Grumpus McLumpus iz mir

He is foremost among those I would hear praised. 

I know that Jeff is one of the most honest, hard-working people I know.  He loafs and lazes with a will (and generally with lots of help from me), but when he’s set himself to a task he’s committed, dedicated, focused and determined to get results.  He will hold his tongue rather than tell a lie; he’s aware of his cognitive biases and doesn’t pretend to be perfect in his pursuit of truth, justice and being let the fuck alone.

I understand that the world is made of in-groups, and that it doesn’t matter what you can do, or how smart or logical or disciplined or calm you are, if you’re not a member of that in-group you will not be trusted and your motives will always be suspect.  I am upset to be watching my brother, whom I trust with my life, who wouldn’t pick up a nickel that wasn’t his whether or not somebody was watching, whose ethics and personal standards are of the highest calibre, get treated like he’s untrustworthy.  I’m prejudiced  – but of course! – but that doesn’t make me wrong.

I don’t think it’s right to make costumes for animals

But you can’t argue with the results.

Example 1.

Example 2

Example 3. Previously posted, the amazing Beedogs.com site.

Example 4. Not precisely a costume, but definitely hoomin triggered.

Example 5. You have to scroll all the way down to the beginning of Feb to get the chinchillas in hats, but by that time you’ve read some Sleep Talkin Man and thus my aim is accomplished.  You’ve also seen a deformed monkey, but I’m not mocking the monkey.

Now some pigs.

Example 6. Shopped but amusing.

Example 7. A modern classic, previously posted.

Example 8.  Ditto.

Cow-irkers

There was a little colour printout of a teddy bear with a heart, which was the only evidence that somebody thought of me on Valentine’s.  Yesterday was very interesting and challenging.  I learned some interesting things and have had a chance to think about them. Everybody wants to make sure customer service is excellent, and that’s my base line belief.  Some of us are better at gauging what customers want than others, and you can all take from that what you like.

Anyway, there’s some Washingtonians and Californians in the office today and so I making more biscotti.  Once they take food from your hand you own them.

But sometimes they just like you for who you are.

so grateful…. and a bit sad

Spent the evening of Peggy’s most recent b-day hanging around the Puddle (I swam eight lengths but boy is my back stiff this morning) and consuming mint tea and biscotti.  Highly recommended.  Paul and Tom were there too.

Last night I dreamed that Justin Bieber was dead and I was hired to squeal like a teenaged girl at one of his retrospectives, there being no actual teenaged girls to do the job.  I was giggling and squealing like a trooper when an unidentified woman about my age came up to me and shot me in the head with a Nerf gun.  And, such are the manifold blessings of my life, I woke the hell up.  No disrespect, but I think The Bieb has peaked.

My coffee is ready.  Jeff has consumed half a honeydew melon for breakfast, but I cannot bring myself to follow his example.

I get to see the Bean soon! My time off at the end of the month is rapidly filling up.

Kenneth Mars has passed away.

Momz shopping kart

I emerged from the psychologist’s office with a powerful urge to spend money,  (subtext “She’s on the mend!”) so I bought an extremely simple shirt pattern and some nice cotton fabric on sale (a musical print, a soft cigar coloured paisley for an awrence (only my mother will get this reference, but ç’est la vie) and a LOUD fish print, which is probably going to make small children poke me in the boob and say “I see Nemo!  Oh look anudder Nemo!”  I also bought a very very loud 18 inch purple cotton scrap, usually used for quilting but I’m going to repurpose the fabric as handkerchiefs, also notions, tired of having crappy thread.

Margot just got some catnip.  After her hunting escapades this morning she’s as excitable and fluttery as all get out; just now she was attacking thin air and then slowly coming to terms with there not actually being anything in the air she just attacked.  I think she’s all tuckered out now, I can hear her snore-breathing and her eyes are just barely open.  She must have been so happy Eddie brought her a live toy; after he had played with it for a while and gotten her into the swing of things, he left her alone with the mouse.

After the psychologist, I poked my head in at Katie’s; I took her out for dimsum, brought her back here for job applyin’, drove all the way out to her place again for Stuporstore; dropped her and her groceries off, and drove home.  Gas situation = must get gas tomorrow; right now putting groceries away is leaving me all tired.

It’s fun going shopping with Katie; how else would I find out that her glasses, which she had when she moved out, have vanished, and now must be replaced.

But for all that, I just don’t feel like I want to own a car anymore.  It was really fun for a while, but I’ve learned my lesson.  It’s not OWNING a car that I want.  It’s access when I want it.  I still have a co-op car ticket and I’ll run up to Highgate or over to Edmunds Stn when I want a car, or borrow Jeff’s if he’ll let me.

