Month: November 2008

I’m going closing night

Some friends of ours are starring in Spectral Theater’s new play, The Velvet Edge. (Read: Duncan Shields and Erin Puckey).

Held at The Chapel, 304 Dunlevy, the same funeral-home-now-arts-venue that the Carnival of the Arts was just at, it’s got a cast of nearly twenty, the guarantee of at least one flawlessly hot girl, Naomi’s costumes are without-fail incredible, and there’s both nudity and blood. How awesome is that?

“An English novelist comes to an asylum to hear the story of one inmate who, after a journey into the decadent heart of 18th century France, was charged with the murder of his wife, but committed due to his presumed insanity. As the inmate recounts his bizarre and terrifying descent into debauchery and madness, the audience is drawn into the scenes of his past. Could his delusions be in fact, a terrifying reality?”

Tickets are $20, which is steep, I know, but Duncan, who is in it and should know, claims, “This is going to be an adult theater show at adult theater prices. This isn’t schlocky horror. It cost a lot to put on and it’s a visual spectacle. It’s worth every penny of the $20. People are going to be talking about this one for a while.”

November 5th – 6th & 8th – 15th

Tickets $20 (minimum donation)

Doors at 7:30 PM Show at 8:00 PM

Written by Blake Drezet and Directed by Des Hussey & Blake Drezet

Warning: Coarse language, scenes of violence, suggestive scenes and nudity.

Reserve your tickets by calling 604.569.2013, e-mailing info@spectraltheatre.com or RSVP through Facebook: Nov. 5th Opening Night, Nov 6th, Nov 8th, Nov 9th, Nov 10th, Nov 11th, Nov 12th, Nov 13th, Nov 14th, Nov 15th.

clever clever (go and vote)

“I come in peace,” it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, “take me to your Lizard.”

…”It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…”

“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”

“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”

“Odd,” said Arthur, “I though you said it was a democracy.”

“I did,” said Ford. “It is.”

“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”

“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”

“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”

“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”

“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”

“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”

“What?”

“I said,” said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, “have you got any gin?”

“I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.”

Ford shrugged again.

“Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,” he said. “They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.”

– So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, Douglas Adams

Via the stupendous Ellen

I like the blog, though it’s all too simplistic

Rule #1: Exercise – Exercise boosts brain power.
Rule #2: Evolution/Survival – The human brain evolved, too.
Rule #3: Wiring – Every brain is wired differently.
Rule #4: Attention – We don’t pay attention to boring things.
Rule #5: Short-Term Memory – Repeat to remember.
Rule #6: Long-Term Memory – Remember to repeat.
Rule #7: Sleep – Sleep well, think well.
Rule #8: Stress – Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.
Rule #9: Sensory Integration – Stimulate more of the senses.
Rule #10: Vision – Vision trumps all other senses.
Rule #11: Gender – Male and female brains are different.
Rule #12: Exploration – We are powerful and natural explorers.

“How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget—and so important to repeat new knowledge? Is it true that men and women have different brains?”

Following links from a TED Talk last week, I came across an interesting brain-hacking website for the book Brain Rules: Principles for Surviving and Thriving At Work, Home, and School, by John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and research consultant and director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University. What little I’ve read so far has been interesting and nicely bolsters some of my own inexpertly cobbled together theories on memory and learning. (Though nothing beats the annuals, journals and articles I regularly hunt down and devour. Science is yummy.) There’s twelve rules in all, and each rule has a corresponding tutorial page on the site that’s meant to reinforce the concepts in the books.

They, of course, recommend reading the chapters first, but this is the internet! Onward video!

STOP PLATE TECTONICS

Japanese Man Petitions to Legally Marry Manga Character

We’ve decided to paint the guest room library the colours of a Hypselodoris nudibranch bullock, but darker and a bit richer, leaving us with aubergine, pumpkin, sunflower mustard, and crimson red. Well, really, I decided and David took a look at what I was talking about and said, “No, you’re not too geeky. That’ll be awesome.”

Which means, as Nicole pointed out, my apartment is beginning to unintentionally match my hair.

