Tag: employment

they say only fool’s rush in, but I don’t believe, I don’t believe

take the pain away, getting strong today, a giant step each day, all I want in life’s, a little bit of love to take the pain away

Employment has fully landed. Wednesday I begin work as a base-rung contract clerk for a market research firm, Saturday I begin preparation for setting fire to the Renfrew Harvest Moon Festival, and Monday evening I start my training as a receptionist front-person for The Scotiabank Dance Centre.

The clerking is temporary, only a few months long, but it’s more than I have and the employers have said that I can shift hours around my pyrotechnic gigs. The Dance Center is also willing to help shuffle. This being October any minute now, that’s really important to me. Fifteen an hour to show kids how to properly light things on fire makes me a better person. The show on Saturday, October 7th, sounds like it’s going to be a really good one. There’s rumour of an orchestra performing in a swimming pool before the fireworks, but I won’t really know until dress rehearsal. In either case, I want as many of you as possible to be there supporting me in my ridiculous endeavors. They are good and worthy things and deserve audience.

Who has my copy of Dead Leaves? And my missing Invader Zim?

This means that next week, in between training shifts and rehearsals, I have no evening’s free until Sunday. The week after, things will open up again. Dance Center work is expected to only be two shifts a week, once I know what I’m doing. I’ll still be on the computer in the mornings, so it will be possible to get ahold of me, but I won’t be able to make it to anyone’s shows or parties, I’m sorry. I know there’s a couple.

Speaking of which, after a day of filming things at UBC and spending time with Chelsea-cat, tomorrow evening I’m planning on attending April Curry‘s Maha Samahdi Medicine Show at the Cottage Bistro at Main and 29th. The e-mail I received said that the event will be an informal collection of performances by four local songwriters, with a lot of improvised jamming on one another’s material. Between the lot of them, there’s going to be guitar, fiddle, banjo, and saxophone, which sounds like a pretty nice mix to me. The music starts around 8:30 pm and admission’s by donation.

Stephen says: Look to the left of this page to see what’s on the cover of Newsweek around the world. Notice anything?

spellcheck doesn’t think “motherfucker” is a word

“London, London” a video by Cibelle featuring Devendra Banhart.

I went to Vancouver Island alone for the first time in my life on Friday. All I knew was that somewhere in front of me was Oliver, whose name creates the feel of kisses on my tongue. He is an older man, as mine are, and sweet as I always wanted them to be. He won’t tell me he loves me yet, but says instead that it’s close, as if the words are a race he hopes to win.

I like the way he looks at me, mildly stunned, as if I am some ultimate unexpected good fortune. Silva likes it too. He is a nervous man, but his worries are only an outward mark of his extreme consideration, like a gold birthmark that stutters in the sun. He wraps his body around mine when we sleep, so always I wake with his arms curled around me, warm ribbons tying me comfortably to him.

I wonder if I will like his parents.

My inclination is for description, for setting down my appreciation for his hair and the length of his body, but no matter how charmed I am with his colours, his skin darker than mine, the streaks of tarnished blond silver that paint the frame of his friendly Brian Froud smile, it is other things that want to drop here. Moments of personality, of detached devotion. Thanks you’s for finally bringing me to somewhere safe. Today he gave me a key to his house. On my way home, I had the men at the hardware store cut him copies of mine.

Mexican court rejects full ballot recount, leftist candidate blasts partial tally.

Coming back was not as difficult as going. In spite of a messenger glitch, meaning I didn’t get one damned message all weekend, there was plenty of news waiting. I didn’t get the job I’d hoped for and there’s nothing I can think to do about it. I have a little design portfolio made-up now that was in case of a second interview, perhaps it will come in handy later. At any rate, there was good news too. This week looks to be intensely and awesomely busy.
Tonight (or tomorrow night, her and the websites have different opinions on when), April and I are going to the Thee Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra & Tra-la-la Band concert at Richards on Richards. (A group led by founding Godspeed You! Black Emperor guitarist Efrim).

Thursday and Friday I have extra work on a film named Hot Rod, out at the Cloverdale Fairgrounds. (I have to figure out how to bus there first thing in the morning, augh).

Friday is the Robot Skytrain Party plus Sam‘s big party at the Treehouse. (“Come to the party that will send a shiver down your back years from now as you suddenly think “Oh, God… I remember that party.””).

Saturday is Vancouver’s first Flugtag, our Second Annual Zombiewalk, and Bob‘s party.

Wolf Parade plays the Commodore on Sunday, (not that I have a ticket, I’m just lusting after one), and Andrew says there’s something else but he forgets, so if you remember, I’d love a heads up.

Oh! And Snakes On a Motherfucking Plane is this Thursday at the Rio, (Broadway & Commercial), at 10pm.

