Tag: news

How much chi can a cheetah tie if a cheetah could tai chi

The Take-Space people were at it again yesterday, this time renting a parking space just off Main st on Hastings. When I went in the morning on the bus, they had put out bright green astroturf and a few lawn chairs, though they were still struggling with a summer awning.

Photojournalist Martin Adler murdered in Somalia.

I was on my way home from Michael’s place. I’d stayed over after the delirious Cirque Du Soliex show, Verekai, not wanting to shift from such wonder to my drab apartment. We stayed up watching Harvey Birdman Cartoons on his lap-top until we couldn’t keep our eyes open anymore. My sleep was full of exhausted glitter and the strong desire to find something I cared about doing. When I woke, nothing had congealed, but I felt distanced enough from the Circus to face Vancouver again. Previously I had wanted too hard to see costumes on every corner, spiraling away from me in the morning clots of commuters, I wanted to look up and see stars in the bright day-time sky, and find giant colourful birds singing in unexpected places. I wanted to wake up in a Romany camp in Italy, grungy and smoky and full of red cloth. I wanted to wake up with longer hair and a prettier smile and some strange skill I don’t have a word for.

Everyone keeps asking why I don’t try to be a writer.

Finally by S. Koyczan

Boyfriend man is so glad
your dad hates him

he’s finally the dangerous man
he always wanted to be.

Shane Koyczan will be performing a free show on Wednesday at the Western Front at 9pm, 303 East 8th, just off Kingsway, as part of the opening night of the West Coast Poetry Festival, (July 5th through 8th at The Western Front. All events are by donation.) Show up early, as seats are going to fill. Bravo TV has been following him around all week taping a documentary and this performance is going to wrap it all up. Winner of countless awards, including a few World Championships, Shane’s got a talent, a hard-worked gift, and he’s worth the hard traffic of half way across town. I’ll post as much of his performance as I’ll be able to tape, but there’s nothing like seeing it live. He thunders.

browser clean

  • Wisconsin voters support Iraq withdrawal.
  • Homeland Security official arrested in child sex sting.

    A nun and some schoolgirls have set themselves up as an international arms company to highlight the absence of weapons brokerage laws in Ireland, successfully importing torture equipment with the assistance of local justice group, Afri.

    Amnesty International has made a short but effective shopping channel film on the topic.

  • No domain name left for you.
  • The top 100 Livejournals.

    Chris Applebaum, one of the youngest yet more heavily T&A music directors, (the guilty man behind the Paris Hilton Burger advert), has done it again, this time allowing Britney Spears to prove she deserved that statue.

  • New String-Theory notion redefines the Big Bang.
  • First lab-engineered organs successfully transplanted into humans.

    • gm denied, yo

    “We tried traps. But the cat is too stupid for standard moosetraps–I’m afraid she’d get caught–and the glue traps were just tragic. There’s nothing like pulling out the fridge and seeing a dejected ton of moose huddled in the corner, looking at you with enormous brown eyes, each hoof glued solidly down to the floor.”

  • Update on Sub-Genius Child Custody Case.

    GM is running a contest to “make your own” commercial for the gas-guzzling Tahoe SUV. General Motors has teamed up with Donald Trump’s ‘The Apprentice’ franchise to create a website that allows prospectives to make their own commercials online. The website allows readers to select backgrounds, video shots, and input text in an attempt to win prizes. Instead, they are getting justly served. The internet is finding it’s own uses. Common sense says these won’t be left up for very long, so steal them now.

    one, two, three, four, five, six.

    edit: the best one is the one my roommate Graham made, here.

    • turn the lights down low, it’s just it makes me feel like I’m in a spaceship

    I want an end to my unpredictable crying.

    The air is full of tiny birds, wings fluttering too quickly. The tips of them are creaking against the stress like lungs choked with down. A cough and they scatter. There’s nothing to show where they were. Wind does not keep drawn lines, the beloved parabola exists only in our minds as a memory.

    Unrelated: walking across a field, a thick flock of seagulls let me walk into the middle of them before taking up into flight and circling me perfectly. How callous I am, I thought, that I have too much science in me to experience this as a holy sign. Instead, I understand the way flocks stay together, what leads them, guides them. I know how to spot the lead bird. I’m not fool enough to pray.

  • Prove Christ exists, judge orders priest.

    I didn’t sleep from Saturday until noon Sunday. I have done more clever things than argue the socio-technological implications of ancient politics and family units until the sun has risen, it’s true, but I was in excellent company and the sun always rises.

  • Stardust capsule lands with comet dust sample.

