BUS PEOPLE: the novel that never was

 

In freshening up my blog with a new look, I've rediscovered literally thousands of things I posted in the past. Herein are links to ALL TWELVE PARTS of my unpublished novel, Bus People. Once in a while I think about sending it out. . . 


BUS PEOPLE: a novel of the Downtown Eastside


This is a serialized version of my novel Bus People, a story of the people who live on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The main character, Dr. Zoltan Levy, is loosely based on author and lecturer Dr. Gabor Mate. It's a fantasy and not a sociological treatise: meaning, I don’t try to deal with “issues” so much as people who feel like they’ve been swept to the edge of the sidewalk and are socially invisible/terminally powerless. I’m running it in parts, in chronological order so it’s all there, breaking it up with a few pictures because personally, I hate big blocks of text.



Bus People Part One

Bus People Part Two

Bus People Part Three

Bus People Part Four

Bus People Part Five

Bus People Part Six

Bus People Part Seven

Bus People Part Eight

Bus People Part Nine

Bus People Part Ten

Bus People Part Eleven

Bus People Part Twelve

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

PDQ Bach: Report from Hoople!

PDQ Bach

REPORT FROM HOOPLE!

Apparently, there really is a Hoople. though I doubt if there ever was a PDQ Bach. Click on the pink link and see if it will work for you. There are no guarantees! The web page is simply ancient, as is the recording (late '60s), but it's some of the best satire I've ever encountered. This was and is one of my favorite "classical" recordings.

Exploding bodices and face plants: the perils of the Edwardian corset

From what I know of Victorian versus Edwardian dress and corsetry, there was a radical change around the turn of the century. You can see the results of it here in the very strange carriage of these women. I have seen images in corsetry ads from this era that made me scratch my head:

Now, I am aware that a woman in that era would wear a bustle: a big wad of extra padding supported with wires and fastened at the top of the bum that was kind of the Kim Kardashian "booty" of the era, making the bent-back appearance of the body even more exaggerated. What this was doing to the female spine is hard to fathom. Corset enthusiasts/fetishists will insist that corsets were actually GOOD for women and supported their posture, claiming that medical reports of internal damage were sensationalized and just wrong. 

But look at this: the belly and bust are leaning forward alarmingly and so in line with each other that they are practically flat, with the pelvis and hips twisted backwards at a nearly-90-degree angle, then forced to bear the weight of heavy gowns, petticoats and that damned, damnable bustle.

There is something of the china figurine in these women's bodies, and frankly I thought those ads were a bit ridiculous and had to be exaggerating. . . until I saw this:

This alarming thing is called a "health corset", for reasons unknown. I wonder if women sometimes fell on their faces from being pushed so far forward, and how in fact a corset was even able to reshape and even deform a human body to such an extreme degree. 

This is sometimes called the "s-bend" effect, and you can see why. The women remind me of cats in mid-stretch, and perhaps this was considered sexy and alluring. Maybe it even gave the impression these women were leaning WAY forward to convey extreme interest in the people in front of them (I would imagine, men). I have heard stories of tightly-laced bodices suddenly exploding, with giant mammaries bursting out of their cage to add a little excitement to a dull opera or social tea. 

But it's no mystery why this woman is leaning on the chair for support. Without it, she'd likely face-plant. The fact the dangling garters look like something you'd strap onto a plough horse is another story.

Make our Garden Grow (my anthem for the lockdown)

You've been a fool and so have I
But come and be my wife
And let us try before we die
To make some sense of life

We're neither pure nor wise nor good
We'll do the best we know
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow
And make our garden grow

I thought the world was sugar cake
For so our master said
But now I'll teach my hands to bake
Our loaf of daily bread

We're neither pure nor wise nor good
We'll do the best we know
We'll build house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow
And make our garden grow

Let dreamers dream what worlds they please
Those Edens can't be found
The sweetest flowers
The fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground

We're neither pure nor wise nor good
We'll do the best we know
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow
And make our garden grow

5 Cereal Gadgets that Actually Work!

Testing YouTube's "new" format. I may never get the hang of this! But at least now I can post more than thumbnails.

