Category: Writing

Raining again. Katie stood in the kitchen looking out the back deck while a haircurling stream of curses came forth about the weather, and how the second she had to go back to school the weather started to suck.

Working out again tonight. Looks like it will be raining for the next 6 months, so finding appropriate indoor activities is a must. Spoke to Anne from church yesterday and she mentioned she’d been in the hospital briefly for tests and they’d actually put her in the emerg for a while but she’s okay now. What with the fallout from their parking lot accident, and the accident the day of Carmen’s funeral last February, they’ve had an exciting time lately, filled with doctors. None of the accidents were their fault, by the way. Just like my grandad, who drove a lifetime and never caused an accident, but whose back bumper seemed to have “BUTTHEAD ATTRACTANT” painted on it, in a colour only buttheads could see.

Ivan is headed directly for New Orleans, but hurricane tracks are chancy things. The 5 day forecasts have been dead wrong all the way along; we’ll see what happens.

I pray that there will be no fatalities, but given the love affair Americans have with cars and driving in ludicrously bad weather I doubt it. The ports along the Gulf Coast have been closed by the Coast Guard and a stretch of the Mississippi is closed as well. Katie’s friend Ashleigh asked if the Hurricane could come here and I said, kindly, no. Then I wanted to fish out an atlas and lecture her, but I didn’t take lectures too well when I was her age, so I kept shut.

Katie’s teacher Kelly took her camera away yesterday but gave it back. Katie sounded completely outraged which means she was probably being quite inappropriate with its use during school hours.

Absolutely dumping berloody rain. Katie said I gotta work out I gotta work out…. so we’re going tonight after work. She GOT UP AT 6:45 this morning AND TOOK A PICTURE OF THE SUNRISE. Special emphasis to pOp. Is that not disgusting? Keith appears to be suffering from some kind of queasiness and low grade fever but I think he went to school anyway. As this has been happening on and off for a couple of months now I suppose I should drag him in to a doctor.

Ivan is continuing to make the lives of my customers difficult. I have now heard quite a variety of stories, and all I can say is that I am watching the track very narrowly. I keep thinking it’s going to veer and hit New Orleans. Either that or it’s going to hit Mississippi, where they aren’t exactly expecting it. I notice that the current track is aimed right at Toronto. Thank heavens it’s just earthquakes out here!

Anybody read Eurekalert.org today? There’s plenty of hydrocarbons 10 miles down… relax, there is no oil crisis. Technology will save our asses from our current problems and give us new ones to be panic-stricken about.

I leave you with a quote from the brilliant writer / novelist Phillip Pullman…

What’s true about depicting life in general is true of our responsibility when it comes to depicting people. There’s a sentence I saw not long ago from Walter Savage Landor which is the best definition of this sort of responsibility I’ve ever seen: “We must not indulge in unfavourable views of mankind, since by doing it we make bad men believe that they are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are good in vain.” Easy cynicism is no more truthful than easy optimism, though it seems to be so to the young. In depicting characters who struggle to do good or be brave, and succeed, or who are tempted to be weak or greedy, but refrain, we the storytellers are providing our readers with friends whose own good behaviour, and whose high valuation of the courtesy or steadfastness or generosity of others, provides an image of how to behave well; and thus, we hope, we leave the world at least no worse than we found it.

It’ll probably be gone by the time you look, but there is a screechingly funny typo here:

http://www.internationaldelivers.com/site_layout/severe/cxt.asp

Hint, if it’s gone, they spelled Seamless, Seemless. Seems like less, get it? And then you look at what they are selling, which is for people who think Hummers are too easy to park.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t that funny. Am I the last person in North America who konws owh to sepll?

Saw nicely coiled magenta coyote scat on the way out of the office. Wonder what SHE’S been eating. Also heard something that sounded like a bullfrog… in the middle of the yard at the next office building over. What it was I will likely never know, but it sure freaked me out. Are there birds that sound like bullfrogs?

Pictured is Keith and Kate feeding ducks at Kings Pond in Victoria.

