Month: July 2006

more warning would have helped, also, a consultation


Chris Klapper‘s SWARM of insect-like baby dolls suspended from the ceiling
by cables and springs. You may safely ignore his other work.

I’m trying to round up people who are willing to help my mother with a leisurely move on the price of pizza, beer, and appreciation.

She’s rented a van from 6 o’clock Friday morning to 6 o’clock Saturday morning. We won’t be moving boxes upon boxes, more just pieces of large furniture that she and I can’t move alone. I know it’s ill-timing, what with the plans to meet here for a movie than night-market, but I’m hoping people might still have the morning free.

Wal-Mart staff ordered to search store after bomb threat.

I did not mean to slam the door. Technically, true. I didn’t mean for it to be painful once I had done so either, the first link in a chain reaction of breaking down shaking in my kitchen, almost crying on my roommate, who wanted to know what was wrong. Usually I am better than that. I hold onto myself. I am polite. I keep to myself and swallow extraneous reactions. Feeling anything is risky, it’s true. Feelings have been nothing but a useless simmering frustration for a few years. There have been no rewards that were not false, no punishments that mercifully ceased. The heart as a holding pattern, understanding that there is no space to land. Dead air. Static. I did not mean to slam the door, but for my sake, I should have done so harder, I have not slammed a door in years. When I was a child, I would shake hotels and houses equally with the force of impact, wood in wood frame. My only vengeful outlet, because otherwise I am quiet, refusing to offer what is not asked and hating that no one dares.

“it’s a phase I’m going through”

This nerdgasm is for Katie and Maddie and Kyle.

Chris Cunningham has reached a point where I’m not sure that he’s famous for what he produces or is simply famous for being Chris Cunningham. He’s got a new video out, his first in seven years, Sheena is a Parasite, for the Horrors, and it’s an anticlimactic come-back for such a cutting-edge director. Apparently, Cunningham first hooked up with the band via MySpace. Low budget, frenetic, and nothing we haven’t seen him already do better elsewhere. (See: Rubber Johnny). I’m disappointed, but likely not as much as real fans might be. He’s always been a wave riding to nowhere for me. A hat full of tricks with a hollow bottom. Me, I want to be Mark Romanek in my next life.

Genetically Modified germ spray could keep dentist at bay.

I know this odd boy, Newton, who usually lives in NZ. We met in highschool, and he’s one of the few people I’m still in touch with, mostly because he keeps in touch with me. I talked to him today, he’s back on his yearly visit back to Vancouver, and found that I have nothing to say right now. My issues are all reflections of the global climate. I’m watching Isreal VS Syria develop, New Orleans funds being mis-appropriated for things like diamond rings and sex videos, and keeping tabs on the Net Neutrality issues, but have nothing of my own. I’m unemployed and single, sitting at home with a sprained ankle, and I’ve been like this for almost an entire month. If there was news, I’ve forgotten it.

Machete gang attacks a party just off Commercial Drive, severs a teenagers hand.

The Annual Mad Hatter’s Tea Party starts this weekend. “Bring a picnic blanket, a flamingo and a tasty treat to share.” This year they’ve got three different performances; Saturday July 22nd at the Burrard View Park, Saturday July 29th at Renfrew Park, and Sunday July 30th at Trout Lake Park. For those who’ve never heard of it, The Fool’s Society hosts a batch of free Alice In Wonderland themed performances where everyone is invited to come in costume. It’s a very family friendly event with enough good music and jokes to keep the adults interested, and since when did we consider ourselves grown-up’s anyways? Toot-A-Lute will be there, as well as most of the Carnival Band. Last year there was croquet, a caucus race, and various bits of delightful acting.

Scientists have defined the function of a key protein that nerve cells use to pass information quickly.

I’m beginning to consider dancing for money

Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries. -Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

I’ve submitted a story to Life For Change, an on-line writing contest. It’s $100 for the author of the story with the most votes. It’s a newer site, only active since January, but there’s been two winners so far, and I hope to at least be short-listed for the next draw. Course, I need people to vote for me, that’s how all these work. This means you.

