But mine were always there for me

My parents were not perfect. They never represented themselves as such. They were not mind readers. They never represented themselves as such. They loved each other, and they loved my brother and me, and I felt safe and cared for while I lived at home.

And now, across the Salish Sea, they still care for me. They help me pay my bills and enjoy the life I live so that it can be equitable with my roommate/brO. They continue to think about me and consider my feelings and ask for my opinion and snicker at my jokes and frown helplessly at my continuing weird takes on our family history.

But what motivates my writing sometimes is knowing that I was Loved, and so many are not. So many people have black holes of mental illness and assault convictions and alcoholism swirling around their parents. They have poverty and intergenerational abuse and racism and food insecurity as constant companions. When I write about these things, it’s because my parents gave me a life in which I could mentally afford to think about others, and to see my privilege as a member of a contented family as exactly that, not a sign that god loves me better.

I’ll be spending a day over at Junction with Paul

It will be hard, going through what now seems like so much junk that was once a family heirloom, or whatever. Katie’s taking some time off too to pack, Dax has gone into the interior with his uncle.

2500 words off to my readers this morning. 1100 words so far today on TB, I doubt there will be more given how exhausted I’ll be when I get home, and I left it at a very nice break point.

I just called Jordan Peterson a custard hearted bigot on twitter. Betcha I get banned. I LOVE IT.

 

cat tree

Buster’s current cat tree is very old and ratty; he’ll get a new one tonight (Suzanne is helping) and we’ll put the old one on the deck. Or maybe it will go straight into the trash, it needs to be completely reupholstered.

Upholstery comes from the Middle English upholder, a person who furnished cloth and mattresses for beds and other furniture. What a weird damned word. Now it’s only used with ‘of the law’ after it.

677 words yesterday on TB, way more than I expected given that I felt crushed when I awoke (air quality was like 250 !!! into the purple zone !! overnight). The air is much better today but still not in the green zone.

Repotted the five little peyotes. It was a lot harder getting five of them apart than two, believe me, but the biggun was pushing roots right out of the pot so it was time. I should water them again later today.

Coffee brings me life this morning. Time for another one lol.

Drew Barrymore is a scab. She crossed the picket line to film an advertisement in Vancouver. HEAVY SIGH.

which one of you incredibly quiet people wants a bsky invite code?

 

Quiet day

Talked to Katie. She wants me to come get the cat tree so I should talk to Jeff about that.

369 words on TB

aqi is between 100 and 200 throughout the lower mainland. ABSOLUTELY no walking outside today.

Jeff wants to go schlepping this am but I find Sunday morning there’s nothing at Saveon and the veggies are really picked over but yes I will if he’s driving.

 

From a court case in the US:

“Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions. With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care, laugh-in-the-face-of-death, life-on-the-razor’s-edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins.”

— Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corp., Inc., 147 F. Supp. 2d 668 (S.D. Tex. 2001)

festive meal

Paul, Ruth, John, Keith and I dined yesterday. It was a very pleasant and convivial meal and just as I was faltering in my eating I realized I was about to basically put my head down and start snoozing so I slithered off home in a taxi. Which reminds me, I have a sammy to reheat.

The Echo is serving them well, they say, and their Yukon vacation was stellar.

1581 words on TB yesterday, so that’s respectable. Coming up on the Ottawa trip in the story.

I’m really concerned about storm Hilary, but oh well. We’ll get our day in the climate sun again here in MST country soon enough I imagine.

89 hits 11 kudos 3 bookmarks

Mammogram results clear. Under a week to get results, awesome.

Quite pleased with the reader reaction to ‘Guy d’Angelique’ on AO3 and even more pleased that I’m adult enough to stop obsessively checking. ABSOLUTELY NO COMMENTS tho sigh.

Tonight we dine at Qwhite Spot with the fam. John and Ruth; Paul, Alex, Katie, possibly Dax, me and Jeff and the instigator is Keith (WHO VOLUNTEERED TO DRIVE JOHN AND RUTH TO THE AIRPORT and then bring the Echo back how do I deserve such a kindly child). He’s in an incredibly good mood these days, surrounded by Ben’s HORDE of friends who are all…. Keith’s age and a lot of them are neurodivergent bronies so…. He’s also thinking of making a run for the grandparents and sadly I have something happening on the 25th so I probably won’t be joining him.

