Allegra Sloman's blog

I type without a net. I have tried typing these things out – yeah it’s TYPING not WRITING what’s it to ya – into a proper text editor but when I transfer it back it’s full of those freaking html hiccups that are so gross I’d rather have an honest typo than one of those monstrosities. So if you see a typo that I didn’t catch, it’s not because I’m too ignorant to spell check, it’s because I’m in too much of a hurry to mess around, most of the time. I am not proud of myself, but I am not making any excuses.

Buffy continues to erode the non-necrotic portion of my cerebellum. I’m getting VERY non watching of the fights, mostly because the shift into the cartoon universe where getting snapped against a concrete wall doesn’t cause depressed fractures, followed by coma and death, is getting really tiresome. I’m much more into the investigating and smooching. I mean, I want to investigate and smooch, I do NOT want to be snapped like the end of a whip into a mausoleum wall.

Note to the woman who promised me a phone call in November and has been known to read this blog. (Lowers voice to whisper.) I’m still waiting.

I am very happy to be heading back to work. A quarter sized chunk of my heart has been ripped out of my body and staked underneath my desk, so I must needs return due to – well, you know about why, I need not explain.

Because people have been fired all over the world for what they said in blogs, I am only going to say nice, or possibly weird and uninterpretable things, about work. So just forget about the heart and the staking. It’s all bogus, anyway. And if I said work is very frequently an even more entertaining and educational place than the Buffyverse, nobody, including most of the people who work there, would believe me.

Which reminds me of a story from Sunday’s supper table. Bree said that a guy who applied for a job at a certain company got googled, apparently that’s S.O.P. now, in which case I’m hopelessly boned for ever getting another job, and said candidate turned out to have a weblog ON WHICH HE HISSED AND HE DISSED about the interview process. Next, please! If only weeding out the morons were always this easy, sigh.

 

Pic is from a car show in Japan; anime comes to life! I had to rub my eyes.

Had a wonderful time singing and playing at Tom and Peggy’s last night. Paul cooked ginger chicken on Friday so the spicing had a chance to spread out a bit; it was really yummy; there were also chocolate macaroons, although if you don’t like coconut that won’t thrill you too much.

And ice cream. Butter pecan.

Considering that she picked up a banjo scant months ago, Brooke is really playing well; and she TUNES it, which is great. She also performed the stellar public service of tuning one of Tom’s 12 strings. I grabbed the Larrivee and played standing up for a change; I should probably give up this singing and playing sitting down stuff. More calories required if you’re standing.

Katie is still recovering from spending 36 hours with her non bf. If I even hint at asking, so what’s going on with this young man? she claws and spits; p’raps I’ll drop the subject for a while.

Paul had a horrible nightmare last night. Sure woke ME up; I’d describe it but it’s too creepy.

Back to work, school, etc for the mass of us tomorrow. John is back tonight, which reminds me. I have to go downstairs and feed Pokey. I am actually looking forward to going back to work, strange as it may sound. I don’t think the kids are looking forward to going back to school. Keith has a project to finish; I should remind him about it before he gets too far into the Buffyverse, because of course we’re still mired in season three.

What is with the right wing Yank pundits? I just exited Juancole.com; there’s an interesting trace on a standard right wing meme. Americans give much to tsunami relief, what about those oil rich Muslim countries giving generously to the relief effort in Indonesia? Then when you do the math, OF COURSE, per capita, places like Kuwait are giving more per person than the US. It’s crazymaking. But once it gets repeated, it is TRUE.

Keith is practicing katakana. He still wants to learn Japanese.

Not much to report. Katie finally came home last night but I have no idea when. Still hard at work on the world building. Could NOT easily sleep last night. My characters were eating lunch in my head and I couldn’t get them to shut up, especially once the new hire started talking. And two more characters strolled up and sat down, and Rick started talking about how this isn’t a job interview, it’s an audition. It’s completely freaky, and it’s more like being possessed than anything else I can imagine. I can see them, I can hear them and they are going places I didn’t know about previously. I knew the building was wired, but it’s insane how much more complicated it is now that I’m actually world building and having to describe all the Millennium Falcon style ‘special modifications’ have been done to the building, much to the landlord’s continuing horror. Oh, do I hate the landlord. I hate him with a passion that is purple and everlasting.

“If audiences in general are underestimated, kids really get the patronizing treatment. Two things are often forgotten about kids. One: They have no taste. They will watch just about anything. This is normal and healthy. Taste comes later. Two: They are not stupid! Kids are born intelligent, and there’s no good reason to make dumbed-down entertainment for them.” *Craig Good, Pixar.

I think I’m going to do a Buffy goodies reel, nothing but interactions between Buffy and Angel. I mean, if it wasn’t for Buffy I would be in this jam.

