I won’t be here for Elly’s performance…

But maybe some of you will be…

Shining a Light on Disability

What is mental illness? Is it a chemical imbalance? Can we get over it? In her
fast-paced, one-woman play Now Who’s Crazy Now?, Elly Litvak candidly
brings her own personal experience living with and recovering from a serious
mental illness to the stage. The play is a highly entertaining and educational
piece, with a message of hope for recovery for everyone. 

Sunday, November 30, 2008, 7.00 pm

Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver
Norman Rothstein Theatre

Tickets: $20.00 and $12.00 for students, seniors. (Ticket subsidies available).
Call Debbie Havusha, Special Needs Coordinator, at 604.257.5151 for more info

Humour is ever so much better than violence

Prop 8 takes one in the goolies.

The cats, each in his own way, mourn Jeff’s absence; one by pissing copiously all over the chair he normally occupies in the kitchen, I’ve already Feliway’d it, and the other by voluntarily sitting in my lap for the first time in six months.  Gizmo was sitting in my lap when Eddie started howling piteously at the back door (the wind is rattling the doors and windows) so I had to stand up and push him off my lap.  He sat in the kitchen doorway, tail switching and with a miffed look.  He let Eddie have a cuff on the way by for good measure.

Biscotti has occurred

I don’t think I have quite enough data points to do a video yet, but I have a script and some of the pictures necessary to made a how to make biscotti video.  This is a hard bloody kitchen to film in.  Maybe I should be making biscotti someplace else, and evil thoughts come to the surface. I’m sure there are LOTS of people who would just HATE IT if I came to their house and made biscotti and left them there.  Yup; maybe I have a career as a biscotti fairy, setting up in people’s houses as they are expecting the open house to sell it.  I should contact stagers and ask if they have an opening.

The economic news continues to be confusing and dreary.

It was so nice to see Keith yesterday.  We watched Pitter Patter, the fourth episode of the Singing Detective.  I know it’s a really hard series to watch, and that the incessant racism and misogyny is a trial, but the stuff Dennis Potter does to narrative is a marvel for a writer to watch.  Anyway, Keith left to go see Katie, who for reasons of her own decided to go see her dad rather than me.  I ‘spect that has something to do with me asking her to, like, sort through her stuff while she’s here.  I’ll give her until mid-December and then I will simply haul all of her crap out of here and take it to the storage locker.  In the meantime I’m going to bag it all; her clothes smell like smoke even when they are clean and she hasn’t been living here in ages.

It’s very nice to have yummy food in the fridge to take to work for lunch (orangey coconut brown rice with mushrooms and bacon, leftover roast beef and chicken and bok choy stir fry).

Less than two weeks before I go to France.  Kinda puts the next little while in perspective.  I have a list…..

My list for today

Biscotti – the making of.  INCLUDING videoing the process and putting it on Youtube.

Putting away my laundry, blech.

Vacuuming my room.

Finding a cenotaph (yes, in this rain) and doing what I have never done in my adult life, which is honour the Canadian dead of various foreign wars.  After considering my options (thank you, Miss 604!) I’ve decided that by far the easiest to transit to is the Victory Square Cenotaph, in the shadow of which I changed into my Scientology protesting clothes, making it dovetail neatly with other aspects of my misspent life.  It’ll get me out of the house, anyway.

Messing around some more with the Garage Band software.  I’m now working on something that sounds like an explosion in a calliope factory.

In other news, a lot of scrap metal is radioactive, and it ends up in recycled products.  Get your Geigers running!

In other news, the Phoenix Mars lander is dead.  RIP little guy, you were the best of your kind!

In other news, Jeff is off to Victoria for a few days and I will be back at work tomorrow.  Excelsior!

more Garage Band

I am definitely in the TOO MUCH OF EVERYTHING AND ALL AT ONCE school of music making.  When it’s just me and a stringed instrument I can keep it quite moronically simple, but give me a wee bit o’ software and I turn into a complexificating loon.  I go back and forth between Not Ready Yet and Karaoke at the Hellmouth with no urge to trim it down, and this is not a good thing, as they are sounding increasingly bizarre.