Worked out last night. I was thinking about what to say about that that didn’t make me sound like an idiot and gave up. I mean, more gormless than normal. Katie joined me and Paul. So this morning I would like to talk about language, since actually using language to tell a short story seems to be beyond me.

I think I believe that everything we -can- see is somehow a gloss for a book or a piece of communication that we -can’t- see. The alphabet of the universe is the periodic table, and the grammar is the set of rules that govern how all those atoms interact. But there is a deeper grammar than that, a grammar that makes people believe in things they can’t see.

News Flash ! !

Gravity just got weirder.

Sorry, just had to throw that in. If it’s true about superstrings – and we’re just as a species starting to assemble the math to be able to come up with a question to prove it, or at least not be able to prove it untrue – then all that New Age horse puckey about vibrations, and some people vibrating on a higher plane, may just turn out to be true. Oh how the folks who worship at the concrete slab, wherein hides the spirit of reason, will wail and gnash their teeth. For I think the great moment of history is creeping up to us in dirty great rubber soled shoes, when enquiry will irrevocably prove itself the final pillar of faith. The Muslims – Muslims who have actually read the Koran instead of memorizing it – believe there is no question a human being can ask which does not lead one to a higher and more worshipful and awestruck appreciation of the creator. You cannot diminish God by trying to find out how the world is put together. It’s just not possible. I have dispensed with a personal creator as being rather untidy, although I believe you can’t diminish the creator by asking questions. There’s nothing in the Koran against science. There’s a lot of directions about how to behave, including the most sensible approach to money of all the world religions. Believe me, the world would be a better place damned near instantly if we actually followed the strictures of the Koran about money. Fat chance, of course. And like all the world’s religious tomes, the Koran suffers terribly from not having been able to predict the discovery of Ohm’s law and the invention of birth control, but that’s another issue.

The Hindus believe that there could be a billion billion people, and each worshipping a different face of the divine, and different faces yet would obtain.

Devout Christians believe that bats are birds, because the Bible tells them so. And when they are asked why the New Testament goes into Joseph’s ancestry in such great detail when he had nothing to do with Jesus in a biological sense, they all look like they’ve hit a door, and then tell me they’ll have to ask the pastor about that one. I’m mean – I send them to a website called Biblical Errancy and say that can’t properly call themselves Christians until they’ve worked through all the logical objections to the Bible. Really, if you’ve swallowed a heffalump, why strain at a tobacco horn worm? I think I’d RATHER eat a heffalump, they’re imaginary. Can’t possibly give you heartburn. Wonder what the caloric and food value of a tobacco horn worm is? Truly, my mind is a wonderful thing, and it always leads back to questions no sane human would see fit to ask. I mean, could I live on tobacco horn worms? Never Cry Hornworm, next up on the Discovery Channel.

My pOp, may the spirit of enquiry truly bless him, will be rolling his eyes at all this and wishing he’d never taken philosophy. It’s not that philosophy is a bad thing; it’s a very good thing, an intrinsically powerful tool in the Baloney Detection Kit without which modern life is difficult to navigate, and investigate. It’s just that philosophy renders one unfit for public life, because there’s nobody left around who can keep up with your arguments or is willing to fix the grounds for the argument long enough to make the whole foray into the tilting ground of reasoned argument worthwhile. It’s as if everybody wants the trumpets, the silken banners, the Byzantine silver armour with blue egret plumes, the tender maidens going ooo and aaaa, the jingling of spurs and harnesses, the snorting of horses and the ting of the jester’s bells, the flap of the great canopies in the summer breeze, the delicious fragrances from the hawker’s stalls…. but nobody wants to get out and fight ’cause it’s too bloody hard. Okay, everybody go home, nothing to see here. Move along. You want an argument? I have a night stick…. I didn’t think you wanted to argue with me. That’s where reasoned discourse has gone. It’s hiding, like the last Pilipino rail. Not quite mythical, but nearly extinct.

