Category: Writing

From the student unrest in France in the late 60s.

I have put together a letter for a friend, started another letter to my former mother-in-common-law, spent the night at the Aerie (Mike cooked, steak tacos Juarez street cart style which is seasoned meat dressed with 2/3 fine/coarse chopped sweet white onion (which I’ll have you know I volunteered for, chopping wise, and Mike cheerfully handed the loathèd task off to me with thanks) / 1/3 chopped coriander.) Slept like I was getting paid to, it was remarkable. AND there was the Starbucks hot chocolate and Avalon milk to make it with in the morning and the leftover homestyle nachos from the night before.

Damn it was good. I guess a paragraph describing it kinda gives it away.

Roared back here at 9:30 to feed cats and go to Science World with Keith and Katie and Alex and it was remarkably nice, really. I enjoyed it and Alex did too until he got supremely crabby and we thought about ice cream but I just said “Alex first; if he needs to go home and nap like you say, that’s what he needs.” Since Katie was trending that way that’s what we did but Katie got a couple of pics.

No I am not writing. But I feel so fucking cheerful you just wouldn’t believe it.

LOOK AT THAT SMILE.

look at it

 

great, I have a migraine.

shutting down for now, my visual field is being eaten by a pulsating heart shaped dragon and I should probably go soak in epsom salts or something

mah gob it’s like pulling teeth sometimes to get Paul to play, and it’s so lovely when he does get going.

I played When I Go (that is a Dave Carter tune of course; I play it on Otto. IT IS A MOTHERFUCKER TO MEMORIZE so long and complex and dicks around with scansion in a couplawkward places plus it makes ally me squirm, the way it so obviously worms its way through FNMI ‘style’ images, and the tune and lyrics are still really compelling and she was a trans woman who died so abruptly that whatever name she chose for herself is not easily learned and I want to remember her that way and have to deadname her instead). Worked through My Needle and I twice because a) Paul loves it and b) eez so frickin short for him to get any practice on it gotta go through it again. Played the extendamix version of Clem’s Walk so Paul could noodle and it was wonderful.

Found out that when I play the three chord walkup for Here They Come,  the A and E strings on the other side of the bridge ARE IN TUNE and they make an awesome ‘tinny threatening fifth’ which, if I move my goddamned arm as fast as the mofo will go, I can squirrel in between runs. Let’s just say that it sounds both good and funny enough that Paul kept cracking up.

Then I made him play 2&20 Blues and noodled on that (how I love that it was written by a woman), and Gentle Arms of Eden (another Carter tune) and noodled on that, and one of the Air Force songs, pOp, I can’t remember which one but you would have been pleased.

And more yet.

I wasn’t even going to write about going to Paul’s to sing and play and then remembered that people need to be reminded that if they want to get good at something they have to practice.

Keith texted me about going to see Black Panther soon. With Katie. Fuck that would be SO SO AWESOME to do that, make it a family event we can all experience at the same time.

Sushi afterward.

 

after a day of the foregoing, I’m finally in a better mood. Paul’s going to come get me for a mall walk and some singing and playing.

Virtually all of my laundry is done as of yesterday night, yay. I even phoned my mother!

We did a shop this morning and had brekky at IHOP.

Applied for two jobs, this past week – not so much as a response. Charming.

My big plan for today is to get my passport application in. I can usually manage *one thing per day* (besides writing a few wurdz and practicing twangy box and bitching on twitter).

I’ve picked out names for George’s hair and the power source.

 

wrote 750 words of sixer short story set on a space station

 

however word count for HOTM is now 40080

woot my Dutch beta reader is getting back to me soon.

Well, none of YOU volunteered to read my porn novel; mOm only did because I jammed plot for the wider series arc into it and she will devour anything with Sweetie in it. (tell me I’m wrong ma) Not, perhaps, the wisest artistic decision I ever made in light of current events …. But one that I feel will be richly attested to by history as a wise decision, because if this sucker ever gets made into TV I want gay love “between a genderqueer person and a guy whose orientation goes from straight to ‘huh, I never thought of that’ to ‘extremely accommodating'” baked into its DNA.

I never thought, when I wrote that first line about Slider in the first book that this was the turn their character would take.

But damn it, it is so very cute and fluffy and angsty and OBVIOUS. Which is the look I was going for.

 

GG I wanna come over for the pinball

You can come over any time sweetie, just tell your mom.

Happy sigh. I got a flying visit from Katie and Alex….

Yesterday I want to the demonstration for Tina Fontaine. I’m really sick at heart about how many FNMI kids end up in care, and feel worse about how many of them die. I feel worst of all that a homeless white guy who confessed is more important than the FNMI teen he killed.

