two whole errands

well three with the cat food

we left the house two whole times yesterday and at four o’clock I said something along the lines of being an old crock who can’t deal with errands

6392 words on Part II

New song in the works. I left it for a day and it was still there when I went back, and it’s also completely different to what I normally do (guitar base). I think it’s going to be a song about the dead, for Halloweeeeeen but I don’t know for sure.

This morning on facebook our dear friend Jan from the Junction showed a picture of an egg salad sandwich from a gas station which had an expiry date of OCTOBER 23 today is thE 14TH do you think egg salad lasts that long? I don’t. Bleaurgh. Futurama meme check. (A truck stop egg salad sandwich causes the character Fry on Futurama to er…. see the episode Parasites Lost,  it has much hilarity.

While making a pit stop at an interstellar truck stop, Fry buys and eats an extremely old egg salad sandwich from a vending machine in the restroom. On returning to Earth, Fry and Bender are assigned the task of fixing the plasma fusion boiler, which promptly explodes. Bender is not damaged, but Fry is impaled by a large pipe. Despite the severity of the injury, Fry’s damaged body repairs itself in seconds and the subsequent medical examination reveals to the Planet Express crew that Fry is infested with microscopic worms from the egg salad.)

Thinking this morning…

Yeah when I just-about-mortally-wounded one of the MCs in ‘UPSUN – Sweep Off Those Waves’ my beta reader (my mother) said, ‘BUT SHE GETS BETTER RIGHT?’ and there I was forced to invent a whole new branch of alien medicine to fix her….and yes I am aware how ableist this is. Ableism is proving to be tougher to eradicate in my thought processes than racism and heteronormativity. And she’s not fixed. When someone commits an act of misogynistic terror on you, you don’t just ‘get better’.

 

Fireball

There was an enormous green fireball visible from most of the Pacific NW last night; went on twitter this morning and there’s all kinds of security footage from different angles – it sure lasted a while and illuminated the sky with an eerie green light. If it was aliens they sure blew the landing.

We’re continuing on with the Sharpe series.

Schlep this morning.

6316 words on Part II

I got the NY Times Wordle in 3 tries this morning.

but everything is going great

 

 

 

yah, that blog post heading is a line from one of my songs.

the line before it is: Sure, the world is sliding into a pit. That’s from “The Evening News” which I wrote in Montréal and is generally considered to be one of my finest tunes (the guy I took the music course from and Paul both agree).

Suzanne dropped by yesterday with a sunflower in one hand (currently brightening the kitchen) and a beige lace tablecloth (now on Granny’s dining room table) in the other and she picked up the camera set from her dead friend Richard since I couldn’t sell it on Craigslist … and so it doesn’t matter when she shows up she brings a little happiness.

I’m still thinking about Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. I think the jumping spiders are just about the cutest animated critters I’ve ever seen. I just loved that movie.

Buster seems completely healed up. When I think how much blood was on him when he showed up on the 8th it seems miraculous.

My mood isn’t bad but I don’t really feel like moving. Practiced yesterday, sent some words to mOm (which reminds me, 6012 words on part II). Watched Sharpe’s Rifles (the first Sharpe) yesterday; Jeff dl’d a simple wonderful copy. The music though is gross. Electric guitar and French horn need a lighter hand than either of the men credited with the music could supply.

I’m supposed to get Alex on Friday.

Candles up for Jessica’s (Katie’s best friend’s) dad, who’s languishing at RCH with MRSA and he can’t get his heart operated on until he throws the infection, minimum two weeks. Katie’s liable to burst into tears at the thought; he’s been a kindly hardworking lovely human for more than half her life and she’s terrified he’ll die.

Thinking about Foreshore Restaurant for Brekky.

 

sundry various miscellany potpourri

Jeff very kindly got me a copy of ‘Road Food’, Misha Collins’ show about regional US cuisine. Really enjoyed the first episode. Jeff is no fan of Vietnamese cuisine, but I am; watching the show start with Pho for breakfast (when I used to have it after I got off midnights all the time at the 24 hour place (name keeps changing) on Kingsway) was MOST enjoyable, I could practically smell it through the screen. His former castmates have started a new ‘Winchester property’, it airs for the first time this month.