Jeff and I have DELIBERATELY not posted anything about how godawful the ferry part of the trip to Bowen Island was so believe me when I say that the signage and guidance SUCKS GREYHOUND BUS STATION MEN’S ROOM MOPS.

West Kelowna fire may destroy the recently built 75 million dollar water treatment plant, the single biggest ticket item ever in Kelowna. The city’s been fighting with BC Hydro over how teetery the power infrastructure is, coming into town, for years now and the upshot is that if the fire comes through it may literally be months before the power’s restored and that means that chunks of Kelowna may end up like Lytton. Abandoned. No water, no power, no businesses, no jobs, no homes.

Michael Sheen talking about what a joy David Tennant is to work with is giving me life today. Their families had babies at the same time and their youngests are besties see my heart eyes, I’ve got heart eyes. Now to channel heart eyes into TB.

Yay, there will be more Miss Scarlet and the Duke!

LOL I lied, 91 hits 12 kudos.

graphomania has stopped

I went for a walk with Jeff, finished “Guy d’Angelique” and posted it – it already has two hits, lol, I do have subscribers so they would have gotten a push email when I posted. It topped 12000 words and it’s DONE like the relief is unspeakable. MAYBE EVEN INEFFABLE. Anyway you can’t see it if you don’t have an account because I don’t want my shit scraped for AIs.

I’m going to drink tea and cry about something else now (I cried so much writing that but mostly because I’m still processing the end of GOmens2 and writing a story IN ANOTHER FANDOM was my styptic against all those fucking cuts). No I will not really cry, I think I’ll eat salad instead.

Recently learned that Al and Jen BINGEWATCHED Twisted Metal after we recommended it and so Jeff and I are smirking at each other every time we think of that.

533 words yesterday

Very hot yesterday, but it’s supposed to not go over 30 for the rest of the week.

Very apprehensive about Ryker care. I do be like that tho. It will be fine, same as last time.

I’m reading about 50 year olds becoming unhoused and asking where they sign up for free housing. As far as I can tell an entire cohort of Canadians paid no more attention to politics than was required to sort of take in the promises and denunciations at election time. When it comes to the instantiations of politics, they’re living in a spun sugar world which is abrumptly getting the ol’ firehose of climate driven events. But I thought welfare bums get errything for free they will cry. What chumps oh well.

However, I’m going to stay cheerful as long as we’re all together on this side and the ac works.

Oh Jaysus I just thought of the title of the next one in the series thank you Dave. Also you said it could all be converted quite nicely to a screenplay and you’re right. That means I have to go back into the completed project and chop it into 13 minute segments with stingers teasers and very high stakes. So to write that new title down I slipped away from writing this, wrote 244 words on the Guy d’Angelique fanfic and forgot to write the new title down. Leaving briefly to fix that, okay I wrote it down but I’m now up to a thousand words on the fanfic. Honestly I’m just going to drag the characters to a hotel room and get them sweaty, I haven’t got all day for conversation!! I have to get back to TB and get the next instalment out to my emotional support editors.

Heavy sigh. It’s a good thing I’ve got Scrivener to keep all this shit straight. Scrivener is what took me from being a writer to being someone who can complete long form multiarc fiction. It is THE BOMB. It is simple to use on the daily with a depth of features that’s abyssal.

Ha ha I EYEBALLED IT Jensen Ackles IS the same size, almost exactly, as Errol Flynn. Same height, weight and shoe size. This is important to the fanfic. This is the level of research I do. I don’t want you to be impressed, I just think it’s hilarious that I PULLED AN ARCHETYPAL HERO ACTOR out of the pile and went yup he’s the same size and shape as Jensen Ackles and THEN I DID THE RESEARCH. Because I wouldn’t want to put it in the fucking fanfic if it wasn’t true. Because facts make light and light makes atmosphere, & suppositions make assholes like me make easily avoided mistakes.

Damn the coffee was good this morning. Must …. have …. more. So I did and now I just deleted the toilet joke I was about to make, so I’ll tell Jeff instead.