Hopefully today I will be able to sweet talk Jeff into visiting some of the audio places around; i have my eye on a better mike and headset, and I also need a separate headset for the Casio keys because there’s no large hole to small hole plug in adapter adapter and otherwise I have to run it through Garage Band, which is occasionally inconvenient, like now, when Jeff has to twist like a pretzel around the keyboard to feed the cats.  Many thanks to Katie and Paul for keeping all the bits together – it would be useless if folks hadn’t tirelessly kept it with its ac adapter.  I am about ready to give Paul the ex-marital bed back, I’m so slammed for space in my room, and go back to a single so I can at least leave all my music set up all the time.  It’s either that or leave it strewn from one end of the house to the other, which is suboptimal.

On a work related note, I’m not there today.  I needed some time off to reacquaint myself with my creative side.  Given the right stimulus, it appears that if you perforate me, music still comes out.

I want to see if I can record any of my birthday festivities; that should be fun!

Last night I dreamed Ridley Scott was directing Brangelina in an x-rated film. Jeff looked up and said, “I’ve had the exact same dream.”  Snicker. All I got to see was Ridley telling Brad to stand ‘artistically’ in a doorway.  While nude.

Last night, roast beast with carrots onions and taters.  This morning, BLTs.  We just finished them.  Yum!

More Garage Band

Heavens. I’ve messed together another song.  The first one was a charming novelty tune called “Not Ready Yet”, and this one is now entitled “Karaoke at the Hellmouth”.  The backstory is that twin demons (they are actually hatchlings from the same clutch) have come to this plane to participate in karaoke for the very first time and one of them gets drunk and passes out during the song, and their performance is further complicated by their inability to form anything resembling consonants.  The wizard they tormented into assisting them on their hellish quest wisely put a liplock on them, so all they can do is howl and gargle, tantalizingly close to being on key, but never quite there, and certainly not capable of saying anything in their ghastly language, which can break glass or drill nails out if used in our plane.  A four year old child accompanies them on Mellotron, a fourteen year old on bass, and the pseudohorns and drum kit does the rest.  Don’t I make it sound attractive?

20 questions

Why do certain wavelengths of light trigger my migraines?

Where does the feeling I get when I’m working on a song come from?

Out of 100 married or common law men, who are married to or cohabiting with women, how many are actually gay or bi and not telling their spouses?

If I really could physically transform myself into a man, and knew I’d be able to go back to being female, would I do it?

Is Justin Trudeau going to be the next leader of the Liberal party, despite swearing that he isn’t?

Is Gregor Robertson going to be a good mayor?  (He’s sure doing the Obama get out the vote thing.  And you know, frankly, any guy who gets busted for farescoffing is gonna be five-by-five by me.)

Am I ever going to have a lap cat again?

Are you coming to my birthday party? (sing out if you haven’t been invited).

How the hell do you save a Garage Band file as another kind of audio?  Oh.  Okay, I figured it out. But don’t expex to be able to play it unless you can convert it to MP3.  And DON’T convert it unless you want to hear a minute long shoegazer song that sounds like I’m being backed up by that chick from the Star Trek theme song and two werewolves.  Truth in advertizing.

Is anybody else as grateful as me for the break in the weather yesterday??? It was warm enough to sit outside and have coffee, and it wasn’t peeing rain.  Yes, I saw Dax again yesterday.  He’s doing much better and he didn’t mention Katie at all.  He laughed his ass off when I described what I am doing with Garage Band.

Is Keith ever going to get over his love affair with GTA IV?  Yesterday was “I will crash into everything” day.

