The Troll Doll Channel: Who knew TROLLS could FLY? (Carousel Waltz)

Who knew trolls could fly? This is my tiniest custom troll, an exquisite thing with a teeny-tiny crocheted outfit and replacement hair made from Tibetan mohair.  Sad to me that no one seems to be watching my videos anymore, but I've come to pour so much of myself into them that it's hard to stop. I won't stop, so must rearrange my attitude somehow. So long as my views don't go to zero, I guess I'm OK.

The Starlight Night: Hopkins Strikes Again!

 

The Starlight Night

LOOK at the stars! look, look up at the skies!

O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! 

The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there! 

Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes! 

The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies! 

Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare! 

Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!—

Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, aims, vows. 

Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs! 

Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows! 

These are indeed the barn; withindoors house 

The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse 

Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

So what does the poem mean?

What means this bizarre double-jointed curvature, this sharp hairpin turn from fireworks "ooooooohs" and "ahhhhhhhhs" into the kind of heavy and even suffocating religiosity that leaves me completely kerflummoxed?

I don't know much about Gerard Manley Hopkins except to say that when he became a Jesuit, he burned every poem he had ever written. Thus perhaps some of his best works were relegated to the ashcan.

He's the one who wrote about depression, that Carrion Comfort one that I find so harrowing, to the point that I think he must have been a true sufferer. But why must everything in Hopkins be Christified?

The poem starts off very much like an innocent Robert Louis Stevenson verse for children, a "how would you like to go up in a swing" sort of thing. But there is a sort of urgency to it, as if we'd better look now or we'll be too late. It seems to tug and poke at us, hey, take a look up there, look at Casseopeia (which I can NEVER see - I am the poorest of visual discerners and can't tell one bloody constellation from another). Then comes a flood of almost-precious elven description right out of Lord of the Rings. Cockle-shells and dingle-bells. Except that, because it's Hopkins, he can get away with it. It's a surprising, even shocking quality, the art of verbal daring.

Fire-folk sitting in the air, why yes, that's a line any poet would kill for. Quickgold: that's perfect, isn't it - why didn't anyone think of that before? The air swirls with magic, you can see your breath, you're shivering yet too warm, your companion's hand is like ice in yours. Yes, you're there, transported, borne up like a downy feather (take THAT, Gerard!) as the constellations wheel drunkenly over your head.

Where I go off-course is in the line, "Ah well! It is all a purchase, all is a prize." What can he be getting at? Taken literally, it makes no sense at all. Purchase what? Prize what? Does he mean we have to earn the right to get into heaven, so to speak - heaven represented by the rapturous star-filled night? Is immortality a kind of lottery, a spiritual 6-49?

Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, aims, vows.

I don't know if he's talking about "buying your way in", trying to bribe God (good luck!), or the cheapness and crassness of reality compared to the gasping celestial vision. It's one of those weirdball Hopkins-ian things that makes you want to toss the book across the room.

But then he gets back to the "look, look" stuff, which by now is getting a little old (can't help but think it!) in spite of the "Maymess" (a word I really thought *I* had invented) and the "mealed-with-yellow sallows".

But then come the strangest lines of all.

These are indeed the barn; withindoors house

The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse

Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

I don't know, this grounds the poem with a thud, steals all its magic. Hopkins must have had some sort of a thing for Christ, and it's weird. When I first read this startling thing, my reaction was "what"? These are indeed the - barn? And what are "the shocks"? Kindly explain yourself, poet.

I can only guess - and I am really guessing here, because this is an odd thing that doesn't make much sense even after a lot of analysis - that he thinks of the heavens/nature and all that jazz as "housing" Jesus and Mary and all those holy folk who to him represent God. Or does he glimpse the holy/eternal in and through, are those starfolk sitting in the air little glints of God, God's little birthday candles maybe?

Is the universe just God's skin?

I might be reading more into this than I should. Hey, maybe I'm smarter than he was, or at least less obscure. But there are things I don't like here, words that may or may not be used for jarring effect: "barn" (barn? Haven't we just travelled to the farthest reaches of the universe? Why use the image of an outbuilding that is basically full of shit?); "shuts" (an awful word, implying "shut-in" and even "shut up!); "spouse", a sort of creaky word referring to one's life partner - oh, that's creepy! Oh, that's creepy! Is he married to Jesus, or his mother? I guess "espouse" can mean just believing in something. Or something.

Or surrendering to it? Oh God. I was never one for surrender, though in certain circles (does the term 12 Step Program mean anything to you?) it's considered the highest achievement.

And that word "hallows" is not one I am comfortable with either - all hallows eve, hallowed be thy name (which for some reason always reminded me of the inside of a pumpkin, that punky smell). So he throws in some language which could not be more at odds with the dazzling fluidity of those first few lines. What of buying, selling, bidding - what's he on about? Maybe it would be better to stop at Line 7. Can the Sunday school lesson; just dazzle us.