 

I am predicting that Hurricane Ivan will make landfall at Dauphin Island, and that the worst of the hurricane (in terms of rainfall) will pour down on Mobile (it’s at the back of a long inlet, making the storm surge a nightmare) and western Florida. I am also predicting it will be a category 3 when it hits, but wide as my back end, and the geography will go against folks; most of the fatalities on the mainland will be drowning. As NOAA urges: TURN AROUND, DON’T DROWN!

The mayor of New Orleans has just called for an evacuation; during Hurricane Georges in 99, the evacuation turned out not to be necessary… maybe New Orleans will luck out again. But if my spidey sense is correct, it’s Mobile that’s going to be underwater in 48 – 60 hours. Up until this morning I thought it would be the City of New Orleans. Oh, and watch for tornadoes… there will be some awesome twisters spinning off of Ivan. You can expect LA, AL and FL to all apply for federal disaster money – they are all going to need it.

another random picture from the recently taken ones, this one from the skate park. Shown are Katie and Samantha, who really should take no for an answer.

Paul was supposed to start his holidays yesterday and didn’t notice that he wasn’t supposed to go into work. Seeing as how the entertainment system on (aircraft identity deleted on the insistence of my lawyer) had decided to do a series of very bizarre things (turn on the reading light in row 13, works on row 22, among other Mack Sennett style symptoms) and it’s an overseas aircraft, he spent the whole day – from 7 am until I picked him up AFTER 10 pm – working on fixing it, it was just as well he went in. Two of his coworkers who will not be named although for two pins I would and to hell with my lawyer, WATCHED THE F*CKING HOCKEY GAME IN THE READY ROOM instead of helping him, after the widebodies were done around 2 pm. PS the aircraft is fixed now, although Paul is still wondering who walked off with the freaking (deleted on insistence of lawyer) and didn’t put them back. Note to self. Make sure the (deleted) are actually on the aircraft the next time you get on a plane.

Paul worried all the way to work about how his leadership style was ineffective, and I said if you can show me how to lead slackers (slackers being a milder substitute for the original word, which inferred sexual abuse towards the canine ilk) without hitting them repeatedly in tender areas and then asking Do You Understand Me Now? you will truly be stellar among leaders. Leading by example just doesn’t work anymore. There’s no societal notion of shame that actually operates across age, sex, cultural and religious lines. People can get on tv for doing unbelievably shameful, brutally stupid and just plain mind gogglingly rude things and people will pay for the privilege of watching them complain about how much sh*t they’ve received for ‘such a small error in judgement’. You can lead by example inside a group of people who already agree on certain things – like inside a church – and I can see the proof of that all the time. But generally? Across the board? Nah. You can’t wring shame from the shameless; you’re just raising the blood pressure of the well-behaved when you try. (This line deleted on the fevered insistence of my lawyer, after reading me the relevant sections on libel and slander in the Criminal Code of Canada). So Paul decided he’d just get them sent home from work without pay, so they can watch the World Cup on their own f*cking time.

I should prob’ly proceed to other things.

Leaving for church in about an hour… my first experience with the church youth. Will we survive? Will anybody attend? Sigh.

I note with amusement that as predicted the Americans have folded on the softwood lumber issue. Amazing what three hurricanes can do to American trade policy. I should keep track of my good and bad predictions.

Had a wonderful youth group meeting today, transacted a bunch of business around worship (mostly re worship) and what the kids are reading/watching while walking around in the early fall sunshine. Got to grab those rays while one can….

When we finish lighting candles at our small group ministry, this is what it looks like.

Katie’s off with Lexi to go work out, and Keith is reading and I’m contemplating all the things I don’t want to do today! I have three separate church services or meetings to go to this weekend, but it’s made easier by the fact that Paul is working and therefore not so resentful of the call on my time.

Mike brought Hero (starring Jet Li) over last night and we all sat around – all six of us if you can believe it – and watched it on his LAPTOP because the freaking disk ne marche pas in the DVD player downstairs. Wonderful movie. Keith, wonder child that he is, got quite bent over the sound tinniness and crawled around the floor for a while liberating the speakers from the desk top so we could have surround sound. I have to admit it really improved the quality of the experience, and that is an amazing screen for a laptop. I’m glad the chesterfield Granny gave me is so big. We had pasta for supper again.

