell, god bless her, repeated every word of the routine she did the night she shared a stage with Tanyalee Davis lo these many years ago. If you ever get a chance to see Tanyalee Davis, DO IT. She is brilliant and subversive and 42 inches tall. Check out her website and her description of being hit by a really bad driver. I think Ardell is funny, but I was disappointed. Lee Ann Keple did a good job of Mcing. I booed the headliner because she dissed public breastfeeding. She said I don’t sh*t in the store and I nearly yelled, but it’s okay for YOU to eat in public, ya fat pig! She said Yikes and I yelled This is Vancouver, like some things ya leave alone. I will get booed someday, and that moment will come back to haunt me. Her set was otherwise quite good, very consistently funny and good with hecklers, although the stuff she did about relating to children… all of it… was quite creepy, full of repressed violence and that laughing through the tears feel you get from people who are still dealing with childhood trauma. Childless women really have a disadvantage; they don’t have somebody to dump the trauma on. There wasn’t a person on stage last night who has children, or was willing to talk about them.

I am writing tons of stuff, my current favourite is about overhearing Jesus talking to his mother on a cell phone on the bus. And why WOULDN’T Jesus come to Vancouver? Everybody else does, and it’s a good f*cking thing they leave again, too.

I said to Paul on the way home, you know, I think this is my favourite on ramp (Grandview Highway eastbound onto Highway one) and he sighed and said his favourite on ramp is still the Jarvis on ramp onto the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto, because it frames the CN tower so perfectly. Then I said to him, it’s great that we never run out of things to talk about, but sometimes it’s really bizarre. And the thing about being happily married is not the times you talk to each other about weird sh*t, it’s the times you LOOK at each other. You know and he knows; you may not be feeling or thinking the exact same thing, but you really know what the other person is thinking and you feel seen in that moment. It can be good, or bad, but you know that you’re visible to somebody else, and that he NEEDS to look at you so that you can be together in knowing something. I’m going to do a bit on verbal abuse. Paul just shakes his head. He’s almost used to it by now.

Two things about Air Canada. They are painting the aircraft misty blue. Brother James in Ottawa do you read me? THEY ARE PAINTING THE AIRCRAFT THE SAME COLOUR AS THE SKY!!! Can’t we just report this as a safety issue and have all the managers arrested for endangering the public???? Camo coloured airplanes!!! ain’t it groovulous!? I’m NOT okay with that. Second thing. Celine Dion is not a professional. They gave her an OXCART full of money to bang on her chest and wear a new trolley dolly outfit and she wouldn’t get off the f*cking airplane in Vancouver because the right kind of bottled water wasn’t available and there WAS NO RED CARPET! It’s at moments like this that I wish the Virgin Mary would appear to her and say things like, “My child, you need no red carpet beneath your feet, for all of God’s creation is holy! Now get off the f*cking airplane and get to work! You couldn’t even lift a meal tray without your forearm snapping, you no account stick insect!” I’m sure she’s very nice in person, but the report back from the troops was that she’d just had a hell of a fight with Ren� and hairs were occupying tender portions of her mucosa, thus the hissy, missy. Of COURSE I’m saying all this because I’m jealous. But I’d stop being jealous of Celine Dion in two seconds if she sang material equal to her talent.

Anyway, I got lots of new material from going out last night. Then sometime this morning I had a dream. I dreamed I put peeled raw potatoes in the toilet. And the toilet got blocked, obviously. And I had to pull the potatoes out, in the dark. Because the power went off. So there I am pulling potatoes out of the toilet in the dark. I can feel their cold little surfaces as I pull each one out. Then I pulled up something squishy. And I woke up, and started thinking about the American election. I’m not sure there’s a connection, and I’m okay with not knowing.

One last thing. A lot of Americans have said they’ll flee to Canada if Bush wins the next election. Don’t be too surprised if some of them actually come! If you do dishes, you can come crash at my house.

 

 

2019 says none of my dire predictions happened. Cassandra you suck.

9 Wands; ready to go another round, for the next lot of bad news.

10 Pentacles; but scared to offend my family, particularly my paterfamilias and Paul.

The Chariot; my future is a series of demands to balance the conscious and unconscious, and the almost warlike and masculine energy required to do it. Motion forward is implied. Note the crescent moons, one smiling, one scowling, on his shoulders. The masks of the theatre – Pamela was a theatre designer, and many of the Rider Waite tarot cards look like backdrops painted in miniature.

The Hanged Man. I have made a sacrifice in order to come to a greater understanding. I have lost something… I have lost an image of myself which was to my mind desirable, but in the end false. I have recognized my loss.

