The standup routine known as “Jesus on the bus”.

So I’m sitting on the bus the other day and this guy gets on who looks just like Jesus.  Totally Jesus, except the burlap tunic and the halo.  I’m looking at him and thinking, sooner or later, everybody comes to Vancouver, so why not Jesus?

Then he pulls out a cell phone and I’m thinking, like, this can’t be Jesus, Jesus is in constant communication with everybody important, including me, except I don’t listen to that station any more, because I hate the ads.

You know, (sings a celestial note ‘aaah!’) “Where will you spend eternity? Get the Heavenly timeshare!” (sings a celestial note). I hate that ad. But the music isn’t bad, sometimes I listen to the music, especially when I can’t understand the words.

Anyway this guy who is obviously NOT Jesus starts talking to somebody on the phone and you know how you can always tell when a guy is talking to his mother on the phone?

Within seconds I know he’s talking to his mother, and I’m leaning forward, because if this IS Jesus, I have a couple of questions for his mom, you know, as a feminist and all.  I wanna make sure I talk to her before he hangs up because I likely won’t get another chance.  As I’m listening I realize they are discussing him going to some place in Burnaby to look at a long term care facility for his dad.

And now I’m really freaked out, because if this is Jesus, he’s talking about putting his dad in a home.  How would you prevent God from wandering if you DID put him in a home?

The poor security guard – Hey — you with the beard, get back here.

 

I have a really short attention span.  I’ve only driven away from my kids twice though, and once my husband was in the car so I had somebody to blame.

I know everybody complains about their spouse’s driving but hubby is the only driver I know who can get the airbags to go off when he’s changing lanes.  He said What?  What?  I did a shoulder check!

 

By applause, who hates it when comics ask for an audience response by saying things like “By applause, who likes Celine Dion?” or “By applause, who likes blowing cops to avoid speeding tickets?”  I hate that by applause thing.  It’s a stupid ploy to get the audience to connect to you.  You don’t WANT to connect with me, I might borrow something, like your ID.  No, you want to maintain a respectful distance, and right now you should check your purse.  I love this part, because there’s always one OCD gal who hears those magic words and checks her purse.  Ha ha!  This joke’s for you.

 

I’ve given up on buying clothes that fit.  I’m just looking for clothes that don’t make me look like Rita McNeil.  In a high wind.

 

Driving in this town has brought me closer to God than my sex life ever has.

Why, I am constantly calling upon the Lord, either to save my ass or to smite the living shit out of the clown parade we call traffic.

I’m sorry, that was mean to the clowns.

And I can’t call drivers in this town assholes because some of my best friends are assholes, and my friends can get behind the wheel of a car without becoming a menace to public safety.

Where are the bad drivers’ heads at?    I think I figured it out.  They live in the CARTOON UNIVERSE.  Yes indeed, these people think that gravity and inertia and acceleration rates just DON’T APPLY TO THEM.  So there’s all these people driving around who think that a ton and a half of car can go from 60 to zero in a car length, because their idea of reality came from a Warner Brothers cartoon.

The schools are failing us.  They should have math story problems like, if you rear end somebody in a school zone because you’re following too close, how many teeth will you have left after the guy you rear ended punches you out?  Goodnight, you’ve been wonderful.

 

 

A family story with some current relevance

A single kindness gets lonely

December 16, 1998

I remember the day Paul lost his memory.  His memory is no longer in his head, you see.  It’s a Casio 128 and his whole life is in it.  He left it on the plane from Toronto to Vancouver.

I’ve never seen Paul so mad at himself.  He was madder than the time he crushed his memory into the boards while playing crack the whip with the kids, and madder yet then the time he leaned over the toilet at work and it swan dived into the bowl.

He blankly said, “Well I guess I’ll never see -that- again,” and become very morose.  A couple of hours after we got to my parents’ place in Victoria, the phone rang.  My mother was outside and my father, who associates ringing telephones with drunken clients importuning him for assistance, refused to answer.  Paul picked it up.

“Is Paul there?” asked a pleasant female voice.

“Speaking!” said Paul, really surprised.

“I’ve got your electronic organizer!” she said.

One of the stewardesses had found it and looked in it until she came up with a BC phone number.  It was purest chance that Paul happened to answer the phone.

It came on the next flight to Victoria from Vancouver – Paul was thrilled, and touched.

So it was no surprise what Paul did when he found a daybook packed with so many names and addresses that the owner had started writing in the margins.  As soon as he saw it was a Vancouver address, he jumped in the car and drove it to the guy.  I accompanied him for laughs.

After loudly and repeatedly expressing his thanks, the gentleman told us that he was a committee chair, and a prof and an activist, and his whole life was in that book.  He had been contemplating recovering the information with something approaching despair.  He promised two things, and I know he did one because Paul got a sensational letter praising his customer service skills at work; the other was to promise that he’d photocopy his address book and put it somewhere safe first thing he got into the office.

So this is a reminder – back up your data.  It doesn’t matter if it’s on paper, a hard disk or chiselled into a rock.  Make another copy and put it someplace safe.  As soon as I got home that night I sent my mother all my friends’ email addresses as well as my address book.

It’s important to remember that a single kindness rapidly gets lonely.  That single act of being present and taking care will ripple out and have effects you can’t even contemplate.  When the world is kind to you it’s because the laws of cause and effect still rule.

I remember one other act of kindness of Paul’s.  We were driving up University just south of Bloor in Toronto and a stunning woman was stuck in traffic, four way flashers blazing, next to an old diesel Mercedes-Benz.  She looked quite distraught.

“My old car!” Paul said, because it was the exact same year and model as one of his first cars.  “I know what’s wrong,” and in about as much time as it takes to describe it, pulled in front of her, leaped out of the car, adjusted something inside the car, and got it running again.  I have taken a lot of pleasure over the years thinking of the story this woman must have told her family over supper that night.

We try to look after each other as a family, and try to emphasize kindness.  When we find things we return them, if there’s an address and a name.  Once I lost a sheaf of writing on the Royal York bus and some woman, who is an angel in human form, spent two bucks on postage getting it back to me.  I thank her, and I thank everybody who ever let me in, comforted my kids when I couldn’t be there, put a happy nothing day gift on my desk, or sent me an email from a friend of a friend.

Sometimes I think that an email inspired belly laugh in the middle of a brutal working day is a random act of kindness – travelling from someone I will never meet, at the speed of light.

Yanno…. I am rather proud of myself

I lost my Mac hard drive, and guess what?

None of my homilies are gone, they are on my site.

Only a couple of my written out songs are missing, because I backed everything up that had anything to do with music a couple of weeks ago.

My canonical list of songs was uploaded to the cloud the end of September, and I’ve only added a couple of things since.

The last couple of pieces of software I downloaded I had all my info, so I just downloaded them again, so I have Finale and Scrivener back no sweat.

Tarot for Atheists and Midnite Moving Co. are on the cloud (mostly… as I learned to my sorrow… but I may have emailed some of it to mOm and Chipper).

All the photos are gone.  That is a shame, and there’s no help for it unless I want to spend a whack of money for no guaranteed end.

I am going to be doing homilies in 2014 for church and will likely be participating in the Compost Communion first service of 2014, with my compost song.

No word back from the interview; I will take that as a no and move on.

I gave my seventh unit of blood yesterday.  I have to do it while I can; my blood pressure is just inside the line and I may not even get to my tenth unit before I have to stop.  But hey, I’ve saved a life or two in my time, and that makes me happy. Katie’s iron was two points too low; she was CHOKED.  And then she and I and Keith ate sushi that I didn’t have to pay for.  And I went to pay the rent on the storage locker to keep the family buffet in the family.  Yeah, I know.

Bone doc says I am progressing well and to keep up the physio.  I’m going back for my final review the end of December.

 

 

 

Russell Brand

Remember, this is a guy who was so drug addicted and so poor he had to give handjobs in public washrooms at one point.  So when he wails on about the underclass he’s fecking well been there.

we know what the revolution won’t look like.

what’s the scheme, indeed….

 

LATER – updated September 2023. Turns out he’s a sex pest, rapist, child molester.

Don’t have heroes, have comrades.

 

krankenhaus x 2

Eddie’s at the vet; he’s gone a little off his feed and I am hoping it’s his teeth.

The Mac is in the shop.

I got a solid five hours with the cpap last night.  It is a super nice machine, and it has a three year warranty.

The instant I lost the Mac to the dreaded white screen of death I started thinking of hundreds of things I just had to do on it this instant.  But of course that’s not happening.  Most of everything is backed up if things really go south, which I don’t think they will.

There’s food in the fridge and food in the freezer, and I’ve taken the split pea with ham soup out of the freezer and put it in the fridge to thaw for church.

After all that fog it’s lovely to have a sunny day!

waiting

for a callback

for the onset of a period of adjustment – I’ve finally bought my machine.

for inspiration about esthetics for sunday

for inspiration to make my comments on the minister’s Rite of Ordination

but despite the waiting there has been movement; I made supper for breakfast this morning; chops and fresh green beans and fresh brussels sprouts, quartered lengthwise, both steamed together, and quartered purple spuds done up in rosemary and garlic and salt like last time since they were a spectacular hit if the comments were any indication.  That you get to watch them disappear and get thanked for them… that’s rooted in the place happiness comes from.

and I have my machine.  It smells plasticky, but that is really hard to avoid.  There are a number of lovely features, preheated moistened air, a quiet period so you can sleep before it fires up and then just sleep through that part, really quiet fans, a really nice LONG and robust power cable for those times when you really have to string it aways across a floor and he gave me a good long walk through the features.  The mask I’m already used to; it is apparently a medium and covers both nose and mouth.  It’s of a milky silicone hue, and sensorily I must report with all gravity that it feels like somebody’s upended a little hovercraft over my face. Before I figured out how to seat it properly, there’d be blasts of icy cold air going across my eyebrows, evenly on both sides, until I (once again I am not exaggerating) thought my eyebrows were going to freeze in the act of fleeing as far up my forehead as they could fling themselves.