😸My Cat Gets EVERYTHING he Wants (especially treats!)😸

Onward! In the face of 15-view videos rather than 15 million, I must carry on.

Have I had enough? Yes - of THIS!

Ironically, this is a comment about comments that never got posted on YouTube. I've had considerable discouragement over my channel lately. Over 13 years, I've built it up to 20,500+ subscribers and over 3,000 videos - but my views are absolutely in the toilet now, without any change in the quality or the work that goes into them. People have even been calling me out on "commenting too much" on other people's videos, which makes no sense as I think my comments are much more well-thought-out than the average and don't attack anyone. Maybe that's why?

So I had no real place to post this, and decided to plop it down here. It's my thoughts on what has happened to social media and the uncharitable, sometimes ruthless Wild West that is the internet.

This evolved into an essay, so skip it if it’s too long! But I have a few things to say about the internet in general, and YouTube in particular, as I’ve experienced it since I started my channel as a hobby in 2011. I have had a number of people reply to my comments about Gypsy Rose Blanchard, claiming I comment too much, I’m in every comments section, and (as a result) I have no life, I should get a job, and should just stop all this because I have nothing to add to the conversation. (I got this one, nearly verbatim, just a few hours ago.) Surprisingly, these are NOT all from the pro-Gypsy camp, which really does shock me. I generally do not promote myself (though it seems like everyone else does, relentlessly, perhaps just to survive the sharks in the water), but to be told I have no life based on my writing hits every nerve in my psyche.

As for an explanation as to why I “write too much”, I am a professional writer, have published hundreds of newspaper columns, book reviews and magazine articles, poetry and short stories, and published three novels (with publishers, NOT self-published). I established my channel in 2011 and have posted more than 3,000 videos, and have 20,500+ subscribers. I don’t mention any of this, ever, because it makes me very uncomfortable to self-promote, though I see it everywhere and all the time, and it is beginning to wear me down. It really does seem to me that this is what YouTube is all about now: subs, views, links, numbers, numbers, numbers! I can appreciate the fact that people need to make a living, but there is such relentless hustling going on that I am beginning to wonder if it is about people anymore.

I do have a lot to say, and maybe some people don’t like it, but I try never to be disrespectful to anyone and believe my comments are well-thought-out. People can skip them if they want. When I hear creators say over and over again “I’d love to hear what you guys think”, and  when I think I DO have something to say, I tend to want to SAY it without being clapped down by people I thought were on my side. It has just happened too many times for me to ignore.

 Writing is what I do. Next to my family, it is my life. When yet another person tells me to shut up because I don’t know what I am talking about, it hurts. I am beginning to think I may end up having to wind up my YouTube experience because it is just not the deal I signed on for. At all. Sad, because it used to be so fun and enjoyable, and it was a way to share all my hobbies, particularly during lockdown. But those days appear to be over. I don’t know this place anymore.

I don't often say these things. . . (but today I will)

I don't often put a lot of personal stuff on this blog, because no one reads my posts anyway except random people from New Zealand who leave comments 12 years after I posted them. I am exhausted and frazzled and worn out after a second bout of having to wait on my husband hand and foot (literally, feed him and take his shoes off for him) after relatively minor surgery, and he will be having another round of it soon. 

What is hurtful is the lack of acknowledgement of what I am doing. I quite literally have to take his temperature, help him to the bathroom, badger him to take his meds, get past his crankiness when he needs to eat, etc. etc. I went through all this during his first hospitalization, when the whole family hopped to and saw that his every need was met. It simply amazed me how everyone came together to serve him, which was far from the case when I used to be hospitalized. 

Then I was left completely on my own, no visitors (and as usual, sending a card or flowers to acknowledge the misery I was going through made as much sense to everyone as sending me a dead carp. It just wasn't done - everyone knew that!) Even discussing it was off the table and not to be spoken of. Had it been ME on that operating table, the family response would not have been the same at all. This I know for a fact. But my illnesses weren't counted as real anyway, as I just should have pulled up my socks and carried on. Which I did, with little or no help to crawl out of a black pit of annihilating depression. And for reasons that I will never understand, I nearly lost the right to visit my  grandchildren because of the nature of my illness. 

So here is what I, the schmuck who has always been blown off by practically everyone, but especially my nearest and dearest, wrote to hand to him. Haven't done it yet, but I'm on the verge. If everything I do for him is neither needed nor wanted, what on earth has my life been all about? 51 years together should amount to more than that.

If you don't eat, even when you are NOT hungry, you will not get better. If I prepare a plate for you of nutritious food that you might like, which takes time and energy, you can at least keep it beside you for later and not wave me off with a look of dismissal. Please try to be a little bit grateful, even if you don't like or want what I am offering.

