badgerbag

I was nattering a little about zines and imposition to my GOAT people and one of them suggested this tool, https://weasyprint.org/ Well more than suggested, it was basically a requirement like, if that person would work on printing booklets or zines then it would have to be with a tool like this one!

Purists, put my toes to the fire, it's good for me!

What I think we will do is, when we are working on a device like a chair or powerchair or rollator, find its owners manual and service manual if we can, but then drag out everything actually useful. Many owners manuals are like 40 pages of bullshit and disclaimers and 2 pages of useful content. So pull that out, add specs for the parts, a workbook page to write stuff down. Serial number and contacts for repair, sizes of things, maintenance and repair log. We give a list of tools you will need to work ont he chair. We could describe some common fixing or maintenance things. Voila, the GOAT guide to your particular chair. And do it as a web page / weasyprint booklet that we check in to our github repo and publish on our site.

I was thinking about the metaphor of "opening up" today because of some recent thoughts about some interactions with people where I felt both pried into in ways I didn't like, but also simultaneously not seen. Like the person was trying to crack me open like a nut, but all wrong, rather than giving me space to express myself organically.

It was very much like when you are a child and someone condescendingly asks you questions that are JUST WRONG and you can also see they are concluding totally wrong things as well like operating on incorrect assumptions, attempting to extract something, thinking they have extracted it when they haven't, and then drawing wrong conclusions. You will then receive the wrong gifts for years and hear them describe you to other people wrongly for the rest of your life as they fail to absorb any actual information about you.

It is such an uncomfortable experience and I had it so strongly the other day. It made me think of other intense encounters of that kind but also of the general feeling of being in a very patriarchal or heterosexual social environment where you are being read 100% wrong.

I feel lucky that most of the time I don't experience that at all in my daily life, enough so that it isn't AMBIENT, and enough so that now when it happens, I SUPER NOTICE it!

I am planning to go to WisCon 2022!

We'll see if the stars align, but it seems possible!

Thinking about also volunteering to help with programming since i've done that before and can do it remotely.

Books lately, for some reason I just re-read the entire Patrick O'Brien series very fast one after the other. Comfort read! I am on I think the 20th one so that's about to end and then I'll read the little backlog of pre-ordered SFF that has built up.

I completely forgot (?!) to vote for the Hugos this year, to my shame, but my excuse will have to be that I lacked executive function after doing all the Otherwise reading. Or something :D

My back garden doesn't get sun right now though it did till early November - But I have set up a lounging spot on the front steps, with a giant patio lounger cushion laid across the top landing - it looks very silly i'm sure but who cares -- so that I can lie on my back with my feet going right up the wall, in the sunny patch, right now from about 11 to 3pm any time I can go out there with cushion and get sun, air, neighbors saying hello, and bonus, it is very good for my bad ankles. The compression socks are also helping.

Pain woke me up in the night but i applied the voltaren and various other creams, had some crackers and water, read, and easily fell back asleep after about half an hour.

Two things going on physically, my bad leg is doing its nerve pain thing - buzzing, pain, "shocks" etc unpredictably including waking me up at night, and collapsing under me sometimes also unpredictably when I stand up. That sounds dramatic but in practice just means i get a bit tired from pain at the end of the day, and need to walk with a cane even around the house, mostly, or i might get stuck (like be able to walk somewhere and then like my leg fucks up and i'm unstable) So my 4 walking canes are scattered ALL over the house hahahah. Nothing new at all and the exact same thing i've been dealing with since I was 22. But so annoying. It does seem to correlate with period cramps which I am noticing more now. Like - is it some sort fo endometriosis thing fucking with some nerve somewhere? I dunno!!!!!!! It's been suggested even before the collapsing-leg part when i was even younger. But so have like 8 million other theories and I mostly hold with the "It's some sort of low back nerve thing, whatever, nothing to be done for it"

So anyway the OTHER part paradoxically is that i am actually able to walk around better than i have in years, my ankles are still steadily improving, i'm stronger, and feeling more bold about venturing out with just the cane sometimes if I know exactly how far I'm going, can park and walk into a building where i'm not going to have to walk a long distance to a bathroom, etc. etc. Today, I walked down the half block steep hill from my house, and up Mission another block and a half to cafe st. jorge , and back , and I was still fine to walk aroudn the house after that and I don't feel like it's going to drive my ankles into some sort of grim, horrible flare up. (I mean we'll see tomorrrow but so far so good)

I like the idea of picking some sort of challenge like, I will walk to the end of the street and back every day. Every other day?

