Island View Beach and a whole lot of meh and rambling
What was I up to this week… well, I did start a little bit of bushwhacking in the veggie garden, eliminating a lot of the overgrowth in the tomatos bed and finding a cluster of ripe and delicious cherry tomatos buried in the middle of it all.
That was about it for garden work.
My excuse was that for 4 days I had a rental car while mine was in the shop and I didn’t want to do any shovelling of the mulch pile while the rental car was parked next to it.
Yes, I know that’s a flimsy excuse when there’s so much other garden work I could do, but that’s beside the point.
Really, I’m not feeling it this year. I like the flowers, but the work is too much. I have a new rule that when anything dies, I will just slap a rock in the spot and not replace the plant.
Even at that, it’ll be a ton of maintenance.
I guess I learned something to consider for my next house, lol. In the meantime, I plan to sow seeds for perennials and plant things that I know will get big and crowd out competition.
Like lavender and asters and creeping thyme… though a lot of that will be done in the fall so they can get a jump start on next year.
But back to the rental: I ended up with a Hyundai Elantra. Fun little car, but what I didn’t care for was the color choices: there’s black, white, grey, wine, and dark blue.
Blech. When did we all get so damn boring with our car colors?
There’s a hot pink Nissan at the local dealership, I wonder what model it is… but in any case, even a bright green car would be fun, but nope. I guess people are afraid of vehicles that stand out?
Well, most people nowadays are cowards who don’t want to stick their neck out for anything.
And I guess since I just got my red car fixed, I’ll probably keep it a while longer anyway. I certainly could afford to get a new car, but I don’t really care to spend the money until mine’s dying.
Besides, I heard if you move to Mexico you have to buy a Mexican car. Sounds like a good excuse to not buy a new car in Canada.
Also because most new cars come in ugly shades of grey. Fuck that shit.
Also in ugly shades of grey, albeit with beige and black and other drabs mixed in: seemingly half of all the clothes sold in major retailers. But I have a rambling post about (online) shopping for later this week, so never mind.
What else? I figured if I set up a music practise station in the corner of my room–complete with violin, bass, guitar, clarinet, and keyboard—I might actually practise more.
So far this hasn’t worked, lol…
I’m also watching videos about jazz and jazz theory and the like.
The big adventure of the week was my Friday trip to Island View Beach in Saanich and walking for about an hour at the waterline to get my feet wet in the surf and look for interesting rocks (there weren’t really any of those to be found this time.)
After my windy walk on the beach, I debated going to check out some shops in town, but decided instead to simply drive home and order a pizza.
I guess that kinda sums up my attitude to my locale these days: I’d rather drive to a not-too-used beach, walk around, then come home, order delivery, and shop online than have to go in anywhere and deal with the Karens. Granted that I usually only shop places where there aren’t any Karens, but still.
Besides, next week I’ll have to brave the Michael’s locations when the Spooky Town Lemax pieces come in.
What else… the new cheap DVD player arrived, so I can now watch old Married With Children, South Park, and other DVDs on the relatively big screen:
The novelty wore off in about an hour, but come fall I’ll probably start working on some knitting in the evenings again when I don’t feel like doing anything useful, and then this will come in handy.
(Also: for the times my brother heads out for an couple hours, I have U2 concert DVDs to watch, lol… there would be too much complaining if I had them on when he’s here.)
Zamo would be impressed with the screen size but not thrilled that it’s up at an inaccessible height and also not pleased that “Technical Support Monkey” still refuses to get cable TV. As for that show… I dunno, man. Maybe I’m just exhausted, maybe I’m blocked, maybe it’s run its course and I’ve run out of ideas, but I think that podcast is over. I’d like to rejig the project but who knows if I’ll get around to it.
Got so much other stuff I need to work on that right now Zamo doesn’t seem worth doing, especially when I know it could be so much better and maybe it needs to not be a podcast anymore in order to get better.
And even with the other stuff, this wasn’t a very productive week. Like I said, exhausted or blocked or whatever.