The four of Pentacles; the man who can’t grip and can’t let go…. but he’s in my past. I’ve decided to let go of something to grab something else.

The four of Wands. Celebration; success.

With some trepidation, I turned over the next card. Knight of Swords. Forward motion. Being inconsiderate of others in the pursuit of his ends. Intelligent but callous. Well, I’ve been described that way more times than I can count; I own the card. I am that way; something softer would have been odd.

The Lovers! Ha! The reconciliation of opposites; the Divine Union that gives birth to the world. How others see me? I burst out laughing. But my home life and my life with Paul is much better, and will be better still. The recognition of sexuality. And the serpent of wisdom / temptation.

The seven of Pentacles. My hopes and fears. I fear to look at what I want to accomplish. I long to revel in what I’ve accomplished. But the warning is, don’t pause too long or too often. It’s a work card, a warning to stay in balance with the work.

Heart beating like a drum, I turned over the last card. The High Priestess. O. The moon is on her crown and at her feet, inconstant moon, and echoing the Chariot. She is reminding me that the path I have chosen is still a sacred path, still a spiritual path. I forget her at my peril.

I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS!!!

TUCSON, Ariz. – Two men ran onstage and threw custard pies at conservative columnist Ann Coulter as she was giving a speech at the University of Arizona, hitting her in the shoulder, police said.

University police arrested the men but did not release their identities.

In her half-hour speech Thursday night, Coulter trashed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and derided liberals and Democrats while saluting conservative students who attended her speech.

Coulter writes a column for Universal Press Syndicate. Her appearance was sponsored by the UA College Republicans.

BUT WHEN I THINK ABOUT THINGS, THEY HAPPEN. THIS MEANS that I will eventually get smooches from Jude Law. Ha ha!!!! Or maybe the universe will get things backwards and I’ll get smooches from Anne Coulter. Oh well, stranger things have happened.

Anne is reputed to have derided their aim…. considering how flipping big her mouth is, you’re damned right she should be derisory.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=562&e=4&u=/ap/tv_be_gone

TV-B-Gone Home

This is what you’re getting for Christmas. You know who you are!!!!! And I’m getting a couple for myself. I’m really excited, even if their website is crashed right now due to high volume.

Well, Lexi and Katie this morning have cause to be impressed by the safety design of Miatas, because they were broadsided at a combined speed of about 100 k by a drunk driver last night.

And walked away of course. The air bags deployed, the victims walk away red eyed from the air bag deployment gas, the drunk is carted off to jail. He just sat in his Echo looking straight ahead, didn’t get out to either run away or check on his victims.

Lexi’s little green Miata is a write off, but as she said, we’re fine, and that’s all that matters. She had her digital camera so we will have pictures later (if the technology kept working, there’s always that). Both of them said we will not believe the pictures when we see them, that they just crawled out of the wreckage going “Holy cow!”. And in the meantime Katie’s walking around like a little old lady and complaining of a lot of soft tissue damage. I told her she didn’t have to go to school today and she said, “What, and miss out on the attention?” or words to that effect. She has two Hollywood esque red marks on her left cheek from the air bag – you know, the kind that say “Something happened to my phys” without actually detracting in any way from her stunning gorgeousness.

Katie says, “Hey, my hair was up when I got into the car, and down when I got out. What the hell happened to my hairband?”

Lexi looked okay but thinner somehow. There are two very funny things she said that I would like to share.

One is that she just HATES it when people say “It was like in the movies” when trying to describe a really impressive kaboom; partly because she works in the business and partly because it shows a lack of imagination on the part of the person who says it. So there she is, giving a ghostly post trauma chuckle and saying, It was like something post apocalyptic in the movies! while we all giggle, because she’s pulling an impressively goofy face while she’s saying it.

The second funny thing I’ve left til last. The entire accident was witnessed by two off duty Vancouver police.

I’m never buying a car again that doesn’t have airbags.

Just checked the Mt St Helens webcam; it’s a beautiful day for an explosion. Picture is too cute not to post.

Part of an answer to a letter from a fellow church member….asking was it something I said.

I am seriously tempted to say yes, just to f)ck you up, but you haven’t done anything to me & your wife and kids haven’t done anything to me either.