Comedy class on Thursday. I am so stoked. Printed out all my routines and of course edited on the way by.

Pic is Marilyn Manson as a child.

It occurred to me that you might not have figured out HOW I got the weird piece of metal. You take tin solder and melt it in a spoon over coals in a fireplace and then dump the melted metal into a bucket of water. The variation in the shapes is unbelievable from person to person; Jarmo’s was the most amazing mother goddess figure I have ever seen. The children present got long streamers, and John got a scythe…. which I have to admit freaked the hell out of me.

. . .irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear and shall not understand, and another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware, both of that “more” and of the outsider’s incomprehension. . .”

— h. w. fowler, linguist, and author of modern english usage (1968)

Getting ’nuff irony these dayz?

Katie coming to a Harry Potter movie with us on the transit

AP photo credit. These are lynx kittens. One last furry animal pic for the year.

May I take this opportunity to wish my audience (that would be my mother, two of my coworkers and a couple of Unitarians) a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR, filled with peace, prosperity, and not very much broken glass. I’ll be soaking in a hot tub at midnight. Hope you will be as comfortable as I.

Pic is random BC scenery, prob’ly Widgeon Creek.

The Lymond series changed my life. Dorothy Dunnett is one of the best writers in English. The six novels in the series are The Game of Kings, Queen’s Play, The Disorderly Knights, Pawn in Frankincense, The Ringed Castle and Checkmate.

I can’t recommend them enough. Despite the fact they are jam packed with battles on land and sea, historical characters, and have the single most incredible hero in all of literature, Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny, for some reason they are considered chick books.

I remember Ingrid telling me that for a YEAR after she read the Lymond books, she was thinking to herself in situations What Would Lymond Do? Then I read the Vorkosigan novels by Lois McMaster Bujold and had yet a new hero to worship. If you like humour, action, dastardly villains and I mean DASTARDLY and deeply flawed and brilliant heroes, look no further than any of the Vorkosigan novels. I started with (strangely enough, loaned by Ingrid) Cordelia’s Honor and that’s not a bad place to start, as it has the single most memorable exchange between a happily married couple in all of English literature. Suffice it to say that the word “Shopping” is involved.

Wade Davis in person and in print is a man to change your brain. In person he’s the single most attractive person I ever saw who wasn’t making a living from his appearance; as a presenter, I have only ever seen one other person who could command a room like that, and that was Harlan Ellison in his heyday. On a printed page he has a masterful and restrained prose style. He has a new book out which Chapters, may they disappear into the Hellmouth, isn’t carrying. At Xmas time they aren’t carrying a coffee table book by a local author? Duh. Anyway, the book I like best of Wade’s, which I reread every winter, is One River.

Edward Shlain’s Sex, Time and Power. Some of it is just plain wrong, some wrongheaded. But where he got it right, he got it very right indeed, and I read the book in 24 hours last Christmas while my brain just about burst. It is impossible to look at the godawful mess between men and women the same way after reading this book. It improved my life a lot. Essentially, once I read it, many human activities which had made no sense to me at all, did. The hair thing, for one thing.

Elaine Pagels’ the Gnostic Gospels. The first place I ran into God as Female and it made sense. (God was a boy for me prior to that). Spinetingling.

Deborah Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand, Men and Women in Conversation. This book changed how I talk to men, and how I listen to them. I should probably go back for a refresher.

First Things First by Stephen Covey and a couple of his henchthingies – one of those neverending self improvement books. However there are a LOT of good ideas in it and it continues to help me.

On the self improvement note, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. So simple that a sophisticated person might say what nonsense, but I didn’t. A powerful and thought provoking little book.

Kerri Hulme’s The Bone People. I don’t know what to say about this Booker Prize winning novel except that it is such a rare and crazy book with such deeply memorable characters, that the flimsy plot means nothing compared to how it’s written. Easily one of my top ten favourite books.

Blind Voices by Tom Reamy. Finally picked it up in soft cover. A beautiful and chilling fantasy.

The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, OF COURSE.

The Lost Queen of Egypt by Lucille Morrison. Yes, I know this is a children’s book. But the depiction of family life and the strength of the friendship between the characters is truly memorable. I’ve been looking for an (affordable) copy for 30 years.

Paul Blackburn Collected Poems. I dedicated the long poem In Colours Unsuspected to him. A great great poet. Everything I love best about poetry, the direct voice, the passion, the economy, the grinding down of one’s own daily life in the mill of art to achieve transcendance, it’s all there.

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s the Mists of Avalon. The ultimate read in the bath book. Makes magic and myth and real life into something truly great.