    Now you’re gone, leaving echoes of somewhere I used to feel at home. You walked away and I felt such a pain shoot through me, as if there was no such thing as mercy. I know you’re trying and that gladdens me a little, it seems a better place for us than that dire muck of misery that you’d put me in so carefully. I’m scared that when I see her, this her you’ve written about but carefully did not mention, she’ll be wearing something I gave you or I’ll have to see you love her. As serious as rain, it’s the only thing I can think of that could continue to ruin me. It’s stupid because I’m grown enough I should know better. I insist on it. I should be a better stone. You don’t know what to do with me. I hand you the pulsing ball that drives my blood and you drop it. I fall apart inside.

    Delightfully, I had some especially kind partners on the floor to distract me last night, the sort where we take hands and whirl into something highly inappropriate for industrial music. Liam teaches me swing dances, for example, and Jonathan tangos with me in his kilt and big stompy boots. It’s gleeful when he lifts me up above his head and spins. I can feel him laugh through the music. (Note to self, call the man already). See, I’m everything shy of vices, so dancing is one of my only ways to salve this years constant and irritating sense of loss. I feel like I hang myself from my bones and when I move, it might even be with a heavy sort of elegance. Every twist of joint a kindness, a violent whispered argument in the dark behind my closed eyes, sounding like lovers who don’t want to wake the neighbors.

  • Male birth control pill soon a reality.

    Course, my body feels like holy retribution today. Everything aches and spasms. Walking without limping has been a proven impossibility that I’m counting on a deadly hot shower to repair. In fact, I think that’s the next step. Hooray for adventure.

  • Warren’s graphic novel FELL #1 online for free.

    • Longbaugh: You know what I’m gonna tell God when I see him? I’m gonna tell him I was framed.

    I can’t turn my back on you for a minute. I’m in from the cold, inspired by darling gunn to fix my dye, so wandering on-line while waiting for all the coloured goo to set. I look and it’s like Warren wrote the news on an especially bitter-hate-world sort of day.

    Australia’s on a second night of Race Riots.

    The United States, (as insidiouswanker points out), “always so fond of criticizing China for human rights transgressions, just keeps on running with that human rights abuse.” As an aside to that, The United States now ranks behind South Africa in civil rights. (for counter-point: A stylish music clip setting to get the vote message across to South Africans.)

    All in the same month, a cram school teacher murdered a twelve year-old student, a Peruvian killed a 7 year-old and left her body in a cardboard box, another 7 year-old was stabbed to death in Ibaraki, and a high school girl was murdered by a fellow student because he thought she was “going cold” on him.

    As if to top it, the State of California has just executed a man nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

    What the hell people? Do we have to come over there and fuck-start your heads? Make where you live a better place to be, already.
    Spread this link around. This one right here.

    I cursed myself for forgetting my place

    I found myself unexpectedly in a pub full of familiar theatre people this evening after rehearsal. As it’s been close to three years since I was regularly working shows in Vancouver, there was a tacit agreement that I belonged, but hardly anyone could place me. Jacques arrived, and when he finally noticed me and said hello, I caught several people relaxing. They’d been worried that I was some strange mis-perception, a mental twitch of a stranger who only seemed familiar. I collected a few e-mail addresses of people I’ve missed talking to. I’ve got to remember to send them an appropriate hello before I go to bed.

    “Then she sank down to her knees, grasped the cutter by both hands, took a deep breath and plunged the long blade through the middle of the package, through the middle of the masking tape, through the card- board through the cushioning and (thud) right through the center of Waldo Jeffers head, which split slightly and caused little rhythmic arcs of red to pulsate gently in the morning sun…“

    My teeth feel sweet now. Rose gave me a black to smoke while we stood outside socializing after. I accepted, forgetting that I don’t smoke, never have. The tops of my lungs are now complaining, reminding me that it’s been six years since I’ve lit anything up, but I mystified myself by having all the proper mannerisms. I suspect I will either eventually blame the city I live in, as Vancouver is a place where Marijuana isn’t considered a drug by any but the repressed children of the far right, so everywhere there are people with little rectangles of white paper rolled into tubes to be gestured with, or my exes who smoked and so gave me a character to unconsciously pattern. Either way, I was somewhat perturbed by how easily I took holding the soothing crackle of tar and clove.

  • Texas Voters Approve Ban on Gay Marriage.
  • Denver voters make adult possession of one ounce or less of marijuana legal.
  • Kansas education board downplays evolution.