The simple fact of the matter is that I gotta be me, and I can’t be me at church (yeah, I know that’s not the point). I thought that I’d be a better person if I got involved and did some work, but I’m a (deleted because I’d kill you if you forwarded this part) with an extremely rude sense of humour and all I did was come to the realization that I’d run out of spots on my tongue to bite. All church wants out of me is my work capacity. I’m going to get away from all you terribly serious nice people and go hang out with people who don’t get upset every time I make a joke about Michael Jackson and George Bush (because I’m not being respectful enough to them.) Yes, this really did happen to me. I nearly stomped out at that point, but at that point I really did think I wanted to be a more pacific individual and I thought she ‘was offering me a valuable life lesson’. Oh, and I nearly stomped out during the meeting at deleted last summer, and there are a number of other people who have nearly met death at my hands (note this is called EXAGGERATION FOR THE SAKE OF EFFECT), or at least the verbal abuse I am capable of when I either feel safe (my poor husband!) or when I’m pushed to the wall of niceness. I’m the one with the problem, not the church.

Oh, I know I’m going to get lots of people sniffing about how I am abandoning the church and I just didn’t get the culture here, which is one of respect and tolerance, but that’s not how I see it.

OF COURSE I SHOULD LEARN TO BE RESPECTFUL. To the people who love me most of all. But THERE ARE PEOPLE TRYING TO KKIILLLLL ME in this culture. Am I supposed to be respectful of them? If I’m not actively trying to kill them back, that’s about as respectful as I can be. But there’s no law yet against making fun of the people who are trying to kill you, and that’s what I plan to do.

All the church did was make me long for ‘my peeps’; the people at work who sit around a campfire with me drinking beer and talking about science and relationships and useful gadgets (while the church is full of people I will never see drunk (added after I sent the email, enough to make you wish we were Catholic)) and then we sing and play and drink some more, and my family, who support me with love and nonsense and appreciation and stoic acceptance of my many sins. I’m going to go drink beer with the sinners, and help them with their events, like the time I was the MC for the newlywed game I put together for two coworkers, and we all fell about laughing. I am a committee of one. If I want to make a difference, I’m going to do it on my own terms. I’ll make biscotti and hand them out to audience members. I’ll give out gift certificates to the people in the audience who have most recently had sex. (The best part is asking them to prove it, of course… I have a whole routine worked out for that). I’ll have a prayer meeting in which I ask a bunch of atheists to ask something to fry George Bush because science teaches us that the prayers of an atheist are just as valid as those of the Dalai Lama. I’ll teach the new game Lizard Scissors Rock Paper Spock to people who can’t do the Vulcan salute. I’ll walk on stage half naked and (with difficulty) keep a straight face and after about half a minute ask “Got Milk?” Then I’ll put my top back on, saying I was distracting myself. Then I’ll spend the rest of my career telling drunks that I will NOT take my shirt off, because I’m tired of the perverts who look at my gall bladder scars instead. Yes indeed, my future is crowded with incident.

Anyway I have to go to work now. Daughter Katie is a little stiff but very happy to have soaked in the swirlpool down at Canada Games last night. I’m leaving the kids rest… it’s a PD today.

Nice long talk with Paul last night/this morning – we woke up at 3:10 am but that is manageable when you’re in bed at 8:30 pm. He still hasn’t given me any specific directions about how I’m supposed to talk to him, but as saying nothing is still an option, that will be my default when things get hairy.

Went over to Peggy’s last night to tell the horrid news about how I have given it the old college try but can’t do the church thing anymore, and she fed me anyway. Or rather Tom and Peggy did. Still can’t believe that they let me slice the barbequeued pork – I nearly ate it all before it ended up in the wok. I was safer with the broccoli. Paul fell asleep on the GSM after dinner (Giant Sofa of Morpheus) so I dragged him out of there so he could sleep in his own bed.

Saw Emrys earlier and contracted to do a reading for her before she heads out of town to the wilds of Ottawa. The cards are being very cooperative, so I told her the timing was good.

Paul had a lovely visit with his mother. Brief and lovely. He really enjoyed hanging around with his siblings, which is no surprise, as they are all extremely wonderful people.

Will be getting back in touch with David Granirer and some of the other comedy types in town now that I know where I have to go serve my apprenticeship. Oh, the work involved… but it’s good to stop being so scared and start being engaged.

From now until the end of December is going to be full of goodbyes, and that is going to be hard, but I am really looking forward to 2005, and that wasn’t true a week ago. I am not feeling completely overwhelmed by all the feelings I’m not supposed to feel and the thoughts I’m not supposed to think. I spend my whole life wondering if I’ve packed the right ideas for the situations I find myself in; I’ve always packed stink bombs instead of presents when I’m going to a wedding. Or I’ve got a tux for mosh pit. Or I’m bringing a colicky baby to the theatre. I have a long history of social inappropriateness, which has gone from being agonizing to being amusing, one of the more pleasant things about getting older. People don’t expect me to be socially appropriate once they get to know me, or they get used to the way I don’t do things as they are supposed to be done. I don’t think people ever get used to the way I am so very inconsistent about following directions; it’s a trial. The hardest part about church is playing nice in situations where, to quote Dunnett, I am aching ‘to cut loose and do something silly’. I think people believe I do it too much already; it was but the tiniest fraction of what I wanted to do. All these bite marks on my tongue. Sigh. Oh well. The church was there for years before I came along and it’ll be there for years after I leave, thank goodness. In the words of the immortal W C Fields “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No sense being a damned fool about it.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about it – obviously. Church is a really safe place to be sad, a safe place to be happy, a safe place to be confused about the meaning of life, a safe place to learn about spirituality. But it’s a really unsafe place to be if your limbic system is acting up. Fighting and f*cking just don’t seem to go along with church. It troubles me that two such important aspects of human life have to get checked at the door or passed over with such mealy mouthed language, and in such haste. I know, I know. It’s in poor taste to even talk about it.

Everybody wants to tell stories about Loki, but he’s a pain in the ass to have at the table. And that’s all he ever wanted, really. He wanted a place at the table among the gods, and they kept saying, when you behave, when you behave. Poor Thor! The crap he took from his life Freya about being blood brother to Loki! You think YOU have problems with inlaws, you try being one of the Norse gods for two minutes. And poor Loki. Everytime he tried to do the right thing, he’d get in worse trouble that he was in before. I really identify with Loki. He meant well.

Pic is of a police dog. He is wearing night vision goggles (?) and a bulletproof vest.

Quoted from eurekalert.org today…

Today’s phishing e-mails are already pretty tricky. Many spoof legitimate companies’ domain names by linking not to legitimate domain names, such as “ebay.com,” but to misleading domain names, like “secure-ebay.com,” which are owned by phishers. Some users, encountering fake Web sites that look real, unwittingly give away vital personal information such as social security numbers, bank account numbers, access codes, usernames and passwords. Another version of phishing takes advantage of the fact that many users configure their e-mail clients to display pictures and text formatting within the messages. This makes it possible for phishers to show users the name of a legitimate domain name within the body of their e-mails — while linking to a differently named Web site.

Phishing messages that appear to be sent by such trusted companies as eBay, Citibank and others are currently duping 3 percent of the people who receive them, according to a recent survey by Gartner Inc. Aware of the threat, members of Congress are currently debating passage of the Internet Spyware Prevention Act, which would provide the Justice Department with $10 million to apprehend phishers and other online scam artists. END OF QUOTE.

Do you not find it eyepopping – 3%!? When I was in the fundraising biz, back when elasmosaurs swam the seas, a 3% response rate was incredible, ecstasy inducing. The first time I saw the Ebay, and then the Citibank scam email, I rubbed my eyes, forwarded it to my mother with a brief note along the lines of “What the f*ck kind of idiot do they think I am?” and deleted it. Well, I don’t have to be an idiot. In another 100 emails, three idiots will pop up and hand over their bank account info. The phishers don’t need me.

I would like to think that anybody reading this is too smart to be fooled by a con job like this, but just in case you aren’t – don’t send your credit card info or other personal details to anybody over the internet unless YOU went looking for THEM and THEY have a secure socket site. I always phone the toll free number first as well to find out how fast I’ll get a live body if I have problems.

Sigh. The world fills up faster with fools and phisherman than smart people with manners.

I have been studiously avoiding my purpose in life for a long time now. I am not going to do it any more. The relief I feel is quite incredible, and hopefully I will now feel a lot more energetic and focussed.

Unfortunately, re-orienting myself means that I will have to p*ss off and disappoint a large number of people, but continuing to breathe carries that rap too, and I can’t help that.

I had been hoping that joining a church and becoming involved in its inner workings would help me become a better person. You know what? It DIDN’T WORK! I’m still an *sshole. I’ll be an *sshole for the rest of my life. A self-conscious *sshole is a TERRIBLE THING! You just get better at making excuses AND you feel guilty all the time. Watching this process take place on the inside of one’s skull sucks.

I thought that going to church would help me deal with the urge to slap people when they’re being stupid, and that didn’t work either. If anything, my pent up demand for slapping people out of their socks and into some sense is MUCH HIGHER. That’s why I’ve been so depressed. I have been straining LIKE YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE to find a loving way to speak my truth, but there’s no loving way of doing it, and what gives me the right anyway? I have two clear choices; put up or get lost; the rules are really clear. If you can’t say something nice….. oh, the tyranny of the nice. Except, in my case, the process of saying something nasty is how I find myself, so I won’t be lost at all.