I light a candle for Tori’s stepdad, who died of cancer in Newfoundland this week. She’s gone to the funeral, where I hope she will be of some comfort to her poor mother, who is burying her second husband. My woes look small and my complaints like the bleating of a sheep stuck, due to its own stupidity, to a fence, by comparison.

I light a candle for George P who passed away from heart failure this week. He will be sorely missed by many for his honesty and deep mind.

I light a candle for a member of my family experiencing issues around custody right now. May it come right for the child involved.

The non bf was here yesterday and chose to interact with me rather more than has been the case previously. As in, Katie said Don’t Send Him that Picture, and I said I will, and then revealed that I already knew what his email address is. Oops. Nosy woman that I am.

Hi Sam! For those of you who don’t know, the picture of the people standing around a truck that’s gone off the road was actually provided by Sam, who said she was really surprised when she found it on my website. Just remember, in cyberspace nobody can hear you scream, and a picture is forever, once ‘oogle picks it up!

Honourable mentions for Books. Brain Droppings by George Carlin, a very funny book.

Blue Skies No Candy by Gael Greene. A very funny, entertaining soft core porn novel. All the soft core I’ve done is in emulation of that book… the notion that there are a MILLION nice men out there, and you simply WON’T have time to sleep with them all – so you’ll have to write about it instead. Sigh…. Man, ya gotta be careful what you read when you’re 18.

Um. Angel is on his knees embracing Buffy. Like, the Bufferama is over, but the images linger on – we got to episode 4 of the 3rd season and that’s where we got beached. I ADMIT IT. When David Boreanaz/Angel fell back out of hell into the vamps mansion, stark naked, I made Katie run it back. More than once. Then Katie said it might be a stunt man. Jumping Jimmy Christmas, what a horrid notion! That my own child could say such a thing. Mind you, I’m thinking that a place of torture that makes you look like you just spent 6 months working out and powering down protein shakes can’t be all bad. Where do I sign up?

I shake my fist at Glen, who got me started on all this stuff. Glower, glower. But he knows I love him anyway.

o, books! I forgot Dave D’s Machine Language, the best poem ever in the English language, but I’m prejudiced; he uses a word I invented. But that isn’t really a book… I’m sliding off the criteria now. Enough rambling, I have to get back to my world building.

Finally got it straight with my webmeister how to get into Wiki so I can mess with my website and make it more fun interesting and educational. Don’t know when THAT will happen, but at least the possibility is there.

Went walking in Deer Lake Park with Paul and Peggy, then they fed us lunch. Any lunch that includes cold sliced lamb is a feast indeed.

Saw the Incredibles yesterday. Enjoyed it tremendously. Asked Paul what he liked best about the movie and he said, “The way they all worked together as a team.” Subtext: We don’t.

Here’s a pic from the walk.

I had pics of Joe L. setting fire to things at a beach but I’m taking them down as I transfer over the blog posts.

I was waiting for a final count before I posted anything, but the scale of the destruction in the area affected by the boxing day earthquake is such that the exact death toll will never be known. I light a candle for the victims, survivors and rescue workers.

If you have the time and money, please make a donation to the International Red Cross.

Glen added something to my site and now I have to come up with the gumption to look at / deal with it. Sometimes I wish I had a tech geek grafted to me.

Much slayage in our domicile last evening, but we all swore a mightly oath that we’d do SOMETHING outside today and no longer fall into the arms of Drusilla and Spike and the rest of the bloodsucking crew.

I should examine our food stores and determine exactly what we have to for picanic baskets.

Buffy has definitely given me a boot in the rear end in her patented high kicking way… A project I shelved a while back was whispering to me half the night. There’s nothing in common between Buffy and this other thing except that there is ‘a situation’ and a bunch of lovely, weird, intelligent people in it. But a pilot and 13 episodes? Sheesh. That’s a lot of writing. Every time I think of the characters, I can SEE them! I can see what the front reception area looks like, and what the main character looks like, and what his voice sounds like when he sings (he’s a retired one hit wonder). There is A LOT of music in the story. Music is actually integral to the story. No more talking about it, it’s bad luck.

My domestic sitcheeation at the moment does unspeakable things to long dead bears, and there’s zip I can do about it except stiffen my orbicularis oris to the point the speech is no longer possible.

Pic is something random from the last few days.

Didn’t get out of bed until almost ten, although I was up reading around 9; finished Bob Wilson’s Bios, an sf novel about an extremely poisonous planet.

Paul is frying turkey sausages for the stuffing, and cutting up onions. Pretty soon I have to go downstairs and liberate the turkey from John’s fridge (there was obviously no room at the inn in OUR fridge, and we weren’t leaving it on the back deck…) and clean it, stuff it and toss it on the oven.

