Not too much about Ukraine

It’s terrible. The Russians are being indiscriminate with the bombings, but so are the Saudis and the Americans right now. The hypocrisy is thick as jam, and as sticky.

I think the next stage in my psychosocial development with respect to politics is to really examine how I am untrue both to my grandfather’s approach to other human beings, which should, since he was gentle and helpful, be a guide to me, and to my sparse and weedy ethics, infested as they are with my own version(s) of gender essentialism, ableism and libertarianism, not necessarily in that order on any particular day, and I’m sure in almost 20 years of doing this I’ve revealed enough of my other bigotries to hang myself twice, were such things possible.

I mean if I’m going to bust it back to first principles. Is it a material universe – the commonality of detectible ‘reality’ – or is it an imagined and engineered projection, taking place in real-time, or is it a natural phenomenon which one can interrogate without ever knowing the full truth of, or is it God’s Creation, or (all the Creation gods’ names)’s Creation or something else entirely? I mean, I know which way I play it, every time, but is it a material universe? Should it make a difference? Should I be ashamed that the best argument I’ve seen for it NOT making a difference was from Buddy, in Free Guy? Anyway, can’t have a philosophy without taking that one one.

Sorry about the late post, I had yet another disturbed night of sleep and when I went back to sleep I slept late, it’s now almost 10 am.

2249 words on story thus far. I think I’ll try and go back to finishing the landslide one.

Yesterday was wonderful.

We went to breakfast at IHOP (it was deserted), came back here for some TV. Paul called and we went for a walk in Fraser Foreshore (I masked, he didn’t, I drove) and I took my camera, secure in the knowledge and belief that I WOULD GET PICS for my mOm, and I sat in the appointed place at close to the regular hour, and Paul and I couldn’t even hear the tweety birds, let alone see them.

Much abashed, I trudged back to the car, grousing in a desultory way at Paul, and then I saw one of the other unofficial feeding stations and put down a handful of non salted raw Styrian sunflowers and next thing I know, there’s a chickadee in the bush on the other side of the trail making the excited food song, which is the same as their regular song but buzzier, louder and with an extra DEE in there. I had put away the camera.

So I got my disney princess moment, but didn’t get a picture. BIRDS YOU ARE ANNOYING. But cute.

CW Picture of Tom Lunderville; Paul and I went to Peggy’s after that, to pick up the hat that I gave Tom after wearing it for a while. Now I’m getting it back again. He ruint the crown but I’ll reblock it. We got tea and soup. We chatted for a long time. She’s in relatively good shape all things considered and coping as best she can with how different her life is now. We talked about Ukraine a bit.

We left to go pick up my library book from the main branch of New West Library (‘this is how you lose the time war’) and then came back to Geekhaus to eat – soup Peggy gave us and borscht and lentil soup. I also showed Paul some of the stuff online that I’ve been telling him about Ukraine.

Then I ran a couple of loads of laundry and napped and cleaned out the microwave. It was a lovely sunny day, and I’m glad I wrote about it, because I was happy yesterday and I needed a reminder.

 

Who am I fooling

Didn’t leave the house yesterday but I ran the dishes and a load of laundry. Jeff and I keystone kops’d the unloading, I wish someone had been taking video. I also mopped all the salt out of the boot tray.

Jeff left the house and returned with Swiss Chalet. Swiss Chalet has had a terrible hold on my palate ever since I visited my first resto on Yonge Street in 1980 or 81. I was working at the Delta Chelsea Inn – I was a baby, and somehow I ended up running the switchboard – an experience which made me believe it would be twenty years before I ever had the strength to be a manager again – and I’d shoot over there on breaks or go after my shift.

A couple of months back I learned to my horror that the only Swiss Chalet IN ALL OF BC was closing – it’s on Lougheed Highway, and since then we’ve made an effort to grab food from there any time we can. Jeff picked up meals for us yesterday and IT WAS SO GOOD. Then he told me that they are probably staying open and that was really good news. I want to live in a Burnaby that has Swiss Chalet. I’m not saying the food is fantastic, I’m just saying it’s a comfort to me.

While Jeff was out had a practice session so long my fingers are quite sore. ah well, if you don’t practice that’s what happens.