I’ve also been trying to really minimize my exposure to news and the like, which is always depressing and demoralizing. One of my friends hasn’t posted on FB in 3 weeks and while I hope all is well with her, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a teeny bit relieved to not be seeing the constant onslaught of reposts from the doom porn merchants in the news on her feed. Hopefully when she comes back, it’s more focussed on funny shit… which she does also post a lot of, to be fair.
My pals in the Dry Shave Show have stuck a fork in that show, it’s well and truly dead. Most of the team have said they will regroup and relaunch a new show later in the summer, but I’m guessing it will be more of a news and opinion show and less of a comedy show… well, that was getting to be the case over the last few months anyway.
I don’t know if I’ll be continuing to mod the chat when they come back, because I need to protect my own energy fields (at the risk of sounding all woo-woo) and if it’s gonna be a ranting show about miserable news and how the world’s going to Hell, I’m out.
All that shit may well end up being true, some of it certainly is, but I’d rather focus on the parts of life/the world that I can affect and have control over and ways that I can make my life better and that means minimizing my exposure to the kind of negativity that the show has exhibited in recent months.
Maybe they’ll surprise me and want to keep it lighter, but I doubt it.
I have another friend who keeps asking me to jump into the fray (formerly with DSS, now in regards to the new show), but I just can’t. I am still thinking of starting a livestream show of my own come fall, but I want it to be fun and even a little bit frivolous and have a focus on change for the better on a personal and cultural level. Otherwise, why bother?
I know there’s money in doom porn and fear grifting, but… well, I’d rather turn tricks, to be honest. LOL… not that I need money such that I would turn tricks, just that if I did, it seems a more noble way to make a living than to be an outrage merchant and selling people on how there’s no hope and everything sucks and just sit and wait for Jesus/Ragnarok/the government death squads/aliens to save us or exterminate us or whatever.
If Jesus is coming, well, I’ll talk to him when I see him. Ditto Odin or the aliens. If things are going to descend into a dystopian hellhole, well, then I guess I’ll be murdered with everyone else. It’s not happening now.
Like Mersh said the other day on Nightwave: go to the zoo. Enjoy whatever time’s left. Live.
If you spend your life spazzing out about the end of the world and the jackboots and Armaggeddon or whatever… well, I guess if it comes you can feel validated, but what if it doesn’t come and you’ve pissed away your life and your happiness in fear? And even if it comes and you’re validated, what about all the time before then that you wasted being miserable?
Also, there’s a woo-woo sort of thing where the negative energy of fearing and spazzing about horrible things to come is what makes them real and what makes them manifest.
Either way, better to have a pleasant life, even a frivolous one, with a short bad section at the very end if you’re caught off guard than to constantly be living in terror as if the Apocalypse is already here.
I mean, what do you tell Jesus or Odin or Shiva or whoever if the end of the world doesn’t come in your lifetime but you lived as if it was coming any minute now? You wasted your gifts.
I’m an occultist, I do divination, and yeah, I get scared too, but when I’ve asked my guides about things, they tell me the evil people don’t have the power to actually enact their plans. And honestly, I think what gives that power is when people wallow in fear.
(Look what happened this year when people got scared of the flu..)
Yes, there’s something to be said for prudence and preparation, but be prepared and then move on. Or, y’know, MOVE!!!! There are whole YouTube communities devoted to being an ex-pat if you really think things are that bad (and there’s a whole process to go through to relocate, it’s not easy but it’s not that difficult either). Make your escape and get on with life.
But I know people who insisted you couldn’t leave Canada even on the day my brother flew down to Mexico, lol. And when I told them it was possible to fly out they either tried to tell me it wasn’t true or they carried on as if I had not said anything.
Well, I don’t quote LaVey very often these days, but as he used to say, “may the scales fall from your eyes.” And if you really want those scales to stay because you’ve built your whole identity around them… well, sucks to be you. Leave me out of your bullshit, regardless of which side of the political divide the bull dumped it.
(That’s not necessarily aimed at any one particular individual or group of individuals, since I see a lot of it and it’s only been getting worse in the last year and especially since January.)
Anyway, let’s wrap up with a couple pics from the garden:
