Let the saliva flow

Halibut and salmon on the barbecue which Paul *keeps in his vehicle*, shrimp with lemon garlic butter sauce, fresh corn on the cob, green beans, green salad, beer and wine for dins; Katie and darlin’ Alex, Leo and Linda, Keith and brO et moi bien sûr for company, and the weather cooperated sufficiently that we could eat al fresco.

A completely splendid meal with even better company and I now have another wonderful family memory and I’ve seen almost enough pictures of Pikku Leo and Annabelle, Leo and Linda’s totally gorgeous grandbabies. Oh yeah and their kids are good-looking too, whatever.

Rather than ask some tired questions about how was your trip I asked the specific question, “Where did you get your worst night’s sleep?” Which prompted much reminiscence and hilarity. Also, Linda’s ‘best thing about the trip’ question has a one word answer…. TUNDRA! Plus rocks.  She’s going back to get her degree!  Being retired is awesome.

Our visitors are off to Washington State today and I wish them good weather and a safe journey as they drive their way back through the US to Ottawa. Thanks for visiting!! Now I’m waiting for them to get up so’s I can make the coffee they brought, given we haven’t had any in the house for yonks….

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Leo and Linda and Alex.  Sorry for Potato Quality, both of these pics are from my cell phone.

 

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And here, in a picture that would make John grin, is my daughter and grandson, and he has a dandelion in each hand.

Leo and Linda are here

 

Yet another brannigan with Keith yesterday, once again via text.  I made the mistake of telling him that black people are finding his current starryeyedlove fandom ‘problematic’ around race.  His response was the kind of white hot and manly flameout one might expect.

If somebody walked up to me and said, “The treatment of race in Dorothy Dunnett’s oeuvre is problematic, especially the novels set in the modern Caribbean!” you might get a faceful of rapidly exhaled oatmeal, followed by me saying, “No shit! What it is! Gimme some skin, sister!” but I wouldn’t defend it.  I would call it a problematic fandom, and I would be able to give examples and counterexamples of how that’s so.

Keith’s basic argument was I don’t see it so it isn’t there. Plus, the tone argument.

Ow.

My many failures as a mother to provide my children with adequate tools to overcome cognitive bias are being written on the world, and there’s bupkes I can do about it.  Heaving sighs over here.

Leo and Linda treated myself and Paul (Jeff declined with thanks) to Bombay Bistro last night. It was splendid and yommy and now my paltry return to them is a pot of oatmeal currently burbling on the stove.

Paul was singing and playing with me on the back deck when they arrived, and so that was very pleasant, and we’re also rehearsing for next weekend, but with the bug situation (Keith has found another live bedbug in their apartment, so the cheap exterminator turned out to be an expensive exterminator) we don’t know if Paul is going.

Buster is teaching Miss Margot to hunt.

 

I’m going to check on the oatmeal.

 

 

 

a brief response

Wendy McElroy, a public intellectual sez.
When you come out of the gate calling responsible use of language “ideologies of victimhood” you *know* who’s gonna love what follows.
Men, mostly.  That was my facebook experience.  I was going to respond on facebook and thought fuckit I have my OWN blog to rant on, why poop on the self-congratulatory parade of men who lined up to agree with every word? Oh, the mean things they said.
Not that any of you care, but I laughed my ass off when she said “For example, homosexuals have been hideously abused through much of history.” This is such a Canadian thing to say it’s quite amusing. You think she’s sticking up for homosexuals, but is she? Who’s she putting down in the process?
(I would argue the whole piece is full of these ideo-logic bombs but I just grabbed one.)
 
I can’t speak for anyone who’s First Nations, but it is a matter of documentation custom AND LANGUAGE you know that SOCIAL CONSTRUCT WE HUMANS USE TO THINK WITH that people who are gender non-normative have been living uncircumscribed lives here for hundreds of generations; the *assumption* of hideous abuse is a colonial use of language, all the more hilarious because McElroy identifies as an anarchist. She thinks she’s covered herself by using ‘much of history’ but no, she’s just revealing the ‘structural swiss cheese’ of her argument in her choice of words.
 
People are at different points along the justice spectrum. Yelling at them to move up doesn’t help and any sensible person with a long term view of social justice knows it. But some social justice enthusiasts are wont to yell, because they want a cookie for how hard they’ve worked on their isms and get shouty and irrational when unappreciated. I am that person.  Except when I’m not.  Wendy’s taking a normal human reaction to cognitive dissonance and trying to ‘other’, denigrate, condescend to and belittle SJWs by saying they’re mean sometimes.  Fuck yeah. Get me drunk and in the same room as Wendy McElroy and I’ll be a right arsehole, you betcha. 
But I’d rather be the arsehole defending the rights of those whom the state has deemed less worthy than white men, than the public intellectual who calls herself an anarchist and then sides with the oppressor with every sign of glee.  Jumpin’ Jimmy Christmas, woman.
 