Do I sound giddy? I’m in writing mode.

I just found a cartoon that completely describes Brad and Omar and I was going to send it to mOm but here it is. From Foxes in Love on Tumblr

Foxes in Love

I was going to but then

I was going to talk about the death toll in Hawai’i. From the fires. Fanned by a storm. I was going to talk about the death toll of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which has been horrific, but I decided not to. I thought about reporting on the death toll of migrants drowned in the Mediterranean, which was considerable this past week, but I thought not.

Instead I’m going to comment on how, when Suzanne’s washed the kitchen rugs, Buster finds a moment and scoots a metre and a half across one, because as far as he’s concerned, we just washed his toilet rag. If mOm had known, crocheting that sucker, that it was going to be kitty toilet paper, she might have frowned, but kept going, cause that’s what we do, is keep going.

I have had coffee, and made tea for iced tea, and in about five hours someone’s going to flatten my breasts into machine readable tortillas and I’m going to feel sorry for myself.

I am rewatching S2 Good Omens with Jeff and trying not to squee at my favourite bits.

Michael Sheen, who plays Aziraphale (he was named by Terry Pratchett so it’s not a real hebrew angel name but it either means raphael’s strength or the helper in alt-hebrew) understands that some of the character’s hand gestures correspond to autistic stimming and actually tweeted “God bless the happy flappers” which given that I’ve stimmed (and been mocked for it) my whole life it was like being pushed into a chair when you’re about to faint.

David Tennant, who plays Crowley (more on that in a minute) has been known to sport non-binary and trans persons supporting merch and has a non-binary child (apparently part of his blended horde (any more than two is a horde, sorry) of offspring with Georgia Tennant.) Angels in the Gaiman-Pratchett-verse don’t ascribe to the sexual binary. So essentially both lead characters are non-binary but present male. Usually. So this global icon has been seen wearing ‘LEAVE TRANS KIDS ALONE YOU ABSOLUTE FREAKS’ Tshirts and the response of the exceptionally trans-hating UK press has been livid. LOL die mad ya salty beeches.

He had to wear dark glasses and contact lenses for the entire shoot and apparently was caught running into walls during takes since he couldn’t see what the hell he was doing. This makes his acting even more next level to me. I enjoyed Michael Sheen but it’s Tennant I can’t take my eyes off.

As in 2019, the fandom’s going insane. It’s also rescued me. There’s a fan theory about season 3 (if it ever happens) that put my feathers back in place, and it has to do with how Crowley…. isn’t who he says he is, or indeed who anyone says or thinks he is. The evidence was all gone through in a tumblr post and I am convinced. Therefore as sad as I am about the final scene in S2 I have decided to psychically crawl from my bed of pain into the toilet of relief, and possibly later visit the fire of collations.

Dr. Jen Gunter’s latest newsletter says that

20% of all Ayurvedic medicine sold in the US and Canada is contaminated with lead.

Jaysus and his lady mother and his poor poppa. Mercury too, apparently. Ha ha, little joke for a friend. But yes, mercury. So

As Dr. Gunter remarked If 20% of all the creamed corn in the US and Canada was contaminated with lead, that would probably lead to public health action of some kind. My take is what is preventing this stuff from being banned is (checks notes) fear of accusations of racism and anti-religious (anti-Hindu) sentiment and a heftic dose of CAPITALISM CURES ALL I guess. However, putting lead OR allowing lead into the manufacturing process of supplements ‘medicine’ SPECIFICALLY sold for the use of pregnant women is a failure on the part of every link in the supply chain.