My ankles haven't been this functional since 2010!

Adventure!!!!

I had a dream about hanging out with my friend Heather (druidsquirrel) and we were laughing and just being silly and sweet sitting curled up on the couch.

Later, Selene was here and though we had not slept together she had slept here for some reason and in the morning made a really dramatic announcement like, "It's over. I'm done."

A lot of thoughts went through my head like, WTF? Is she mad? Did I do something? Do I even care? We were never friends really, I just vaguely knew you because you're Heather's partner? Why are you even in my house actually? And why is this so final -- couldn't you just like, be vaguely in touch, like be social media friends and say hi every few years or if you're in town? While thinking this, I went to hug her goodbye kind of reluctantly.

Then during the hug I had a horrified realization:

- This was a dream
- I don't want to be hugging Selene
- Because she murdered Heather and then shot herself
- Then i woke up and cried a bit and Danny was awake and hugged me and let me cry on him
- I wanted to go back to sleep and not to be crying but I let myself feel it for just a few moments

Feeling sad for Heather and I wish she was here for me to talk with just about everything and nothing and that Milo could play role playing games with her.

Fuck you Selene. How dare you haunt my dream.

I knew you were bad to Heather and I wish I'd ever really said so. I shudder to think of the abuse you must have perpetuated on my friend before murdering her.

Years ago I was struck by Joanna Russ saying something about, I don't remember her exact wording but something like performative femininity such as women wearing high heels and make-up and showing cleavage. It was something like how it signifies their willingness to devote their labor to pleasing a man. That has a useful point which I think we can see has some truth and yet it shuts the door in a way to a larger possibility, which is that anyone's display of time spent on care for themselves signals the ability to do care work which may apply (as well as Russ's observation on patriarchal dynamics) to the ability to care for others (as well as yourself) in other dimensions (that aren't about carefully adorning a human body). I am sure this is obvious but it's a way of thinking about dressing cute (whether femme or not) (or "self-care") and what it can mean.

Resolved, I will make some kind of list of parks in San Francisco, that is a checklist and scavenger hunt style of thing, and start visiting all the parks and finding interesting things about them, while offering my template or checklist or whatever to other people. This will be doable by me by driving to the parks at lunch hour during the work week, I think. As I visit the parks or if i want to front load it by doing some online research I'll add neat things to the scavenger hunt portion (for example things that would be interesting Ingress stops, like the dragonfly wind sculpture in holly park). I don't really want to do this as part of a real game or app like pokemon or ingress, I want it to be free and made up, but also to satisfy my completionist/gamification urges while getting me out of the house. If i were really into this I could make it an actual game in some way with google forms and spreadsheets (or something) so it would be something you play with your kids and when you reach particular stages you get a "reward" that would be just like... some text or a picture.

After working pretty intensely I beetled off to the doctor for a pre-surgical covid test. Took photos of basically every mural on Valencia between my house and 17th street and I bought myself some fancy things - a tiny pewter flask - a copper vase - a couple of those japanese notebooks with fish on them - the antifascist coloring book - a Marimekko towel. Doing my bit as a person of a certain age to support small businesses?!!! I guess????

I don't understand how any restaurants, bars, or little shops can possibly survive with rent as high as it is.

Noisebrdge has found a new place speaking of rent. with a 10 year lease! so fantastic. rent is more than it was but - 10 year lease I hope will be a good thing. It is directly behind the old space. I went to have a look at the move-in and see if there was anything useful I could do (no) So took pics of the chaos and of the literal board they laid from a 3rd floor window of NB to the 2nd floor window of New NB which I guess they were gently easing things down with a rope and pulley. Holy shit but it was funny to see that. I hope no one dies.