I am doing everything I can to help you get better, but I am getting near the end of it. It's all very well to tell me "just stop", but that's not what I signed on for. It's not in my nature NOT to want to look after you. You should know by now that I am a nurturer, and I do not feel it would be fair to you to just stop. But it is wearing me down when I see the lack of appreciation.

I walked a long time in heat and discomfort and pain today, BECAUSE I wanted to get things you might like, things that are easy to eat while lying down, and some things to make an actual meal which we have not had since Monday. And then you said there had been no need for me to go to the store anyway. Which meant, "You shouldn't have bothered." So what I did was completely devalued and blown off as unnecessary and unwanted. 

I do these things because I CARE, but I believe I have given far more to this family than they have ever given me, and it is beginning to catch up with me. I think that you should get your own food as far as you can, and I will make an evening meal of real food and you can eat it or not. Please, if I do go the extra mile for you, which I have always done, don't just tell me you didn't need or want it. You did need it, you continue to need it, and I will try to do what I can to maintain my sanity until you are better. 

😄SMOKIN' HOT SHOWGIRLS do the Crowd Wave with their LEGS!😄

So this, which I worked on for hours, got TEN views. I'd give up, but somehow after 13 years and 20,500+ subs, I find that hard to do.

WHY is this happening? Why are my subs rising by 300+ per month, but no one is watching? Ten views, when the Motormouth thing, which I threw together in ten minutes, has 14 MILLION.

Really, I give up, except I can't. I just had to keep trudging forward, but it does seem like everything I've built up since 2011 (over 3 THOUSAND videos) is just going down the toilet due to people's indifference. 

Is there a way ahead? I guess I will find out, yes or no. But it galls me that so many channels with 3000 subs or less are getting tens of thousands of views, while my stuff just falls into the gutter.

Can't Live: the Tragedy of Harry Nilsson

This is something I'd have to file under "it seemed like a good idea at the time".

When I finally found the song 1941 by Harry Nilsson, it (of course) sent the detective in me on a search for more about Nilsson's life and work. I began to realize how many amazing songs he'd written, and how incredible his voice was, with its pure 3 1/2-octave range vibrating like glass in the heavens. So as I trudged through the archeological dig that is YouTube, I turned up a documentary called Who is Harry Nilsson (and why is everybody talking about him?) The title was based on the song Everybody's Talking from Midnight Cowboy, one of my favorite songs from one of my all-time-favorite movies (which I saw again recently, and which once again knocked me out of my chair with its soul-shattering depiction of life's desperate fringe-dwellers).

I instantly saw the biographical connection with the song 1941 - the only difference being "the circus" meant, presumably, the music industry, money and fame. That last line "but what will happen to the boy when the circus comes to town?" is one of those one-liners that packs a tremendous punch. And it all happened. He was born in 1941, and his father walked right out the door three years later, leaving a scar on his soul that never seems to have healed.

I was hooked immediately because as the doc unfolded, it became apparent that  his destiny and fortunes were intertwined with those of the Beatles, in particular John Lennon who was every bit as adept at monstrous self-destruction as Harry himself. He even famously got drunk and rowdy with Ringo Starr (who seems to have pulled himself out of the fire just in time). Most of the people who contributed to this thing were industry types, who were in accord with the general feeling that Harry Nilsson was hell-bent on destroying himself for reasons that only made sense to him. Though he was described by friends and loved ones as sweet and gentle and lovely and all the rest of it, that is not the way he acted and not the way he treated people who deserved infinitely better than his sometimes monstrous abuse.

It was getting depressing, and I knew how it ended, but I trudged on. When John Lennon was shot, Nilsson became obsessed with gun control laws, though all his crusading appears to have come to naught. After that his career fragmented as he careened from cocaine highs to alcoholic lows, generating enough nicotine fumes to poison a whole community. Before John died, they had a screaming contest which resulted in Nilsson rupturing a vocal cord. His voice never recovered. But he seems to have inexplicably chosen to destroy his instrument in a way that horrified me more than all the rest of it put together.

So when he was 54, his life walked out the door. He ruined his body, and collapsed and died from all his extremes. But I had to ask myself if the San Andreas fault in his personality stemmed from that early parental abandonment.

It must have.

Nothing else could crack a soul clean through, could it? Unless there was some kind of abuse we don't know about, but maybe this was enough. By the time I got to the end of the documentary I had a heavy feeling, but I also felt the familiar anger I experience when I hear of someone pissing away the kind of golden opportunities that less fortunate people would give their right arm for.