She stayed over on Saturday night and watched Ghostbusters with us, after we helped her emergency move this weekend, instead of going out for Hallowe’en. (Ray was going to help her, but he accidentally bailed, leaving her in a bit of a panic, her car shaky from a Friday accident and too small for her things, so I called up my mother and asked to steal her and her van for the evening.) The whole thing was a giant ball of sticky, fidgeting stress, all wrapped up in her raw and recent post-accident break-up that left her spending Friday night in her car, but my impromptu rescue thankfully worked out. David and I were enough to help haul things out of Nicole’s a day overdue storage container, my mother’s van was a perfect fit to tetris cram in absolutely everything, and her room was just the right size to set up her bed and neatly avalanche pile her things on it without breaking anything or making a mess.

Seattle-kilt Tony came by for a Saturday visit too, which was also a treat, though a less fraught one. We went for breakfast at the Pannekok House with him and a batch of equally fun-clever Seattle folk, (and David and Dominique, though obliquely, as they were one table over), then dervished our way from there to tea at my place, where Nicole had holed up to take a shower and decompress from her awful Friday of Stress and Doom. (You did catch the theme there, I hope.) It was nice. The four of us sat in the living room and played with Emerson the Emo Bunny, drank honey lemon ginger tea, and shockingly didn’t talk about anything terrible. Next time I’m in Seattle, I’m going to try to make sure to see him. Next time, too, I hope to bring David. It’s about time those southerners met mah man.

An open letter to history

From today’s Saul Williams newsletter:

“Dear History,
For too long have I pondered your meaning, memorized dates of battles, years of servitude, decades of injustice, named eras after movements, mourned the extinction of species, cursed founding fathers, worn vintage suits and cloaked myself with references of your hold on me.

I have walked through museums wondering how it is that greatness had lived and died all before my time. Parts of me feared becoming great because it seemed to include a price of death and a postmortem glory that my memory could never resurrect. I’ve stared at paintings dying to catch glimpses of the painter, closed my eyes to listen to songs that drunken ghosts dance to, and all the while I’ve fought to FREE the present to BECOME.

In 1995, I stood with poets in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, barking metaphors at the new moon of the summer solstice wedging words into it’s craters, sewing seeds through nightly wind.

In 1996, I forced the ocean back with words, fathered planets, climbed pyramids, and began to decipher the sirens song to conjure the dream-filled Children of the Night.

In 1997, I stood with prisoners in our nations capitol bending bars with the power of thought as wordsmiths served sentences and Hip Hop diddy-dandified itself: stealing golden calves from the Old Testament to smuggle into the lavish crib of Pontius Pilate for it’s birthday party

In 1998, I swallowed fear and sun-danced on film reels, projecting a me that had not been into a me that ever shall be.

And HERE I stand, ten years the difference and witness to changing hands.

Dear History,
I beat you. I stand a generator of generations bearing witness to a world that we are holding accountable for past actions. Me and my friends, we’re changing our diets, re-inventing marriage, check-mating capitalism, re-defining ethics, replacing cruelty with compassion, and have sworn not to re-elect the sins of the father.

We are casting our votes for so much more than a lesser of evils, but for change, and greater insight, for wisdom out of the mouths of babes, for races that bleed into ONE.

Dear History,
You are behind us and we are no longer looking back. We are standing on the threshold of new times, new days, new worlds, and charging forward without battle cry or trumpet, while cynicism, apathy, and cowardice take their place beside you, behind us.

Dear History,
We no longer believe in you. We have invested our our thoughts and dreams into the present moment and opportunity to shift our reality into one that does not resemble your dog-eared books.

We stand on the shoulders of those who have dared to dream and on the necks of those who have wasted their time and ours proclaiming a past past its prime.

Dear History,
Blitz! It’s my turn now. You can have your mounds of flesh, leather boots, cannons and sabers, nooses and guillotines, warships and fighter planes, trails of tears and blood, genocides, dungeons and dragons, ghost stories and fairy tales……….

Come on guys! Help me out! ~ Saul”

Write Your Own Letter To History