what a thing to have a brO (and friends)

REPENTANCE BEFORE UNITY

With thanks for the many simple pleasures of MST Country, with thanks to the people and the stories that make this place, for the sky, land and water, for all the beautiful creatures herein. It is a good day.

Jeff has (like Thorkel) stood in the ‘undeviating stream of my complaints’ as I whined about my health (okay the rumours about brain damage are true! what it is!) and survived!

Also I called Dave and wordsaladed all over his uncomplaining ear. He’s got to haul himself off to a doctor as well, shortly, and he’s looking forward to it about as much as I did. I have to go into the clinic 14 days hence.

Today I am going to wander down to the drugstore and find out what manner of side effect lies in wait for me there. DO NOT WANT a YEAR OF NAUSEA.

Tomorrow I’m going to the Junction to help Katie set up the baby room and nag her dad about how old he got, since he’ll be 72 tomorrow. Last time I was there we had a talk about the things that could have killed him, like the time he hit a wall on his motorcycle at 50 miles an hour, then (limping four ways from Sunday) rode what was left of it to Ron M.’s place in London and crashed on his couch. Shook it off and beat most of the dings out of it the next day. The shit we get up to when we’re young! and then after we’ve survived it we wake up in a cold sweat decades later going HOLY SHIZZBALLS OF RECKONING. I still get a chill when I think about the plane crash. Surviving stuff like that should make you a better person, but as best I recollect the only thing that came out of it was that we should have wills, although we didn’t actually DO anything about it until years later.

I’m up to 2700 words on the haunted object story and I’m loving the dialog, it’s most hilarious and effective (and yes I do say so myself, dialogue is one of my writing skillsets).

I now veer wildly off into Schadenfreude land. He was a cruel and evil and anti-science man, and now he’s fondling Satan’s dick in hell, and GOOD. For when the link disappears:

(Ed Mazza, Yahoo News, Monday September 13 2021)

Bob Enyart, a notoriously homophobic right-wing radio host who refused to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, has died of COVID-19.

The death was announced on Facebook.

“It comes with an extremely heavy heart that my close friend and co-host of Real Science Radio has lost his battle with COVID,” wrote Fred Williams, co-host of the ironically named show, which routinely pushed anti-science talking points, including creationism.

Enyart was 62, according to Newsweek.

My age. LOL Fred do tell me your vaxx status

after all, repulsigans, you have taught me that the cruelty is the message as “Cops” returns to Fox Media

later that morning – Mike called and told me about the Reddit Herman Cain award and it’s all for vile people who said covid was a hoax and then died of it so I was able to tell Mike I already had an award recipient on my blog this morning DOUBLE LOL

Veers wildly between weird, cool and impossible

This is bloody hilarious

Do you hear that, hsifyppah? A SHRUB PLAYS THE BANJO FROM THE SHADOWS.

I’m still in shock from the doctors appointment. I have DO SOMETHING and I do not wish to know these facts.

Did I mention that I’m going to sell the hang drum and that Keith has grown a full beard and he looks splendid?

More China

Election influencing?  Oh, I imagine so.

 

Released Wednesday (note, Nanos Poll from August), it found two out of three Canadians want the government to be more forceful in its dealing with China, with 88 per cent saying they support or somewhat support a foreign agent registry for anyone working on behalf of a foreign government or organizations to influence Canadian policies, which is something the United States and Australia already have.

fill the cup

For the beauty of the lands and waters and the strength of the people and creatures, I give thanks. To walk on this land is a great gift.

Got a plum cake over to Tom and Peggy, it was still warm in the pan, yesterday morning. Mebbe it wasn’t biscotti (me yelling over the phone at Tom I’M NOT A ONE HIT WONDER YOU KNOW while Peggy was no doubt rolling her eyes) but it sure is edibibble.

Walked in Fraser Foreshore Park and received the gift of a new bird; it was a yellow-breasted chat. I got a good long minute of him, yellow underneath like a waistcoat, over pale trews, and browny-green on top, and then my goodness he flew so I got his flight pattern and then there was his call, which was what got my attention in the first place.

I walk those woods, or I should say that little strip of biodiversity jammed and vulnerable between Sto:lo and Burnaby South’s industrial zone, often enough that I know what the background noise is like; nothing but crows and possibly eagles on a really hot day in August. A pleasant sunny day with a bit of wind in May and the woods ring with everything avian that has the capacity to sing, pretty much all blowing up their syrinxes at once. But this fellow was alone, and he said chak, like a bird four times his size and bellicose, and I thought who the hell is that? for he is not much of a conversationalist and I have not heard him before.

He kept making noise, that irritating chak! noise, until by great good fortune he turned out to be as yellow as a goddamned Minion and thus almost comically visible to an amateur such as I. (Less than five metres off the trail, less than five metres up a tree, and in bright frikkin sunshine. HULLO. He flopped from branch to branch and he didn’t care who saw him. And I could have stood there a while longer but chose not to, because I don’t persist in standing as well as I used to, and I had enough markers to be able to figure out what manner of critter I was looking at (I’d also clocked the eyestripe). This species is omnivorous. He’ll do well in that park if he eats millet, someone is feeding the ground birds.

