Author: foxtongue

Rabbit Hole Day approaches!

Reposted from Dan Curtis Johnson:

Back in 2005, I posited that there should be a day of the year on which everyone posts not about the usual things that they do, the usual life that they have, but instead about a day in a completely different sort of life. A day in which everyone falls down the rabbit hole like Alice, a day spent where the rules are completely different.

I thought a fine day for such an event would be the 27th of January – the birthday of Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Why, golly, that’s five days away, Thursday next week! The Seventh Annual Rabbit Hole Day is almost upon us!

In 2005, of course, it was largely limited to LiveJournal but in years since it has spread to the various other blogging platforms and even onto Flickr. Maybe this is the year it gets all over this Maybe this is the year it gets all over this Facebook thing that I heard someone talking about somewhere maybe one time.

——
For consideration: try it! you’ll like it! who doesn’t like to get away from the Usual for a bit?

Previously: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.

as through this, we transform

365:2011.01.15 - no public face

Today is the anniversary of the day I was hit by a truck seven years ago. It threw me thirty feet, peeling the skin from my knees like red fruit, shifting my bones, and tearing my silk skirt and shoulder like they were made from the same tissue. My hips were no longer a cradle, but a crooked cup, dropped and badly repaired. My right arm wouldn’t follow commands.

-::-

Your heart, it tastes like something I used to remember. Words restarted, strange memories, reverb, a breath of fresh air, and shift. (Standing in a room torn down years ago, shouting at a man who will no longer talk to me, never see, don’t mention, “I never said it would be easy to be with me.” If I could have seen the future, I would have walked out then, every step away a commitment to a better tomorrow.) We sit in your vehicle outside my building, the third night in a row, dark, midnight warm, a scene from a movie we’re writing with all the verve of a massacre, interpreting the strings, showing our scissors, oxytocin gleam, sharpening knives, as close as the moment at New Year’s Eve when we kissed under confetti and flashing lights. A change, the weather, our sea, research material, a history beginning to mingle, to be.

Between my arms, pride, peroxide corrosive, sincere and loaded as a gun. Lying on the couch, discussing humanities, a button floats to the top, ready to be pushed. He stiffens, ambiguity banished, a familiar motif, easier for me to get to than him for me, a center of Rowan tree, witch tree, anger, dense and thick with power, almost spitting his words as, counter-intuitive, I relax, comfortable with the coda, the moment, hatred matched with an alpha sympathy. We both have this. It is a gift, as well as a curse. Us as graphic motif, living, crackling towers of fury, hands raised, ground shaking, pulling down a storm. He apologised, though it was unnecessary, an instinct ground deep, appreciated as part of a medley, a comfort carved from context, clever and adored. Though you make me afraid, I wanted to say, it does not stem from this, but how much I want to live in your heart.

the idoru of telemarketing

  • Robotic Ghost Knifefish is Born (w. video).
  • 3D Printing-On-Demand Now Available in Titanium.

    “Please indicate your gender. Press one if you’re a female. Press two if you’re a male.” Even though I am a binary answer, I still flinch, thinking of the graffiti I read earlier in the woman’s washroom at Cafe Du Soliex, (next to Amber’s love note to Silva), FOR A GOOD TIME, FUCK THE PATRIARCHY. Still, the pre-recorded voice is friendly and the questions regarding politics are otherwise banal, so I stay on the line, answering by pressing the appropriate telephone keys. The entire thing is over in under two minutes, as counted by the timer on my wireless phone, and at the very end a truly robotic voice warbles through some syllables, the echo of a Radiohead song, Thank You For Your Time And Participation.

    • Scientists are saying the future is going to be far more futuristic than they originally predicted.

    The First Decade of the Future is Behind Us:

    “Imagine it’s 1995: almost no one but Gordon Gekko and Zack Morris have cellphones, pagers are the norm; dial-up modems screech and scream to connect you an internet without Google, Facebook, or YouTube; Dolly has not yet been cloned; the first Playstation is the cutting edge in gaming technology; the Human Genome Project is creeping along; Mir is still in space; MTV still plays music; Forrest Gump wins an academy award and Pixar releases their first feature film, Toy Story. Now take that mindset and pretend you’re reading the first page of a new sci-fi novel:

    The year is 2010. America has been at war for the first decade of the 21st century and is recovering from the largest recession since the Great Depression. Air travel security uses full-body X-rays to detect weapons and bombs. The president, who is African-American, uses a wireless phone, which he keeps in his pocket, to communicate with his aides and cabinet members from anywhere in the world. This smart phone, called a “Blackberry,” allows him to access the world wide web at high speed, take pictures, and send emails.

