Bytown returns September 26

Twenty-seven years of chaos.

A lifetime of weird and wonderful webfiction, released under a Creative Commons license, ready to make you cry. With joy, I mean. At least occasionally.

Start with the projects

Where to start

Everything that exists →

View foto stream →

  • A monitor photographed at an angle, screen glare across it, showing the mcm.1889.ca home page: a pill-shaped badge reading BYTOWN RETURNS SEPTEMBER 26, the headline "Twenty-seven years of chaos.", a paragraph about webfiction released under a Creative Commons licence, and buttons reading "Start with the projects" and "Subscribe". A woman's rain-lit profile fills the right of the screen.
  • A cream Huacaya alpaca in a black nylon show halter, head and neck filling the frame in hard midday sun, turned in profile with its eyes lowered and half shut, its dense crimped fleece rising over the face into a woolly forelock, with a second animal and blurred livestock pen railing behind
  • The near corner of a concrete bench slab, far out of focus, cutting diagonally across the lower half of the frame, with a suburban park sharp behind it at dawn: mown grass, an asphalt path curving away, a soccer goal at the left, young staked trees, a playground structure at the right and houses along the skyline under an amber pre-sunrise sky
  • A close-up of pale yellow-green trifoliate leaves in direct early-afternoon sun, one cluster sharp in the right of the frame with the raised midribs and surface texture caught by the light, the rest of the shrub falling away into a soft wash of the same foliage behind
  • A pale beige tile with an embossed mark on a wooden desk, two dark tiles fanned behind it, a notebook and pen blurred in the foreground
  • Rain-beaded asphalt seen from directly above, with a shallow pothole worn through to the darker aggregate beneath and a thin weed growing out of its edge
  • The photographer's long shadow stretched across sunlit mown grass in low morning sun, one arm raised, with the shadow of a slender young tree beside it and a discarded teal plastic bottle lying in the grass
  • A weathered split-rail cedar fence along the bank of a still pond at dawn, the water reflecting a pale pink and blue sky, with a low cut-stone wall and evergreens on the far shore and dried seedheads growing up through the rails
  • The cut end of a dark metal tube against a pale scratched plaster surface, crusted with pale debris where they meet, its shadow thrown hard across the wall by low sunlight
  • A black and tan hound asleep on a wooden floor in warm lamplight, stretched on its side with its head tipped back, having slid half off a cream fleece bed
  • Lumpy pink and purple cloud undersides filling the whole frame, lit from below at dawn
  • A part-eaten flatbread on a white plate under a heap of pea shoots, with prosciutto at its edges and dark balsamic pooled alongside
  • A close-up of open crochet in thick rust-coloured ribbon yarn, its looped rows running across the frame with daylight showing through the gaps
  • A dimpled clear glass bowl on an orange wooden table, cracked from rim to base with a shard broken away beside it

Most recent

All 628 posts →

Dogs and Seizures

So we foster dogs, which I think I’ve mentioned. This came about because, after my wife’s accident, we were forced to ride the bus on day — not an easy feat for someone with a brain injury — and on that bus ride, she saw a service animal. Something in that moment made her realize that she wanted to take care of animals the way animals took care of humans in need, and so as soon as we were able, we started fostering.

These days, we focus on palliative dogs who don’t have long to live. One of our current fosters, Peppa (so named because she snorts like a pig) has recently started having seizures, and… yikes.

OK, slight diversion: long ago, I wrote a story and mentioned a character had Tourette’s. Someone who had actual experience with Tourette’s wrote to me and told me how I was actually 100% wrong about the condition, and pointed me at some resources. I think I was more like 200% wrong, and I have made a point of never making that kind of mistake since. Or, well, as much as I can.

The same thing is currently happening for seizures. I mean, I still don’t have a ton of experience with human seizures, but dog seizures are pretty damn terrifying all on their own. Peppa will be in a deep sleep on her bed and then suddenly she’s making these strange, jerky breathing sounds that you’d mistake for choking if it weren’t accompanied by desperate flailing.

The seizures last less than a minute, probably, but it feels like ten thousand years have passed before she finally starts to gasp and grunt properly, and you can see she’s come out the other side.

She’s usually calm for about five minutes, just catching her breath again, so I can hold her and try to convince her she’s fine. Apparently dogs don’t actually know they’ve had a seizure when it happens, so as far as she’s concerned, she just came out of a deep sleep with her heart racing for no reason. So we get a few minutes of calm before she starts to think of ways to burn off that energy.

And then we have what I like to call “all night disco derby”, which consists of Peppa, half-blind and disoriented from the seizure, running around the house at full speed, trying to do… something. She’ll run straight into walls and furniture without slowing down, no matter how hard you work to stop her. If you put down padding, she’ll push through it. If you try to hold her, she’ll squirm free.

Keep in mind this usually starts at around 9:30-10:30PM. At least once a week. And the disco derby lasts for around 4 hours.

So as you can imagine, I spend half my time being not-quite-awake, and the other half worrying about the next time I will be not-quite awake.

That said, she’s the cutest little thing in the universe, so she gets a free pass.

All of which is to say: I don’t make fun of Tourette’s anymore, and I don’t make fun of seizures, either. Sure, it’s limiting my off-colour punchline opportunities, but at least I don’t have to feel bad about laughing at this kind of misfortune.

Continue reading

Earlier in the log

“MCM” by MCM, https://mcm.1889.ca/index.html — licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/