Is Allegra going to remember to keep her liquor store receipts in future?  The ******* Stella Artois was skunky.  I said **** this for ***********, I’m going to get more Lion Winter Ale.  And I did, too.

How many disgusting figurines will ScaryClown make on his two weeks of vacation?  I’ve seen one from his facebook links, and he still hasn’t answered my question about where he’s hosting now so I can repost the link to his homepage.  Anyway, the most recent one is either an aborted alien fetus or fresh Hellmouth spawn, and yet it is strangely cute and inoffensive, like all of his work.  There is a tension between his touching innocence and his stated and raging depravity that is reflected in his art.

Anybody know about a good USB mike?

What do you say to somebody who has an amazing life and committed friends and doesn’t understand or appreciate it?

How do you help a moron?  This is actually a different question that the last one. Which reminds me of a joke – how do you make a sword invisible, answer, let a coward wear it.

Do you think there will be anti-atheist rioting in the US within the next four years?

Do you think the Mormons know what they have done to their church by their successful efforts to kill Prop 8 in California?  (Sample banner : No more Mr. Nice Gay).  I really don’t think it’s a fair fight; queers have been substantially more discriminated against for longer.

Did you eat a good breakfast?

Are you going to do something good for the world today?

a big stew of links and updates!

I won something worth $720 and I gave it to a coworker after briefly toying with the notion of selling it.

I support the United Way, which is I why I won the above noted item.

I’ve been up very early every morning since the time change.

Patricia and I brainstormed a problem at work and the results were high five worthy.

I’m shopping today for my France trip.

Haagen Dasz Mayan Chocolate ice cream is REALLY good.

I have a very long list of things to do.

Flying Spaghetti Monster made a Pastafarian out of me.

Can a squirrel be cute?

There’s a new Youtube video in my account of the little waterfall next to work.

It’s so rainy that it’s actively dangerous to walk anywhere except pavement.  Wet leaves, slick grass.

It’s so rainy that the ground is exploding.  What the hell is it?

I had to take shots from different angles.

Is it a Helvella lacunosa?

These guys at least are cute and not reminiscent of inimical alien brains.

Found art in the ladies can.  This one’s for daughter Katie.

Barack Obama’s family is going to adopt ‘a mutt, like me’.  bwa ha ha!  We’re all mutts, Uncle Rocky.

I already sent this link to Paul.  Folks like this should get taken out behind the hangar and shot.

Some people study psychopaths, and I guess that’s a good thing.

I have an offer of a weeklong stay in a bungalow in Belize, and I’m seriously considering it.

Eddie and Gizmo demonstrate vertical superiority.

Doug’s contribution to the art of pumpkin carving.

Sandy P at work took this awesome pic when she was in SF.

Death by black hole and other astrophysical meditations; I especially like the notion that Apophis could have been called Bambi.  A physicist explains it all for you.

I am just finishing making waffles.

We watched Objects in Space again last night.  Honestly, it’s in my top five hours of tv ever. (Along with Restless, Michael Moschen’s special, the moon landing, and the episode of Band of Brothers where they parachute into Normandy).

If fonts had personalities…..

I am messing around a lot with Garage Band.

I found the sound of a door on freesound that was so good I put in on LOOP and listened for half an hour.

My digestion is much better since I started taking acidophilus.

Keith is supposed to turn up later today.

Oh, Nutella, how you glisten!

We are very SF positive in New Westminster.

That should hold ya for a while, I guess.  I’ll be off shortly to commit myself some serious retail therapy.

Going away for a while.

Katie didn’t show last night. Normally I wouldn’t comment, but I am really disappointed. She called Jeff but not me.

Jeff, at least, was appropriately sympathetic when this piece of intelligence reduced me to hysterics.

I finally got that huge whack of bank draft out of the house and into the hands of the financial dude.

A couple of people want Tarot readings at work today.

I’ve got four days off now. I’m going to drop out of blogging for at least a couple of days, or until I can think of something cheerful to say, whichever comes first.