[Life] and death

Today I am going to my cousin's funeral. He hung himself a few days ago. He leaves behind a young child and many grieving family members.

I'm not that close to that side of my family - mostly because of sheer distance. They all live about four hours drive away from us, and when I was growing up, we spent a lot more time with my mom's side. So I think the last time I saw this particular cousin was most likely at my grandfather's funeral, about ten years ago. His death does not significantly alter my life.

That in itself is terribly sad.

My head is full of thoughts about family, and death, and why the two can be counted on to intersect when nothing else seems powerful enough to bring people together. I couldn't even bring this young man's face to mind when my dad told me over the phone. Most of the people at his funeral, I won't recognise. But I go, because blood ties are strong. Because death is the one thing that we all share. Because I want to be there for my dad.

And because I am grieving - not for the loss of what I had, but for not ever having it to lose.

[life] Infocom!

When I was a child and living in Africa, we had a computer. A very small, very dumb, very 1980's computer. And for this computer, we had several infocom games. Memory escapes me as to whether we had Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy while we were out in the savannah of Sudan, or whether we acquired it after we returned to Canada, but I do remember that it was the most convoluted, frustrating, make-no-sense puzzle solving game ever.

And now it is online for all to enjoy. Thank you to Neil Gaiman, who pointed the way on his journal.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Man, talk about a blast from the past. And, whatever you do, remember to pick up your mail!

[dollie] The wind beneath my wings

I'm in the midst of a project for another hobbyist, and I have to admit, it's stretching my skills in ways that I rarely experience when doing stuff solely for myself. I suppose I'm inherently lazy, and I like to stick to what I know. Yet when someone else asks me, "hey, could you make this?" my instinctive response is, "I dunno, let's find out!" And most of the time I can puzzle it out.

I'm mainly self-taught, with some help from others in the hobby who were kind enough to let me rider their coattails for a while. I'm sure that there are easier ways to do things than the methods I routinely use, but for me, part of the enjoyment of the hobby is the discovery process. Using my brain to figure out how to make the image in my imagination work on the small plastic body in front of me.

Corsets? Sure! Rolled "elven" collar? You betcha! Slashed sleeves? Bring it on!

[life/writing] The way women think

I am in the midst of a rampaging read-through of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. It's a great story, and I have just finished Wizard and Glass, which is in the main a flashback to Roland's past.

So I'm clipping along, enjoying myself, and then suddenly the book started to bother me. I couldn't figure it out - the story was fine, the writing was the usual accomplished yarn-spinning that I have come to expect from King, I was engaged in the concept of Roland as a love-sick kid. Then I was reading some scene between Susan (his sweetheart) and her maiden aunt, and it hit me.

King sucks at writing women.

He does best with young women, but even so there is always this sense of distance, like he saw a woman once and is trying to reconstruct the image from memory. I don't know that I fully expect a man to be able to think like a woman - god knows I have touble enough trying to write men - but there is also this weird melange of contempt and fear and hostility toward older women in his writing. Especially older women who have the care of young people. They are always shrieking harridans, hovering on the edge of madness, obsessed with sex (either frigid or desperate to be fucked) and utterly jealous of the young. They mouth words of love, and then send their charges off to terrible fates, their satisfied smirks barely concealed. Susan's aunt in the Dark Tower, Frannie's mother in The Stand, Ben's mother in It, Carrie's mother in Carrie, the list goes on.

All this is not to say that I think King is misogynist, or even a bad writer in any way, simply that I find him falling a bit short on this one area. It's not surprising I suppose that he should have so little understanding or sympathy for the middle-aged woman. (Although, hey, isn't he married to one?) It just makes me wince I bit when I stumble over one of these flapping, blind harpies in the middle of his otherwise well-crafted prose. And it makes me wonder what caricatures I am fond of using without realising it.

[dollie] Project!

I, as you may have known, gentle readers (all two of you), love projects. This one is moving apace, which is good, considering my serious lack of long-term get up and go. I have to do all of my going all at once, or I run out.

In progress:






Lots still to do, but I am on a roll.

Okay, the painted trees sort of suck. I'm going to fix em, I swear.

[dollie] branches like bones

Work on my semi-secret dollie project has commenced. I spent the weekend at the in-laws, where my father-in-law has a garage filled with Xtreme woodworking equipment. Very cool to play with power tools, woo! Together we built the base for what will become my Biggest Project Ever. I followed up with a trip to Micheal's, where I spent entirely too much on stuff to continue the project with.

Should things go well tomorrow, I may start posting "in progress" pictures.

[life] strange yet beautiful language

Sometimes Shawn and I have discussions about where we are going with our lives, or about how we want to raise our kids, or about meditation and how truly recognising the oneness of everything makes such a difference to every aspect of your existence.

And sometimes we have conversations that go like this.

Shawn: Hey

Me: What?

Shawn: Hey.

Me: What?

Shawn: You know what I'm doing? I'm rueing. I'm actively rueing going downstairs to do the dishes.

Me: Uh huh.

Shawn: Hey.

Me: Oh God.

Shawn: Hey, you know what you could do?

Me: Well I can guess but do inform me.

Shawn: You could do the dishes. You could do the dishes and then we could pretend that I did them, and when you were done, you could be all, Thanks for doing the dishes, Shawn, and I'd say, you're welcome.

Me: (laughing) Uh huh.

Shawn: But see, I'd wink, like this: (winks) so that we'd both know, and it'd be like me thanking you for doing the dishes. And then you could make me quesadillas.



And you know what the worst part is? I'm going to be doing the goddamn dishes, too. When Cute Spouses Attack, next on Fox.