Being angry with Unitarians is surreal and pointless. And it could be argued that I’m only p*ssed off with myself. You might as well say, I’m really p*ssed off with the QUAKERS! What a bunch of (floral homophobic reference, plural)! Well of COURSE they’re non-violent and peaceloving, that’s why they’re Quakers! If all the Quakers in the world took up kickboxing and gun club membership, I personally think the world would be a more interesting place, but it would be hard to argue that it was a better place. I had to delete the next sentence. There’s places even I do not wish to go, at least while my grandmother is alive.

So I lovingly acknowledge and respectfully reference the really amazing work that Unitarians do, but I’ve hit the wall on one of the principles: The free and responsible search for truth and meaning. You would think there was nothing in these words to jib at, but alas, free is NOT responsible, and responsible is NOT free. They put a nun and a temple prostitute in the same donkey costume and called it a principle, and I’m the poor slob that noticed that there is a problem that goes way beyond semantics and out into politics, human nature, reality and my sub-version of reality, in which there’s a damned big rip in the donkey costume and I can see Sister Mary’s undies.

There are few things freer than an 18 month old child, and few things less responsible. If I want to subscribe to the principles of Unitarianism I have to reconcile free speech and responsible community, and I can’t do it. I’m not saying others can’t but I pronounce myself incapable. I am miserably unhappy about this crack in my reality tunnel. But I can’t pretend it isn’t there. It’s the same thing that happened with Paul – he said that I’m verbally abusive and he’s right. That’s what made the alarm go off. I’m not supposed to be abusive towards anyone! But I can’t help it. The trick is finding the right things to be angry about, as Aristotle once remarked. It’s either that or stop attempting to communicate at all.

So I come up on the rocks of free speech. The landscape is jagged, and the wind comes from the future, and smells like struggle and death. Because it all comes down to this. Until the last 24 hours, I thought “I can tell the truth – my truth, which is mine, belongs to me and is not prescriptive – or I can be loved”. I never put it in those terms before but that’s how I was feeling. “If I want people to love me, I have to do things their way.” But there are only four people on this planet whose opinion matters to me, and they will love me no matter what I do. I think I was mistaking approval for love. Approval is provisional. Love isn’t.

Free speech is not free. We are living in a culture that is shutting down not just the rights of people to freely assemble and speak, but the mechanisms that teach people what free speech is. The internet is not a substitute for learning to think for yourself. That is something that only talking to people who are smarter than you can teach… and only if you admit that they are smarter! That plus reading, honest self-assessment and learning how to correct your course, even when it sometimes means you must abandon ship and swim for the rocks. The last year has made me realize that there is NO SAFE PLACE for me, except the inside of my head, and I only get to be here for another 30 years or so, and only if I’m lucky, and stay healthy. When I went to church I was looking for a safe place for me to be, but I didn’t know myself as well then and I didn’t realize my *job* is to be offensive. It’s what I do. My mental state is to live in the boundary layer between what is acceptable behaviour and what is not. Culture is fluid – that boundary layer exists – it’s a place where creation and destruction take in each other’s laundry. This is sometimes good and sometimes bad, but it doesn’t go away, and it’s the best place in my world.

Any place that feels safe for me is likely to be unpleasant for other people. I am going to go live where all information is provisional, except that I am carrying the heft of the history of the universe in every cell of my frame. Everything else, as far as I can tell, is up for grabs.

Don’t feel like posting, so I won’t, much. Saw Joni Mitchell River last night which is a sort of concert play based on Joni’s music. It was interesting, but not entirely successful; it had ‘moments’. I’m not used to being in the front row, and having cried so much in the last little while it was really hard to keep my eyes open, so I ended up not really watching the show except in bits and just listening to music. Musicianship was uniformly excellent.

The last time I cried this much in this period of time my cat had just died. I figured I had stopped last night but it just started up as soon as I woke up this morning… had to phone my mother to make it stop.

I bailed on the pot luck at the North Shore church tonight; I’m just barely going to make it over to Peggy’s for the canvass meeting as it is. I would put my mood as fifty fifty tremulous exhaustion and blank despair. No, (she said) I am not suicidal. Suicide is for people who don’t know that chocolate heals all wounds. So I ate a chocolate croissant and Katie’s putting on tea water for me.

Very very interesting Tarot reading last night. Matt had FIVE major arcana come up. Katie’s was “You are working very hard and you hate school”. Keith’s was “You will have a successful career but a big change around the home front is coming for you”. Mine is the usual, quit avoiding what you’re avoiding and get on with your life. Some things don’t change.

That’s Jan with a fungus.