One of Paul’s neighbour’s really likes Probes, so I’ll run it by her first and see if there’s any interest; if not I’ll stick it on Craigslist once the office has moved, inshallah.

Mouse

I woke during the night to the unmistakable sound of Eddie meowing with something in his mouth. I didn’t feel much like dealing with it at the time, so I went back to sleep.

Later, Allegra mentioned that she had both heard Eddie and watched him. She said Eddie was clearly looking for Margot, either to let her in on the fun or to provide some lessons on cathood. It was a mouse. Apparently Eddie let it go in the basement and the two cats played with it and/or chased it around for a while.

Allegra briefed me in the morning and I started the search. If Gizmo was still with us, I might not find anything, except perhaps a very small patch of blood, or possibly a tail. What I found was Margot, in the basement, staring intently at a box against a wall. I pulled the box away and sure enough a mouse appeared. With Margot’s assistance, we cornered the critter and I grabbed him by the tail. It was a cute little thing, brown and white, apparently undamaged, and stared up at me from my hand, without struggling. I carried it outside to the bushiest area I could find and let it go.

Margot was still staring at the box when I left for work.

A selection of Valentines

I’m at an appointment this morning so I won’t be going to work to hand out Valentines, but I will share this with you. I thought of doing it yesterday afternoon but it was cooking and laundry after I got home and I couldn’t get excited about printing them out.

Guess I’m just lazy.  Snurk.

Homily went well.  Double snurk.  I took half the biscotti in and that worked out well… Peggy took the leftovers.

louts

Here’s the triggering article from the LA Times.

Any article of popcult-moaning regarding the lout, without at least pulling a few examples of acceptable contemporary femininity, like, say, that appalling creature Snooki from the Jersey Shore who is so Ms Everywhere on the Scanalyzer that even I, who would rather get a day’s worth of dental work than watch Jersey Shore, cannot avoid her, is missing a point.  One point among many.

As humans continue the ongoing experiment of self domesticating themselves,

an experiment that degrades the human experience from birth by pressuring women to participate in da inhumane folly of unnecessarily invasive first world childbearing practices, kicks it up a notch with virtually no support for breastfeeding, kicks it up a notch with our ludicrous notions that we can protect our children from all harm by caging them (while saying on dog rearing websites that puppies raised in a cage are not capable of being properly socialized if you cage them longer than 16 weeks, HELLO does anybody see two points with a connecting line here? apparently not) and driving them everywhere, kicks it up a notch by parking the kids in front of a television from the minute they’ll sit still for it until the minute they find better things to do, kicks it up a notch by giving them inane and useless and actively degrading and mean-to-active-children schooling, kicks it up a notch by publicly rewarding assholes, goofs, drama queens of every gender, phat beat whiners and dictators, kicks it up by actively mocking those enjoy solving problems instead of making them, kicks it up a notch by providing actively anti-social activities…. like Xbox computer games and porn for boys, and computer games on facebook and reality tv for girls…..

we’re getting the kids we’ve bred.  If they behave badly, it’s because they were trained to, and not punished for being rude and rewarded for being polite.  It’s that simple. We are the subjects and objects of an experiment, and the experiment is COMING WRONG.

If you have kids, raise them properly – teach them that life is a story; it has a beginning/middle/end.  Even if the story is sad or hard, it’s a better story if you have manners, and hang around with other people with manners, who love you and who are lovable.  If you can’t do that, DON’T FUCKING WELL HAVE CHILDREN.  And certainly don’t expect this violent, mercenary and child unfriendly culture to do the heavy lifting for you if you do.

There are thousands of sex-trafficking victims in Canada.  They are forced migrants, aboriginal children and runaways of every description.  Anybody who thinks Canada is a child friendly place has only to look at our ability to convict child-sex traffickers and the truth of the lout is revealed.

Why would a lout want the trouble of a real woman when for a bit of cash he can have a 16 year hot Asian chick being pimped out of a massage parlour across from Metrotown?

It’s always the unspoken assumptions that trouble me.

I briefly mentioned porn.  I know men who have destroyed their ability to relate appropriately to women (as in, have normative heterosexual intercourse…) because of porn.  They retreat into loutish behaviour because they know things are not going to come right in the bedroom.

I also meant to mention that over the last 50 years, an increasing amount of troubling chemicals have wound their way into our lives and hormone balances.  There are wholesale behavioral shifts in human activities, sexual expression and gender identification which I think are bigger than what would be caused by talking about things on the daytime agony columns like Oprah or Jerry Springer.  There’s something much more basic going on in my view, and I’ll be talking about that more in later posts.