Month: March 2006

gm denied, yo

“We tried traps. But the cat is too stupid for standard moosetraps–I’m afraid she’d get caught–and the glue traps were just tragic. There’s nothing like pulling out the fridge and seeing a dejected ton of moose huddled in the corner, looking at you with enormous brown eyes, each hoof glued solidly down to the floor.”

  • Update on Sub-Genius Child Custody Case.

    GM is running a contest to “make your own” commercial for the gas-guzzling Tahoe SUV. General Motors has teamed up with Donald Trump’s ‘The Apprentice’ franchise to create a website that allows prospectives to make their own commercials online. The website allows readers to select backgrounds, video shots, and input text in an attempt to win prizes. Instead, they are getting justly served. The internet is finding it’s own uses. Common sense says these won’t be left up for very long, so steal them now.

    one, two, three, four, five, six.

    edit: the best one is the one my roommate Graham made, here.

    • as I step across this ocean


    postsecret.blogspotcom – void
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    operatic lederhosen boy child

    Imogene is fantastic. She came into the shop yesterday with a small gift of grapes and the better gift of her company. I asked her to dinner and we talked about the men in our life and our boring jobs and a million little things that make it easier to get to know someone. I brought her home with me then over to Duncan’s for a mini-quickie-culture night. We melted down truffles and dipped chunks of my publishing pineapple in it. It was more fun than I think I’ve had in awhile. No pressure, no expectations, no having to worry about other people. It was refreshing. A good precursor to a morning that would have left me far more upset without it.

    Just a general note to the world, here, I think. Unless you are my partner or we work together, I do not answer to you. Assuming otherwise will result in my gently easing you entirely out of my life, to be spoken at only at other people’s social arrangements or in accidental public encounters.

    Speaking of social arrangements. Meat Night is tonight. A group of people is gathering together to buy a Priscilla Platter at the Memphis Street Blues BBQ Grill at 7 o’clock. It’s the size of two Elvis platters, and so therefore likely more meat than you have ever encountered outside of an Albertan wedding. And before you get on my case about over-consumption and all of the other “we live in a first world” politics that may spring to mind over such an outing, please direct them to Bob, as I am mostly along because I am slowly starving to death while waiting for a bank transfer or a paycheque, whichever comes first.

    &nbsp cute to make the brain misfire

    he needs what I have but can’t give away

    There is a raccoon stuck bottom-half inside a tree, I see it when I walk from the bus-stop. There is a man on a blue ladder, his arm up to his elbow in the hole, trying to shove the squirming creature free from the other side. I want to walk up to the situation and reach up and grab onto the creature, ignore the claws and teeth that would tear at me and pull. Yank it free in one smooth movement. Instead I run my tongue over the inside of my teeth, ossified pearls, and walk away. I will be late if I do not go now. I am obscurely disappointed my skin will remain intact.

  • Net-funded professional journalism.

    I’ve been sleeping heavily lately, as if everything shuts down, as if my soul goes absent. I’m not used to it. Every morning is a dim entrance, a watery sky debut into a film I never needed to see. It’s like there’s a blanket of dust over me in my dreams. I twitch, I can feel it, just on the edge outside of consciousness. My body is trying to cope and maybe not doing as well as it used to. There’s something in my head getting in the way. It’s like when I lie in bed, when it’s time to dream, my mind seizes the chance to escape me, drive fast and away, disassociate from the crashing tide of conflicting shades of ache that run underneath my point of view, instead of resting, instead of taking the space to relax and fix my scrapes and bruises. It’s tiring me out, not being in my body. I have to find someone who knows how to connect the bits and pieces. I have hopes for Saturday.

  • The Sexy Beast is talking to you.

    Today the radio plays songs I used to listen to last year. It’s like nostalgia without the immediacy of caring about what happened. My in-box tells me letters from people who used to be my lovers. Someone drops the word muse on me and I smile, warmed by a rare spark of feeling worthwhile. If they weren’t so far away, that’s exactly what I want to be. The weather here never changes. Overcast with a chance of sun, sunny with a chance of rain. Always water from the sky. Even when it is blue it looks gray. I haven’t taken part in creating in a long time, too long for me.

    • someone should dress as paris hilton

  • Watching an airplane hit by lightning.

    Vancouver had a another successful pillow-fight flash-mob this past Saturday. For those interested, here’s pictures and video. Regrettably, I couldn’t go, my time was with Skatia, but there have been reports filtering in from various people that tell of traffic stopping and feathers drifting down for blocks.

    In a similar vein, The 26th Annual International Fool’s Parade is this Saturday. It’s been a tradition to dress up as spectacularly as possible and sing and march eccentric down the seawall. This year, however, plans have changed. We’re meeting at Robson Square at Noon. No costume too loud, no instrument too silly.

  • Drawing Restraint 9 AKA sometimes Bjork is a bit much.

    • personality winding away


    on a slow night
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    Sitting in the shoe store alone, I’m getting that absent feeling of two a.m. where you know the rest of the world has mostly gone to bed. The only clock is on the computer desktop, but I can’t escape the impression of ticking, like I should know how to play piano to explain myself. I think of brickwork, of his hands on the keys and on my back, the way he kissed me as if drowning were the way to go. I remember a lot of things and wonder how much of it is important. I should send him a letter. I should send more people writing. I suppose this is my version of dwelling on mortality, mourning for the people I love that are too inaccessible for me to tell them so.