Talked to Paul on the phone; I read him a long twitter thread about how the Russian army didn’t rotate the tires on their armored vehicles and that’s why they can’t get through the mud (obvs more complicated than that). The big takeaway is that the Russian army is so corrupt they aren’t paying for spares or basic readiness maintenance and it’s showing in their performance. (Not so much in the south where they were more massed and the weather is better and the ground more solid.) There is also the problem of what the hell is going on with the Russian airforce. The Ukrainians are still just barely holding their own and given that the Russians have overwhelming superiority in numbers and equipment why don’t they have command of the air? Once again I’m thinking they just don’t have enough spares for operational readiness.

Go go dancers from the trendiest gay bar in Ukraine are now volunteering; the waggish comment on twitter was that we now have ‘battle twinks’. OKAY HE WAS CUTE but he’s got nuthin fer me.

A reminder that Ukraine is the second largest country on that landmass. It literally stretches from New York to the Great Lakes if you lay it on top of a map of NA.

Cried, just cried like a fool, when I saw the video of thousands of Berliners greeting Ukrainian refugees off the train so they could have a place to stay.

Too early for the kudos to come in (that’s around 3 am) but the story is at 2200 words. I’m going back to sleep, three and a half hours isn’t enough.

Not posting about Ukraine today

I’m not an expert and I have no special insight. I will say that I’m terrified for Odessa now. It’s not an entertainment, it’s a million refugees and counting and death, death, death and resistance. Please give money to refugee assistance if you can.

I have a library book to pick up today and intend to do some other wandering around New Westminster.

One kudo, word count on new story now stands at 2K.

My sleep is very disturbed, but my BP was 118/84 yesterday…. yay.

Sleep’s messed up

Off to the library to pick up a book I reserved in July, lol. I was, like, 85th in line.

Galileo's first sketches of the moon in 1609

Galileo drew these after his first glimpse of a moon through a telescope.

The Ukrainian tax office, taking a leaf from its comedian president, has issued a statement about the tax implications of acquiring a Russian tank. Don’t worry, they assure the populace; by the time you get it, it’s not worth much (implication being that it’s been blown to pieces) and it’s not considered a taxable good. Full marks for straight faced ludic nonsense.

More reports of Russians refusing to fight, but the big news is the lengthy file of tanks, half tracks and trucks going into Kyiv, and not moving. Apparently supply is an issue, but what I keep hearing is that Russian boys are holing their gas tanks for the privilege of staying put.

The Russian military is using vacuum bombs (thermobaric bombs) on civilian areas. Mostly people have evacuated but not everyone can. These are bombs that basically turn everything to mush and fix it so even if you’re protected by a wall or building your lungs get mushed.

Reports are overwhelming that Black people who were going to school in Ukraine (a popular destination for med and engineering students from Africa) are being refused entry, food and medical attention at the Polish and Romanian  borders. Some of the stories are nauseating and heart-wrenching.

One of the self-funded reporters in Kyiv is a Black man from Chicago, Terrell Jermaine Starr. The amount of racist abuse he’s getting in Kyiv (there are civilians with guns everywhere in town and Ukraine is just as racist as anywhere else) is still less than the fucking bullshit that racist armchair pundit warriors are giving him on twitter. Anyway, we’re into our seventh day of the invasion, and he says he has PTSD already and people MOCKED HIM. Like wtf you got brain maggots er what? If someone shoved a gun in my face I’d be unhappy, and if ten seconds later that gun went off (not pointed at me) because the civilian left the safety off, that would definitely fix me for not sleeping soundly for the next little while.

1594 words so far on the new story, one little kudo last night on the second last story.

Must finish leftovers! No more cooking til leftovers done!!

A link to Zelenskyy dancing with his comedy troupe in black pleather (as a parody, apparently) has caromed around the internet. Here’s the translation, scanged from u/viciuniversum on reddit, unitalicized words in brackets are the translator’s, italicized words in brackets are my explanatory notes:

“Let’s pour a shot of martini
Bud’mo hey! (Cheers!) (Bud’mo, pron bood mor LITERALLY MEANS LET US BE can you imagine being from a country whose nominal drink clinking words are literally ‘let us be’????)
For freedom, for destiny, for truth!
Bud’mo hey!
One shot, two shots, three shots!
Bud’mo hey! You are gay!
For Yura, for Yulya, dulya [hand gesture] for Lyashko! (saints and heros and politicians of yore)

Here’s my bulava (Ukrainian weapon and traditional symbol of power, a short handled round mace) my brothers!
Tomorrow we go dancing against Moskovites (Russians)
We will dance Gopak (Ukrainian national dance, began in 16th century, men returning from battle would re-enact and perform feats like the balletic leaps the dance is known for. Dance is also popular in other slavic countries), we have the strength
Ukraine is not dead yet, as long as we keep drinking well:
Borsht, salo (smoked pig fat), onion, bread, moonshine,
Drink, and eat,
I drink, I drink, I drink!

