Month: October 2008

he’ll be back, oh yes he will

BB video: Jacob explaining his Cold Boot Encryption Attack.

I deeply appreciate Jacob. Not only is he locally famous as my mad, delicious friend who convinced Liz and I that taking our shirts off while standing in two feet of snow was a good idea, (all in the name of art, you understand), he is also now, gratifyingly, the mad genius behind NoiseBridge, an open Project Space for hackers that just opened in San Francisco’s Mission District with a focus on art, science, technology, mentoring and other fun stuff.

“We want to provide infrastructure and collaboration opportunities for people interested in programming, hardware hacking, physics, chemistry, mathematics, photography, security, robotics, all kinds of art, and, of course, technology. Through talks, workshops, and projects we encourage knowledge exchange, learning, and mentoring.

As a space for artistic collaboration and experimentation, we are open to all types of art – with a special emphasis on the crossover of art and technology. From hardware labs to electronics, cooking, photography, and sound labs, anything that’s creative is welcome.

We intend to have many interesting things happening at all times. Sharing is essential to making this work. A logical followup to this is to find a space to display our creative projects.”

When it’s completely set up, the plan is to have a darkroom, a machine shop area, an electronics area, a programming laptop area, a relaxing reading room, a bart capsule hotel space, a library, server racks, a kitchen, and possibly a few more things, just because. At the moment they’re still meshed in the process of establishing themselves as a non-profit, but soon people will be able to make tax deductible donations. Not to say you can’t already give them money. That would be good too.

echoes, pretty little thing

SleepyCanSecWestJhayne, by Julia

“I made tea.”


So sweet, I stand in the doorway, looking back over my shoulder, an image from last year, why do they all sleep like that? One thin arm thrown over their face, head attempting to burrow into the mess of silk pillows that cascade across my bed. If I took a picture, it would seem almost identical to pictures I’ve already taken, heart warm in my chest, smile a permanent part of my skin, the camera a friend and confidant, recording like I love you, safe in this moment, embedded forever, or as long as my digital media will keep. How does life repeat like this? So slyly, so quietly, to perfectly the same, yet with different props, a different body, another frame of mind over reference over history over name. The division of minutes a lie, fabricated like music to make myself feel better about getting older while staying the same. I want flowers to fall from the ceiling, red and orange, a snowstorm of petals to announce this is new, define a change, to create an unreality in the midst of the repetition, floral scents as solid as mist, as solid as my feelings seeing this, as I look over my shoulder to see him in the bed, arm up and over, time traveling stock still, a year ago, a different man, yet still here.

it takes one to know one

bOINGbOING: Tales from the Underground Economy

Stayed up late last night talking to a friend down by Savannah. Once I found where he was on Google maps, the soft hint of an accent he’s always had clicked perfectly into place. Deepest, darkest Georgia. I don’t know very much about it, past what I’ve read in books like Midnight In The Garden Of Good and Evil, but the little red arrow put him directly in the middle of pretty much nothing. Marloe. There was a named road nearby. A road. Singular. One.

I was worried when he went, moving from Seattle, a reasonably sized city, to the far out edge, vaguely near only a college town, even though he’s a perfectly capable human being. He seems to be finding his niche down there, though. Staying with family, driving the long drive into town once a week. I don’t know how he does it. When he went into the DMV to renew his license, he asked where the nearest cash machine was. They told him, down the street, right at the next lights, left at the next street, there’s a place right there. Which sound like reasonable direction until you discover that those lights were two miles away.

I can’t even imagine. I rely on being in a city. Every time I lived somewhere isolated, by distance, time, and/or money, I cracked around the edges. Depression set in, and endless baking. (Beware if I’m ever making continual batches of cookies. It’s my cry for help.) Getting out was like taking a breath, as monumental as the discovery of a new continent. Moving back to Vancouver saved me every time, though at least one relationship didn’t survive. I didn’t feel alive when I was trapped, or sane or healthy or reasonable. My entire world had become the two rooms I lived in, became my perpetual anger at escapism, became awful and vapid and hell.

Funny, going to bed considering that, when my recent trip back east has left me feeling saved again, but this time from Vancouver.

Los Angeles bans new fast food restaurants in low-income and minority neighborhoods.

always finish with dancing cats

Scott writing about Opening For Tricky, “You love a guy’s music for 14 years and a quarter of the conversation you have with him is “LOOK! MY PHONE GOES WOO-WOO!””