Zeek! the mighty hunter ate a mouse in front of Katie this morning. He waited until she was gazing out the back door, horror struck, and then siphoned it down. And we just dewormed the little buggers, too. He’s off to the vet next Friday to get his teeth cleaned and some of them yoinked. Then he insisted on breakfast too! What a porker. They are going to look at what appears to be a mass in his stomach but when he went to the vet’s last he probably ate a mouse for a midnight snack and then had breakfast, so the vet was probably worrying over nothing. After the deworming treatments Kira is not coughing so much; the vet said that if that was the problem she would gradually start coughing less and less over about two months. She’s definitely much more skittery than normal (even for her) but that could be the wind and the rain and being more housebound. Heavy sigh. I wish I could write something thought provoking and marvellous, but all I can think of is that guy I read about on Fark, who caught fire during an attempt to fix his automobile and stopped, dropped and rolled…. into a tray of gasoline. Although he was an idiot up until that point, the doctors treating his array of burns said he did all the right things afterwards, like bypass the local hospital and go to a burn specialist and keep the burns moist. What it is to have hindsight.

Paul went for a run this morning. I should make my lunch for the music meeting and cut up some vegetables. I should cure cancer, promote peace and clean my room, but really I think I’ll curl up with Good Soldier Svejk for a while.

Paul said “I am going to try an experiment and try not to be so critical and praise more.” So of course he got into a fight with Katie about Lynn biting her. Well, Katie did step on her hair, even if it was an accident. Anyway, after Katie got busted for assault in March (Oh, didn’t I mention that?) we’re a little sensitive on the subject around here so I can understand why Paul got exercised, but it’s been like Rashomon, hearing Katie’s version, and Keith’s version, and I’ve yet to hear from Paul except to dismiss the whole thing. Anyway I think that Katie’s been punished enough and she’s still on speaking terms with Lynn, who would probably laugh at the notion of pressing charges, so I think the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot, although I can’t help but idly wonder how entertaining pictures of this catfight would have been if someone had been present minded enough to snap them. (I am the personification of evil motherhood, sigh.)

Art Spiegelmann has a new book out, and I intend to purchase it. Anything that reproduces a lot of Little Nemo and Katzenjammer Kids can’t be all bad.

The new Strangers in Paradise is out, 68 I think. It better be better than the last 6 or so, they all sucked gas station restroom mops.

Okay, they were drawn well, Terry can’t do anything EXCEPT draw well, but plotwise they were skanky.

Wonkette continues to make me her biggest Canadian fan. I love her take on things. When she’s wrong, she actually says so, which is more than I can say for the likes of Michelle Malkin. Have you read her latest column? It’s a hate crime with a byline. Speaking of pundits, I think that Molly Ivins is starting to misplace her outrage and veer off into despair. Her invective is gone, she just sounds tired and sad, although of COURSE she still makes lots of sense.

Is it just me, or are you experiencing Schadenfreude over all the Repulsigan gay / bi pols in the States that are being outed left right and cosmetics aisle? There are more to come, as well, according to the gimlet eyed gent who has made it his business to out every gay person who had anything to do with the Defense of Marriage act in the US.

I light a candle for the victims of Beslan.

I talk to a LOT of Floridians in my job, and they’ve been chattier than normal of late. Mr. Z. in Ocala FL told me that Floridians are, man woman and child, crazy right now. The stress and panic and general freakedoutness is so high that people feel like running down the street shrieking – and they’d be moving faster than the cars on the I95, as he opined. He also said that it SUCKS to be in construction in FL right now because – and I had NO IDEA this was the case, lumber is unbelieveably expensive and concrete more so. WHY? Because China due to the construction boom and Three Gorges, is eating about 70% of the world’s construction material capacity right now. So not only are Floridians going to be hampered in their cleanup efforts by the fact that another couple of hurricans may blow through before the middle of November, the prices to rebuild are insane. I am willing to bet that the current softwood lumber debate in the US will evaporate by the end of the year. The US is simply going to be too hungry for construction materials to want to dicker over tariffs. If all the construction heavies in FL hold a gun to Jeb Bush’s head, just watch how fast those negotiations turn around. You can bet your sweet ass that the major construction companies in FL are NOT headed up by pinko softy Democraps.