If you comment here saying you can’t come, Andrew will have Samuel L. Jackson call and persuade you.

Also, he checked with the box office, you can buy your tickets at the Rio anytime it’s open now.

Oh, and CROSSPOST this mofo! We want to own the theatre.

I didn’t join so much as I was assimilated

I’m front page at Sinister Bedfellows this week. buy my book.


Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

So very suddenly I find myself attached to a band. A band that is going on tour this weekend. I only found out yesterday, but the plans are well in place. I’m not sure how this happened, that I’m coming along, but it seems I am some sort of package deal. I’m going to Victoria this afternoon to hook up with Nikky for his gig, then I’m to meet a van-load of musicians at some random cross-roads disastrously early tomorrow morning to go to Gabriola for a concert at their wine festival. Sunday we’re back in Victoria and only returning to Vancouver for Monday night. I foresee a lot of not sleeping, really. Part of me is glad and part of me wants to know what the hell I think I’m doing. I’m not a musician, it rails, I’m barely even a writer!

Monkeyfluids is pretty good today, thanks to Michael for reminding me it exists.

Yesterday I went to a surreal educational puppet show about bees put on by DeeDee, a transgendered line-backer of a harpist from New York who drives a giant custom tricycle. It was in the park near my house and I know Vern, the fellow who made most of the bees. April was there. Strange days on paper, but alright in person. I’m still unemployed, though I’m crossing my fingers for a local PA job that looks like it would be utterly perfect for my odd myriad media skills. (I have a viral marketing gig for September lined up in case everything else falls through). Last night I got some recording done at my mother’s house, so there’s a mp3 polished ready to send out to the darling people who thought I was worth paying for. There will be more when I return. It’s been a stupidly busy and unexpected time lately, I’m sure you understand. See you after the cut.

Jesus Monkey Pants in Space has a new home on Warren‘s The Engine.

my computer speakers are dying


Originally uploaded by
skonen_blades.

Job interview today. Oh sanity. Dressing extra-conservative to try and off-set my brightly coloured hair. They want a receptionist. It sounds simple, plugging people back and forth between phones, pushing people into voice mail systems, riding the tiny thunder of a dispatch system. It pays reasonably, but I’m still considering turning them down if they accept me. I like being in offices, hiding behind exorbitant desks is occasionally comforting, but I feel I need a quantum leap out of the threshing field of crappy low-level barely-paying employment I got caught in after my divorce. Small faced places, populated by disquieting smiling minimum wage children. Everyone twenty-something and toiling away in a place with no chances to change or climb higher. Retail, restaurants, coffeeshops without end, amen.

Pilot finds snakes on a plane!

I’m trying to decide if I’ve regained enough confidence to refuse the shelter of an easy job on the assurance that there’s something better, if I’m going to be venturesome and throw my faith instead with my applications to more interesting companies, more ethical employers, more complicated tasks. I’m fairly certain I have enough past experience pulling survival requirements from the air that I shouldn’t be too concerned to say “no.” I might be scraping, but I’m persevering. The language of desperation isn’t whispering softly in my ear, it’s stuck sitting with paranoid magazines in the waiting room, reading anecdotal articles on chaos fractal butterflies until next month and wishing it had thought to bring a book.

the usual kind of drink

barbra

producing sounds like Stephen King’s nervous system caught in a mousetrap.


The line broke, the monkey got choked, they all went to heaven in a little row boat, clap back.

I recieved a letter of “immediate termination” today. Not unexpected. They had been vague about my schedules and their phonecalls were increasingly paranoid and contradictory. I have a job interview with Telus tomorrow. I did a test for them today, scantron style, all tiny little ovals that you fill in with pencil. I’d forgotten the sound a pencil makes on paper, the little swish sound as it softly grinds itself into the paper like a subtle dancehall pick-up, how the scrape of it travels up your hand and tunnels into the fingertips. There was the same personality test that I had to fill out every year of high-school. More True/Less True. Chopstick marks, one after another. Question one, old houses, familiar territory, question two. IQ measured in how well I process a pattern in a row of shapes. Personality measured in yes/no questions.

The First Rocket Launch from Cape Canaveral

I did well. I always do well with those. It’s in the taste of them, how fast I read. Print chewed up faster than waking up in the morning. Twenty minutes and mine is done. The expected smiles of surprise on the other side of the door. “You’re finished?” “Yes.” Blue carpet, blue walls. The walk to the skytrain is nice, under trees. I wonder if I’ll ever be homesick for these clouds and think no. I walk through the Central Park playground that was one of my only memories of Vancouver as a kid. The signs are dirty now and the little train doesn’t run. Half of it is torn up, under reconstruction. The water fight fountains are gone. It all feels appropriate and meaningless, all at once, like a pop song resonating to a false mirror flare of nostalgia frequency or a boring music video.

breeding like Starbucks.

