yes, *that* dawnperson @thatdawnperson@rafting.io

Vash plants a face. #CatsOfMastodon

I have not posted #caturday in a while.

My deltoid is slowly dispersing this year’s influenza immunity cocktail to the rest of my body.

The sky I can see from home had a semi-ominous mood this morning. And a point of light.

Lao Gan Ma spicy chilli crisp spooned out of the jar. Not OMG gimme rice quantities but enough to wake up your mouth.

The future is unevenly predicted.

Yesterday a delivery person phoned me to confirm leaving the package at the front desk and it rang on my wrist, not my pocket. The natural feeling way to respond struck S as very Dick Tracy.

I did not follow up by putting on my trench coat or sticking out my jaw.

2/3 of the way through The Unicorn Project. More story driven than Kim et al’s Phoenix, by which I really mean they’re less heavy handed with the education piece.

I like a skunkworks story that turns out for the best. Would be better to have a real life example but I seem to have career shifted away from the book’s target audience.

Nothing quite like seeing a popo social media account saying
« Today marks #TransDayofRemembrance and we came together to honour those who have lost their lives to trans violence. Thank you to our 2SLGBTQ+ community partners who we will continue to work with to ensure York Region is a safe and inclusive community for all. »

The 519 had the decency to include a speaker who called them out for being in TPS’s pocket. #ACAB

Reading Gene Kim’s Unicorn Project is an exercise in « how is my mental and emotional state going to see me interpret this now? »

Also the main character may not be the race I think they are. Name says one thing, description says another, circumstances tilt toward the latter.

There’s a cold, damp wind in Toronto this morning.

Change in the weather, no change in ... John McDermott you are living rent free in my brain.

The school had like 3000 students in 4 grades. I was academic stream with music and theatre electives. Jane was trades stream with shop electives. We became invisible to each other.

And no other student in the school tried to bully me after that. That had been my goal, and I achieved it.

The vice principal had some kind of hate on for me, but enough of the teachers were humane, even kind, and I tried hard to get good marks. It wasn’t the hell some endure.

5/5

My abs were in good shape. I took a lot of punches, all landing against my abs or obliques. Never raised my hands from my sides.

The crowd got bored. Someone told Jane to stop, this wasn’t proving anything. She threw a few more punches then walked away. The crowd dispersed. Some people lit up. I waited a minute and headed to my locker, then home.

Jane was still in my gym class. She kept teasing me about my body for the rest of the school year. Then her presence in my life evaporated. 4/

There was a small crowd. I don’t remember if I was given a chance to throw a punch, but I didn’t. I stood at ease, alert, ready to dodge anything that might cause actual damage.

Jane hit me in the belly, fist balled and striking in a way her thumb could break if she tried that on my face. It was an expected relief: I had sized my opponent up as incompetent and it looked like I could just relax.

I maneuvered to get my back against the wall to avoid an errant kidney hit. Jane continued. 3/

I didn’t have martial arts training but I had an older brother and spent a fair bit of time with street people (including some gang members). We had fist fights in the area around my elementary school, and I knew crowd dynamics.

I knew how to fight to win and how to defend myself. I had a good idea which fights were worth it, and had decided this one wasn’t. So I went to the fight intending to do nothing to hurt Jane, but to bring her reputation down a notch. 2/

So when I was in Grade IX (that’s the way we wrote it, srs) I hated my body, which was doing weird things I didn’t want it to.

We had mandatory gym class and Jane also didn’t like my body. Teasing quickly escalated to bullying. One day I was told to show up in the smoking area behind the school (we had one, the teachers had a smoking lounge) when classes ended.

So I showed up. Jane probably expected me to either ghost or cry at a couple punches but she didn’t know about me and fights. 1/

Got paid by Elections Canada for the Oct 26 byelection. That was about twice as fast as standard elections pay.