Lovers,
Those who were sent here (spies),
They are covered in glitter,
We spit on them.
Artists, stylists, move aside [can’t tell]
Lip-stick, gay-parades, and in Rada (Ukrainian parliament) everyone is like that.
I don’t want to, I can’t, but for salo, let’s do it.

Here’s my bulava my brothers!
Tomorrow we go dancing against Moskovites
We will dance Gopak, we have the strength
Ukraine is not dead yet, as long as we have salo!
Borsht, salo, onion, horseradish, moonshine,
Drink, and eat,
I drink, I drink, I drink!

In like a very wet lion

March is coming in with (checks with weathercat Buster) YUP IT’S RAINING. Definitely more like a lion.

I think I owed you a Grecian urn, right mOm?

Image

3300 yo Bronze Age pottery jar with an octopus motif. From Ialysos, Rhodes

I have learned from Tish’s latest letter that Terry will be here in July and he intends to bike back to Cornwall from here. Shoulda heard me squeal, oh how we shall feast him!!! Don’t you love it when guys pushing 70 with a broom just say FUCK TIME! I AM NOT IN YOU! This is a guy whose back was broken in a bike accident …. so he’s, you know, hard fucking core. I learn also that they are grandparents again; Peter and his s/o have had a little boy.

I learn from Leo and Linda that they have REALLY CUTE GRANDCHILDREN. I mean, I already knew, but damn. They are most sincerely cute.

DAY 6 of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine 2022 edition.

Belarusian hackers have messed up troop transports from Belarus. Précis of story:

The ‘Cyber Partisans’ group said that trains had been stopped in Minsk, Orsha, and Osipovichi due to them compromising the routing system and switching devices by encrypting the data on them.

Minsk is the capital and largest city. The Belarusians are going to feel like they’re being whipped at a cart-arse in hell for supporting Putin in this mess. No surprise to me that local hackers are making their sentiments known. Interestingly Anonymous is refusing to do infrastructure hits (such as this) because they figure there’s too much that can go wrong for civilians.

Now, for a little of the old BUT HOW IS THE WAR AFFECTING THE FOLKS AT HOME?

LOLOLOL you will remember the convoy of honkies which so exercised Ottawa and Centretown for three whole weeks until the Emergencies Act was levelled against them? Or perhaps the Ukrainian ‘conflict’ has shoved that recent outbreak of boils upon the body politic from your ever more easily distracted mind?

WELLLLLL, it turns out that when you turn off the rubles AT THE GLOBAL LEVEL, the flow of money AT THE GRANULAR LEVEL which allows the honkies to continue being complete fascist assholes STOPS and they collapse like the water critter in ‘The Abyss’, when the door closes. So the convoy which was supposed to go across the US had 6 trucks and is apparently disbanding. THIS MEANS THAT THE HONKIES IN DOWNTOWN OTTAWA WERE PARTYING ON PUTIN’S DIME.

NEVER

NEVER

NEVER

forget this. They weren’t traitors by my standards (even if I said so, at the time, mostly because I’m kinda over the whole nation state thing and how can you be a traitor, etc, if the entity you’re being a ‘traitor’ to shouldn’t exist in the first fucking place….) but they sure’s fuck were dupes and bad neighbours, DUPES I tell ya, and every word of their maskhole, anti disabled, racist misogynist homophobic transphobic ahistorical anti Indigenous horse puckey was supported by Dirty Russian Money. Don’t forget. Never forget.

The punditfaced and wibblebrained Yanks on twitter are encouraging the US to go to war with Russia LIKE SURE BUDDY do you think your Cheetos are going to stay on the supermarket shelves in a post nuclear war world or do you REALLY HAVE PUDDING FOR BRAINS. Bad pudding. Jeff says, “I like pudding.”

TRANSCRIPT OF A CATHERINE BELTON INTERVIEW. She is the person who keeps getting sued by Russian oligarchs because she tells the truth about their relationships with Putin.