Does fame do this? Why do so many famous people self-destruct, usually from drugs and alcohol and the disastrous situations that inevitably result? Was I spared, do you think? I guess I wanted it, but I also didn't. When I get a comment on a YouTube video I posted six years ago, when I receive an email comment on a blog post I did in 2012, it reminds me of something important.  It makes me realize (once again) that the rewards of the creative life are not what you think.

The rewards of the creative life are NOT helling around in bars, snorting cocaine until you hit the ceiling, abandoning a wife and son (yes, folks, he DID abandon a wife and son, just like in the song, before siring another five children with another woman, whom he soon left a widow). The rewards of the creative life are - simply - the creating itself. Or maybe touching just ONE person and hearing about it many years later. And realizing there may have been many others who just never told you about it.

I stepped out of addiction just in time, and like Ringo (and Paul), I'm still here and savoring my life to a degree I never thought possible. I keep it simple now (though it's never easy), and if I think about drinking, I think about where it took me, and I can never go back there again. But when I think of Harry Nilsson, I just get angry. There's something so perverse about the whole thing. He got drunk "at" people, that much is plain, and maybe even "at" himself. But why not use a few particles of that genius brain to figure out just what you have to do to live a peaceful and fulfilling life (and to treat the people you love the way they deserve to be treated?)

It takes no great genius to fuck up, to destroy, to obliterate. No talent at all. And I'm sick of hearing about tortured geniuses and listening to people make endless excuses for them. This song, though - it's just eerie, because the raw need in it, the sense of catastrophic damage, is disturbing to me. Do people need to be so irreparably broken to communicate such grief? What a horrible deal. 

So what's the conclusion? If you're a legendary creator and performer, or just someone who needs to write and perform, and want to live a half-decent life, be careful who you choose as a role model. Shoot for Ringo or Paul, who are still here and still creating - not poor, beleaguered, self-annihilating Harry.

The Troll Doll Channel: 🌞Buddhist trolls🌞

Someone left a comment on this video after it had been up SIX years! It only got 36 views, but there's something very gratifying about someone finally noticing it after all this time. It's actually quite lovely. 

💀The JOY of SMOKING! (Bizarre '60s Propaganda Film)💀

I promised myself I wouldn't fuss over how many views I get on YouTube, but I must confess it seems a bit bizarre to have 20,500+ subscribers and only 30 views/video. There are a VERY few that got absurd views, such as the one with Motormouth that got 14 MILLION+, and rising, with a hundred thousand or so comments. Just ridiculous, and it has not helped my views whatsoever. 

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but it could be I MUST be monetized to be recommended anywhere, and I'm not going to do that. I wouldn't make anything, and it causes endless problems in that you get demonetized at the drop of a hat (or a swear-word). I want to just enjoy this, and it HAS been nearly 12 years, and it DOES incorporate all my favorite hobbies, but why do they get such wretched views when I work just as hard on them as on the very few that got freakishly high ones? Checking my channel every morning has become abysmal, one of the low points of my day. Yet I keep on. I don't know what else to do.

As for the ads, how bizarre can it get? I found these on Internet Archive, which must be one of the first websites on the internet, as the format has not been updated in 30 years and is ridiculously hard to search. It's really completely random. But I have never heard of Century cigarettes, and having these historic figures puffing away is one of the more bizarre methods of smoking propaganda. The thumbnail is from another ad, but has not been altered in any way. Madness.

FOUND! The lost classic: 1941 (When the Circus Comes to Town) - Harry Nilsson

It took me a while to track this song down! I was watching documentaries about the historic Barnum and Bailey Big Top, and for the first time in decades I suddenly remembered this song, and the line "but what will happen to the boy when the circus comes to town?" I remembered there were dates in it, but what dates? And I was sure the title would have to be something to do with the circus.

I kept searching and googling and finally thought: oh, this HAS to be a Harry Nilsson song! And I was right. So here it is, for the first time in 30 or 40 years at least. I FOUND IT! YouTube is wonderful.

Well in 1941 a happy father had a son
And by 1944 the father walked right out the door
And in '45 the mom and son were still alive
But who could tell in '46 if the two were to survive?

Well the years were passing quickly
But not fast enough for him
So he closed his eyes 'til '55
And he opened them up again

When he looked around he saw a clown
And the clown seemed very gay
And he set that night
To join that circus clown and run away

Well he followed every railroad track
And every highway sign
And he had a girl in each new town
And the towns he left behind

And the open road
Was the only road he knew
But the color of his dreams
Slowly turning into blue

The he met a girl, the kind of girl
He wanted all his life
She was soft and kind and good to him
So he took her for a wife

And they got a house not far from town
And in a little while
The girl had seen the doctor
And she came home with a smile

Now in 1961 a happy father had a son
And by 1964 the father walked right out the door
And in '65 the mom and son were still around
But what will happen to the boy
When the circus comes to town?

Dear Canadian Open Net Salmon Farmers....