We watched ‘Catherine called Birdy’ and enjoyed it mightily. The closing credits are absolutely delightful, and everything beforehand was very well done; a perfect star vehicle for the inimitable Bella Ramsey (previously from Game of Thrones and Worst Witch.) I find it amusing that if I’d known Lena Dunham was behind it I probably would have given it a miss, but many of the writing and interpersonal lapses of her past incarnations are not seen here. A woman’s allowed to get smarter. I won’t infest my site with it, but if you care, google Lena Dunham controversy and be prepared to wonder if she has any friends who don’t share their drugs with her. I mean, I could easily say a hundred controversial things before breakfast but she acted like she literally didn’t understand what she was being called on half the time, and dissolved into tears at charges of racism.

Please note that if you’re a settler accused of racism, it’s probably true! Screaming about it doesn’t help. Sit with it and stay off social media until you can represent yourself as a person capable of self-improvement. Not saying I am that person. I have moved my views somewhat but I’m in the post-wallow stage of antiracism (sample of wallow: ah me! hoW CoudL I haveKN OWN … my PAreNTS did their best – there were only two people of colour in my entire grade school, blah blah blah yes I’m 63 and white in Canada, of course I bathed in racism and ableism erryday) in which I feel a brisk disdain for white crybabies and prefer deeds to words on the subject.

There are 50K Beavis and Butthead fanfics on AO3. Jest reviewing my life choices over here.

5278 words on Part II.

For Trotsky Tuesday, please enjoy the famous combination of anarchist ideals like free love and nudity plus scientific excellence embodied in this wikipedia article about ´Élisée Reclus.

I’ve gotten to the stage in the pandemic where I’ve now imagined all my friends and relatives dying of COVID (except Onty Mary because she just WON’T, THAT’S WHY! I DON’T HAVE TO EXPLAIN THAT TO ANYONE) or sequelae and gone to their funerals in my mind. Somehow I get to arrange all those funerals too so I get things how I want them. As you know I enjoy funerals and memorial services and do like a good one. Anyway, if I sound like I’ve been randomly crying throughout the day, here’s what made me cry.

A newborn calf with really bad respiration after a tough birth, dying in its owner’s arms. A Ukrainian woman making a video for her boyfriend on the front and her apartment takes a direct hit while she’s making it. Dozens of Canadian disabled people on twitter begging for food because they have nothing in their house for Thanksgiving. Not being able to do Thanksgiving with the family. Being too lazy to cut olives for pizza. Wondering if this phone call to my mOm will be the last one. Being glad that my daughter trusts me enough to talk to me about important stuff. Being terrified to lose this housing situation. (This place is literally 50% cheaper than any even close to equivalent housing situation in all of the lower Mainland.) Being so tired that I forgot my evening meds. Every time I go to the grocery store now, I cry. I cry about the abundance of food that’s going to disappear into the maw of climate change. I cry every time I put something like coffee or almonds or chocolate in the cart. Not much, I’m not sobbing, but I’m leaking.

The pandemic is dragging us all through a slow motion mass casualty event. We’ve been abandoned by politicians but the wise expect that. What we never expected was neoliberalism is such an indelible feature in our world that it has made the people we thought we could trust – the public health authorities and epidemiologists – into villainous murderers.

During and after the Great Mortality (as the black death was known at the time) people became much more selfish, lonely, profligate, violent and distractable (by contemporary accounts, anyway, as I read in Tuchman’s ‘The Distant Mirror’.)

It’s all happening again now, and I’m in the middle of it with everyone else. These moments of sadness are because it’s easy for me to feel sad. Many beautiful things are dying, but we must rush on regardless and be adults and hide our grief.

consequences

Geologic time is now.

Putin’s raining down destruction on civilian infrastructure in Kyiv; parks and places children play. Lovely. Also, and this is a first, the Russians have turned off ALL THEIR AVIATION TRANSPONDERS. So unless you’re watching from space you have no idea where the aircraft are going. No bueno.

