Month: August 2008
going to take you home
I’m worried that I’m slowly transforming into one of those domestic goddess types, where every time you talk to them, the topic leans hard on decorating, cooking, and new ways to clean out your closet, try now! Fill in pin prick holes in your white walls with toothpaste, (it also takes wax and crayons off walls), use cigarette ashes to clean your silver, and newspaper to wipe down the mirrors. Don’t stand your brooms on their bristles, use equal parts vinegar and water to remove wall-paper, use salt to clean cast iron pans, and remember sunlight is a free UV disinfectant.
I suppose it’s because outside of Zombiewalk, all my news is apartment related. The mirror I painted has been wrestled onto the wall, I bought a batch of pictures frames and a black, epoxy/polyester powder-coated steel coat rack from IKEA, a birch wood IKEA bed-frame from Craigslist, and replaced every shared-space lighting fixture in the entire apartment with brushed steel fixtures I bought from Jane, an exceptionally nice woman who lives next to Paul Plimley. (It’s amazing what a difference lighting makes to a space). Soon I’ll be purchasing a little pot of raspberry/strawberry-daiquiri coloured paint for the kitchen, replacing the behemoth cupboard in the closet with something more functional, and putting up wall-paper.
Last night I framed the letter and the photos Lady Anomaly sent me, put them on the wall, abandoned the old lighting fixtures in the lobby of my building with a note saying they’re for my landlord, and sorted all the recycling that’s been languishing on the porch. (Does anyone want an easel? I’m not sure which ex-roommate ditched it here, but it’s a good one, if a bit rusty legged from being outside.) Tonight I’m going to do a last check around the house for things that need to be sent to Silva, itemize the boxes of things we’re giving away, (after Silva has a shot, as she left some things behind she’d still like to own), post my give-away list, and find a charity willing to take away what’s left. (That said, does anyone know a good place to give books to? David‘s got literally hundreds he wants to give away.)
Small changes, but creating order from chaos. Neg-entropy, the impregnation of order and coherence into the structure of matter.
I’m also thinking it would be a good idea to whip round a petition that the landlord put a bicycle rack into the space next to the stairs on the bottom floor. It’s empty, just the right size, and would save us all hauling our cycles upstairs away from the perpetual thieves that prowl the neighborhood. Is there a way to make this easy? I know he won’t want to put the money in, but maybe we could pool resources, buy the thing ourselves, and simply have him install it.
thank you interscope, for having a download error
Working with pre-release music has unexpected bonuses.
Right now, as work, I have to listen all the way through the new TV On The Radio album, Dear Science, which is set to release on September 23rd. So far, it’s rocking my existential thigh-high socks. It is addictive, it is smooth, it is a nice, sweet new direction, less thrashing rock and more sexy, sultry groove. Not as blow-your-head off as Young Liars back in 2003 or their follow-up, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, but still effective. Possibly a little more desperate, a little more heart-broken. I’m going to have it on heavy rotation. I’m not even all the way through and already I’m developing favourites: Stork and Owl, a snatching, heavy-bodied track, and Golden Age, similar to Cookie Mountain, but a little more mature, a little more firmly packed, with a killer chorus.
They’re playing here September 7th at the 7 Commodore Ballroom. I’ve already seen them twice, but now I really want to go.
standing up, being counted
“We stand awed at the heights our people have achieved. No gods, no religion. Us.”
The cult of Warren is strange and bizarre – standing in his shadow, I attract my own miniature flock of digital stranger crows that flap and holler. They pool in my footsteps, inky comments on breast size and comic book lines, and hop from medium to medium, trailing like shreds of three panel love songs cut with rusty scissors and animated comedy quotations.
It happens sometimes, that my friends are made larger than life, puffed with their creations into parade balloons that float on the hot air of media, swearing, writing, and song, mossy with articles, bright with light, and loud, that I get caught in the slipstream, somehow. I flutter, attached, back stage, in the green room, in the booth, behind closed doors. Crew, countryman, friend, lover. I look out and see eyes, lines of them waiting, eager, like drugs waiting to be born, delicate membranes of gossip, admiration, and downright lies, torn between trying to keep the pedestal up, balanced, and meaningful, while wanting nothing more than to climb on top. Disparate options with similar needs.