There are reports of gang rape (I saw on reddit, it was heartbreaking, a personal account of an 18 year old woman in eastern Ukraine being gang raped ON THE HALFTRACK by five Russian soldiers, who threw money at her and called her hohol (Ukie) whore at the end of it but it was not news and not verified) but less unclear are the multiple reports of Russian tank crews ABANDONING FUELED AND FUNCTIONING TANKS. Just leaving them in the damned road. I don’t know if they’re walking back to the border or handing themselves over to be interned until the end of the war or hiding, or just heading back to Donbas. Who the hell knows. But the untouched tanks are just sitting there. I’ve seen video of one but there are credible reports of more.

_______________

New story is up to 1516 words. I’m going back and forth with first person chapters of about a thousand words apiece.

Two kudos in my inbox this morning; one for the musicians story (in which I promote another musician/filker, go me, AND integrate a song one of the actors is well known for singing … as part of the soppily romantic ending oh come now haven’t you ever wanted to wake up after a night of love with someone singing something beautiful and romantic in the next room … speaking as someone this has happened to, it’s verra noice) and one for the “I’m going to pretend to be your perfect boyfriend” story that starts with a pickup in a bar. One of the things I like doing best in writing fanfic is taking super well known lines from Supernatural (2005) and integrating them in conversations that have nothing to do with the show to give a little frisson to the reader.

1000 words today

It was lovely to get unstoppered. Frame is a witness gets cozy with the person who’s been deputized by the US Marshals service to ‘safely conduct him to the nearest Marshals Office for processing’. The witness is traumatized and paranoid and the deputy is …. having second thoughts about being a bisexual cop in a small town in Colorado. I figure I’ll put them through hell for about 20k words and have a lovely shootout for the finale. (I don’t normally play with guns, but why not, it’s kind of a shooting week in world history.)

 

JEEEEEZ

 

There is so much misinformation, disinformation, cheerful lies, tankie mischief and plum bullshit out there about Ukraine and the Russian invasion that walking away from twitter feels like pulling your lips away from the firehose.

The war is costing Russia something on the order of 8 billion dollars a day, and they just had about half their access to the global banking system cut off. More sanctions are coming. People are protesting daily in every major Russian city (there were at least 5K in St. Pete’s alone !!) and through the entirety of the former Soviet Union, where the resistance of the Ukrainians has put steel in spines. Putin has announced that he wants the territories of the former Soviet Union back and guess what, most of the former slave states are not impressed. And from what I’ve seen there have been protests in every large city in soidisant Canada. If the rest of the sanctions come, Russia has funds for about a month more of this before they have to go to the international equivalent of Vinnie the Fish for the rest of the warchest. Germany spat in Putin’s face and sent anti tank/helicopter weapons to Ukraine. So much for Germany staying neutral! They spat twice hard when they blocked the pipeline from Russia, too, and announced plans as to how they’re going to get along fine without their gas and oil. The German public is not united in this but the poll numbers are high enough that the Ukrainians can continue to lean on them.

And Russian boys are dying in hundreds in Kharkiv right now. They ‘took’ the city and the Ukrainians took it right back.

Putin is now so desperate that he’s calling up the nuclear troops and setting them to do ‘exercises’ which is basically him grabbing his dick and saying LOOKEE HERE. Do I believe that he will use nuclear weapons? Maybe. But he’s already the kind of person who can’t wander out incognito because about a quarter of the population of Russia would be blithe on vodka for a week if they could have a chance to shiv him. To be the aggressor in a nuclear war would not cement his popularity. NATO is on alert which means that US branded troops are now free to move in Europa.

Jeff tells me that the space authority in Russia is threatening to drop shit on people they don’t like from orbit and once again, if it’s the Russians wanting to start a war from space they aren’t going to like the results any more than the poor bastards underneath whatever they drop. Biden’s as much of a Killocrat as the next one, but if ever there was a casus belli that would be it.

Of particular interest to me is the Ukrainians and Americans releasing intel that the Russians are planning an explosion somewhere in Russian controlled territory that they can blame on the Ukrainians so they can send more troops and really crush the resistance. Russians commanded by Putin did the same fucking thing for the Chechen war, blowing up apartment buildings across Russia in the runup to the Chechen War in 1999. The wikipedia article says that nobody really knows who did it but I’ve seen enough evidence to convince me, and if you need convincing please check how the timing of it is what catapulted Putin from the prime ministership into the Presidency just a few months later. NOT AN ACCIDENT.

Apart from Switzerland, which is landlocked, there isn’t a single European country currently allowing Russian flyovers.