Herewith my comments on Bluesky, a Social Media platform established by the guy who started twitter. He stole a metric crapstack of twitter’s old employees, but elongated muskrate dood that hisself by firing them all.

bsky creeping up on half a million users!!
 
fun place – trans people welcome; still issues (which no one is trying to hide but the company needs a kick) for PoCs and Indigenous – you can autoblock terfs, antivaxxers and bad political actors with one click and the list keeps growing but you’re already subscribed, isn’t that amazing? autoblock lists on social media are the fucking BOMB
 
I see Russian, Ukrainian (once mistook the two, had to abject the apology fuck me that was bad)  and Turkish in my feed. It’s overwhelmingly an English speaking place.
 
not enough aziracrow content <—- (written or drawn, mostly drawn, so I guess I’m sticking with tumblr for now LOL and I’m there under my real name which REALLY makes me stand out extra LOL although to be fair writers which I am use their real names)
 
Not enough weather and disaster on-the-ground content (twitter’s shining star)
 
YOU WILL GET ‘NOTES’ if you DON’T ALT YA PICS – this is a fantastic norm for a social media site. “Hello, I love you, won’t you please alt your pic!” (Provide a description for people who can’t see).
 
extremely thirsty (current slang for horny), much nood, no gifs yet (DAMNATION PEOPLE GET ON IT), no DMs (direct messages) and you can’t chain ‘skeets’ which I call bleats because it’s not gun related. Also sheep look like clouds in a Bluesky, the name of the app!!!  Adult content asks if you want to see it. Thank you! sometimes I want to see (I am just as prurient as the next chump, thanks) and mostly I don’t care. The last thing I looked at was a man’s back. It was muscular and full of tattoos and while it didn’t make my day it did make me smile.
 
The MAIN GOAL is to curate your experience so asshats can’t get at you by blocking IMMEDIATELY. No discourse, just block. In consequence it’s almost entirely free of interruptions by asshats and when they do get through you just block them once with neither guilt nor backward glance. Lovely. No asshats, all genders, no huhu.
I have put the second letter on Keith’s embroidered apron.
Only wrote 31 words yesterday. I will lie fallow for a few days, try to get back at it on Monday.
chamomilegeode-deactivated20221 on tumblr five days ago said:

did you know that, besides the apple of knowledge and the pomegranate of life, there’s another mystic fruit, one that grants you a sense of purpose?

yeah, it’s the raisin d’être

conversation on tumblr – this kind of shit happens every day on tumblr so I’m sharing it because of how it illustrates and supports the hive mind in a super creative and positive way

person 1

Please retire the “we are made of stardust” phrase I am so tired of it

person 2

Stars are made of flesh

Person 1

I change my mind bring back the original phrase

person 1

If I remember correctly, elements heavier than iron are only created when a star dies.

This is interesting because 1) it places a lower bound on when life can evolve, and when life is most likely to evolve, assuming any of a number of certain chemical compositions are necessary and 2) it means that a significant portion of the matter around us was forged by the death of a star.

Stars, when they die, can create new elements and I think that’s cool as fuck.

Person 1

I looked it up, actually it’s like this:

Helium and Hydrogen were created by the Big Bang.

Elements from Helium up to Iron are created by stars through nuclear fusion during their lifetimes (In a process called Stellar Nucleosynthesis)

And elements heavier than iron cannot be created except by Supernova Nucleosynthesis, by the collapse and death of a star, and elements from silicon through iron still are mainly created by Supernova Nucleosynthesis, since stars big enough to create them by fusion in life are pretty rare

The stardust makes you alive! It’s neat.

Person 4

This! Yes!

Okay, so, this is a thing we actually know a bit about.

While what you’ve brought up is the leading theory, and has been for a good while, there are some inconsistencies — particularly with the far end of the stable elements and the radioactive elements. The amounts produced in Supernova Nucleosynthesis would be far too low to actually account for the amounts seen in the universe.

So, how were they created?

The best theory we have is collisions between neutron stars.

When two neutron stars collide, they produce a supernova with the required energy density to create those ultraheavy elements, which means that not only are you made of stardust, if this theory is correct, you are made of stardust that was released when two of the most violent, extreme objects in the universe collided, possibly billions of years ago, hundreds of millions of lightyears away.

Person 1

You are the wreckage of a violent multi-star pileup

 

 

off to the showroom

Keith needs to buy some furniture to fit in his new room. We’ll go off to see that midmorning. He’s also setting up ‘the last family meal at the Manor’ for Sunday so I’m hoping Jeff will come.

Weather continues okay, pollen except mold is low.

Laundry done, now I need to put it away. har har

Ukraine has lost a lot of warriors in the offensive. Things are gonna snap.

