Category: Writing

new story

2700 words (3192) (3516) (3945) of a new story so far. I just cannot stop writing stories about men being loving and supportive to each other; it’s not like it’s happening that much in real life so this is very powerfully fictional and massively therapeutic.

Other people’s fanfic complaint. ELICIT IS NOT ILLICIT. GAWDAM, PEOPLE.

It’s possible that graphomania is a migraine symptom. Given how weirdly distant from reality I’m feeling at the moment (sort of cotton woolley) it seems possible.

I printed off the Advanced Care Directive document / worksheet for Paul yesterday after our walk in the school park, and Katie called me last night and we had a chat and among other things she said Paul seems to be studying it. I marked my copy up quite a bit but I’m nowhere near done; I’ll talk to Jeff and the kids when I am done. Alex was burbling continuously in the background while we were talking.

Beautiful weather yesterday, perfect clear sunny almost fall day.

In the middle ages the places that maintained civil society better than others in Europe during the Great Pestilence were places where the notaries were allowed to do their jobs, and transfers of wealth happened in an orderly fashion. No comparison of course to what’s going on now.

Bunk/Wendell talks about Omar / Michael

Can a clothing store be racist.

Redneck Darwin.

And the worst part is that I have to fly two miles with it and then barf it up again

If you don’t like the post title, you won’t want to watch the video.

However if this was taken when they say it was the herons are off the nest already and mama heron’s keeping that ratshawarma for hersel’, she will not be casting up accounts for any babbies. NYC Great Blue Herons ARE METAL AF.

I’m 1300 (okay now 2028 words 2533 words I should close this tab) words into my third fanfic in 3 days WARNING GRAPHOMANIA IN PROCESS. La la la. So easy.

I say SCHNERK unto you

We managed to wait until this morning to finish Peggy’s apple tarts. Go restraint! I’m printing up a large print letter for Auntie Mary, including the usual curated funny picture from the internet. Laundry done but not ‘whisked’ upstairs.

We’ve started a Person of Interest rewatch.

Lousy night of sleep, I’m congested when I lie down and not if I’m prone or sitting up. I am SCHNERKING und SCHNERKING.

I’m suspecting Katie’s very busy, haven’t heard from her since the Victoria visit. It’s an observation not a complaint.

Lots of kudos and comments on my new stories last night so that was pleasant.

PLEASE BE KIND, PATIENT AND COOPERATIVE WITH RETAIL WORKERS TODAY AND EVERY DAY.

Big hugs for everybody reading this morning! As Allan Jaffee once remarked, “Serious people my age are dead.”

Finding my health

It’s worse this morning… both the rib and the dry cough. There is no way I’d be going to either Bowen or Mike’s in my current state. Time for a roasting hot shower and ta cough up a lung. When that’s not happening there’s a squeaky wheeze in there.

So if I’m watching comfort food TV, eating comfort food, doing laundry and writing fanfic who can be surprised. Posted another 2500 word story, 150 hits already so far, but fewer kudos. It isn’t funny, the way most of my stuff is, so maybe that has something to do with the ratio.

Next story up will probably be one of those cuddly funny stories; I just had to get the fix-it and parallel universe little stories out of my system first.

SHNERK oh make the mucus stop ROY KENT GRUNT

the writer is always a fantasist

The writer is always a fantasist, because words are not the things they describe.

One can wander in the far lands of the extraction of etymology, but nothing gives the picture like the exploded view.

Therefore one must diagram, and in making a diagram, you fall in love with the diagram, you make excuses for the state of the diagram, you tell people that this diagram is the best, you have nightmares that this diagram is the worst, but nothing can prepare you for how little the diagram is like the processes and states of matter which exist in real time.

One makes maps.

