I’ve got rants in my pants

I called somebody out on using a gendered slur recently and he paused & adjusted his speech. Sometimes it’s that easy.  Now if I could just stop using my own slurs and replace them with something better.  I am in search of a few good words, to replace a few slur-ry ones.  I’m looking at YOU r-tarded and p-nsy, two words which shouldn’t even be coming into my mind, let alone leaving my mouth.  If the action is stupid, I’ll use ‘ill-considered’, and if the person is stupid to the point of being a threat to life, limb and body politic, ‘witless’.  P-nsy is more problematic.  I am thinking ‘mollescent’ or ‘mollusc’ or ‘spineless’, although if I use mollusc I am afraid the Old Ones will cotch me.  I’m working on replacing “Thank G-d” with “Thankfulness!” and I’m already well into replacing the exclamations “C—-t!” and “J—s!” with “Darwin’s Beard!”

 

Excellent news

I have a job test on Monday at noon which I am very pleased about.

Also I actually TYPED the minutes and sent a draft to Sue already; the board meeting was last night.

Also Sue and I ground our way through the Stewardship Drive work (she did most of the work but I will be instrumental in getting it all printed for the pledge package).

Furnace on for the first time this year.  House smells like a dusty cat.

 

Worth stealing wholesale from boingboing.net

A letter from Sydney Smith to Lady Georgiana Morpeth (right), Feb. 16, 1820:

Dear Lady Georgiana, — Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have done — so I feel for you.

1st. Live as well as you dare.

2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°.

3rd. Amusing books.

4th. Short views of human life — not further than dinner or tea.

5th. Be as busy as you can.

6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.

7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.

8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely – they are always worse for dignified concealment.

9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.

10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.

11th. Don’t expect too much from human life — a sorry business at the best.

12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence.

13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.

14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.

15th. Make the room where you commonly sit, gay and pleasant.

16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.

17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.

18th. Keep good blazing fires.

19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.

20th. Believe me, dear Lady Georgiana,

Very truly yours,

Sydney Smith

Brain hurts

It’s like a slap in the face to get up and realize there’s NO MORE SUN.  But hell, it’s October.  And October is SOME OTHER PLANET Month. (Obligatory Joe Hall reference).

I’m off to put gas in Ziva, maybe even for the last time as the plates expire at the end of the month and I’m not renewing them.  I will collect Katie and bring her back here for laundry and other mischief, and then churchy type stuff in preparation for the Board meeting tomorrow.

I am working on three new songs simultaneously.  One of them is because I downloaded a free app which allows me to strum chords I couldn’t play tanked up on painkillers, meth and ketamine, one of them is vibrating rapidly back and forth between being George’s theme (Lady of the Deep Waves) in my imaginary show and being something sad from the Game of Thrones universe, and the other is a Celtic style “Go forth and be happy” kinda tune.  I must be driving Jeff nuts, I’m practicing for hours every day and unfortunately it’s rather hard for me to write songs without actually, you know, like, singing.

I am contemplating the list of things I’ve put off with misery.  I’d like to trade that in for some feisty action and a dirk to slit the gizzard of my procrastination but the friendly NPC at the counter is NOT helping.

I’m enjoying having a phone that allows me to post pix directly to my blog though, I think it instantly made it more fun and interesting.

 

Yesterday, a tessellation

Jeff took me out to breakfast. I couldn’t hack a turkey just for the two of us, so it was roast chicken with taters, squash, veg and gravy. Opening (ha, everything was already open and the sound tech had just finished encouraging a rather poopy bird (flicker?) to leave via the window by which it gained entrance) and closing church; excellent service, interacting with the Bean, who is TALKING UP A STORM, finding Tom’s sweatshirt just as I was locking up, identifying it by the sawdust and getting it back to him; taking Carol home, dropping in on Kira-kitty to say hi and finding her so still that at first I thought she was dead (I thought my heart would stop) but she’s just deaf, and promptly got up when she realized I was topping up her dish. Singing and playing the compost song for the minister (I tolja I can write a song about anything); more practicing when I got home. A lovely long phone call with Jan of Courtenay – a brief one with daughter Katie – in all an entirely satisfying day. Ziva’s rooftop was retracted; glorious fall day; almost starting to be creeped out at how I’m starting to think it really should RAIN.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE.

Google Play

I know all you high tech folks will roll your eyes, but it blows my mind I can go to Google Play on my laptop, pick out apps to try, have it confirmed that they will work on my model of phone, and then they can push to my phone in seconds through the wifi.  And just as fast as I try the little suckers, they come off my phone, usually, but the drum rudiments app is proving useful, even as the music notation app is not.  For example, Angry Birds is off.  Each time the advertisements blocked my ability to destroy those verdammten schweine I died a little, and off it came – although now I know what all the fuss has been about.  So far I’ve been sticking with free apps, anybody got any tips for a good paid app? I’m looking for utilities, music apps, productivity apps and anything you’ve found useful.  I can recommend gStrings Free, it’s as good as any tuner I ever paid for and quite sensitive.

Visits.

Visited with Sue this morning to help her download from her daddy’s funeral. He was 102.  Meshuggas about the inheritance; waiting is.

LOVELY visit with Mike last night (funnily enough I’d been kvetching to Paul, with whom I was practicing yesterday, about how MIKE WUZ NOT RETURNING MY CALLS WAHWAH) and he called around 8 and I kinda forst him to let me come over.  I brought Otto and sang Theo’s Theme and John Scalzi’s Blog and Compost and Grateful and It’s Just So Nice When Someone knows your Name, and Lemming’s Twofer, and the first verse of Wanted to Believe, and Mike sang the drop D version of Dylan’s Tangled up in Blue and another song, I can’t remember which.  We talked about various things, including how trying work is for him right now, and how the insomnia really doesn’t help. BUT HE FOUND THE TAYLOR.  His parlour guitar was lost in the move but he found it again, and so me happy.  I was VERY BAD and drank two beers, which made me so drunk I collapsed on the sofa and slept from 10:30 til 8:30 the next morning.  Two beers.  I always was a lightweight, but this was ludicrous.  Also worked on Rozo for a while, her shoulders were a reticulation of weenie little knots.  While I was there Mike called Brian and I got to talk to him for a while.  There is nothing like the sound of a friend’s voice, yanno?

This morning I came home and promptly started brekkie for Jeff, being melon and bacon and pamcakes, and then Sue called and I went off and had a second breakfast of more coffee.  Also, getting checks signed so I can pay some churchy bills. Then I wandered into a sign shop and ORDERED the John Caspell Memorial Pinball Parlour sign for reelz this time, and then my other errands got shunted aside as I had to trot home due to the coffee.

Now I am looking up the language of flowers on the internet for a bouquet I’m buying for the minister tomorrow and as soon as I change my clothes – ew, slept in my clothes, what am I, frosh at some scummy college??? – I’ll be off to buy a floral bouquet, pick up some more spray paint, and buy some eggs and butter to get going on some biscotti.  Roast chicken for dinner tonight.  MMMMM chicken.

I cooked a pork roast the other night with basil and lemon thyme from Suzanne’s deck garden.  It was nommy too, although Jeff owned that it was a little overcooked.  We did agree that pork roast should be roasted, it doesn’t cook right in the crock pot.

Paul and Keith are off to Seattle for the long weekend.  Katie is doing cat care this time; I should call her.  The only reason I know she’s alive is from her facebook comments.

Miss Margot has been extra barfy.  I need to brush her very very thoroughly and give her a lot of kitty malt.

SO LOOKING FORWARD TO SINGING NEW SONG FOR MINISTER.  he he.