And speaking of dead noisebridgers the zine shop made me think of Tony Le Tigre and I sure do miss him (shifty bullshit or no) as he was endlessly entertaining and I enjoyed his zines and talking with him. RIP Longshanks. I am thinking of updating his freesources zine and putting it in all the free bookshelves around here. Maybe this weekend.

All i have really been doing is playing Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley and reading endless novels. Not feeling super creative most of the time though kind of ready to fire it back up.

I had my gallbladder out which helped a lot and then I think what happened was I was so happy I could eat greasy things again that I over did it and sparked up my ulcer/gastritis problems. Now I can only eat tiny quantities at once and feel sick. Am on maximum prescription omeprazole and they are going to endoscopy me next week just to rule out anything super bad. It is probably the same old same old that has flared up on me now and then since Hurricane Katrina.

I want to make a ZILLION ZINES and also publish a bunch of tiny pocket books hopefully with yatima.

So many projects cooking now in my brain only - like I said I have not done a lick of work. It's been all animal crossing, gardening, puttering around the house, doomscrolling, hiding.

Just saying hello! Danny and I are at home, not going out except for groceries, and doing fine. Danny has been working from home since last week.

Books I've read recently:

The Ghost Map, non-fiction about the process leading up to figuring out cholera, the famous London neighborhood water pump, John Snow and his frenemy Rev. Whitehead (would make such a good novel where they start out in severe disagreement and then become investigation partners!). More cheering than you might think as it is erudite and also comfortingly positive about Science.

Changa's Safari series. This was great -- straight up adventure as Changa and his friends roam around the world in their merchant dhows circa 14XX & have amazing adventures. I liked his dynamic with Panya.


Railhead by Philip Reeve. I loved this so much! A rogue, an android, another rogue, and sentient interstellar hyperspace going trains! OMG! It couldn't be better!

Death of a Nationalist by Rebecca Pawel - This was recommended to me as a detective novel of Fascist Spain, as I was discussing on FB how, while going through some old annontated family photo albums, I found a cousin Nino from Sicily who had fought in the Spanish Civil War and then slowly realized with horror that he was on the WRONG SIDE and then I found a little booklet written in Italian by a relative (his uncle the priest) that was about the family and it turns out also to be incredibly fascist (written in 1939 after Nino's death) and worse, was published in like 1972. I had to go immediately donate money to the national lawyers guild fund for defending antifa clients. OK, anyway, back to the book, it was a hard read as it was a hard time, and one of the two protagonists is a fucking Guardia Civil, but it came out very interesting and was worth the read.

The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister (vo1. 1 and 2) This is the version from the 80s, and if you missed this, Anne Lister is a lesbian from the tv series Gentleman Jack (which I haven't seen but am aware of from others' fandom). This is an abbreviated version of Anne's diaries (which were kept it code) from the 1820s. I'm curious to read some of her other diaries before and after of course! They start out a bit slow, plenty of juicy crushes and affairs, but by volume 2 you get into the actual fingerbanging action (sorry but true) and also they all have some sort of VD (probably trich) and are literally douching with mercury. Fabulous.

From December to Feb. I mostly read, well everything by MC Beaton/Marion Chesney, sparked by her death last year (one, I realized suddenly how much she had written, two, I didn't feel bad to pirate her books since she was dead and whoever inherits her IP is already going to make bank.) They're good if you like that sort of thing! (Fluffy Regencies, also fluffy detectives Agatha Raisin and Hamish MacBeth)

Love to you all, my friends.

I always forget about this. I am still kind of mid series of the Morland Dynasty, which i really like but warning that it's awesome all the way till book 22 or so when it gets to the U.S. Civil War. Ugh! No! Basically just skip that one (or, i'll jump back in on the next book and see if it improves)

I'm in the middle of a super fabulous book called The Tiger's Daughter - I love it!!

i was saying on my daily blog earlier today that it is mary renault-ish. i stand by that -- it is mary renault in fantasy mongolia with teenage lesbians.