This is absolutely hilarious! It amazes me how this flew over people's heads. My husband said, "That William Shatner is nasty! He went on a 20-minute profanity-laced rant about FISH FARMS!" Then I actually watched it, and laughed all the way through it.

Shatner's my hero, and has been for a very long time. He's 92 years old, for God's sake, and if he can still get up and rant about anything, more power to him. I never miss his mystery series The UnXplained, nor is it lost on me that he has been a superb horseman and horse breeder all his life. Being a horsey person myself, I appreciate that.

But this is prime Shatnerian satire/parody, and like all good satire it has a very sharp point. He's not just randomly ranting, as is made plain by all the other people chiming in. And yet, as obvious as it seems, a lot of people are't getting it! I notice how seriously the news outlets are treating it, calling it a nasty rant when it's really a superb slice of prime Shatnerian satire.

Shatner has always had a sense of humor about himself, as in his "singing" career in which he was good-natured about it as people held their ears and howled. He has played parodies of himself on TV many times, and seems to enjoy it. With a 75-year acting career in stage, screen and TV behind you, I guess you can get away with it, no?

According to some people, no.

And according to the bitter, sour, dour folks in Canadian media, apparently not. BUT THAT'S JUST HIS POINT!  Canadians are afraid to speak out, afraid to be passionate about anything, so he's breaking all those old taboos in getting up and ranting about fish. But Canadians don't seem to get it. And news outlets only clipped out a few seconds here and there without giving it any context at all. 

It's both funny and dismaying to me  how my husband was just incensed with this, and said it was utterly disgraceful and even nonsensical for him to unleash a "20-minute rant laced with profanity", when if you actually watch it, it's set up as brilliantly as anything SCTV ever did. And he even changes his accent and re-instates the "hoose and aboot" of Canadian speech, even though his speech was thoroughly Americanized decades ago.

Anyway, hey, don't diss the Shat-man (or is that the Shaman?) - he has a point to make, and it's typical of him that he would use humor to make that point. It's just possible somebody hired him to make this speech, even possible he was reading from a script, but this makes it no less delicious to watch.

BUT EVERYBODY IS GETTING IT WRONG! Has the culture lost its sense of humor completely? Can't we laugh at anything anymore? Come on, Canada. WAKE UP. One of your famous sons is trying to tell you something - and not just about fish farms. Your total misinterpretation of this brilliant comic bit are only proving his point.

🍁DUDLEY DO-RIGHT: A Canadian Legend!🍁

What can I say? In the hands of legendary cartoon moguls Jay Ward and Bill Scott, the ridiculous became sublime. Back in the early '60s, the whole family gathered around the TV set (well, those under 25 did - my parents had no idea what any of this meant) to watch Rocky and Bullwinkle, and it's not because we were interested in the goings-on at Frostbite Falls, the adventures of Mr. Peabody or Fractured Fairy Tales. Those innovative animations were but an introduction to the main event: 7 minutes of rapid-fire, clever satire aimed right at the most stereotypical of Canadian images: THE MOUNTIES. 

Most Americans, if they thought about it at all, pictured the RCMP as a horde of red-serge-and-Mountie-hat-wearing anachronisms straight out of a Nelson Eddie-Jeannette McDonald movie of the 1940s. They believed the Mounties' motto was "We always get our man." Where this drivel came from is anybody's guess, but Dudley Do-Right hit all the buttons and summed up, not the ridiculousness of the Mounties, but the idiocy and ignorance of Americans and their narrow and highly-limited view of Canada. Much later there was a lame movie attempt to recreate the madness, but it flopped nearly as badly as George of the Jungle. You simply had to be there, watching Nell endlessly tied to the railroad tracks by Snidely Whiplash, Dudley riding backwards on his horse and, of course, "getting his man" (though the actual motto of the RCMP is Maintains le Droit, meaning uphold the right, as in righteousness). 

Thanks to the internet, none of this ever dies, and I have to admit I find it all hugely enjoyable. I am dredging out stuff I was sure I'd never see again. Meantime, Americans continue to assume the RCMP ride all over town on horseback, wearing their red serge tunics and those damned hats. I don't know how to tell them this, but that's only ever done for the tourists in the famous Musical Ride, an amazing feat of dressage (and I'm not sure it even exists any more, as it would likely just cost too much to  keep all those horses). 

The Junk Drawer of my Mind

There are times when I might be convinced that I remember every single thing that ever happened to me. But maybe it just seems like it. This particular pop-culture reference must have occurred some time in the '70s, but I remembered it so vividly that I wonder why that single synapse in my brain continues to fire half a century later.