This map tells me distances inside the ‘lower mainland’. This map helps me gauge how many kCal to pedal a bicycle up that hill. This map tells me what geology I will encounter when I dig. This map tells me about the snaking tubes of metal and concrete, plastic and glass, that run under the surface. This map tells me what mammals are common to this part of the world. This map tells me what the odds are that my home will experience earthquake damage. This map tells me about the airspace above my home. This map tells me what stars are above my dwelling place and how far they are from me. This map shows me where the highway traffic cams are. This map shows the arrangement of the planets and major bodies in the solar system. This map shows what languages were and are spoken on this land. This map shows a picture of every house on every street, but not the alleyways. This map shows every street including the alleyways. This map shows the tallest trees by species. This map shows the strangest architecture. This map shows the location of an abandoned cemetery. This map shows the heron rookeries. This map shows all the known external locations for the CW show Supernatural. This map shows buried treasure but the raccoons already dug it up and ate it so imagine the nine year old coming back and seeing a hole in the ground where the candy was. All of these maps beg you to imagine. And there are thousands of people for whom a map is an affront, for nothing in their brain works that way. None of these maps are connected except in my mind. They never will be connected. They will never be overlaid. They exist together, floating one on top of another, only in this poem; for a moment you too can hold them up there in your mind, having been given this sketch. Then the paragraph finishes and this time tomorrow you will not remember that it happened.

One writes because it’s in your head and has to come out. One writes because there is something breathing in your ear; there is no control, between the impetus and the page, merely a hint of directionality. One writes because the variation between the imagined and the real is a big play-space and most of it has not been explored yet. One writes because one wants to rid English of its colonialisms and make it the one true argot of freedom, breaking its chains, filling in its scandalously tiny trove of words for relations. One writes because how else is one to demonstrate how vastly different one is from everyone else; and simultaneously how dragged-through-drains dirty and boring and pedestrian one is, although if one is hosed down and buffed up and stood under a certain light one might pass muster at a public gathering. One writes because it’s always personal. One writes because it’s always political. One writes because there is a special someone waiting for your words, if your words survive. One writes because the past made you do it. One writes because the future is begging. One writes because no matter how grey and recondite the subject, the words are not the things, and even that most noble academic is a fantasist, though her choice of words is not lightly made, is not an accident.

sneezles

Sneezing quite a bit this morning, but I like sneezing. Not so much when my rib still hurts but there’s a little less of that each day, and less coughing. Sound night of sleep but I got up a little early. Nice cuppa, very praiseworthy training session with Buster, ran a load of laundry, started working on a story, handwritten. It’s only ten paras long about a cursed object, and I’m having so much fun with it.

I started thinking about how an entire generation of furniture is going to end up on the biggest junk heap in history, and to wonder how many of those objects would be cursed. Then because I’m autistic and have no imagination I cast around for the most likely cursed object in my house so I’d have something to describe, and I did describe it, and it’s funny, so I’m glad I got up today.

little bits of happiness

I’m still working through the throes of coming out of a twitter addiction but the results over the past two weeks are:

1 I’m no longer subject to strangers hitting me up for cash

2 I’m no longer getting live feed of people being killed by ‘their’ governments, drowning in floods, being shot by police, wildfires and other up to the minute disasters

3 I’m posting more to my own blog

4 My mental health has improved marginally – I feel less desperate and less oppressed by the state of the world

5 I’m writing more

6. I miss Pebble in the Sky and so many other people on twitter, I want to hear their voices in my head, I miss them so much. But I’ve been telling people on twitter for years how to get hold of me, so if they don’t, they’re busy, and that’s okay, or they didn’t make a note, and that’s okay too. I miss the funny ones, the writing ones, the dead serious about the working class ones, the technoweenie anarchists and the Ottawa grannies and the filkers and the local journos.

speaking of writing more, out of the 1500 words I sent to my mOm the other day, she unerringly picked out the single sentence of dialogue that encapsulated it and I just want to say publicly that mOm can claim to be suffering from mental deficits and I’m going to repeat what the cognitive scientists say; old people get to the same place as young people when given time for the tasks they must solve…. and when not subject to be hassled while they’re thinking.

I am old too, you know. I’ll get there eventually. And in the meantime I’ll quit telling her to respond fast, I’m stepping on my own cloak there.

Thank you Gaia for the inspiration

So before I turn you over to my latest creation, and the tune hasn’t stabilized so I likely won’t post it today and even more likely will never post it.