On to a more pleasant subject. Jeff is a very good brother and roommate. After I lost my cell phone (coming up on 18 months) he loaned me his spare (non activated) cell phone, so I have an alarm and a clock and gaming platform and something to take into the bath when I want to play solitaire and soak. I dropped it numerous times and it quit. Apologetic and abashed I immediately took it to him and within minutes he had restored it to life. I do not deserve. But I am very happy.

50 cm of rain over the next day. BLOOP

 

 

Poem for Russia Today ‘journalists’

As you may or may not be aware Russia Today is a propaganda arm of the Russian state, responsible for (among other things) many of the ‘articles’ which got the honkies in Ottawa and elsewhere so upset. Alexey Kovalyov of Meduza told the workers there to grab everything ‘data’ they can before they quit. (Russia warring on Ukraine caused some of them to rethink their positions, lol.)

The tune is a modification of ‘Take a Nap’

One little thumb drive
Maybe two
Journos, all I ask of you
Before you quit
That den of shit
Load ‘em up
‘Splode ‘em up
Get a grip on it

Because ‘Russia Today’
Is Putin’s propaganda
And it’s no slanda
And it is NOT okay
Screen caps click click click
Before you wander
Over yonder
Download every file that you can grab
And then you blab
To Meduza
And they can tell the world!
(And hopefully keep you out of it.)
PS he’s noodleremover2017 on Telegram

Walked yesterday morning with Jeff to get my prescriptions yesterday and also to pick up Vitamin C and more probiotics (I ran out and I was NOT HAPPY AMIDSHIPS.) All my laundry is put away. I have no idea what I’ll do today but I am not feeling like writing, I can tell you that much. I may make chicken tenders for breakfast, since we have honey mustard sauce.

on feb 16 60 people came to my site

why? What was so different about that day?

Russian government sites are down; twitter has been throttled back in Russia; casualties are mounting and the Russians are having troubles taking Kyiv, since the Ukrainians won’t give a metre without a fight; the Russians are fighting people who didn’t chop down the trees in the public forests in Kyiv while they were dying of exposure during the Great Patriotic War because they knew the war would be over soon enough and their children would want the trees to play under.

The Russians are on the wrong side of a stupid conflict, but the Ukrainians, the good ones and the bad ones, are pretty much united.

The Russians are doing so poorly that they’re threatening nukes. I don’t know how to respond to such atrocities.

 

Zelenskyy says The Fight is here, I need ammo not a ride.
Russia OUT OF UKRAINE.

As an anarchist I’m not supposed to stand with or under any flag but the red and black, but I’m just going to give you the hairy eyeball if you want to decry the flag that is the blue of the sky and the gold of the grain.

Here’s some real anarchism: they’ve changed the street signs for the oncoming invaders so they all say a variant of GO FUCK YOURSELF\

They changed the street signs for the invaders so they all say GO FUCK YOURSELVES

productive day

Wordle 251 5/6 I LITERALLY didn’t get a correct letter until the third guess, didn’t get another until I guessed the entire word. That one was tough.

?????
?????
?????
?????
?????

A shop in the morning, walked with Paul (at Lougheed – I picked up finishing nails for Suzanne so she can hang pictures over the weekend)  and otherwise ran errands with Paul and fed Paul lunch (more peas chicken and rice THIS TIME WITH GINGER NOM) and looked at one of his boboes and got him to do his blood pressure (worse than mine…. I basically said in a level voice that that was the BP that sent me to the hospital and then he took it again and it was still high but not a crisis), two loads of laundry washed and dried (I get to put them away today lol), finished re-stringing Otto (when the hell WAS GAFilk, seriously, has it been that long and will I ever let it go that long again? the strings were so dead I should have been ashamed to record with them last winter), made some social plans with Suzanne only to learn that things have shifted a little with Katie and she’ll call me when we all get together to swim. Which reminds me the stretch has all perished out of my already super-thin bathing suit. I want to get one like the green and black one I wore when I was swimmin’ in the Dominican Republic, which Tom liked for some obscure reason. So do I want to brave the swimwear store in Metrotown? I can handle Lougheed, but Metrotown is like Tinfoil Central as far as the logie and disturbed of the Lower Mainland is concerned. Okay maybe that other mail further down Kingsway is worse but I never go there.

Keith continues to enjoy his job according to Paul.

This is a lovely although unclear as to the long term outcome story from Argentina.

