Hemlock B Bootsalotta

I keep telling myself I will post here and then not doing it. Then I look at the time stamp on my last entry and a month has gone by.

One of the things that definitely fell off the bus around the time of the funeral was my Spanish practice. I'm disinclined to go back to Duolingo since they brought in AI - I've seen lots of commentary from Spanish speakers that it's introduced a lot of errors into the program. But Duolingo did make it really easy to build a habit around practising, so I now I just have to figure out how to build a new one.

I'm also trying to build up the habit of doing Write Every Day again. And I started doing drawing exercises through DrawABox. And I'm trying to build a habit of going to the gym regularly again. That's really not a long list and none of the things on it are particularly difficult but I suck at changing multiple things at the same time so that does kind of explain why I keep running into a wall.

(Also new meds and learning to feed myself and big work stuff and the cat is also on new meds and ok, maybe it's more than four things.)

***

In very good news, contractor's tests all came back negative. No bone cancer. So he's back to work on Tuesday. I am very happy he's healthy, because I genuinely like the guy. It also means I can now yell at him without feeling guilty. He texted me that he spent all day yesterday driving to stores to pick up supplies.

One of the things that has been waiting for the end of the construction work is to get my fucking toilet fixed. I paid off the last of my credit cards this month and said great! Time to rack that baby up again! And called a plumber. He decreed the ancient throne to be unsalvageable so I have a new one winging it's way towards me. Some day very soon I will be able to crap in my own house without having to haul buckets of water from the shower to do so. What a country.

***

Saw my dad on Thursday. He wasn't doing great. It's alarming how fast his cognitive function is declining. Summer before last he would lose the occasional word. Now he only manages a few words before he starts struggling.

I sent an email to all family members and said, look I don't take risks around infection so we can do one of two things, either we do it at my house and everybody masks religiously for two weeks prior, OR we try and find a heated patio. I really didn't think the masking would fly, but much to my shock everybody agreed right away. The nephews said they mask anyway because they're both at new jobs and don't want to take time off. Everybody also said they are happy to do the family get-together in January, which means some gap after work events and NYE parties. So that's what we're going to do. This also gives me some extra time to get the kitchen sorted out - right now it's still full of boxes of crap. I don't want to unpack until the back window gets torn out because that's going to be filthy. But if I have a couple of extra weeks I have time to 1) harass the contractor to finish it 2) clean up after 3) put in shelves and 4) unbox everything.

Wish me luck.

***

I have been absolutely fascinated by everything that's happening around the CEO shooting in Manhattan. Not so much the shooting itself but the social media around it. Conservative commentators are getting pushback from their audiences when they frame it as "lefty's celebrating". People in New York actively telling each other not to cooperate with the police.

This article is a good example, there are people who spend their spare time solving crimes who have have done a lot to close cold cases and they're all saying nah to this one.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/internet-sleuths-say-wont-help-find-unitedhealthcare-ceo-suspect-rcna183228

It's been like a real-life Leverage episode and it's fascinating.

It has also led to a lot of Americans talking about their personal experiences with private healthcare. It's always been a horror show, but I feel like it's gotten worse in the last 10 years as the capitalism pressure-cooker gets hotter. Companies can't just make profit, they can't even just make more profit every year, they have to make a higher percentage increase in profit every year - until they hit the wall of course, because that shit's just not sustainable in the long term.

I am really hoping that Ontarians are reading these stories. Because our province is pushing for private healthcare and that's going to be very very bad news if the public just lets them get away with it.

The lovely and talented bcholmes took me to see Hanna Gadsby perform in our town in August. I've been mulling it over ever since.

Gadsby is famous for openly mining their personal traumas and tragedies for their comedy. What fuelled this show in particular was grief at the death of their father, and rage at the bureaucracy that denied him dignity in his last days of his life. They also talked about their ambivalence at the wealth that has come along with commercial success. Wealth has become part of being a celebrity because we value celebrities. In a way that we do not value, say, elderly people.

So. Somewhat topical.

Also funny as fuck. I am fascinated by their ability to talk about things that hurt and make you howl with laughter while they are doing it. I mean, there was also an extended bit about fleshlights, which probably helped. But still.

***

I had a long discussion with my sister yesterday after I told her that I would go to her thanksgiving gathering, but I would be masking and not eating with the rest of the family because they take zero precautions. I tried to explain it by saying the chances of infection might be low, but even low odds aren't worth it if the impact is really fucking bad. I don't think she got it.

And I wonder if that's because she wasn't here when I was trying to navigate getting care for the Old Man and so she didn't see just how fucking awful it is out there. And that was with some money tucked away, it would have been considerably worse if he had been poor.

I always find these conflicts so incredibly stressful. Mostly I just wish I didn't have to do it over and over and over and over again.

Still alive.

Occasionally I see posts by people who say, oh sorry I've been so quiet, I've been doing all my posting on this other site. Not me, nope. I go quiet because I suck on all social media.

***

The Old Man really really really wanted to do a dinner out with the family and I just couldn't bring myself to say no to him again yet again. I made a point of getting him his flu shot a couple of weeks ago because apparently this year's flu is a fucker, and then last night we took him out to a steak house. I was thinking I could reduce the risk by doing it 1) midweek, 2) before December started proper and 3) before office Xmas parties and family get-togethers make the numbers sky-rocket. Well #1 & 2 didn't come through for me because the place was packed. And then at the last minute the nephew couldn't come because he tested positive for covid.

Still, the Old Man said he really enjoyed himself. When spring comes we'll do it again at an outside venue - hopefully with the nephew this time - and if we can make that our new tradition I'll feel better about saying no to winter indoor gatherings. I should have done more of that this past summer, but he spent most of it in the hospital. He's in good spirits and good energy now though, so hopefully that lasts.