Good morning everybody. Circle last night. Skipped supper so I could pig out on goodies afterwards and now I feel a little strange. Keith put bread on last night. He asked me how anybody could tell if he was wearing a mask and I said I don’t know. If you’re consistent about it how could anybody tell? And I said if he wanted to take his mask off to be rude, I would probably not like it very much. He agreed with me. I think he is really really tired of being the good kid. He wants to cut loose and do something silly and is afraid we won’t love him any more if he does. That’s how it looks – I imagine I’ll have to ask him. It’s rather odd; I could say anything at all about either of my kids and they’d rather die than read my blog, so somebody in Lagos could be following their progress and they’d be blissfully ignorant. But it got me thinking about the masks. I’m much more polite than I want to be. That’s why I write humour or say funny things – I’m basically hostile and have to pretty it up. I really should get back into standup – Margaret Cho was a revelation to me, that you can be that rude and that funny. Margaret never pushed two kids out so I think I can probably raise her on the grossness issue. Childrearing is a march through bodily fluids. Paul didn’t want to download the pix last night so nothing from circle, but here’s something from Victoria.

(2019 from Pkols)

I am very humbly grateful to the gnomes who got the site up again so I could log in and post. Writers’ workshop at L.E.’s on Tuesday was great, some new people and some old people and the usual amazing writing. Especially appreciated L.E’s story as well as Hannah’s writing. I think I had a remarkably and weirdly normal childhood.

Board meeting also great, I have a feeling canvass is going to be fantastic this year. I feel like an ass for signing up for canvass, but I suppose everybody has to have stretch goals and it is entertaining to speculate which of my pore beleaguered cocongregants will have the d’ubious privilege of a visit from me to shake loose some cheques. Maybe I’ll hum the music that’s playing in the background as Max Bialystock fleeces little old ladies (I can just picture my mother’s face as she reads that). One of these days the church’ll get tired of me and they’ll all howl and point at the door, but it hasn’t happened yet… and now that I think of it, it’s not likely to happen as long as I cough up my pledge. Katie just phoned me for no reason, just to say hi! I am sensible of the great gift of telecommunication.

I leave with a quote from Mr. Damon, from April of 2004. He runs www.nmazca.com/blog, which is one of my pilgrimage points on the internet. We have corresponded, briefly. He and I do not see eye to eye about the world, but he is a very humane and intelligent man, and it’s a very Unitarian quote.

Now let me be clear about something. I am not a Christian, but I am neither anti-Christian nor anti-church. I recognize and support modes of thought and faith and communion that provide people with solace, strength and a sense of vibrancy and blessing. I DO NOT have a high regard for fundamentalist, literalist philosophies and the oppressive, narrow and, in some cases, violent behaviors that they promote. That has little to do with religion and Spirit, in my opinion, and a whole lot do with fear, control and ambitions toward dominion.

To bring harm, hardship, anxiety and death to your enemies — who are in fact your human + natural relations — in the name of a deity, or with a notion of divine guidance + supremacy, is an act of utmost ignorance and an affront to all of that which is our true nature and purpose.

Never mind that error message behind the curtain. I’m running late for a Church board meeting so I won’t be here long, but apparently a server died and took my site with it for a couple of days. I will DEFINITELY be checking my site now, I feel like a baby sitter whose charge crawled off into the bushes.

My ninety-two year old Granny fed me, my folks and my kids lunch today. Home made macaroni, green salad, fruit salad and a glass of skim milk. Pretty obvious how she lived to be so old. Apart from her hearing – which has been terrible since she had scarlet fever as a child – everything is working remarkably well. Paul will be sad he missed seeing her, as he adores my grandmother.