Thank you to Adam, Andrew, Angus, Avi, Brian, Bruce, Christopher, Chris, Christaline, David, Dominique, Duncan, Ed, Erin, Gary, Eva, Gord, Heath, Jacques, Jer, Jordan, Keith, Kyle, Liam, Lung, Lee, Luciano, Navi, Nick, Patti, Paula, Michael, Mike, Mike, Sam, Sara, Sarah, Stephen, Steven, Simon, Travis, Robin, Ray, Reine, Ross, Ryan, Roger, Wayne, Vicki, and the other five to ten people who’s names have momentarily escaped me.

Next time you’re all signing a damned guest book.

I’ve made a Flickr Pool for party pictures, fashionably late birthday. Pass it on.

Roger, Jacques brother, was talking with someone about a car for sale. If this is you or you know who it is, could you get in touch with me? Roger was an older fellow with the short sandy hair who came later, the one with the amazingly inconvenient talent of avoiding being in any of the photos I currently have at my disposal.

And again, whoever forgot their keys, if they’d like them back, they should get in touch with me. (Otherwise, I’m just going to start using their nifty light-up key-chain). My Outlook thrashed itself this past weekend, I can’t get at my invitation list to ask around properly, so I’m relying purely on word-of-mouth. The more of you send out feelers and harassment, the less likely someone will be panicking sometime this week.

Andrew, Sarah, Ethan, and Alicia, you still have books here that you put dibs on.

July 10th was Nikola Tesla‘s 150th anniversary. Tesla, the archetypical mad scientist, invented radio and alternating current, set the world record for man-made lightning, and was nemesis to none other than Edison himself, who was entirely a prick to him his entire career. After an intensely accomplished life, he died destitute and alone in a pigeon filled suite in New Yorker Hotel.

Part of the various celebrations, (2006 has been declared The Year of Nikola Tesla by Croatia, Serbia, and UNESCO. Croatia already has him on their money), is going to be a Christopher Nolan film based on The Prestige, a captivating novel by Christopher Priest, starring David Bowie as Tesla. In 1980, Orson Welles produced a Yugoslavian film named Tajna Nikole Tesle, (The Secret of Nikola Tesla), in which Welles himself played the part of Tesla’s patron, J.P. Morgan, but I don’t think it’s going to match up to this. I had such a fierce secret crush on Tesla when I was growing up that it was silly, so this looks like it’s going to be entirely too sexy for words. Seriously, casting David Bowie as Nikola Tesla, you can’t actually craft a hotter idea than that. Not unless you somehow throw Phillip K. Dick in there as played by another David Bowie. Here’s a link to the trailor.

Here’s some fine examples of where I’ve been wasting my time on-line

I am wretchedly tired. Come to my party tomorrow. Instead of writing, you’re getting a tab-dump. (Has anyone formalized that term yet? We should get on that.)

blue
  • Fairwood Press currently publishes Talebones, a magazine that has been publishing science fiction and fantasy short stories for eleven years. Yesterday they sent out a plea for subscriptions, saying that they are in financial distress and without new subscriptions, they’ll have to quit putting the magazine out. Click here to see what you can do.
  • European Honeybees commonly imported to Japan fall prey to the Japanese giant hornet. The local bees do not, instead they have evolved a fascinating and wierdly wonderful defense. National Geographic News has a video.
  • An audio recording made on November 18, 1978, at the Peoples Temple compound in Jonestown, immediately preceding and during the mass suicide and/or murder of over 900 members of the cult, has been put on-line by someone who got the audio tape in 1979. This means that for your auditory indulgence, an alarming bit of educational history is vicerally available.
  • The Steam Powered Internet Machine, by Turner-prizewinning artist Jeremy Deller and his collaborator Alan Kane, links a steam engine to a computer, allowing visitors to surf the net, powered by one of the driving forces of the Industrial Age. Although mischieviously impractical, (click to see the picture, it’s neat), the machine does work.
  • Gez Fry decided in 2002, without any experience whatsoever, that he wanted to make a living out of Japanese style illustration. After studying artists like Masamune Shirow, he emerged with an astonishing enough portfolio to break into the big market, in only two years. Pingmag has an essential interview that follows why he decided on his excellent life-changing decision and how he went about it.

    • now I’m at Sam’s, wondering where he is. it’s been over an hour. I was going to help him pack.



    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    I found out that the computer dot in Kashmir is my godmother’s amazing best friend, Joy. One down, 800 to go. All these mysterious places, I’ve been learning the world map a little at a time, just from peeking into where everyone seems to be. (The most interesting bit, I think, is how accurately my map globally describes what areas are spread with internet access.)