Mike called around 2:30. Work is coming to a head (he predicts his dismissal with a package from the company IMMINENTLY) and he just couldn’t get away. Jeff still got us burgers and shakes from White Spot, and they were fantastic, exactly what I was craving.

Ryker is sick again (a cold) so no family Thanksgiving this year. I’m just as happy about that, actually.

An academic in Turku has asked people who are destiel fans why they be fans, so I answered.

Buster, while far from completely recovered, has returned to his normal routine. He won’t be allowed out until he’s healed up.

who was in the yard

I could hear stuff getting moved around but I can’t tell whose yard the noise was really in. Half expecting to see Paul’s canoe gone when the daylight arrives.

Jeff got sammiches for supper, they were nommy. Turns out that the corned beef on rye being terrible was just that one time, it was fabulous last night.

Particulates still moderately crappy today.

Heard from Mike; he’s hoping to get some shit done and drop by later today. I’m hoping  it’s nice enough to drink beer and eat burgers on the back deck.

No sign of Buster. Jeff keeps checking up on him and he’ll probably end up at the vet.

I’m semi-participating in Jeff’s SG-1 rewatch. I keep singing to myself while doing it (I wrote A LOT OF FILK SONGS FOR THAT FANDOM Y’ALL) but not aloud, Jeff does not favour me bursting into song while I’m sitting right next to him.

5217 words on Part II, got my guitar and mandolin and ukulele practice in as well. Got the tablecloth down on the living room table again, thanks Suzanne for pitching it in the wash.

Kerch Strait Bridge blowed up (in part) the day after Putin’s birthday – I thought it was the day of, but no, so I’m issuing a correction, mOm. Constructed in 2016 after the First Ukraine War as the dirty-colonial-resource-extraction-megaproject-thumbprint of the New Russian Empire, (V Putin Proprietor), the bridge was the longest in Europe, a technical triumph and a hated symbol throughout Ukraine of Russia’s aggression.

Fixing it is going to be interesting; the Russians didn’t have anyone shooting at them during the construction the first time but they will not have any such assurance as they try to reconstruct, and they have to, because they can’t pull cherries and grain and other stolen agricultural products out of the countryside if they don’t.  (Crimean agriculture despite everything had a bumper crop this year.) Anyway, expect more stuff to blow up. The Russians have got one lane (with crazy amounts of security) on the car side going, or will soon, but the rail line is apparently going to be tougher.

Ukrainian authorities are openly mocking the Russians on social media…. it’s savage and entirely deserved. An example of press coverage. Obviously someone knew about this destruction way in advance if they planned a stamp.

working working working

Completely revised Part I of Totally Boned over the last two days; 151 words added after all the many words I deleted as being a) too precious b) not germane c) funny but in the wrong place d) guaranteed to annoy readers, however happy they made me.

I have also revised what I have of Part II in preparation for some serious work next month (November is the WRITY MONTH).

Tremendously bad dizzy spell yesterday morning at sunup. I spun, I collapsed on the john, I almost threw up, and 45 minutes later I was fine. Better this morning.

Finally mailed letter to Mary.

NOBODY has said a word to me about the poem I posted, but at least the people who read fanfic are still communicating with me. I got a kudo for the story about the camboy and the weed store owner this morning…. It’s very cute, and very sex positive, and it has the single funniest text message exchange I’ve ever written in it, and I’ve turned out a few.

If you’re here early in the morning I’ll be adding more to this post after I do some drug taking (prescribed) and laundry manipulation (mountainous, I have to get the rugs out of the dryer). Great, I’m out of some Metformin, back to the pharmacy I guess.

OKAY that’s all settled.

Buster just came in COVERED IN BLOOD. I closed the cat door and Jeff is dealing with his wounds in the upstairs bathroom. Jeff will make the determination whether he’s going to the vet or not this morning.

I was supposed to see Alex yesterday and it didn’t happen. Heavy sigh. Happy 8th birthday, kiddo.