Oddly, personal experience and testimony to those who think they aren’t privileged do work to move the needle toward justice, but they are really inefficient strategies being one on one, and they put a lot of emotional pressure and expectation on disadvantaged people. If you are immune to the effects of sexism and racism and all those isms, you’re lucky in your life, and cursed in your head, because you aren’t seeing and feeling the world of your fellow humans except in the narrowest way, and while you can’t tell, other people can, and that is among many things an annoying feature of do gooders.  Oh yes we will call you on your bullshit, yes we will.  Who’s a good reactionary? Who’s a good reactionary? You are. Yes you are. You know you are, fuzzums!  

Fairly busy weekend

Today it’ll be cleaning, then hanging with Mike, then brunch with this dude I met at Lorraine’s birthday gathering at the track (which, as I think I mentioned, was a truly awesome event). He makes brunch once a month as a fundraiser / can gatherer for the Food Bank and pics from previous events showing people from 6 months to 65 years old cheerfully consuming pamcakes in a sunny kitchen are tremendously appealing. Also it will be super easy to get to on transit, always a consideration.

There will be laundry and editing in there too someplace.

Then Monday, Leo and Linda. YAY!

Editing

Very close to being done on the Homilies book, and very grateful that I have something to get me into the editing mood before I fling myself back into Sweep Off Those Waves.

I have a tremendous desire for an old family recipe, so I think I’m going to make it today, chicken and mushrooms poached in orange juice over rice.

 

Spoilers sort of

Don’t go to see Jason Bourne.  It’s a classic example, as Jeff and I agreed, of an action movie in which every single element is perfect but the script.  So I’m not going to say anything about the plot such as it is but I will spoil the movie for you by telling you not to go.

Keith’s coming for brekky

As the Jeff Birthday celebrations continue.

Home fries, eggs, bacon, sausages, avocado, tomatoes and if Keith wants coffee he’d better bring it.

Editing Homilies.

 

 

added in the early afternoon…

 

HE BROUGHT COFFEE. Now of course I have to clean out the coffee filter but HE ALSO BROUGHT CREAM. This concludes my whining in the subject.

I’m actually enjoying editing the homilies since they aren’t on my to do list.  Funny how that works with us sickly creative types.  Ah, good, my backspace key still works.

Working on a standup routine, goes something like this.  Nope, nope the backspace key still works.

 

Happy birthday 2 U

May I toast one of the smartest, kindest, most honest and funniest men I know – Jeff.

He’s good looking, too, but I get to say that, I’m his sister.

Pleasant weekend.  I ate at Cora’s again with Mike and this time it was absolutely amazing.  Jeff got the leftovers.  Whoever buys fruit for them knows that the hell they are doing.

We’re going to stretch the birthday out by getting yommy fud today and going to Jason Bourne next week.

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Not much to report; Keith and Paul were here yesterday to (among other things) drink beer and watch documentaries. Paul and I walked to the beer store, and this time I didn’t stiff him with any of the haulage duties. I wasn’t wearing shoes with orthotics, so different things are smarting today.

We are re-watching Burn Notice. I’m doing it with a view to establishing whether the Michael Westen character is possibly either a) asexual – for which I’ve found some evidence in behaviour and text or b) so traumatized by previous events with Fiona that he requires extraordinary circumstances to feel sexual with her at all, for which there is plenty of evidence and which is how the characters frame the situation, including Michael but excluding Fiona, who appears to be gapping that Michael has good reason to be wary.  But what if he’s using it as cover for being asexual? The way he goes la la la la la I can’t hear you when other grown men talk about their sex lives? That childlike smile, at ninety degrees to the heavy lidded smirk of a guy who’s getting hip-twitchy, the softening of his posture and the very slight backing away when Fiona’s getting frisky… Jeff says it’s self-control.  Of course, but in the service of which emotion? When he’s really trying to act like a guy fighting his feelings he gives her a little shove and looks down and away. The body language is quite stylized. The semiotics are eeentresting.

Page 71 in edits.  I am also rewriting at the paragraph level, but not too often thank heaven maybe once every ten pages or so, for clarity and connectedness.

There is karaoke a few kilometres from here tonight.  I’ll see how I feel.  Consciousness is a variable quantity these days, and it makes an appearance and vanishes at odd hours.