    This summer weather makes me wish I drank alcohol. It rains a little, is cold at night, and when I open my eyes in a sticky hot room, companion in my bed to a clutter of books, an antique hunting horn, a handful of plush roses, my feet tangled in a pile of clean laundry, a wish for a wine bottle flashes into my hands. It’s part of being unemployed, of feeling that my accomplishments are accumulating too slowly to change anything. I want the melodrama of a morning swig of sour intoxication to insulate me against the passage of empty time. Not that I’ve ever managed to be drunk in my life, my thought comes fleshed only in media, but French television shows, Spanish movies full of lovers and taxi-cabs that drive too fast, one hand out the window, hair being tossed back by the weight of the sun, make saturated hydrocarbons look fun, meaningful and nice instead of unpleasant, a wretched taste similar to cassette-head cleaner.

  • Beautiful Day Without You, an animated video by Damien Ferri for Royksopp.
  • A Million Ways, a home-made music video by Ok Go! that sparked a make-your-own contest.

    I skipped out on Graham‘s movie night to visit with David and his last night of the big-screen TV he’d rented for World Cup. (As of today, he’s back off to Macbeth it up at the Caravan). We watched Requiem, took a dive into the perturbing anthropology that is modern television, and just generally stayed up too late eating pizza and drinking tea strong enough to dye skin. (Dear me, You Forgot the Pizza in the Fridge, Leave a Note on the Front Door for the House Sitters, Otherwise it Will be Two Weeks. Sincerely, Your Sudden Realization). I think we packed it in around four in the morning, but stayed up reading in bed until closer to five. The New Yorker, Lila Says. Comforting to be so domestic. The younger kids who stay the night at my place, crashing over after movies so we can all have breakfast the next day before work, they don’t know the subtleties yet, they can’t sink into it.

    Our first blanket arrangement was called the Too Hot War, but that one sank into the swamp. So we built a second blanket arrangement: the Too Warm War. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. So we built a third one: the Cold Toes War. And that one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, lad, when you get people like us together, the strongest castle upstairs of England.

    • the girl from labrynth is the girl from requiem for a dream


    Psychedelic Fur
    Originally uploaded by Airchinapilot.

    Fashionably Late Birthday Party, Saturday, July 15th, Cotton & Second, just off Commercial, BYOB, friends, instruments, sweets, savouries, BBQ-ables, drinks, bubbles, whatever-you-like, appropriately pass it on.

    Mike‘s so cutting edge.

    The silence was deafening, heavy with threats. To break the quiet, my friend asked, “Alright, what’s the average penis length?” I asked, “Average average or average that I’ve encountered?” “Both,” she said. I did a quick calculation using the wrist of my right hand, quickly marking off lengths from the tips of my fingers. She spit laughter, “Did I actually just see you do that?”

    Vladimir Putin kissed a boy ‘like a kitten’.

    There was a behalf-of-someone-else marriage proposal in the comments section of my poll post. I don’t know either of the men involved, but it made me smile through my ridiculous sun-burn. Not sure if I’m really marriage material right now, poorly tanned red leather for skin, hobbling around everywhere on my cane and wincing. If I move the wrong way right now, I’m liable to crumple like a burning photograph, clutching at my ruined shoulder or irritable wrist. On the up side, I came home to an answering machine message dismantled into merely someone scatting with the word ‘beep’. I can’t even tell what gender the person is, let alone figure out who I’m to call back. Congratulations mystery caller, you win the Interesting Yet Disadvantageous Communication award. Tonight, it’s a paperback copy of The Fall by Albert Camus. Only trick is, you have to call back and actually leave contact information to get it.

    R.I.P. Syd Barret

    I pulled out a cheap pink striped restaurant mint. “Wait, no. I have better ones.” My hand dug into my pocket again and emerged with an ouzo ball. “I’m useless for this right now,” she said. I looked at her face, fixed behind the shield of her helmet, looking like a sixties movie astronaut, then at her gloved hands resting on the arms of the motorcycle. “You’re right.” I crumpled the blue foil wrapper off with my fingers, reached up under the plastic screen and placed the candy into her mouth. “Drive safely.”

    Vote for the Clowngod.
    Then vote for me.