 

 

New Poem Little Seed

You are a little seed. There are millions like you.
You were made to sprout in a mind
unthinking being sprouted; that’s
For other minds to bend. Upwards where upwards
Is defined by gravity, that mundane unknown.

I can hear people laughing in my basement.

I want that to be in the scrapings of trace nutrients
I give you, that you are so loved, and all around me
Are ancestors who can still laugh, and will never cease
Weeping this river of love. Salt water kills plants they say
But there are those that grow in brackish water.
There’s no guarantee
That you will be one of those, little seed.
I too was once a little seed, and I commit you to this world.

wrote a letter

I am finally picking up enough that I can write letters again. Handwrote (in monster script) a letter to Onty Mary and now I’m staring at it as if that will stamp and address the envelope and walk it to the newly restored post box at the end of the next street.

My irritability continues unblemished. The only thing not collecting my ire is the new Star Wars show, Andor, which is absolutely wonderful

I managed to make chicken barley soup yesterday; it has chicken, barley, peas, carrots, onions, turmeric, black pepper and lots of veggie bouillon – but it still isn’t very salty. Barley chows down salt quite effectively. Super filling and tasty.

Today I will make pork chomps, potatoes, & salad for lunch, if I can be arsed.

And on that note I should probably get up and get dressed and get going.

I scored 2196 on Waffle this morning. This is literally 250 points higher than my all time best score and double what I normally get. I STILL HATE THE GAME.

 

the annoyances

the biggest annoyance, always and forever, is the failure of every level of government in Canada to protect its most vulnerable citizens from COVID

That is a slow-match, slow-burn, never-ending anger. The dead can’t speak and so I must. Forty-six thousand Canadians have died of COVID, (that number is likely under-reported by as much as 50%), hundreds of thousands have become disabled, hundreds of thousands are experiencing loss of breadwinners and grandparents, and all of the responsibility for what should be a collective effort has been pushed onto schoolchildren and people who don’t believe in science. It’s unconscionable, and it’s daily life.

Some ratbastard trudging to work without looking where they were going nearly trod on a baby raccoon in the Seabus Station. Mama raccoon was able to effect a rescue, but no thanks to that asshole. GRRRR whole thing was caught on video, which I’m not sharing.

Family Law is a new show that I should be watching because my friend Sue Sparlin is in it. Unfortunately the lead character, ably played by Jewel Staite, is a narcissistic, petty, bullying, parental and relationship incompetent with a drinking problem.  The character is so unpleasant Jeff and I bailed after the first ep. I AM SO ANNOYED. Many good people behind and in front of the camera, but there is so much ‘humour of embarrassment’ that it’s about as much fun as getting sunstroke. Also watching children get repeatedly treated as props and dragged through their parents’ mental health issues is TRIGGERING AF. PLEASE NOTE full kudos for casting a trans woman as a trans woman as the office manager. AND SO GOOD TO SEE GENELLE WILLIAMS again.

Air quality is 50 – better but still not great. Good enough to go walking with Paul today if he has any interest.

Sent twenty dollars to a disabled Canadian via paypal this am. Sometimes people talk about their lives in such a way that you really feel your privilege. I AM SO FORTUNATE. AND I’M ANNOYED WITH TRUDEAU we were all supposed to get a double GST tax credit and now it won’t come until after Christmas and the people who need it most, the disabled, are filling up my twitter feed with tales of starvation and horror, people thinking of applying for medical assistance in dying since they aren’t given enough money on disability to live.

Katie is still too busy to see me – Friday she says.

Hoping to Darwin this fool isn’t my relative. His most recent stunt is to go on twitter and ask why the gummint isn’t doing something about

are you ready

CONTRAILS

 

jfc

JFC PEOPLE

This is what he posted, with pictures of contrails.