I’m training the other guy today. he’s awesome because he’s not a keener



Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

A Quartet Of Clips From Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth.

Does anyone know of some quick pick-up jobs? My days off sick from work last week, added to my place of employment deciding this month to haul our pay-period back a week, have left me painfully scrambling. They’ve never paid enough for me to have a buffer for this sort of thing. Taking out a week of pay is like assisted suicide. After buying a required bus-pass, I only managed to pay rent by using up my birthday money from my family, leaving me only $20 until the 15th, which will also be wretched, due to my being half a month behind now on all of my bills. It’s this sort of thing that’s been leading me to seek employment elsewhere, somewhere less financially murderous. I’ve been tracking down bagger & tagger jobs, the removal of corpses from crime scenes, but most of them want me to have a drivers license. Something else I don’t have money for.

What do you regret?

The Virtual Stage is putting on a free workshop presentation tonight 7pm at the Roundhouse, Spank! – a new absurdist sci-fi comedy by Andy Thompson (writer of The Birth of Freedom), starring John Murphy, (the Heretic). Ed of techno_fetish and Sam and I are going, maybe a few other people. As it’s free, you should too.

yo quiero a los que me quieran y olvido a los que me olvidan

Sometimes it occurs to me that I could populate a very unrealistic novel by simply describing the daily customers that come into my shop. Currently there’s a bronze-tone airhead escort and a nice couple in shopping for leather that I rather like. Middle-aged, short hair, I’m making castrati jokes with the wife and they’re asking for my opinion on how everything fits, whether his bouncy penis is showing or no. Another man is shuffling around, a senior citizen with immaculate inch long nails, (one pinky nail painted gold and a full inch longer than the others), trailing an oppressive floral perfume that goes well with his wrists full of jewelry and his over-size rhinestone rings, but painfully with his hawaiian-print silk shirt, teal gore-tex jacket, and ill-chosen dark brown lipstick. Even with the door open, the air will be choking sweet for hours after he leaves.

Yesterday a cross-dressing hooker dressed entirely in shades of pale baby pink gave me half a box of chocolate covered almonds because she’s trying to watch her weight. Last week a midget in a three-tier camo-print mini skirt came in with her intimidatingly conservative chinese grandparents and a girl with a inexplicable jar of peanut butter, which initially doesn’t sound odd until you’re aware of just how polished she seemed, as if she were wearing plastic on her skin to keep the dust off.

Every day is a little bit like this. A long song of eccentrics, broken up by bleach blond trendy girls with hoop earrings, playboy belly button pendants, and puffy white ski jackets that show their navels, clothing marking social regularity or mis-match. It’s a parade of costumes to the point where I can spot call girls from strippers in a crowd without trying just by the way they wear their hair. Eye make-up and foundation are also beginning to be tip-offs. I wonder if this is the skill I’ll pull away from this job, being able to spot market trends in people who put themselves up for sale.

Undressed – From the Hotel Lobby to a One Night Stand, a mix-tape by dys

There’s a Christopher Walken movie night happening this Friday at Michael‘s house downtown. At this point the plan is to watch the William Gibson film, New Rose Hotel*, the King of New York (by the same director), and Suicide Kings. (These are subject to change due to availability or complaints). There will be also various potentially painful SNL clips, if you are brave enough, and a reading of Poe’s The Raven.

*New Rose Hotel comes with a warning: Willem Defoe appears naked. This is more scarring than you would previously suppose.

just a slice of life in general, I had something more to say but it got lost behind the couch

My mother writes a splendid explanation of her time at the University of British Columbia.

Earlier this week, Jenn came down for breakfast and gave me a packet of glow-in-the-dark fridge letters. I just opened them tonight. Sliding one nail under the plastic and attempting to pry it free of the thin cardboard backing launched every little letter violently airborne and straight into all the stove elements. I was impressed. After fishing them all out with a twist of wire, I’ve written GOD IS VENEREAL on the freezer and left the rest of the letters to the other occupants on the apartment. (Of which there is going to be one less as of March, as Ryan is officially moving in with Eva instead of continuing the sham of living with me and Graham.) It seemed the easiest thing to write, but now I’m vaguely concerned at my frame of mind. I seem to remember that the most common message in the english language is HELLO.

Neried rants a good shot at explaining her being a mother.

Nothing lingers like the realization that almost my every reference lately to interesting conversations has begun with “We were in bed and..” It’s like a bad habit, it brings to mind all the wrong connotations, like I prefaced with “and we were taking off each other’s clothes..” instead. I stop. My sentence echoes in the air as I halt midbreath and wish I could reverse what I just said. Thankfully, my friends understand. It’s possible they’re used to me. I’ve forgotten. This week I had the treat of a late night outing with someone who knows all my older friends, the clan of theatre folk who are a generation ahead of people like Antonio and Mimi. It was like a rewind on a few years. It was a gift. The nicest thing he said to me, “You were like you are now.”