It was an ad in Cosmopolitan magazine. I cringe to think that I actually read Cosmo, but I must have or I wouldn't remember so much shit about it. A couple of articles stand out in my memory, and one of them is about Liza and Jack Haley, Jr., proclaiming their undying love for each other and their plans to start a family. (They were divorced the following year.) Liza had even picked out names for their never-to-be-born kids, one of which I remember: Savannah May. Ye gods.

There was another article about - yes, it was about Warhol, or it had a Warhol connection, in that one of his "superstars" named Cherry Vanilla had gay friends. That was it, that was the story, that some women liked to have gay men as friends. This was the 1970s, folks, and people were a little slow on the uptake.

But this! This ad barbecued itself into my brain for reasons unknown, and tonight I googled "Andy Warhol white rum and soda Liza Minnelli", and THE VERY SAME AD popped up immediately. It's the kind of thing you can buy a reproduction of on Etsy and other sites. I don't know if it's so memorable because it mentions both Liza and Andy in one headline, or because it so reeks of social-climbing and empty, narcissistic self-importance that it has become a sort of period piece reflecting the cocaine-and-alcohol-fuelled disco lifestyle that rioted among partygoers, both gay and straight, until the AIDS epidemic crashed down on everyone and brought it all to a screeching stop.

In other words, it's a classic.

We die the way we live. Is anyone surprised?

The way we die is the way we live 

Or have lived. Is this news?

I have seen it over and over. A man I knew who lived fast, sucked down alcohol and smoked like a ruin died hard. At least he died quickly, opening the door of his truck by the side of the road and collapsing. He was dead by the time he hit the ground. 

Others, unable to let go, trying desperately to stay in control, stay sick for years, and years, and years. 

I’ve seen near-miracles, like the woman I knew through my former church who was terminally ill and determined to die at home. This was not a cheery or positive woman, though her saracastic digs were often howlingly funny (so long as they weren’t aimed at you). 

But something happened here, something strange and quite wonderful. This woman’s friends knew that her sarcastic quips were just a cover for a fragile and loving heart. There was a sweetness in her that contrasted beautifully with the sour. 

Without even sitting down to work it out, shifts of people  began to look after her. Towards the end, this involved bathing and feeding and taking care of her most basic needs. 

At the very end ,when she lay dying in hospital, her two sons, estranged from her and from each other for a dozen years, stood on either side of her bed. There’s just something so powerful about standing by someone, about being there. Attending. 

It’s not a fancy and certainly not a squishy-squashy word, but at the end, it means everything. 

A lot of people I know, if they are willing to name their ultimate fear, say “Dying alone.” There is something so hollow about it, indicative of an empty life with no significant attachments. 

How you die is how you have lived. 

A couple of years ago I saw something in the paper and, before I could stop myself, exclaimed, “Holy.” It’s a silly expression – don’t know where it came from - that just pops out of me when I am truly surprised. 

I won’t say the man’s name because I don’t wish to be barbecued all over again, and it wasn't his real name anyway, but suffice it to say he was a local Vancouver not-quite-celebrity, a newspaper writer for the Sun who pretty much worked in one place all his life. 

He was almost always described as “acerbic”, meaning he could be acid, even caustic, but his remarks caused gales of laughter among those who were NOT his target.  He was the master of schadenfreude and could summon it with a snap of his fingers. There is no way you can tell me he didn’t get pleasure out of it. 

I knew him as a theatre critic at first, and I noticed right away the carbolic quality which could be quite funny in a mean Dorothy Parker-esque way. Then he was assigned the classical music beat, and was away to the races.

People pretended to be OK with his excoriating remarks, even tried to see them as an honour, though I don’t know what they thought in private.  He did like certain artists,  though he was extremely picky and seemed to have supernaturally-sensitive hearing. If a violinist lost a single horsehair from his bow, he noticed, and he wasn’t charitable about it. 

His weekly column, entitled Urban Scrawl, ran for a few years and could be immensely entertaining. But that’s not the thing I want to write about today. 

At some point in the ‘90s I must have sent him something. I do remember a bizarre visitation by Liz Taylor at the local Eatons store to promote some new fragrance, Black Something-or-other. I sent him my newspaper column about it, and he actually responded: “Ol’ Violet Eyes! I might just steal that one. I only steal from the best.” 

This didn’t seem like a mean or acerbic man. Over the years I’d send him sporadic bits and pieces, and to my astonishiment, one year he sent me a Christmas card. I couldn’t quite call him a friend, but he did respond to most of the bits I sent, mainly clippings from my column. 

Then he sort of went underground, wrote a few pieces for the Georgia Straight and  disappeared, apparently into retirement. 

So that was that, until one day I encountered a very weird sight. 

The Grand Master of the acerbic quip had a Facebook page! 

I couldn’t quite believe it, but there it was. It had all sorts of comments from people, stuff he’d done, etc. It certainly looked real. 