Favorite images from The Movies

Dolores del Rio

Garbo and Gilbert

 

Mae Marsh

Gloria Swanson

Wedding of Tom Mix

William S. Hart

Rudolph Valentino

OUT FOR BLOOD: why my arms are black and blue

I won't preface this very much, because I am exhausted, stressed, and must go through all this again tomorrow. So because it's my blog and I can complain if I want to (and badly NEED to), here it is. I have to go back into the clinic tomorrow and report on this, which makes my stomach drop through the floor, but I feel I have to, for the sake of other patients who can't or won't complain (and most people don't).

Review posted online June 4

Bloodwork incident June 1/20    

On Monday, a technician in this clinic left large black and blue marks inside both arms when trying to draw blood. She poked and prodded, bent and held my arm down, went from one arm to another, then got 2 vials (they needed 3) and said it had stopped and she “didn’t have enough”. She finally called for another technician who drew the blood painlessly in about 30 seconds. Then my doctor said the results were “off” (lab error?) and I needed it done again! 

I have NEVER had this sort of experience in at least five years with this clinic. It has always been fast, efficient and painless. I do not know the person’s name, so I hope you keep records on this because I never want to go through this again. There was never an apology for the needless pain and anxiety/stress this caused.  Is there any way to arrange in advance or at least choose who does my blood draw? 

I assume this clinic wants feedback from patients if they have an incredibly stressful experience like this. If not, then the lab is remiss in providing the best service for patients, and I will have to go elsewhere. This did not need to happen, and I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.

Margaret Gunning

Where peaceful waters flow

Bee Attitudes: in praise of the Honeymakers

"God is dead". . . and so is Blogger?

One of the stranger gifs I've ever found (provenance unknown). So now I get an alarming message from Blogger, which I was afraid would soon be discontinued outright as obsolete technology, telling me that there will be a "new interface" on Blogger as of "late June". 

YouTube has threatened all sorts of dire things over the years, including disabling comments on videos featuring "minors" (in my case, dolls!), and then threatening to shut down channels altogether if they did not designate whether or not the videos are "made for children". All sorts of penalties were waved about for even taking one step in that direction, i. e. featuring a puppy for a few seconds (FOR CHILDREN!), OR, a puppy and a nude woman in THE SAME video (mass confusion and more penalties).

In my case, completely confused and panicked, I agreed to designate one video at a time as "made for children" or "NOT made for children", literally ticking a box for each one, but with an archive of about 2000 videos, I had no idea what to do with all the old ones and was seeing vague threats about having my account terminated forever. I sweated this for a couple of weeks while people posted videos with titles like "IS THIS THE END OF YOUTUBE???!!!" and worse, until the dread moment came, and. . . nothing happened. I mean, NOTHING. 

It was just like the "videos featuring minors" thing - they haphazardly "applied" it to random videos for a few weeks, then dropped the whole thing. In this case, the FTC was after YouTube for allowing companies to access personal information about children, which was ENTIRELY YouTube's fault, but passed along to creators to terrorize them and make sure they knew Who Was In Charge.

This Blogger thing is quite different, or at least I hope it is, an update of sorts, but I want to be able to keep my massive archive, access it easily, and post new things equally easily. The new version of anything is always infinitely harder to use and less effective (as I found out when I was forced to adopt YouTube's new editing program). I can try out the new one, and they do say there will be an option to keep the old "interface", whatever the hell THAT is. 

If the new one is easy to use, updates the look of it a bit (it DOES look very dated, and there seem to be hardly any Bloggers left), then fine. But I dread losing stuff I have lovingly toiled over since about 2011 (!). I just don't want to lose any of it. I DO look for things in my archives several times a week, so if I can't do that without turning it upside-down and shaking it, then I will have to try to stick to the old one. I don't know. But at least there are no dire threats that are never carried out. Yet, anyway.

Meantime, now YouTube is saying "this version of YouTube is going away soon. Try the NEW YouTube!" This is a way to phase out desktop applications entirely, so I will be hanging by a thread once again as some sort of dusty museum piece. 

But for now. . . 

What's on the bottom of a cardboard box?

THIS.

Mark Zuckerberg dies

via GIPHY

Northern shovellers: what's that under the water?

I am more grateful than ever for my connection to nature during this brutal, endless time of confusion and constriction. These banana-nosed ducks are endlessly entertaining and have canoe-like bills that are often hidden as they swim in circles dredging up all the best muck to eat.