My dear friend Joseph is about to be laid off, so if anyone knows of any work in Montreal for aerospace engineers…?

It’s a wedding. They are dressed in their best clothes, lying on a hill. They look like a carefully staged moment for a documentary on the history of stock photography. Her lips are painted pink. From his hang a flower picked from the grass beside his hand. Posed on the brink of conversation, they are skirmishing with words, throwing a miniature fit in avoidance. “Congress is preparing an investigation, and I will work with members of both parties to make sure this effort is thorough.” she said. “I don’t believe you,” he replied. “Look, that cloud’s shaped like a stork.”

Nicholas has been spending slightly too much time on-line.

One of the perks of my job is free long distance phone calls to anywhere in Canada and the U.S. As I have a few stretches of hours wherein all I’m doing is upping my freecell score to ridiculous levels or reading a book, I’ve been encouraged to try it out. This offer sounds like cool water in the scorching sun to me. I like this opportunity to get some of you a little better, to get to finally greet my family in a different medium. If you want to hear from me, simply fill out my little poll. Store hours of operation are 11 – 6 PST.

“I was the one worth leaving”

The party was an entertaining success.
By the end of the night,
my money gauge read like this:

[ &nbsp ] Beatles
[ &nbsp ] Andrew
[ &nbsp ] Famous
[ &nbsp ] god
[ &nbsp ] birth control
[ &nbsp ] Christopher Walken
[ &nbsp ] Alan Rickman
[ &nbsp ] European
[ &nbsp ] cute bartender
[ &nbsp ] Emo DJ
[ &nbsp ] livejournal
[xx] fire spinner
[xx] myspace
[xx] real poets
[xx] discordian
[xx] goth
[xx] poet (angsty)
[xx] T.V. actor
[xx] poseur
[xx] your mom
[xx] startrek furry
[xx] easy as apple pie
[xx] Arts major
[xx] porn star
[xx] philosophy major
[xx] morris dancer
[xx] premature ejactulator
[xx] child actor
[xx] country singer
[xx] chopped liver
[xx] they never loved you
[xx] no self esteem

In the darkness I came to the mountainside. A red woman opened the door, velvet and calm, cats twining around her ankles. When I step outside of my work, if I escape early enough, and look up into the welcoming sky, the blue looks as thick as a hallucination. I think I cried in my sleep because there’s a light smeary path of leached dye running down my cheek from my right eye. Just enough tracery of purple to catch my eye in the mirror when I blindly brush my teeth. I look like a comic book character. There’s a curl of it on the back of my right hand too, where my face must have rested. A perfect curl describing the bones of my hand in Fibonacci’s most perfect sequence of gold.

  • New world’s largest telescope to dwarf Hubble’s abilities.

    I feel adrift today. For the first time in over a week, I have no plans for my evening after work. When eight o’clock ticks to, I will be rudderless. My feet will be wind upon pavement waves and wandering. It will be cold, however, so I will likely go home. Weigh the anchor in folding the laundry that has eaten my bed from under me and tidy the endless small papers that collect in slippery drifts against my furniture. There are flat surfaces here, I just need to find them again under the detritus of never being home. I would rather that when people come in, they don’t take a minute to wonder where it’s possible to sit.

  • Television show hopes to convince participants they are in orbit.

    Jacques and I split the money fifty/fifty, (minus Ray‘s personal donation). He broke even and I’m going to be able to pay my transit inflicted debt. I don’t know how many people came. I would guess a number around fourty. It was a room full of eccentric twenty-somethings and middle aged men, a very two dimensional look into my social life. I wonder how much they mixed. People like Chistoph and Will are likely to mingle with anyone, but so far my only word on the party was Dominique calling this morning to quickly tell me what happened after she, Rowan, Travis and Josh left the party.

    There is no buzzer for 440 w Hastings, so people took turns in the cold glass atrium, watching the door. On one shift, I invited in two people off the street who seemed as if they were coming to the party. Turns out we didn’t know either of them, but they looked right. Long coats, long hair, a combined aura of geeky conversation. Another shift was twenty minutes alone, wrapped in my shawl against the chill and finishing Douglas Coupland’s Miss Wyoming until my mother came down with my brother Robin. I was glad of the relief, I didn’t want to miss Rowan playing pop songs on his accordion. It’s delightful. An entire corner of the room dissolved into laughter when they realized they were listening to Nine Inch Nails. Anyone who took photographs, I would appreciate if you would send them to me to post, (fully credited), into my flickr account.

  • Jesus Monkey Pants in Space up to page 9.