There were anywhere between 450 and 600 people there at any given time. I showed up late and left early (before the march down Granville), but I was there for a while. Thanks brOJeff for loaning me your folding stool – it’s really proven a godsend when you’re in sit/stand/mill about situations like demos and long waits to get into venues.

I think Margot has an infected anal gland. I expressed about a teaspoon of horrific glop out this am and I finally put her back down when the volume of her screeching was too deafening. Pet ownership, it’s a real trip.

s’posed to get 10 cm this am

 

just 50K words to go!

Keith (driving in the snow….) took me and Paul to TRIUMF yesterday for a tour. YES I WENT TO A CYCLOTRON and Keith bought a hat.

Here are the pics. The clean room, Know These Alarms, a cabinet full of Xantrex Power Supply manuals, and a stencilled word which got more comments on facebook yesterday than I’m used to… well I thought it was funny.

The man giving the tour had such a remarkable haircut that I was tempted to take a picture of him for the sole purpose of mocking him, which is mean, even for me, so I refrained, and I am satisfied that the prospect of your shocked amusement upon viewing what was quite possibly the strangest non-wig, non-hairpiece performance art you would ever see was still not enough to motivate me to take and subsequently share his picture.

I finally have everything I need to update my passport, it’s like a miracle. I’ve been making stabs at it since December, now I just have to write a cheque and drop it in the mail.

Thanks Jeff for helping that happen.

Also finally took care of my follow-up stool sample. (No pictures by request.)

Paul and I walked in the GLORIOUS SUNSHINE at Oakalla, and then Katie and Alex and I went swimming, and Paul dropped by for that as well, and we splashed en famille and it was very much fun.

This morning I have brekky with Sue (I think I’m going to bring musical instruments).

I haven’t been writing – but I have been blocking out the rest of the book and I’m quite happy with how things are going, so fret not.

 

So Mike cooked tenderloin for me Sunday night but he overdid it with the kosher salt and it was almost too salty to eat. He got anxious; I ate mine, and then stole some of his.

I thought about all the times Paul just ate what I put in front of him, even if I couldn’t eat it.

Had a simply grotesquely bad sleep – I think I maybe got four hours in before I got up and started stooging around.

Then Mike fed me chik’n congee for breakfast, OMG it was so.frickin.good and this time he deboned it so the gwai lo chick didn’t have to deal with the congealed bits of bone end, etc. It was a superlative breakfast, with all the scallions and cilantro I could ever want to dump into it.

Balance was restored by the two and half hour nap that followed.

Keith and I are at loggerheads again. This time he hung up on me. What a pair of fucking children we are.

I told Jeff what I was arguing with him about (our argument consisted of him saying that Jordan Peterson is awesome and ‘saying things that need to be said’ while I want to die from being such a terrible mother). At the end of it I said four words and he ended the call. Jeff has already culled one friendship over Jordan Peterson (and since I know exactly what ceasing to talk to someone for political reasons feels like, I am sore on his behalf) and he’s not keen to make it two.

Keith says Jordan Peterson told him to clean his room.

I’m Keith’s mother. You know, of course, how it feels when you’ve told your kid to clean his room four hundred times (or thereabouts) but one fascist asshole tells him to do it once and he hops to it.

Fascism man, it’s hard to put down.

I can’t find out how to pronounce vápni in Icelandic and it’s pissing me off

I think it’s V-owp-nih but the internet for once isn’t helping comme d’habitude which is probably just proof a few more of my neurons let go with a ghastly scream.

I’d love to say why I need it but no spoilers.

The US sure is making it easy for western democracies to see how low they can set their expectations. Expect right wing tyrants, vastly increased domestic spying, pork barrels that span the planet and offer your choice of exit strategies if the locals get stroppy, all tied up with the best press money can buy while you’re standing on the bodies of dead journos and indigenous people.

I retreat into fluffy sf.

 

 

 

There are times – there have been times in my life when I wanted to be male. I was never unhappy with my body but I sure would have liked to swap it out once in a while. I do like this body. It made babies, and breast milk. It also made honking big gall stones and proved to be no match for alcohol, but them’s the breaks.

Referencing Altered Carbon:

My most recent gosh wish I wuz a boy moment was thinking to myself that I’d love to look like Joel Kinnaman and make a coat sway like that when I walked.

Further comment on the show. Dichen Lachman sure gets cast as the crazy martial artist villainess a lot.

I really liked the art direction compared to a lot of sf shows.

The show runner’s been trying for almost 15 years to get it made. Netflix made it possible. Also, the fact that serious star power has stopped thinking that playing a nude role is a sign of moral defect.