Tanked all my Lumosity games this morning. I don’t mean to dip but using a trackpad instead of a mouse is kinda bogus and I should stop doing it.

Made more iced tea.

Had my leftover pad thai for breakfast. DAMN it was good. Jeff enjoyed his Mongolian stirfry so we’re putting that restaurant in the rotation. The soup (sort of like Tom Ka Kai but called Coconut soup) was so good I could feel my soul leave my body and then come whooshing back in with a big ass THANK YOU. I asked for Mild-Medium spicing and they NAILED IT so well.

Reviewing my to do list. Amazing how many items I’ve already crossed off.

360 words over today and yesterday.

Just found out that the only Guyanese person I follow on twitter… his dad was a chauffeur. And so is Blossom, so I’m thinking that is one strange echo.

ai yi

walked down to the weed store, lord but I’m in poor shape, even downhill was tough, and coming back uphill involved me planting my ass on every bit of furniture between here and there at least once.

Procured a poopsi at the donair place across the street from the weed store and after finishing it managed to make it home. I was dressed entirely in black so let’s just say the sun’s still doing their job.

ordered thai- nom

I am now in a parasocial relationship with an actor NOT IN HIS ROLE but in his role as HUCKSTER for the role. (David Tennant, as Crowley in Good Omens.) This is perilous layers of unproductive meta (I use it in the sense of people walking in and among and beside the artistic ideas which are being represented by an engrammatical ‘story’ as players, production staff, writers, relatives of the writers of the original text, media reporting on the fixed form of the engrammatical ‘story’, people creating paintings and gifsets and fan edits and AO3 stories and beadwork and t-shirts which reflect their emotions and experience, the feeling of reaching across and through an artwork and just holding hands with someone and crying, just crying, because you feel seen and loved, and then wearing them while they stream about the engrammatical ‘story’ because it’s something precious and fleeting and needs to be shared), as I will demonstrate,

as I’ve already BEEN through this with Misha Collins as Castiel, so I’m shoving the idea out of my mind like a warbler who’s twigged to the cuckoo’s egg. Not very successfully. These things happen.

Whether this newfound tendresse, or the caution it will hopefully engender as I heave it from my sensorium with many a psychic grunt and wail, will inform the longing I hope to continuously expose as a feature of Totally Boned (as you may not know, the longest of my current projects and the one which, despite itself, continues to show signs of actually being … worth charging money for.)

Anyway, the pattern-seeking in art across disciplines – the meta’s an outgrowth of this. I mean, as a cultural phenomenon it has all the appearance of some weird variant of an anxiety attack, or as more likely on second consideration, a cultural displacement behaviour for the ever trending anxiety that is our daily portion. Sad to say this is the shit my ADD brain was made for. I don’t worry about what I’ve got in my head, all I’m concerned for is that the useful items appear in the order in which they are needed, at least with respect to my creative life; I’ve never known to have truly seen whether I can do that in my personal life. It seems to me that there was a time, but I ain’t got the hormones to do that no more; ‘most everything has shrunk, my field of vision most of all. “The air gets thinner but the view gets better,” as Ingmar Bergman once remarked. In my case I’m looking through a smaller aperture. I can’t control my mood, or, necessarily, my energy level, so writing is hard some days and not others. Multi-thousand word days SOUND good, but I burn glucose and brain chemicals like a fucking thermal lance while I’m doing it and feel like hell for literally days afterwards so I now am writing to an upper limit of 750 words a day for my health. I know that sounds funny, regrettably I care not with great lots of uncaringness, parcelled out for your convenience. My hypocrisies and vices are what they are; we’re living on borrowed time, all of us, and the reason I’m angry I didn’t get a resolution in this Season 2 of Good Omens is that I think society is about to break in half and then get ground to powder

so I’ll never get one. Logistics of war, of plague, of planetary threats unknown.