Spoken is italics, everything else is sung

what a spanner ( OMG
what a spanner Jesus threw
what a spanner – oh my God
what a spanner Jesus threw

well of course you can say
that science got there first
‘cause of course, you know science,
always making shit up, not wrong am I
the fact is that I know
for sure
religion came first

cause whenever I hear stories
of bears watching the sunset
and animals of different species helping each other
because it’s built-in
after that I think
‘you know, religion obviously jammed through that cognitive door first, yippee’
and where does that leave us

what a spanner ( OMG
what a spanner Jesus threw
what a spanner – oh my God
what a spanner Jesus threw

and of course I think some more
and if Jesus wasn’t born
there wouldn’t be a Bible
which its adherents raise
as proof of their devotion
consider the religion
from which the Bible sprang

Hey, they didn’t fucking proselytize
and that’s when my bell got rang

Across the earth Indigenous
had practices specific
to all the places that they cared for
in balance and pacific
but when the Bible said to go
and preach to all the nations
Jesus underwrote some wars
and war on all relations

Christians know
this mortal sin
However much
they hide it
We were crushed
in a conqueror’s fist
Til Gaia’s truth*
defied it

I’m leaving Islam out of this shitkicking because I wasn’t raised in a Muslim country. Even though I’m an atheist I’m ethnically Christian.

*That would be science, folks, in case my creaky metaphor didn’t make sense. The working together of science and Indigenous cultural and religious practices is one of the ongoing great stories of the 21st century.

d’ohccasional randomness

This is a review of a book I want…. no probably need to read.

I have had a story added to a Destiel collection on AO3. I am absolutely thrilled and it means more people will read it. It’s 12500 words of fluffy and mildly porny madness that ends with an ILY scene at an airport. I also think it’s got some of the funniest dialogue of any of my stories. Email me if you want the link.

I stopped taking cough medicine at 11:30 last night to try to let it clear my system, but the crackling in my chest has come back. Low grade fever, productive cough, crashed appetite, really an effort to push fluids but I keep hearing mOm’s voice encouraging me to do that thing.

Buster scrapped with another cat THROUGH the cat door last night. I locked it and expected him to whine about it all night and he didn’t let out a peep until I woke at 8:30 this morning.

Left hand is still bruised but all the mobility is back and normal function has resumed. I am now thinking that I did crack a rib, but there would have been nothing that an ER doc could do but hand me a little envelope of T3s anyway after a chest xray in a freezing room so I really dodged 8 hours of ER time during the largest surge of infections in over a year. Knowing that Paul would have come with me is extremely comforting though. What a fine and life affirming thing it is to have friends.

Tom is closing the speaker shop (Halloween is the last day) and going on line! I may get work doing data entry loading skus. He was only in hopsital (deliberate typo) a day for the pneumonia and when I was talking to him on the phone today he was on the skytrain which means that Peggy is not actually driving him everywhere any more. Also that the phone call dropped three times before we gave up.

The only social media I’m on now is here, AO3 and Reddit. I’ve added 400 karma points in the last week alone so you can tell I’ve been busy. When Reddit gives me free awards I always use them within five minutes, usually for other women.

I can definitely state (from what I read on reddit, among other things) that feminism has lost big over the last 40 years. What a time to be alive.

ADDED LATER: SOMEBUNNY is running a jackhammer within a block radius and WOW what an annoying sound!

the dance of the maggots

to be devoured in a place
where your mind has no purchase
inverse of a location

you find yourself here
anyway

the place goes away and the feeling
of it, a question mark in pyrotechnic smoke
most literal
continues

there is a trope in screen delivered content
a figurecomestoyouinadreamandtellsyou
content
(by which I mean
whatever the plot device is)
is a lie

the movement of maggots is not proof of life
unless you’re speaking of the maggots
and only a corrupt culture
will sell that viewpoint to you

the ground shakes with
their nagging vicious drumbeats
so it looks as if the maggots dance in time

CHICKN

I have chicken thawed in the fridge and must Do Something with it.

Trip to Victoria for next week confirmed.

Tom is feeling poorly; he’s been in hospital again. I wrote him a letter, I should mail it.

House filk has been postponed until we have better health and a certain venue. (Edit later) nope it still may happen on Saturday. I think Peggy is possibly contemplating more food than she can reasonably get into her mouth but I ain’t argying wit’ a grown woman. I mean, she’s having rellies for house guests AND wants a house filk? I WANT EVERYTHING AT ONCE she is my relative, there’s no getting around it, I don’t care what the family tree says.