I do my best, but I can’t relate. We sit in restaurants, months out of date, how have you been, me too, this place, that bit of news, how is it, how was it, I’ve missed you, say hi to the wife and kids. We eat, trading knives like we trade stories, smile, and sign where the waiters ask us to sign. I loved that movie you were in. And I get the smile too, as if they should know who I am, what I do, why I’m here. We lie in bed together, on top of the covers, clothes on, flipping through television channels, ordering food from room service we will finish eating in the morning, after we wake, bleary, uncertain of the city, uncertain of the beige pink walls, the cold marble floor, how we’ve moved to hold each other in our sleep. We are not these incantations written on message boards, names attached to more meaning that stone. We are people, as difficult and as holy as everyone else. We make what we make, create when we can, scrape a living out of it, barely, and rinse, wash, repeat. Glory is rare.
Over 35 years ago, a plastic surgeon named Dr. Maxwell Maltz noticed that it took his patients 21 days to stop feeling phantom sensations from lost limbs. After further research, he came to find that it takes only 21 days to form a new habit. In fact, if patients worked for just 15 minutes to form a new habit every day, without skipping a day, after three weeks it was actually harder to go back to their original behavior. He wrote a book on the subject called “Psycho-Cybernetics” and accidentally founded the self-help movement.
I wish more people knew. It’s proven, too, that everything hones with practice – research, accounting, programming, painting. Even dry talent, art learned from a book, can be added to, can better itself. With the advent of the net, it’s possible for everyone to have an audience, if they only try, use the tools available.
The only way to climb is to stand on a pile of your own creation.
To live, learn, and strive.
last minute
Though I rarely attend poetry slams anymore, having fairly burned out after winning too many games of my Poetry Slam Bingo, (containing such squares as: No One Understands Me, War Sucks, I Was A Highschool Misfit, If I Punch The Air You Should Clap, Let Me Show You My Angst, I Lesbian, Counting Makes Rhymes Easy, and many more), I’m going to be working the door tonight, because holy sneezes…
How fantastic is that, you ask? Pretty damned fantastic. And as if having the mama of dada swing by isn’t enough, it’s also the Decathalon Slam – 2 teams, 10 rounds. As many people as possible on each team. So come be a part of the fun. It’s going to get creative. There’s going to be a cupcake eating round, a sock puppet round, a mime round, a team piece round, a 1 minute poem round, an improv poem round, and so on.
gosh, it’s pretty
Lightning shot in high speed, then slowed significantly for our, dare I say, illumination.
via neatorama
WE WALK AGAIN
pass it on
Your web zen for today
The only death metal grindcore band with an avian vocalist.
Their MySpace features such songs as “Beak of Putrefaction”, “God of Empty Nest”, and “Feral Parot” (sic). For the record, the Congo African Grey parrot is named Waldo, and I really can’t stop laughing. For extra points, they’re from Victoria. Power to the locals! Weirdly, here’s a really good interview with them.
found thanks to andrew.
—
Also, as a bonus, an equally fantastic headline: Dog-cloner denies she was Mormon sex kidnapper Joyce McKinney.
query: any electricians in the house?
Does anyone know how to install lights? I bought a chandelier off Craigslist awhile ago, and Nicole’s then-boyfriend Brett installed it, but it’s turns out that it hangs too low and everyone keeps bumping their heads, so I went back to Craigslist and got a better one. However, Nicole and Brett are no longer together and I really have no idea how to take the old one out and put the new one in. I know that somewhere the internet will have instructions, but I am leery about attempting to muck with electricity without help.
edit: this is why the internet it fabulous. within half an hour, not only did I have a comment which made me laugh, I had actual, reasonable instructions from someone competent, and two offers from people to just come over and do it. you are all fabulous. thank you and thank you and thank you!
whoring my friends, part II
Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night through until the end of the summer, Spectral Theatre has been presenting two one-act horror plays for the price of one ticket. Coming up in the final set of their summer series, they’ll be featuring two sci-fi/horror shows:
written by Blake Drezet, directed by Michael Cope and featuring Aurora Chan, Joanna Gaskell, Vincent Riel & Devan Vancise.
and
The Hunted, “marooned on distant shores, stalked by an alien menace that boggles the imagination”,
written by Blake Drezet, directed by JC Roy and featuring Blake Drezet, Vincent Riel & our very own
Duncan “the big man” Shields.
At the Spectral Theatre Studio, 350 Powell Street. Doors at 9:30, show at 10:00. Tickets are $8. It’ll fill up fast so book your tickets early.