“You’ll notice, that not one single elected politician will say anything in regards to what we are all seeing in the sky these days. It’s absolutely disgusting. Nothing is normal about what’s happening up there yet not one politician will say a word. Right”

My responses: (and this is after I deboned it because I GOT VERY VERY SWEARY)

I was five years old the first time my pOp explained to me what contrails are. I’ve had six decades to watch people freak out about the natural consequence of applying the ass end of a 1500ºC jet to the cold dry air ten kilometres up. Fuck this wilful ignorance.

and as a comment to my twolleague ZenHeathen, My pOp was working for the National Research Council at the time…. let’s just say we don’t *worship* science in my family because science can be suborned to cruel and genocidal purposes. But neither do we pick and choose which established science to call real. eg vaccines.

PUTIN ANNEXES TERRITORY HE DOESN’T CONTROL AND BLAMES NATO. Good going dude.

A quart is called a quart because it’s a quarter of a gallon. It is annoying how many standards of measurement we have to live through. And die through, remember how close the ‘Gimli Glider’ came to being a mass casualty event and all because strangely enough gallons and litres aren’t the same.

 

 

what news

What will that Putin guy get up to next? Well, the news commentariat in English is trying to talk about Russian unlimbering nuclear weapons in its desire to secure security as if anything about it is normative or acceptable, and that by itself makes life awkward.

Another bad Air Quality day in the lower Mainland as the #Minnekhada park fire continues. No rain and summer conditions  so no help from the weather.

Apart from running a load of laundry and leaving the house with Paul yesterday was a day of doing nothing OH I FORGOT watched the first four episodes of Andor. Absolutely love the show.

Mall walk with Paul yesterday. Got some treats at Cobbs – four chocolate croissants and two blueberry custard danishes. Damn they were good. Also got some pita bread from the pita bread factory. Still thinking about Paul going to the pita bread factory at Eid and expecting to find one crumb of pita bread in the joint. Men are so cute sometimes.

It’s like all I care about these days is food. Everything else seems suspect.

 

 

lovely time

Peggy made us kale salad, peas, rice, naan and butter chicken and we got pumpkin pie and whipped cream for dessert.

MAN aLIVE i love that woman. She had a helluva week (in a word PLUMBING) but was in good spirits.

Paul was in good shape. The guitar didn’t come out of the case but he sang along and sang the Shanty Boys song. Like many of his songs from the Dawn of Time there’s nothing on the internet that comes anywhere close to matching the tune and the lyrics. At some point, because his variant is so interesting we should probably record it. Closest I could find. Makes sense a historical song from Michigan would turn up in London ON there was a lot of back and forthing.

Otherwise it was Cindy driving things. She sang and played Emerald Green, Vixy’s love song to Seattle (which makes me cry every time I hear it because I miss my people so bad it’s a stone in my shoe and we did an ‘all filkers assemble’ recording of it at Conflikt one time (and I’m crying again lol no). Also she played WWJD (What Would Jack Do) and it really is a fun tune even if I did write it. Also she played JoCo’s The Future Soon and the classic unfilked Mary Ellen Carter.

Then home. I bought beer the other day but I have to stop drinking any, it’s disturbing my sleep.

KEITH DROPPED BY while we were there and he and Jas (this happened the last time too I SMELL A TREND) got into a lively and emotional discussion about Keffals (a transgender Canadian streamer/twitcher treated very poorly) which I stayed the hell out of, mostly because I was entertained as hell (Jas IS extremely entertaining, especially when he starts remonstrating with his mother Cindy.) It is not in and of itself an entertaining subject but the discussion that followed on about ‘what content creators do and how they have to manage the entire internet about their content’ was FASCINATING. i am so freaking glad I’m self-published AND DO NOT HAVE TO MANAGE MY 30 FANS. It’s a miracle. I don’t have the energy to do anything but content create and tweak my twitters or whatever. And call my mOm once in a while. And I really owe Mary a letter.

We also talked about housing. I am so glad Cindy and her kids live in a rent controlled apartment and can’t get demovicted; me and Jeff on the other hand will have to scatter to the four winds if this place goes. We are quite literally paying half market rent here. Serious stuff.

No surprise to Jeff’s sneezles this morning, AQI is up around 70. The woodfire smell is continuous but not overwhelming. Very restless night of sleep for me, the AQI can’t have helped.