a quote about religion

this gem comes from Blind Lemming Chiffon

A definition of religion that no one will like: a collection of preconceptions, often rooted in folklore, that some people use as brain-spackle to fill in gaps in their knowledge.

This is cute:

a poster showing musical rhythms by the use of phrases whose rhythms correspond to the notes shown.

It was wonderful to have Alex. I am exhausted and we didn’t even really DO anything but I slept super crappy as he jumped around all night.

Now to launder and what not.

I’m finished Good Omens S2. I’ve seen cliffhangers before but this one is quite devastating and I’m going to be a while settling with it.

Wrote 635 words yesterday, again, mostly infill on part II – removing adjectives and adding/expanding description where it is helpful, correcting some timeline stuff, the usual.

alex is here

He’s asleep still. We went to bed late. We are having fun.

I wrote this in response to a tumblr post which I found evasive and self-serving, regarding climate change.

Gimuy Walubara Yidinji people have a dance. It’s at least 10000 years old. In the dance, the men are the water, coming up and coming up inexorably and washing over the shore. (The eastern shoreline of what is now called Australia was eroded by hundreds of metres every year for years as the water from the last glacial melt came up – they would have been losing territory and hunting and fishing lands and watching with horror). The ancestors of the dancers knew this was important cultural knowledge. I hope the light goes on with this; humans have always had ways of transmitting and absorbing info about climate change. Settlers as a rule don’t value it because it’s not a book, attested, or a podcast, or an internet post. It’s not peer reviewed science, as if keen observation were not the basis for all science ever.

Indigenous people should be better respected. They’re carrying culture for every human on earth, not just on the lands they defend.

gapped the demo

I must not have wanted to go all that much.

Still writing.

Have said farewell to Jeff, who has departed on his journey.

‘Regular’ fiction publishing continues to be a complete wasteland, wherein any profits to be recovered go to the richest people in the chain and the dregs go to the content creators. Better by far to maintain control of your creation and get nothing, in my view.

BEHOLD THE HORROR

Cover of a cookbook: The Microwave Fish Cookbook by Val Collins

Someone got this published, even though as far as workplaces and roommate situations go, its very existence is a violent crime.

My most popular bleat on Bluesky so far:

gentle reminder that every constraint applied to trans women is immediately and gleefully applied to cis women who don’t meet normative standards of appearance or dress. So all the hairy faced gals, all the bald gals, all the tall gals, all the gals with big hands or feet. Ain’t we all women

I’m about to write a really mushy affectionate scene for TB and it’s going to be amazing, I’ve been thinking about it for days.

*T&*^*( Buster just threw my laptop onto the floor.

He’s now wandering around the house and screaming for Jeff at the top of his lungs.

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

more server notes

Previously, we announced that on Wednesday, August 2nd, our server admins would begin restarting some VPS servers as part of a maintenance to improve stability of your VPS service. This is still the case, however due to an additional issue that requires the host machine’s BIOS to be upgraded as well, our original service disruption estimate has been increased. We now expect the disruption to your service to last for about 45-60 minutes on average.

The full maintenance process is scheduled to begin at 7:30AM PST and is expected to last for approximately 8 hours.

listography

First, some housekeeping for the site:

On Wednesday, August 2nd, our server admins will begin restarting some VPS servers as part of a maintenance to improve stability of your VPS service. This will cause minor disruptions to your site, which is expected to last for about 10-15 minutes on average.

The maintenance process is scheduled to begin at 7:30AM PST and is expected to last for approximately 8 hours.

Weather continues fine and not too hot. Osoyoos is under less pressure.

Feasted brO with chicken and ribs from Earls, got him croissants from Cobs, and encouraged Suzanne to bring him an Aero bar (she brought him a pack, reserving one for herself!) and then Suzanne came over to collect a garment and a ring she’d forgotten, and we had iced tea on the deck and a good old chinwag for her to decompress after caring for Ryker all day (he was an ambulatory demon who fights diaper changes with all of his considerable strength.)

Spare a thought for baby Ryker who has: lost a two day a week caregiver, has to move to four new locations because his dad’s moved out from his caregiver – his mom, with whom he is now apparently at daggers drawn. Suzanne will still be looking after him but she’s got scant days to get her apartment fit for a toddler and he’ll be moving into a one bedroom apartment after having a four bedroom to literally run around in.

Walked with Paul in Foreshore Park. His Parkinson’s symptoms are bad; one of the possible triggers is TCE (trichloroethylene) and of course over the course of his career fixing things he’s been exposed to enough of that stuff to hurt him especially as TCE is often stabilized with MEK, methyl ethyl ketone, both together being used as degreasers and both being godawful toxic substances.

He’s started the Aricept, and good God, is my heart torn. He’s not feeling a diminution of his dementia symptoms, but he is feeling insight, for the first time in months, into his disease, and it was all I could to stay present with him, and not feed my grief into the conversation, because he’s got enough of his own. I loved him so much – no one can ever know how I felt about him, especially after the kids arrived – and now I have to choke it down to be his friend. He is feeling disoriented and (after I gave him plenty of silence to compose his thoughts) he said he’s finding it harder and harder to follow conversations. His ready smile is gone. He’s still got a sense of humour and deploys it, 95% of the time with kind accuracy, but you really have to listen because his voice is starting to whisper and the Parkinsons makes his face a mask.