    It’s just after Christmas. The average family’s wish-list includes smart phones like the president’s “Blackberry” as well as other items like touch-screen tablet computers, robotic vacuums, and 3-D televisions. Video games can be controlled with nothing but gestures, voice commands and body movement. In the news, a rogue Australian cyberterrorist is wanted by world’s largest governments and corporations for leaking secret information over the world wide web; spaceflight has been privatized by two major companies, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX; and Time Magazine’s person of the year (and subject of an Oscar-worthy feature film) created a network, “Facebook,” which allows everyone (500 million people) to share their lives online.”

    This week: stuffed with potential.

    In an effort to prod myself out the door more often, I’ve started scouring the city for events again. The next trick will be to actually go to some of them. (Ex. I intended to hit up the PuSH opening gala last night, but spent time with A. then Lori instead. Fail? Not fail? Still social, though stayed in. Tough call.) That said, here’s some good ideas I’ve chalked in, but haven’t solidified yet. Who’s in?

    Tuesday/today

    7:00 + 9:30pm – Half Price Tuesday, The Green Hornet by Michel Gondry at The Rio. $6. (With A.)
    7-9pm – PuSH: Boca Del Lupo‘s free La Marea, Gastown, zero-hundred block of Water Street.

    Wednesday

    8-11pm – Jack and Martin from Maria in the Shower, an intimate duo show at The Helm restaurant, 1180 Howe Street. (With Jess.) Company bailed, stayed in.

    Thursday

    12pm-6pm – PuSH: Iqaluit at the Woodward’s Atrium.
    7-9pm – PuSH: Boca Del Lupo‘s free La Marea, Gastown, zero-hundred block of Water Street. (With Beth.) Went to Bin 942 after for delicious tapas and killer chocolate fondue. Holy hell, I had forgotten how completely magical a raspberry tastes. There are no words.
    9:30-late – EXCISION (Dubstep Invasion Series) at Gossip, 750 Pacific Blvd. $25.

    Friday

    9-late – Isaac’s Freaks & 45’s Formal birthday party. (With Tony & ?.)
    12am – City of the Lost Children midnight movie at the Rio, (subtitled). Admission is $8 or $7 in costume. Stayed at the party.

    Saturday

    8-12am – The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra with Jess Hill at Cafe Deux Soleils. $10-15 sliding scale at the door. (With Tony & ?.) (Sold out before we arrived).
    8:30-12am – Stay Wet: An anti-celebration of the 82nd anniversary of the Dry Bill, featuring The Furniture, Blackberry Wood, Antiparty, and The Brass Action at The Railway Club.
    9-12am – Karaoke at the Main St. Legion, 3917 Main Street. (Added to this list by request.)
    10-2am – SinCity at Club 23 West. (With Tony & A.)

    Sunday

    2pm – PuSH: 46 Circus Acts in 45 Minutes, UBC Frederic Wood Theatre. 2pm. $12.50 General, $5 Kids under 12, $25 Family of 4 (max 2 adults). Box Office 604.822.2678
    3pm – Day for Night: Full Moon in Paris by Eric Rohmer at the Waldorf Cabaret.     Went to brunch with Tony and A., then for hot chocolate at Cocoa Nymph.

    PuSH festival: La Marea opens tomorrow

    Boca Del Lupo, one of Vancouver’s most spectacular theater companies, has a free outdoor show for PuSH this year, La Marea. It starts tomorrow:

    A man has just had a motorbike accident… An insomniac tries to get to sleep… A couple has their first kiss… A man stands on a balcony escaping the party that rages on behind him…

    When strangers walk past you on the street, do you ever start imagining what they are thinking? Where they come from? Or what they are doing there at the very moment you glance upon them?

    At night and in real time, moving from the pavement to illuminated windows, from balconies to café terraces, La Marea presents nine different stories—intimate snapshots that bring the zero hundred block of Water Street in historic Gastown to life for the opening of the 2011 PuSh Festival. These fictional scenes are repeated over the course of the evening in shop windows and on street corners, where audience members can observe the characters’ inner thoughts through projected subtitles.

    "It’s an adventure… like a visit to a film set, without the camera crew getting in the way. This isn’t just a play in multiple episodes, it’s an experience touching on the beginning of love, the end of love, and everything in between." – Montreal Gazette

    January 18-22, 7pm – 9pm.
    Outdoors / Site-specific.
    The zero-hundred block of Water Street in Gastown (between Abbott St and Carrall St).

    let that be the end of it

    As if more evidence was required to show that vaccines don’t cause autism, the British study that linked childhood vaccines to autism was recently proven to be a complicated fraud:

    An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study’s author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study — and that there was “no doubt” Wakefield was responsible.

    “It’s one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors,” Fiona Godlee, BMJ’s editor-in-chief, told CNN. “But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.”

    The full paper from BMJ is here.