We did all the normal regular things today – up the mountain to look at the view and take pictures, over to Tim Hortons to suck up some calories, and then over to Kings Pond to feed the ducks. The wood ducks are all gone but there were plenty of mallards.

There was a mouse at the bird feeder in my parents’ yard but he messed off before I could catch him. Then a little nap after reading a few bits out of National Geographic, then the blog – my site wasn’t up this am for some reason. Then put the foam beds away downstairs, wander all over the house looking for the usual wide range of things we’ve forgotten to pack and then the ferry. Paul sounds like he’s looking forward to having us back. Wonder if he got the second lot of worming pills into Kira – Zeek! scratched me so badly I was still oozing blood fifteen minutes later and that finger is still quite sore. More later….

Jan not only WASHED MY DISHES – and every freaking dish in the house was dirty, folks – she DROVE ME TO THE FERRY with kinder in tow. How can I not love in-common-laws like that? She’s a goddess among women!

Got a great picture of Katie taking a picture from the ferry but I don’t have the software to get it onto the computer at my parents so that will be for later. My 92 year old granny has a convection oven and BAKED MY FAVOURITE chocolate cake with butter icing (Homer voice, mmmm butter icing) and I made her a cup of tea and we all had pizza and various other foodicles for lunch. I’ve decided I don’t want to go to the Egypt exhibit, the notion of standing for hours in a line is not something I can grok currently, so I watched Howard Keel and Katherine Grayson in Kiss Me Kate instead. (Kate’s idea, she likes Grayson and really likes the movie – actually she’s a bit of a fifties musical fan – blood will tell dahlings.) I get a strange thrill every time I see Bob Fosse dancing in that movie. He could sing, he could dance, and man could he choreograph. Too bad he was such a little sh*t, but that’s the artistic temperament for you. Not much else has happened today, saw my brother briefly and watched Katie snap him while he snoozed in the dreaded Coils of Morpheus (the sun room La-Z-Boy), bought three kinds of underwear (Sponge Bob boxers for Kate, no name black boxers for me, and these cotton briefs that Katie calls ‘granny panties’ for me (Kate wears thongs, which for a variety of reasons I am too polite to describe in detail wouldn’t uh work for me)) as well as boys jeans for her. I sorted through some of my parents’ castoffs and collected two of my favourite books from my childhood/adolescence (being Bob Hope’s severely ghostwritten and really funny autobiography Have Tux Will Travel and The Marx Brothers at the Movies, which has long excerpts from the scripts, which after almost 70 years are still absolutely brilliant, anarchic, witty and surreal.) I could have had a brown suede coat and a spoiled mustard coloured coat but after almost a decade in Vancouver I’ve declared war on any coat that doesn’t have a functioning hood. I did yoink the moccasins, I’ve had a yen for such footgear for a while and they fit perfectly. My mother has just finished assembling her mother’s family stories with tons and tons of pics, and I bound some of them on the comb binding machine while parts of Kiss Me Kate (ie dialogue) were on that I didn’t enjoy so much. I LOVE James Whitmore’s suit in that movie, I’d kill for a suit and hat like that even if it made me look ludicrous. Katie loves Anne Millers’ pink Bianca costume in Kiss me Kate – it’s this wispy busty little number. Keith announced that he wants to learn tap dancing. I told him to practice some more on the mandolin and we’d discuss it. Actually I can see him Irish Step Dancing instead, which is one of the ancestors of tap. He says he’s a lot more coordinated than he used to be, which is very true, but we’re already paying for one set of lessons.

I think that this morning on the ferry was the first time in about ten years I’ve gotten onto a ferry without spending any money. Amazing. Picture shown is something I pulled at random off my mother’s hard drive.

My mother is thrilled that I did the comb binding on the three family books already and is getting the rest of them ready to finish so I’ll be off now. I feel so happy and so relaxed that I just know it won’t last.