Today has been all sorts of determined costume panic, as eBay payment problems proliferated beyond belief. Eventually the place which relisted the one I won while I was having issues with their check-out even offered me a free costume to make up for the hassle, that’s how bad it got. (I told them it wasn’t necessary, as I never managed to actually give them any money, but they’ve insisted, so help me pick one?). The days were running by like a Bukowski novel, all wild horses and too little time, drawn out in sentences that only ended when a gun fired or the sun went down, but a very nice lady somewhere in California completely saved me, and has mailed one overnight to a mail-drop in Point Roberts, which means I’ll have my costume in time for the Parade of Lost Souls, Vancouver’s only Hallowe’en party. Which spares me murdering someone, which I appreciate.

In other news, David and I finally got to spend a nice evening with some of our new neighbors. (Nice, sane, geeky people have been replacing the cracked out addles who riddled the building when I first moved in.) We met them as I was climbing up onto the roof to take a picture of an amazing rainbow that cradled the east yesterday evening. There I was, up a ladder, obviously where I’m not supposed to be, industriously removing the trapdoor padlock, when from behind and below me, someone clears a throat – a situation that could have gone badly. Thankfully, it wasn’t the landlord, but a sweet new friend who took us in for dinner and giggles with his incredible girlfriend until almost midnight. Now I’m extra glad of where I live. We might be holding onto the edge of the Drive by the scraped edge tips of our fingernails, but it’s worth it.

Nagi Noda’s final music video: Precious, for Japanese pop singer Meg.

in other news

  • Making Canned Halloween Monstrosities

    The Here Be Monsters Carnival of the Arts is on again.

    David and I took Nicole and volunteered at the opening night cabaret at the Chapel, the re-purposed funeral home down behind the Princess Hotel. (A skeezy neighborhood, but venues are venues and you work with what you’ve got.) We had a surprising amount of fun for standing at a door and collecting loose change from people. The show was good, if a bit bizarre, the art had enough hits to make up for the misses, and I reconnected with Ashley, someone I liked seeing every week when I worked at the Dance Center. I’m looking forward to going back on Wednesday, Thursday and maybe Friday for the Showoff Festival, their “lite” version of Theater Under the Gun. (Tenth anniversary, no less, how time flies.)

    Would anyone else like to come? It’s free if you volunteer.

  • Making Monstrous Paper-Mache Pumpkins

    • david proves his use as a perpetual witness. again.

    Last thing we need now is a great leader, by Penn Jillette

    My voting station was in the gymnasium of one of Vancouver’s oldest elementary schools, only a couple of blocks from my house. To get there, we had to walk through the thin strip of nameless industrial area that jackets the foot of Clark Drive, all auto-body shops and unidentifiable offices, where low rent prostitutes cluster on the corners at night. The way over was unremarkable, a short, pleasant walk of a couple of blocks, David and I discussing the Canadian women who fought for their right to vote back early in the 1900’s. The way back, however, is worth a story.

    We’ve already crossed Clark, we’re not even a full block away from my house, when a speeding red “sportscar” hits the breaks next to us so hard the tires smoke, and the driver, a young, thin man of about twenty-eight yells intensely out the window at us, “GOTH IS GREAT! ROCK THE VAMPIRE REVOLUTION! I’M WITH YOU! FUCK EVERYTHING BUT BLACK! RAAAUUUGH!”.

    Now, David and I, dressed as we are in perfectly ordinary clothing, are baffled. We stop, look at each other, decide simultaneously that he’s off his rocker, and look back at him.

    “Excuse me,” I say as he stopped shouting to take a breath, “but we’re not even dressed a little like goths.” Disgusted that I managed to get a word in edgewise, he replies, just as loudly, practically frothing, “FINE, FAGGOTS, WHATEVER.” “Anyway,” I say, “their band practice is a block up. You’ve got the wrong street.”

    He then growled at us, spat out the window, then drove off as fast as his car could actually go.

    …

    A few moments later, I turned to David, “Were we just goth-bashed?”
    “I think so.”
    “Wow. What a freak.”
    “Yeah.”

    winter foreshadowing at the gate

    The Devil and the Monk

    The clouds are so thick today, the sun has no direction, light merely comes from up. It’s as if the sky was removed by some photoshop freak who took out everything blue or bright and replaced it with a gluey, blank film of gray. They’ve swallowed the mountains, the ocean, and the tops of every building over fifteen stories high. They are omnipresent in every direction, painting everyone in a gentle, damp blanket of light sog. A continual light drizzle with a persistent dewy texture that slowly soaks in, drenching clothes slowly by osmosis.

    It is not a terrible rain, a driving, slashing torrent of rain. It is merely misty. People are moist today. They are standing in archways, dripping, shaking umbrellas, cursing cold feet, disliking the rain, and refusing to smile at the bus-stop. Instead they stare seriously up the street, as far back from the curb as possible, torn between the hope they will see their bus and the illogical worry that their legs will be drenched by a passing car. (With rain this thin, there are no real puddles).

    The Secret Thoughts of Harold Lawrence Windcrampe