    I don’t think I could put their skills and talent in my freezer. I’m not big enough for that. My family outshines me more than singing for the joy of it. Me, it’s sun outside and I feel like I need a raincoat. I seem strewn into limbo. My feet are pulling me forward on habit alone. People on the street and I’m waiting for them to stop talking and begin using their heads. Waiting and losing time, staring into the sky for an unrecalled twenty minutes, losing my soul to a string of other people’s glorious smiles. My voice is dying, trapped in the amber of a summer I don’t remember enough of, trapped by a time that never came because it’s a film-strip of memories, days and evenings and too many transient whispers.

    Boys calling on the phone and asking for improbable sizes. “Do you have red boots in size 15? I want something slinky.” Boys who sound similar to friends but not quite, enough to pause me a second more, stutter my voice and steal my certainty. I’m abandoning my faith, you see. Rolling up the primrose path and trying to be with someone I’m not in love with. It’s a first, but I’m too exhausted. Maybe it’s time to be like everyone else.

    monday and life continues


    he looks happy
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    Thank you to everyone who sent their condolences, thank you very much. The hardest part was wrapping him up in the plastic bag and putting him in the freezer. Irrational, but I felt I was smothering him. He’s there now, though I feel as if he’s still sleep somewhere in my room, as if he might scramble over to me at any time and tramp all over my keyboard. It’s tricky, knowing and not knowing, all at once. I’m worried that when it comes time to cut into him, I won’t be able to separate his body from his now absent mind.

    I hope that when I die, there will be someone who cares for me enough to preserve me as art. Take me into pieces like the BodyWorld exhibits or do simply what I am doing, sewing wings onto the corpse. Tyler said I was creepy for saying so, but I think it’s an expression of dedication, of the continuance of being in memory preserved into flesh. Tricky things, emotions and motivations difficult to express.

    Thank you, too, to those who donated through PayPal to help me with the intense veterinarian bill. Your kindness has been overwhelming. The bill has been covered, I’m not going to have to painfully swallow it whole like I expected. (I’m finishing the verification of my account right now.)

    And to those who’ve been asking, the lovely James Everett has renewed my Flickr account.

    he’ll be all “oh noes, my face on the internet” and I’ll be like “take that”

    I came home from work yesterday to discover thick smeary pools of black blood in the kitchen and down the hall. Graham had e-mailed me at work, said Skatia was sick. I hadn’t expected it to look as if he’d been torn up. There was more blood than I would have initially thought a ferret could provide. I found him shivering in a pile of my clothes, blood crusted to his fur. He was exhausted, cold, and limp, obviously too ill to move.

    I said to Mike, who was with me, “My ferret is dying.“

    I put him in hot water and Graham called the Emergency Animal Hospital in Kitsilano. I called Stephen, arranged for a ride over, and cleaned up the kitchen. Our theories were either Skatia had swallowed something that had lodged in his intestines or he had a bacterial infection. The vet said otherwise, her $200 guess is cancer.

    In retrospect, taking him to the doctor was a very expensive mistake. (One I’m not sure I can actually afford, so if anyone feels like taking me out to dinner for two weeks…)** Not only did she only tell me what I already knew, “he’s lost a lot of blood, he’s going to die,” the vet also became upset with me that I wouldn’t have him immediately put down, in spite of the fact that he wasn’t in any pain, as there would be “no way he would survive the night” and made it a hassle to get him back. He’s curled up in my lap right now, still breathing, over twenty four hours later, being kept warm in a blanket with a hot water bottle and a space heater. She only made things difficult.

    It’s true, though, that I don’t know how much longer he will last. Sam and I stayed awake until dawn watching over him. It was expected his organs would shut down one by one as the blood that was left in his system worked to keep his brain alive. Slowly he would go to sleep and cease breathing. Now I’m not so sure. I got him to drink an entire tea-cup full of milk last night and at least half of it stayed in. He’s not exactly animated, but he’s no longer in shock and the bleeding has diminished. If he survives tonight as well, I think he’ll be okay for a few days more. He’s a tenacious little thing, even still dragging himself across the room to get to me, so I expect him to remain resilient.


    **


    you’re dancing with myself

    photo by cyber_kostyan

  • MMORPG Roma Victor is crucifying naughty players rather than banning them.

    Walking to work this morning, it occurred to me that I am very lucky that a good cross-section of the local youth have obliterated most of the more traditional means of seduction. Comfort drugs and the threat of sexual infection have granted me an equanimity that I would not have had before. We all pull hair, we all scratch backs, we absently rub out the aches in feet that find themselves near out laps. The hormonal ocean is absent, there’s no confused motivations lapping at our hands or the words we apply to our situations. Sleeping is sleeping, usually, and staying overnight is fun, not a promise.

    I really like that. I appreciate the freedom it grants.

    “The most effective means for neutralizing the Other is the appropriation of their symbolic language.”