I offered to take Paul to lunch and he deferred to Keith who was on another call. We were on the way back to my place and heard from Keith, so we went over for a late lunch there and I got to see the whole family including Alex, which was very pleasant. My plum cake was well received. Paul and I then spent an hour singing and playing (I of course, even with my recent illness, am well rehearsed, so I made it hard on myself by picking up an instrument I do not regularly play at this time, a standard sized mandolin. I felt like butterfingers and clumsy had come to live in my hands, it was quite comical.)

THAT BUILDING IS CONCRETE. I sang as loud as my body can when I’m sitting down and Katie didn’t hear a thing.  It was so good, so very good to see her. Alex had a new game which he was playing with his oldest friend on line, which is in my view cute as hell. How else are kids supposed to sustain friendships without some technology I esk you.

I ate the bean chili that Keith made, and drank beer, and came home.

Doc appt today

mOm have you seen this birding site?

Writing along

“And we want to remind you American and Canadian citizens, that you are still our guests here and we are still your hosts.”

– Beau Dick, featured on “Skoden” by Snotty Nose Rez Kids (2017)

Beau Dick made a brief visit to this blog March 11 2020.

Eighteen hundred words yesterday and today on the cursed object story; in this short span I have managed humour, horror and character introductions, with about a hundred show tropes layered in, and all in broad daylight in an alleyway.

We’ve started a rewatch of Fringe. That show really flies out of the gate at 100kph. So we’re watching two JJ shows at the same time, since we’re rewatching PoI.

just knowing

For the peoples, lands and waters; I give thanks to be in MST country, may I be a good guest and visitor.

Just knowing that the picture exists….

My last post was very inspirational to me. I considered, for a moment, that I would be allowed to go to a peeler bar, a noted local establishment catering the devotees of ecdysiasts, were I accoutred with this ! As a person who is easily inspired (even more easily downcast, sadly) I was pleased to be inspired to download my vaccination certificate.

Just imagine- that what inspired me to do it was NOT my mOm telling me about her recent acquisition of same, and pOp’s, along with much waggery about how she did not want to go to any such establishment which was now, by all accounts, slavering over her custom now that ‘the pandemic is over’ which just sounds like a complete failure of the 5th estate to me. In her view and mine there’s nothing in those places she could want that would be worth not understanding her husband’s conversation! and along with that princely bargain getting a chance to swap respiratory particles, fomites and the dog shit other people have walked through with every other overexcited stranger in the joint. Gee thanks says mOm but no, and even if the prospect of being surrounded by raucous strangers doesn’t appeal, there’s the whole yelling at the servers thing and what’s with how hard they make it to pee, anyhow. So my mOm tried to lead by example but only the thrill of once again being able to attend a peeler bar made it possible for me to ACT.

It seems clear to me, not to anyone else, that sometimes the BC government is my un-indicted co-conspirator and sometimes it’s selling my data to shadowy hypertoxic arms of the Chinese Army and sometimes I want to protest the RCMP but mostly I just want to disband them from the comfort of my own home, an idea that any serving member of the RCMP would find: one of a) boring b) asinine, given the positive impact of the RCMP on the course of my life c) aggravating d) indicative that I need to die. You can’t expect the critter you need to stop drawing your blood to enjoy your attempts to unfasten them.

Plum shortcake in 20 minutes

Dang those are nice plums.

Crows demanded food this morning, so I put out some almonds and closed the blind on the kitchen window so they can’t see me as I walk back and forth cooking.

Started a letter to my folks.

I’m a couple of hundred more words into ‘the Haunted Sideboard’. By the end of it it’s going to be a grand festival of community burning of cursed items, big kumbaya energy, plus romance.

Spoke to Mike. He’s a week into being off nicotine (he said he was lying awake at night listening to his lungs rattle and it was either quit vaping or die) and absolutely wild with rage at absolutely everything, plus, work is so gross that it’s honestly worse than quitting a major body fuck drug like nicotine. My coughing, after a day of being calm, has taken off again, so no Mike tomorrow simply because I don’t wish this on anyone SORRY JEFF.

Jeff has pronounced the Plum shortcake to be edible.

 

the plums

are freestone. I was anticipating ghastly prep but I’ve processed most of them already, they come apart with a single swift slice of the knife

Burritos are coming, or so I piously hope, I certainly paid for them.

1/2 an hour later…..

well i fucking jinxed us, we got the wrong order and I guess I’m out the money.  i tried to raise hell with Doordash but once I realized where the call centre was I decided to say fuck it, so I have now requested a refund. Goddamn it.

Can’t criticize China

Poor Simu Liu. The idea that the Chinese government believes it owns anyone of Chinese descent seems a little propertarian for the twenty-first century. But if anyone reading this doesn’t understand what the implications are for a city like Vancouver, then you probably won’t like UPSUN very much.

PLUMS appeared on my doorstep yesterday. They were grown in the yard of one of Peggy’s friends and I got four pounds of them. Plum duff today.

5450 words. The graphomania, along with the migraine symptoms, seems to be dying back.

Cleaned most of the dead stuff out of the fridge. What a ghastly ordeal.

Made ovenbaked chicken thighs paired up with store-bought cole slaw and potato salad, nom.

WORST REDDIT TYPO OF THE DAY content warning slur alert

Crip tonight.

I nearly tore my eyelashes off in horrrrorrrr JFC.

then I start thinking about punchlines for jokes because I can hold two opposed ideas in my mind at the same time