In other acts of random candor, I must report now in a spirit of feminist self criticism.

I recently started plucking my eyebrows so that about half their normal mass is now yielding before the first pair of tweezers I ever owned that was worth a docken.

I am pleased with the results and believe it makes me look, along with new stylish glasses, and a short neutral haircut, and me resting in the ammoniacal arms of Garnier number 60, reasonably well-kempt in a low key way.  I no longer care to wear contacts even though I own a relatively recent prescription pair; the capacity to wear makeup except in the context of a miracle play or other public event, or possibly dressing up for an awards show I got invited to by accident… I wouldn’t even wear makeup to my own wedding, were my life to break out in bizarreries of that nature; no creature who loved me would countenance it, let alone ask for it.

But I must now say that every ravaged follicle under both eyebrows rose up and said in one voice, as the arctic blast from my cpap mask chased my denuded brows into the heather, “Bet you wish you hadn’t plucked us now, you sellout!” I can’t say how much warmer I would have felt, but their ghostly cries interrupted my five minutes of thinking of this and that before I fall into my nightly ‘sleep’.

I’m amazed I remember that; my sleep is like a special case of amnesia, where all my bad memories go down dark hallways and get conveniently throttled, while all the sunshine and fireworks and gleaming new bicycles and a pair of pantyhose that lasted ten years lived.

My Mac died, and I’m sad.  I have another machine, so I’m happy.

There is a balance in everything. Sometimes you’re at the pivot point, and sometimes you’re hanging on for dear life off the end. Sometimes the only thing you care about, as you fly through the air frightened and alive and hyperaware, is that the right kind of music is playing.  That is the rather neurasthenic and precious point I find myself at, and I’ve tied myself into this wildly swinging rope in the hope that inertia reasserts itself and the rope quits moving soon. I have a sack of popcorn, a tarot deck and a small stringed instrument.

 

 

Physio and carrots

Physio kicked my ass this morning.  My flexibility was deemed excellent and worthy of comment, but my lack of strength was considered troubling.  Of course.  At least I am well enough to start swimming again.

I am showing the cafe tonight, or so I fondly hope, wish me luck.

Keith dropped by last night, it was lovely to see him.

400 words on T4A yesterday.

I picked some organic carrots for snax…. they were yummy.  It’s amazing how fast those suckers disappear when they are so slender and fresh.

Hot sauce!

Pugs for Halloween.

Rant and sing.

  • Rex Murphy – please quit talking about the First Peoples as if you had a clue; you’ve left both compassion and history mired in the mealy-mouthed racism of your latest screed. Link goes to cluelessness.   Oh and by the way, it’s a special left wing brand of racism to say those cop cars were burned by white plants of the RCMP; people who were there say otherwise and I’ve decided to believe them. Steal land, steal children, crush languages and cultural structures and see how cuddly and all ages appropriate the response will be. Let’s not forget they are fighting fracking in #Elsipogtog, for everyone!

    Practiced for an hour today… Jeff had to go out to wrangle backups for a customer so I sang loud and hard and got FINALLY FINALLY a verse together for the Game of Thrones song.
    When we were small no one could tell the two of us apart
    and I learned to fence and ride with all my soul and all my heart
    then I’m just a little older and my Da cares not a fig
    I’m tarted up and shown about just like a harvest pig
    And there’s more than one way forward, and there’s more than one way back
    and you can sit this one out if you haven’t got the stones
    I’ve always thought a good defense starts with a swift attack
    and that’s the way I play it when I play the Game of Thrones  (Obviously this is Cirsei’s verse).
    And now, time to do some chores.

Food and more food

Cooked up a standing rib roast for Jeff, Rob, Tom and Peggy last night; the taters were an extremely well received new red-skinned potatoes, quartered and dredged in salt, rosemary and garlic and roasted and I also made steamed carrots and the usual corn and peas.  Peggy brought HOME MADE PUNKIN PIE X 2 may she be worshipped and adored forever and ever, AND whipped cream, and whipped the cream TOO. OM NOM NOMMITY. Rob brought a blueberry pie, which I am, like an evil, evil crathur, contemplating for brekkie.

Reviewed the birds’ eye maple which will be used in Tom’s custom guitar (it’s a good thing, and will be a pretty thing). Once the guitar is made he will be playing a lot more.

Job interview went well.  I am now hoping my former boss will get back to me via LinkedIn with his phone number so I can get a proper reference.

Life proceeds!

Back to work maybe.

I am hopeful to at least get sent to an interview this week.  In the meantime, I have completed and frozen the turkey soup, which is more like turkey stew, and now must repair the damage to the kitchen – a twenty pound turkey carcase leaves a greasy trail.

Landlord was unhelpful.  I must now wait another month.  Oh well.  Those that burn their arses must sit on the blisters.

New Game of Thrones Mashup.  I did laugh quite immoderately.