I am trying to develop enthusiasm for anything but it’s as if when I’m not at work I’m an unwound clock.

In about 15 minutes Jan and Jim will turn up (presumably with Carly in tow) and then I get to hang out with some of my favourite people.

Katie and John bonded last night over Buffy. Sigh. John and Katie have not had the best uncle niece relationship ever, but it has improved quite a bit since the summer, and that is a relief. Don’t know exactly what triggered the shift in Katie; John is the same as he ever was, only more so, if you know what I mean, and if you know John you know exactly what I mean.

It was wonderful seeing my folks yesterday. Paul’s mum Phyllis called while we were there to let us know she wasn’t spending Christmas evening by herself. I was relieved about that, too.

I imagine Keith is having a great time sitting around in his underwear playing games at Jeff’s. Must start on the books Jeff gave me. The new Coupland looks lovely and it’s set in Vancouver…. the other one is about how men are going to disappear in 125000 years. Is that nearly soon enough? I personally think mass human extinction is a lot closer than that, in fact I may be a participant, but I will examine the evidence.

Have a lovely boxing day, and try not to spend any money.

After a lovely turkey lunch care of my mother we visited with Barry and Jackie and Bonnie and Rani in the sun room, while watching all the birds at the feeders and then we watched quite a bit of Lord of the Rings III on Adrenaline and now we’re about to jump on the boat and come home. All in all a fine visit. Keith’s off to Jeff’s. Sigh. Wonder if I can talk Paul into doing the Pacific Buffet on the boat? Kids made out like bandits, and I got books for xmas, big surprise. Happy Boxing day everybody.

Have yourself a medicated Christmas

As your purse allows,

Numb your brain cells, then sit in a chair and browse

but have yourself a medicated Christmas now.

now we’re home for the holidays

they’ll be squalid days

I know…..

etc.

Got on the ferry at 7 am; Katie slept not at all, Paul was up at 3 am and I slept like the big baby I am until about 5, when Paul came back in. To my utter astonishment Katie came for a hug, so I already got my Christmas present. For me Christmas is about food and family. The ever heightening Mutually Assured Consumption drives me batty; Paul and I deked around Christmas presents for each other with no difficulty, and considering what a curmudgeon he’s being I am so glad. Wouldn’t give me a penny for coffee on the freaking ferry this morning! I had to go back down to the car deck and shake the Subaru out for change, dadgum it. Found and reported a suspicious package but I guess nobody wanted to believe that it was a bomb, so it was still there when I got off the boat. Keith wanted to touch it and I told him not to.

Ate a fantastic meal at Mike’s place last night. Tori gave me a self-portrait, which is a)very fine and b) still there, because in my haste to depart (to get enough shut eye, and get Keith out of there because he was feeling a little under the weather, etc) I left it on the mantel like a dolt. Had to phone back to apologize, but I’ll be back to collect it Monday or Tuesday.

Also Tori had a couple of mixed music playing-off-the-computer music loops which were tasteful and appropriate. Paul and I were really impressed, a solid & eclectic mix of music.

Still can’t believe what happened in Toronto with respect to travel. Paul and I and the kids would probably have been able to get in, but travelling around Toronto would have been a nightmare and flying/renting a car to get to London would have been one of those You Could, But Why Did You Bother stories. Hope to heaven Lexi and her hubby got to Europe and Bonnie got to Victoria – I will phone her sis shortly to find out.

Last note. I am so mad I could take up carpeting with my face. Yesterday Katie logged on, or tried to, to her MSN account and found out it had been hacked and she no longer had access, although the password clue had been changed to If u want ur mail talk to demos_love_all. Using her brother’s account, she checked the profile and demos_love_all@hotmail.com purports to be a man living in Egypt. Anyway, he – or whoever – told her if she wanted her mail back to contact him, and Paul and I immediately said no, and then made a panicked call to Mike, who promptly emailed us something to scan our system with. Katie then was the freaked out recipient of a lecture about computer security (above noted scumbag had not actually messed with her profile) and told to use Mozilla instead of Internet Exploder. Then we checked to see if there had been unauthorized access to anything else on the hard drive, and apparently not. Needless to say we’re all really shaken and cheesed off, and Katie is scared all of her friends will think any nasty emails that demos_love_all writes are really from her. Also, she never wrote down anybody’s email address, so she’s flying blind – apart from her non-bf and a couple of other people she’s no idea what the addresses are of all of her friends. I have memorized everybody’s email for anybody that matters to me so I don’t have to go through this kind of crap if my hard drive crashes. When my hard drive crashes. Heavy sigh.

Much Christmas Joy and Hugs to you all. I wish my brother would get here, can’t open prezzies until he shows up!