It had been, oh, five years since I’d heard anything. I knew I couldn’t “friend” him, but tried to send a message anyway. It went something like: 

Good to see you again! Have you interviewed the countertenor Michael Maniaci? He knocked me over on YouTube the other day. Interested to hear your view. Hope this gets to you.” 

Boy, did it. 

Though I wasn’t his Facebook “friend”, he wasted no time in answering me.

“This was a mistake. I am not on Facefuck because I have no interest in joining the herd of vacuous idiots. Hope this gets to you.” 

Uh. If you’re not on Facefuck, how can you answer a Facefuck message? 

It was upsetting. 

I did find a few things out. I mentioned his name to someone I knew, one of those I-know-everybody types who was as gay as the day is long. “Oh, THAT guy. He has a reputation, you know. They tell me he’s the most arrogant, cruel, narcissistic, heartless, ruthless bastard they have ever met.” 

Oh my (again)! 

So that was that, until my “Holy!” day: I saw  a full-page spread, which is certainly more attention than he had ever received before. You have to die to get that. 

He was dead, so they ran a large full-color photo of him and articles by retired Sun employees about how “acerbic” his writing was, and how wonderful, and how he was wasted in Vancouver and should have been writing for the New Yorker. And about how he had kept his private life private. 

Colleagues mentioned his kindness, but there was a hedge-y quality to some of it. There were also stories of him hiding behind a post at concerts when he saw a friend or colleague coming his way. 

But apparently, this was OK because he was dead now and already being elevated to sainthood in that strange, strange way the dead are always elevated. I have often wondered if this is nothing more than a superstitious fear that the bastards will come back and haunt us. 

I did not react well. I was furious at all the statements about his kindness, his gentle soul, etc. The man was an asshole and I wanted the world to know it. 

I didn’t think hard about it and I did use his real name, a bad idea. The blog post was out there, though I assumed no one would read it. But I had tagged it with his name (duh: the part of me that DID want people to see it). It wasn’t long until I received feedback, not the kind of feedback you ever want to see. 

“You mean you are going to rip into this man and hurt his family before the body even hits the ground?” 

“I have never in my life seen anything so merciless. You are a sick woman.”

Message boards said things like “it sounds like she was a stalker, obsessed with him, and he had probably been trying to scrape her off his shoe for years.” 

It’s funny how in moments like this, dynamics are neatly reversed. It drives me completely crazy. Like a bizarre weather vane, there is a complete 180-degree turn,and ALL the nasty things a person has done are heaped on to the person who has been hurt by them. 

It’s insanity, and it happens all the time. 

I think I hit a nerve here, because it was obvious to me that this was a lonely, bitter old man (not THAT old – only 67, but the lonely die young) who died without inspiring much real grief.  An article I read later, written by a friend, was much more honest than the verbal Cool Whip posted in the Sun. She spoke of his kindness, but then said he frequently isolated himself and could suddenly cut off friends in the manner of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. 

Oh my, again. 

Then came the truly heartbreaking part: as he lay dying in hospital, a few colleagues from the old days were having trouble piecing together any facts about his life. Where was he born ? Was it Saskatchewan? Didn’t he have a brother? Where did he go to school? Nobody knew. Their colleague of 20+ years was a complete cypher, a blank.

As far as I know, there was no one from his family there, no one to stand by him as his life ebbed away. 

I will never know why he attacked me that way when I was simply trying to renew a connection, not a close one, but one that had occasionally been fun. I don’t know why there was a Facebook page set up in the first place when he wasn’t on “Facefuck” and probably despised such things. (Another colleague described his work habits as being out of the 1950s, along with his attitudes and TV preferences: all he watched was Turner Classic Movies.) 

Somebody mentioned a wake, and even said, “Will you be there, Margaret Gunning?” I really needed more acid thrown in my face. Still later I read a blog post which nearly peeled my skin off in a single piece. I was described as a loony old lady and “stinky old biddy”, and the post was accompanied by a goofy picture of me posing with my bird on my shoulder, a clear attempt to paint me as a lunatic. 

I guess I should’ve known better than to speak ill of the dead. I broke some sort of primal rule, I guess, but I was just pissed off at all this glowing praise of a man who had other traits besides kindness and gentleness. Try vitriol and nastiness. 

I did take my post down and posted a brief apology on the Straight message board. My timing had been bad. Fury has abated, to be replaced mostly with pity. I wonder about that wake now, whether it ever happened with so few people.  And I wonder if any of his mysterious, even chimeric family members would have attended, because it seems to me that attending was not their strong suit.

Just rediscovered something I wrote many years ago, on the tag-end of a piece about Paul Biscop, the small medium at large whose spirit turned out to be as mean as all the rest of him. But here's what I said about him.