He walks around the seniors residence twice a day. He wishes he had a microwave so he could make himself breakfast, oatmeal is what he wants, but he faithfully turns up for their excellent meals. We’ll try to deal with it this week.

He ran a couple of errands by himself yesterday – I could have gone with him but I stayed in the car or ran other errands – successfully, and walked as much he could in the park. I was having a hard time because I can’t dawdle, I have to walk with purpose or everything hurts. And he’s slower than he’s ever been so I am less inclined to walk with him because I’m practically keeling over if I have to move that slow.

We saw a yard long valley garter snake, just shed its skin from the incredible glossy scales, sunning next to the bridge, paces from where I saw the vole. I also got to watch a heron scratching itself on the neck for TWENTY SECONDS. Much relaxation and feather shuffling afterwards  – that was viewed from the observation deck on the river. Paul got to see it too.

And he got lost and turned around on the way back. And he didn’t recognize me until I got within about five metres. It’s not a cruel disease process because diseases just are, in our DNA or in our response to our environment, but it impacts like torture for the sufferers. Fifteen minutes later he managed a bathroom visit and two errands by himself. I want him to be as independent as possible but Christ I worry.

This is a hundred million yo crab in amber.

100 million year old crab in amber, four different views

weird you want weird you get

So… apparently, there’s a company called Prestige Biotech, and it, apparently, is owned by Xiuquin Yao, and sometime in March of this year it was discovered that this company is renting a ‘storage facility’ in Reedley, a town SE of Fresno CA, which was jam-packed with infectious agents, moribund mice (almost a thousand were euthanized).

From Beth Mole’s Arstechnica article from three days ago:

Local and federal authorities have shut down what seems to be an illegal medical lab hidden in a California warehouse that contained nearly 1,000 laboratory mice, hundreds of unknown chemicals, refrigerators and freezers, vials of biohazardous materials, including blood, incubators, and at least 20 infectious agents, including SARS-CoV-2, HIV, and a herpes virus.

A criminal investigation is ongoing. The tenant of the warehouse is listed as Prestige Biotech. Prado told KSEE that the company’s president, Xiuquin Yao, was not forthcoming with information. According to the court documents, Yao told officials that his company had moved assets belonging to a defunct company called Universal Meditech Inc. (UMI), to the Reedley warehouse from another Fresno location where UMI had operated before it was evicted. Prestige was identified as a creditor to UMI. But, Prestige allegedly failed to provide any licensing or permit that would explain the laboratory activity at the warehouse.

All biological materials were secured by July 7.

list

spoke to Dave, he seems in good spirits

helped with the 3 weekends running yard sale again yesterday, where I was told what I was expected (!?) to haul away from Paul’s old room, and where I found Paul’s soaring logbook since he was almost in tears at the idea of losing it (found it in seconds…Paul could describe but not *see* it) then went to Peggy’s, where in addition to being served my healthy whole wheat pasta and green salad lunch by Peggy’s preternaturally solemn granddaughter I heard (after she left) a piece of gossip so extremely

Comic book effect applied to a photo of allegra sloman, a middle aged white woman, showing extreme levels of astonishment and virtually all of her teeth

that I only wish I could share it with anyone who cared. We three sang bluegrass standards and filk of various denominations.

I am going to Orycon; we’ll drive; Cindy will be (inshallah) healing from her first carpal tunnel surgery so I may get to spell her more often than not which is fine because I fucking love that stretch of road as much as I love the stretch of the 401 between Cornwall and London…. There is a LOT of pentup demand for a con after a two year absence so I’m sure it will be a banger for all involved.

The con will be masked. Here are the deets.

a couple hundred words on TB

Osoyoos is about to burn down. In light of that how unfortunate is this?

 

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.

orycon mebbe

Got an invite to ridealong with Cindy for Orycon. I am so goddamned tempted words don’t cover it. I’ll decide by the end of this month, when the rates go up again. It’s in Portland OR in November, so it would sort of be a 65th bday celebration. We’d be driving, I believe. It’s only five and half hours plus rest stops and the border.

I am very much thrilled to report that Keith has found a place to live that he can afford. It’s in Richmond, but I believe it’s above the flood line; at least it’s in a locale two metres higher than the Richmond average (1 m above sea level). I know bunches of stuff about the landlord/roommate but while I have mentioned him in past posts I will maintain a discreet-ish silence going forward.

Praying with all my atheistic inclusivity that Katie and her kids also find a good space.

I’ve only written 100 words in the last three days, but I’m still feeling forward motion so I’m not worried.

I’ve had breakfast and coffee.

Suzanne was here yesterday, the enshinening happened.

Very low energy day yesterday, but I managed to make myself a decent salad and fried myself up some steak strips.

Fire risk in parts of Metro K’emk’emelay are now ‘extreme’.