***

Tomorrow we drop of the bed that we finally got for him. Holy shit those things are expensive. I mean it makes sense they would be, they have to be sturdy enough not to break on people and the mattress is pretty high-tech, but still. Even so it will still be cheaper than the rental.

I am behind on so many things. My to-do list is a fucking joke, seriously, it's one of those cartoon things that has pages stapled on the bottom and just spreads all over the floor when you pick it up.

My to-do list includes writing and phoning politicians because things are a nightmare in Ontario right now. I had an argument with the housemate yesterday about how yes, voting matters, because if we weren't spending so much energy struggling to stop the Conservatives from making things worse, maybe we would have the energy to push to make things better? They made the counter-argument that this province always chooses one of the two big main parties and always the one that isn't in the federal seat - so struggling against the Conservatives is never going to not be a thing on some government level and we should just focus our energy elsewhere. They have a valid point I think, but also you gotta start somewhere, so yelling at politicians is still an item on my daily planner, because honestly I have the time equivalent of 2.5 full-time jobs now and that's what I can manage.

***

I'm trying to get back into Write Every day. Dear Lord. My brain is like the Sahara. I've been trying to write a story from the perspective of a person who struggles with depression which you would think would be easy for me, but it's surprisingly difficult to put the experience to paper.

So I was thinking about it one night when I was lying-in-bed-not-sleeping and it occurred to me that for me at least, depression has always really been about anger. So if I can write a character who is just quietly fucking furious all the time I might get closer to what I'm trying to express.

Could be an interesting exercise, if nothing else.

***

So yeah. Same old, same old over here.

From a personal relationship perspective, the worst thing about his lock-down is that I can no longer pretend not to know how much time Axel spends playing video games.

An article I was reading this morning referenced the "Y2K bug". I found it enormously amusing that the writer felt the need to explain to his audience what the Y2K bug was because of course it happened so long ago that many people reading would have been too young to understand and remember. I r geezer. Anyway, it was just a throwaway reference, but what I thought was interesting was the way it was framed. I'm paraphrasing, but the writer basically said that companies spent millions of dollars on fixing it, but it ended up being a big waste of money because "everything was fine".

I had to go back and read it again to make sure I understood what he was saying. After all the investment and work of armies of programmers updating code to accomodate a four-digit year, he's claiming that it was all a waste of time and money because - well, because their work was successful?

I'm trying to tease how why this bugs me so much. He doesn't give any reason for why he thinks that the work was unnecessary other than the fact that most systems successfully made the transition. His entire logic seems to be based on, "This is the way things are now so this is the way they would have been anyway, even if we had done nothing."

I'm wondering if that kind of thinking is behind so much of science denialism that I see. When nobody sees kids catching polio, they think "polio isn't something that happens" instead of "we are actively doing something that makes polio not happen ".

I don't know, I'm still chewing on this. What do you think?

Well OK, maybe one comment.

Guys, take my advice. Talk to the people who put together "The Package" tour. They know how to do advertising.

I'm not having my most productive day ever at work today. Go figure.

For some reason thinking about colonies on other planets and satellites sent me down the rabbit hole of thinking about intentional communities. I've met a number of people who lived in communes just from hanging around with pagans. (One I can think of in particular had been going close to 50 years at the time I met one of the members, and didn't show any signs of stopping. And that was at least 10 years ago.)

All the ones I've stumbled over or read about always seemed to be "on a piece of property somewhere out of the city" and that started me wondering if all intentional communities are necessarily rural. So I stuck a couple of terms into a search engine and started looking around.

Turns out that no, there are lots in cities. Including several in Toronto, which is kind of neat.

Just judging from what I found online it looks like Pagans and people interested in eco-housing seem to run about neck-and-neck in terms of wanting to start new communities. And that there is lots of overlap between the two, as you might expect. But that the real front-runners are Christians, who can list more active co-housing groups than everybody else put together.

And it also turns out that The International Church of Satan is starting a commune in Halifax. So there's that.




[ETA] I also found one called Lothlorien but I can't actually open the website because my work security deems it "suspicious". I'm finding that highly amusing.

I had a discussion on Facebook yesterday about the BBC's "Faces of 2011 - the women" article. Their list consists of one singer, one athlete, three politicians - one who is the list by dint of having been shot - two sexual assault victims, two brides, one bridesmaid, one woman who went on a date and a female panda.

So for the entire month of November, the only woman who did anything of note was a marine who went on a date with Justin Timberlake and in April Pippa Middleton wore a dress that made her bum look nice. December didn't manage a single human woman at all.

Wow.

So I proposed a new list. Michele Bachmann (even though I hate her) should probably stay, and Dilma Rousseff definitely. Personally I don't think sports and entertainment count as news, but Adele and Li Na both made a major impact on their respective fields so let's keep them too.

I'm still debating with myself whether or not Gabrielle Giffords, Nafissatou Diallo and/or Eman al-Obeidi should stay. Certainly Gifford's shotting and recovery was newsworthy. Diallo and al-Obeidi showed great courage in stepping forward publically to speak about what was done to them. But I'm really uncomfortable with the idea that a full quarter of a list of the most notable women of the year are famous for having been the victims of violence. So I dunno yet. I'm still thinking about it.

Now the people I would definitely add;

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman who shared the Nobel Peace Prize for 2011.
Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the first woman Prime Minister of Denmark.
Anna Grodzka, the first transgendered MP in European history.
Angela Zhang, who at 17 developed a particle to deliver chemo drugs directly to a cancer site.
The thousands of women in Egypt who marched against the military in Cairo.

Who else? Who would you add?

You know I've really liked a number of Roman Polanski films.

That doesn't in any way change the fact that he's a fucking asshole.





(Woody Allen,Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Tilda Swinton - that makes you assholes too.)