On the other hand, in a basement in Pasadena, a cabal of high school students, queer studies professors, elderly film directors, amateur set decorators and body double actors are depending on one young non-binary person to carry the weight of successfully using AI to create an entire film to ‘fix’ the notorious last season of a long running TV horror-comedy. Let those who ponder the meta, who enter the liminal space of the meta with the breath of a prayer, take warning, for that, my fellow lunatics, is a project with a much better chance of seeing daylight before the apocalypse really bites than S3 of Good Omens. We who have faith have faith for a reason. In other words, I’m making fun of it, but I have to; if I can’t mock what I believe in, I’m a victim, not a collaborator with an idea. And this whole Pasadena thing I made up on the spot, because it would be a great idea for a Destiel fanfic and I needed to make a note of it.

watching

Brief walk with Jeff yesterday morning, then a few limp attempts to write. Paul called and wanted to come and visit Buster “to beat him up”. The new medication is perking Paul up considerably and we had a simply lovely visit and I dealt with his toenails (poor man had a blood bruise on one toe and three others were recently smashed, so I guess him getting up to pee is actively hazardous) and washed his feet. We ate strawberry ice cream and drank iced tea and talked about Ruth and John’s upcoming visit and them borrowing the Echo.

When I came home I had 30$ of treats on me. LOL

Then I someone got a whole bunch of writing done and sent some to mOm.

And I talked to Mike on the phone. He’s maintaining – he was pulling his kayak out of Deer Lake to clean off the goo when I called him – but has zero interest in social gatherings. He mentioned that he has a spare camera if Keith wants to get into photography.

And I talked to mOm and pOp on the phone. The weather was fine and the pollen count low, which doesn’t mean much ’cause Jeff and I are sneezing like the dickens. Now to tornado the kitchen and get some cloathes in the wash.

There’s an ACORN demo tonight, I plan to go since it’s one bus ride away. Maybe I’ll coordinate with Keith if he’s going.

What we’re watching:

Twisted Metal: Answering the question, can you take a 20 year old legendary computer game and turn it into a TV show, with a resounding, unequivocal and extremely loud yes.

Rewatch of Justified, we’re early season II. Raylan you are a horndog. Winona you are a fucking idiot. And Dickie Bennett is the most cowardly stupid man who ever lived, until the next villain rolls up.

Coming up on the end of Medium. I cannot say enough good things about this show. It is so dazzlingly inventive with the tropes, formulae and story logic of modern television and so consistently well written (one bad show so far out of HOW MANY? IT RAN SEVEN SEASONS) that it is impossible to overstate how great it is. The child actors are so good they’re terrifying. They’re actors, not window dressing, professionals to the bone. Jake Weber as Joe is the superlative dad of all of modern TV in my view. There may be better ones, but I ain’t seen him yet. His representation of a world view of rationality (his job, most of daily life) and radical acceptance (all three of his daughters and his wife experience psychic phenomena) is a great accomplishment and he just surfs in the liminal waves of excellence for the entire show.

We’re into S4 of Law and Order. Christ, that’s a dark show. But I LOVE LENNY.

And life proceeds. I get Alex this weekend for a night. Happy sigh.

I got a new credit card (replacing old one) and it actually WORKS. I am so happy.

I need to check that I’m going to get my pension money starting in November but I’ve already done enough paperwork for today so this is a tomorrow problem. And of course I can at that point give M&P their ‘glad newis’ that they can reduce their stipend to me and start applying it to the kids instead!

My blood pressure and Paul’s blood pressure were PERFECT and within one point of each other yesterday. That was hilarious since it never happens, but it def. sounds like Paul’s finally got his BP under control.

Me reacting to twitter imploding

Looting Corpses with You rev 2.

The moon is high and bright
It bathes a ghastly blight
Upon a battlefield
With flinty stabs of light
The little things we like to do
Will keep us ever close and true
Oh how I bless the moon
For I will soon
go looting corpses with you.

Their boys put up a fight
You know it don’t seem right
But we survived the fray
And now sneak out at night
The CO will find fools to scold
until he sees that shiny gold
Oh how I bless the moon
For I will soon
go looting corpses with you.

He used to mock my clothes
Swear he’d bite off my nose
And now he’s lying here
He don’t smell liiiiike no rose
And how I bless each little turn of fate
Their horsemen arrived two hours too late
It is now past noon
And pretty soon
I’ll be counting silver with you
Another happy memory
of looting corpses with you.