Protest about the war in front of the VAG on Saturday. Putin’s threatening to use nukes. I’m trying to picture how I’ll be getting myself to write and create if that fucker bombs with poison, and the radiation level’s already up because of the tanks going through Chornobyl and kicking up all the radioactive dust.

Suzanne made things shiny and went home to nap. She’s been so busy with trying to make a living she hasn’t been able to clean her own place since she moved in, and one of her kids plus a girlfriend plus a hound is living there right now so things are lively. (But reasonably peaceful and Suzanne adores dogs and isn’t in a place in her life when she can own one. This poor hound is allergic to grass, can you imagine having to walk on grass in booties cause of allergies. I saw pics; Crooks is as cute as dogs get but beeg.)

One little kudo for an older story this morning.

Off to get my increased meds this morning, think I’ll walk over. The Entidying continues; Suzanne wants to get to the livingroom next since that’s where Master Alex plays and draws.

Peas rice and chicken

2.5 hours of taxi-ing and sitting in waiting rooms yesterday. When I saw my appointment time of 4 pm I was disgusted, since I knew I’d be on my ass waiting for a long time, but almost two hours was not what I guessed.

Anyway, I’m increasing the dose of one of my morning BP meds and I should have a scrip faxed in (I’ll check later today) and renewals for everything else. We’re hoping this will drop my blood pressure enough that the risk factors for cardiovascular damage drop somewhat.

When I came home, I realized I had some chicken thawed and I’d already made a pot of rice, so I dumped what seemed like a lot of safflower oil in a pan and fried up some chicken and rice and peas and added exactly one tablespoon of soy sauce and nothing else (it was the Most Caucastic stir fry ever, I assure you) and it was actually totally delicious and hit the spot and Jeff even had seconds, which meant it was completely consumed and there were no leftovers huzzah.

Still delightfully clear but cold yesterday, it’s supposed to be much warmer today. It was chilly in the basement these last two days.

One little kudo this morning. I wrote a story about two people who meet while already quite drunk from two different parties and one of them can’t stop barfing but they get frisky anyway. That’s the one that caught praise this morning. It has the funniest title out of all of my stories.

Much better night of sleep last night. As suspected I was twisted about the doctor appointment Tuesday night and that impacted my sleep. I could go on at length about how goddamned rude the people waiting with me were and how variable people seem to be in terms of both quality and usage of masks but there’s no point.

Probably getting a cleaning specialist today, and whether or not we do I’ll be talking to Jeff about whether we’re doing a shop this morning.

I got the strings OFF Otto but have not got them ON. Such a hassle to have ball end strings for the mandolin.

People are dead in the opening shelling of Putin’s war.

I don’t think Putin understands that he’s paved the way for a lot of unrest at home. The rouble’s tanked, foreign exchange is locked up, the army itself is poorly equipped and fed and trained and morale is low, and the suffering of the people on Russian territory as fuel and food and anything from the West skyrockets in price will be most terrible. One half of Russians support Putin’s war. One quarter does not. One quarter is not sure. Those numbers WILL change, and Putin’s going to be pissed when they don’t go his way.

Here’s a good overview of possibilities on Youtube. Make sure you turn subtitles on, that guy talks REAL fast.

off colour

I woke up about two dozen times last night, and I kept feeling nauseous, so either I ate something disagreeable yesterday or I’m sickening with something or it’s psychological because I really don’t want to sit in a doctor’s office across the street from one of the busiest emergency departments in the city later today and in all cases having to go to the doctor today is suboptimal but I will go. I’m planning on taking a taxi unless Jeff volunteers to drive me, but it’s close to rush hour for the appointment, so that seems unlikely.

Eggs and coffee for breakfast.

I’ve restrung Smokey and he sounds BETTER THAN AWESOME. I imagine I’ll go downstairs and he’ll be completely out of tune again, but I ran through ‘Gelis and Niccolo’ full chat and it sounds like god giving advice. brrr, lovely. Managed to thank Mike once again in person when he was here ‘tother night for giving me the restringing tool, which is abso wonderful and speeds things up and makes them much less scary.

I am working in the back of my mind on a song, sadly another hymn.

I am not looking forward to restringing Otto, but I have the strings and it brutally needs doing and as far as I can tell I haven’t restrung him since GAFilk. (A brief Really I should find a decent luthier and have the goddamn frets brought down, or maybe I’ll do that myself with a file.

The weird letters on my earlier posts all came back, I have no idea why.