Something about the manner of his dying continues to bother me. It's the same way L. D. died, and if ever a man carried a load of poison karma, it was that one. His colleagues stood around his deathbed trying to figure out if they could remember any details of his life. Incredibly, he only worked in one place for his entire career, the backwater arts pages of the Vancouver Sun, and had never spread himself out, probably because his spirit was so small and he was incapable of taking risks. They would interfere with his opinion of himself.. No one knew if he had kin anywhere - there were only vague, conflicting ideas. So what is a stroke? Something backs up on you, I think. Something in your head disastrously explodes. If you're immensely old, it makes some sense - the vessels age, they wear out - but at 67? At 67, it's a form of autointoxication.

I can't find the tribute from the "friend" who was actually somewhat honest about his true nature (if any of his nature was true), stating that he often isolated himself for long periods, and was known to dump his long-time friends in such a shocking manner that they never knew what hit them. His nickname (behind his back, of course) was Sweeney Todd, as in the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, who had his "friends" murdered, ground up into hamburger and made into meat pies which he sold to the public in his quaint little village butcher shop.

And one more thing! All those people commenting in the Georgia Straight mentioned they were going to hold a wake in L. D.'s honor. I couldn't help but be reminded of that scene in A Christmas Carol where the ghost of Scrooge overhears his colleagues (who have known him for decades) discussing his funeral arrangements. One exclaims, "I thought he'd never die!", and another states that he would go to his funeral "only if a luncheon is provided. But unless I am fed" (pats his paunch with both hands) "I stay home."

This wake never happened. It didn't. I didn't need to be there to know this. No one cared enough about this bitter, nasty old man to want to honor him in any way. The most elegant and tasteful luncheon in the world couldn't help his colleagues and faux friends to overcome this repulsion. I still don't know why this "don't speak ill of the dead" thing is still around, because it's nothing more than rank superstition based on heebie-jeebies, goblins and ghoulies, and things that go bump in the night. 

And L. D.'s legacy is macabre enough without all that.

🌹GYPSY ROSE BLANCHARD: Knockin' on Heaven's Door😮

Don't get me started on Gypsy Rose! I no sooner cut loose from the Meghan and Harry nonsense (mainly because they were so tedious and predictable) than I fell into the fire, and this thing is just beyond creepy. There is something rather terrifying about this woman and her compulsive lying, but worse than that is how the internet and media have made her into a celebrity BECAUSE she murdered her mother. No other reason. But I'm sooner or later going to have to cut loose from this one too, because I notice what a divisive figure she is and how various creators are now at each other's throats over it. I made an initial video, not as good as this one, that got over 3,000 views, and this one is scraping bottom and might have to be scrapped. THAT doesn't make sense either. There is a VERY bad energy around this girl, beyond creepy, and one wonders if she has even come to believe what she's telling people.

😱This Doll Creeps Me Out! (and here's why)😱

My troll/doll videos never get too many views, but I keep posting them anyway. My channel is now up to more than 20,300 subscribers and well over 3,000 videos, and yet, people with a few hundred subs/videos are getting thousands of views every day. Such is the weirdness of the internet, and YouTube specifically, because one of the stupidest videos I ever posted is now well over FOURTEEN MILLION views. 

Don't ask me why, or how, as I made a total of twelve videos which are virtually identical, just with different audio - yet THIS one went through the roof. I get all sorts of bizarre comments, many of them pretty gross, and in some cases people are all angry with me because the audio and video don't sync up! They say things like, oh, this is fake, folks, this is a lie, this is inaccurate, this is just a way to make $$ (though I'm not monetized and never will be).

So I keep on going, as a way to share my interests and hobbies with others, and as a way to keep a record for myself, or to make a video to send to one specific person. Nobody thinks about that.

Ryan Rewind: Glad to be a Grad (but Grandma is a little sad).

🐥BABIES EVERYWHERE! Gosling Stampede at Burnaby Lake🐥

Goslings, goslings everywhere! They were peepin' and cheepin' on our last visit to Burnaby Lake. Several Canada goose families were massed together, and the fuzzybutts had taken over the place. It's common to see goslings at many different stages of development, and one even looked like it was right out of the egg. There's also a magical moment when two gorgeous male red-winged blackbirds swoop down to eat out of my hand.

MELLADO: We're all at the Dance Recital!

 

The year-end Mellado dance recital (which we've been attending for 13 years) is always a highlight of the year. Here we are with Lauren, an incredible young dancer whose progress we've followed from the age of three.

Lauren and her Daddy, my son Jeff. Good-looking guy, don't you think?

Lauren and Grandma share a moment. There's always a theme for every recital, and this year it was Hawaii (can't you guess?)

Wallpaper version!

Before the show! Waiting for the elevator to take us there.

A couple of bonus shots: me and Bentley, and books.