Category: Writing

omnibus post

Third season of The Last Kingdom is shooting, we’ll see it in the fall on Netflix. Bernard Cornwell, the writer of the novels, is going to get a cameo in this season, and he said, most sweetly, that he hopes Uhtred will swear at him.

It was amusing catching Peter Jackson’s cameo as he got whacked in the LOTR.

The message on the wind (a very powerful inner voice which is occasionally correct)  is irritating the crap out of me right now. I’m getting consistent messages to a) get a dog b) get a kitten. I am not doing either of those things, jeez Louise.

Buster and the rest of our household are still sad, but we’re not freaking out any more and the possibility of contentment once again exists in mental outlook.

Keith is off to Victoria this week and I’m very very happy he’s going. It is wonderful to have family to visit.

I was going to rant about various things but I’m feeling too peaceful. This is a good sign.

 

so long facebook I mostly enjoyed it

Sent to my facebook friends, all 280 odd of ’em.

I’m in the process of deleting this account; I’ve started downloading my ravings over the last decade or so just in case there’s something in there worth stealing for something else. I tried doing it before, but the latest news from Facebook is like going to the doctor and being told to change or die. Or it’s like being yelled at by Uncle Moshe that the Nazis will kill every Jew in Vienna and the cold blast of fear that shoots down your back when you’re finally believing him.
It’s realizing that we ‘made’ this dystopia because somebody good-looking held a door open and we walked into it, unaware that through that door was an entirely colonized future. If we complain about this state of affairs, we may be asked “Well – what did you expect for free?” which, like all colonialism, ignores that we are actually having items and data stolen from us, ‘for free’, which remains theft, even if you scandalize capitalism and fail to charge for noticing it.
Damn me if I don’t draw a line somewhere.
 
Filkers will see me when I’m flush enough and feel safe enough to travel.
Anybody on my FL in Vancouver (or Victoria or Seattle) can pretty much drop by for tea anytime with a couple of hours’ warning.
Family, hey there.
If you like what or how I write, I have almost fifteen years of almost daily blog posts and a rather daunting amount of ‘collected material’ on many subjects squirrelled away at allegrasloman.com. I’m me at gmail. I suck Greyhound Bus Terminal men’s room floor mops at texting, so email me if you feel like it.
I have learned many interesting things from you all, and I will miss your friendship and companionship, sympathy and course corrections. I will miss you documenting your slide into debilitating illness without turning into a horrible person, and I will miss your aptitude for bringing me things I found genuinely interesting and enlivening, your encounters with critters, the hours and battering hours spent framing social justice concepts. The food, you great load of swine. The Food.
I mean no offense to any of my swine-avoidant friends, and they’re long past the eyeroll stage anyway.
 
I’m angry, but I’ll do my best to be kind.
 
As a coda to this, for my fellow literary sf fans. Is there another fan out there who thinks that the Demopol in Herbert’s The Dosadi Experiment feels similar to what Facebook has morphed into? PPS still think it would make a bad ass movie.

6 am start

Katie’s coming to fetch me at 6. We may or may not get on the 7 am ferry, but that’s okay since there are a pile of things to do in the terminal, most of which involve preventing Alex from running into a total stranger’s ass at 30 kph and spending money, but at least we’d be out of the wind.

Buster has been droopy since Margot passed so Jeff’s taking him to the vet today.

Continuing to plug away at the novel. The non-binary boys are having a discussion as to whether the bling Jesse brought back from Iceland is an engagement ring and it really is not since Jesse would marry with a gun to his head and under no other circumstances. They’re poly queers, marriage is bullshit. Birefringence is a property of moissanite, y’all.

still a sad house

Buster is perturbed. He comes in from outside and instead of sitting on the mat waiting to sniff him for all of his new outdoor smells, Margot is not here. He looks for her at the top of the stairs and she’s not there. She doesn’t come at the rattle of the treat bag, or the sound of the cat food in the bowl.

Where is she?

Well, Buster, it doesn’t get better when you know where she is.

He licked a tear off my eyelashes yesterday.

Paul came by and watched a Star Wars movie with us yesterday.

I remember how hard I resisted crying last week when I was feeling ‘sad in advance’.

RIP Miss Margot

Yesterday morning around 8 Miss Margot came into my room, breathing stertorously, and thought about jumping up onto my bed. I encouraged her, but she turned around and walked back out again. Fifteen minutes later I picked her up. She seemed to be fine.

Around 9:45 Jeff found her in distress under Granny’s old dining room table, and she passed within a minute.

She had been to the vet on the first of March and received a clean bill of health. Nothing about her appetite, movement, vision or sleep would indicate that there was the slightest thing wrong with her. It happened so fast it’s hard to believe it was anything but a cardiovascular incident.

She rests, in the blue corduroy mandolin bag I got from Jim and Diane, with all the other cats in the yard; Bounce, and Gizmo, and Eddie, and Zeek!, and Kira. What a surprise the guys who dig out the yard when this house comes down are going to get.

She was born by caesarian section on December 13, 2008, and named after the veterinary technician who assisted with the delivery. Peter, a coworker, acquired her from Scaaty Cat cattery in Victoria, but she proved to be too poopy for his partner, who couldn’t deal with having to mop up after her.

I saw a picture of her when she was 14 weeks old. I’ve never fallen in love with an animal’s picture before, but I went insane with BABY MUST HAVE BABY and messaged Peter with how cute she was.

For $250 I acquired her – Peter was about to take her back to the breeder and I said NO.

When I get my shit together I’ll put together a memorial page.

Jeff’s distress is great. I just feel numb, and still sore from Saturday.

Keith and Mike came over yesterday to comfort us, and they did, which is all you can expect from friends. Paul, who was markedly fond of her, will have hugs an sadness for me too I imagine when he returns from Seattle.

Keith finally showed off his zweihander. That is a big sword. I should make him a scabbard.

 

Le travail continue  Word count 40992

Sometime around 8:00 this morning I wrote this, the tune is the one from earlier this week.

Margot’s Song

I have gone where my friends are waiting

Don’t you worry ‘bout me

And it’s not like I could forget you

Or you forget about me

 

You will miss me lots

Wish it wasn’t so

When I fill your thoughts

I was here a moment ago

 

My old dish is back in the cupboard

And my grave’s in the yard

Your old heart isn’t made of rubber

And you’re taking this hard

 

All the love you felt for me

Will never go away

It’s in the universe we made between us

and it is here to stay

 

I have gone where my friends are waiting

Don’t you worry ‘bout me

And it’s not like I could forget you

Or you forget about me

got home around three

  1. My feet are screaming blue fucking rapine and unlawful confinement.
  2. There were at least two thousand people at the Kinder Morgan protest. Media says one thousand. Lefties saying six thousand. I can easily believe that many people came and went, but there were two thousand people there when I was there.
  3. My feet, they are very unhappy, ditto my legs and hips. I am glad I bought that sturdy stool for Jeff, and sorry I’m using it more than he is, although he’ll get his chance when he goes camping this summer. I walked six uneven hilly kilometres today and honestly I’m really really feeling it.
  4. Coyote from today

Another protest

Off to the Kinder Morgan protest this morning. For once I don’t have to go all the way downtown – it’s at the tank farm in Burnaby. I don’t intend to get arrested, although there have been four arrests already.

Walked and talked for a while yesterday with Paul. I saw the counsellor on Thursday, and it was really funny, while talking to Paul, I mentioned the many, many things that are devouring my attention so I can’t write at the moment, and Paul said, well what about “This?” and I said “I didn’t even bring that up,” and I laughed because despite how horrible the situation is, it wasn’t even 10th on my list of the horrible things that are on my mind right now. THAT problem I have a fix for. It’s a stupid fix with nothing to recommend it except that I can look at a calendar and say – this is the best I can do and fuck all y’all.

I keep thinking I should cry, and I did cry a couple of times yesterday, but my tears dry up because a) I don’t really feel it and b) I feel embarrassed to give my grief any purchase. It’s as if I don’t believe I’m justified in feeling this blue – that I just have to power through it.

Then the counsellor says she’s going to a conference at the end of the month about how to offer counselling support while the Cheeto in Chief’s in office when I mentioned that GEE IN ADDITION TO ALL THE THINGS I legit can be unhappy about there’s that nuclear missile adjacent asshole so I guess I’m not the only person getting my joy killed.

However I imagine I’ll have some joy next weekend – hoping to make a run to the Island with the grandson and mama.

stupor and vapour

I think I may be able to lever myself out of my fog of the past week.

Took a SHIRTSLEEVES WALK in the sun at the Quay with Paul; sang and played for a while after. Current song that we’re working on (me with gestures, Paul with trying not to howl with laughter). Please note that I realized I have never learned a moose song, and given that I am  very FOND of moose this was something up with which, etc. We also worked on some other tuneage, but worked through Me and Bill a few times. Looking forward to playing it for Jim and Jan, who introduced us to the song.

Saw Alex and Katie briefly, as they were coming in as I was leaving Planet Bachelor; they also had Suzanne in tow, which was lovely. I could have stayed for supper but went home and made flatbread with rosemary instead, with olives on the side.

Of course did I remember to ask Katie when we are going to Victoria next? NOOOO because I’m a dodohead