    • someone outside is yelling “fuckers, don’t leave without us”

    Mirrormask, Sunday, seven o’clock at Tinseltown.

    And, HERE! Bloody hells, people, see? Posted proof that I have seen the singing chinese students already. Yes, you’re very kind for sending it to me. I feel appreciated. It’s delightful. I love how the one on the left moves like a warner bros. charactor. I adore the fellow behind them who ignores the entire proceedings, but please, no more. This is old for the internet, mark that time passes faster here. Please send me new things. New beauty! Like this sort of nifty or this. What about the Victory Day video by the Nazi Olson Twin Clones?

    related: archie comics attempt to be period.

    In every direction, people are screaming drunken syllables. Hallowe’en has hit, and delightfully so. I’m sitting in front of my computer, hearing all the crowds in thier houseparties. Imagined or real, I’m too tired to care. I should have stayed downtown, the costumed crowds were a balm to my scratched life. I felt like I could have stepped off the bus and been enveloped into the shiny masque crowds lining outside almost every club. Instead I went to a meagre house-party. The smooth story of never knowing how to celebrate meshing well with my over-all lack of positive focus. I know in reality, I would have paid cover, been unable to properly dance on my twisted ankle, and been relatively ignored by everyone present. I tend to feel affinity for the old idea of the wall-flower. A passing ship, she’s probably spoken for. I don’t drink and this adds to my apparent unnaproachable aura of being in dance clubs, excepting the cliche sleazy people. It’s slightly deadening, like bubbles of lassitude are being forcibly pushed into my bloodstream and making me dizzy.

    There have been so many moments leading to nothing in particular lately. I feel like I get nothing done at work, though I am thanked for being so specially fantastic every day by at least twenty people, because of the minor war currently occuring between the manager and the owner’s panic-attack neice. There’s a dichotomy there I don’t appreciate. This place is so full of strange drama. Every time there’s something wrong, I want to whistle past it, get on with finishing the tasks at hand, but this majestic battle of thiers is eating at my life. When I’m not at work, it doesn’t effect me, but it’s constant as the stars inside the shop I’ve been spending full time hours in, and it’s killing me. I need a better place to spend my days, one with tiny ladders to climb. My happiest moments are when I’m thinking of a stolen afternoon that’s getting on too many weeks ago. The memory will be wrung of blood eventually, but until then a smile creeps into my body and I lean into the glow.

    come back to my spiders web of beautiful things

  • the conditions in Iraq for subcontracted workers under Halliburton.

    Doing sixty downtown, she’s going to be late for work, but the view reminds her of other cities.
    How the lights and by-ways of freeways work, how it’s strange now to see them in movies.
    I was there, she thinks, and that place, and that one. She can’t see a street she hasn’t walked on.
    The lights of the car behind them catch her eyes in the mirror and she turns her sight to the driver.

  • 85-year-old Seattle woman recruited by marines.

    A man in an orange hoodie picked up a sodden page of junk mail from the street and lay it across his shoulders like a cape, then rushed us. Dominique cried out, “hey look, there’s superman.” and I smiled, but didn’t feel like laughing. I was too tired, too worn by my day. I should have been home hours before, but the circumspection of social maneouvering left me outside. We had just been at a half-empty nightclub, trying to dance to eighties music. Dominique knew all the words. I didn’t. I barely recognized the music and none of the clientele. The rules of the dancefloor were strange, with not enough people to keep any cohesion to the space. Without warning, one might find themselves suddenly surrounded by the small group of japanese tourists or being threatened by the tiny elbows of the tottering girl in the corset who was trying very hard to be something. What, I couldn’t say. Only with Rick and Dominique was I comfortable. I sat on the side for a little while, watching everyone and feeling slightly too cliche to actually be doing what I was doing. I pulled out my book to write in, but decided instead to pull out my camera and threaten Rick with pictures. I shouldn’t be writing what my brain was trying to think.

  • U.S. Air Force testing new transparent aluminum armor.

    Vast layered conversations spanning six topics at once. She should find partners who speak like her.
    “I swore I wouldn’t do this again, but I think I’ve figured out why I’m going through with it.”
    She’s referring to three people. She’s referring to keeping a secret and possibly telling lies.
    She’s explaining why and who and when without them.
    “I wasn’t raised to believe in anything. I never expected to encounter something sacred.”
    Words, meanings. The resolution of a two puzzles pieces finding conclusion.
    He replies, “Religion was never something I had a use for, but sometimes the vocabulary is right.”
    Confirmation, a deduction of between the lines.
    The same path, but one person facing backward, one person blind.

  • U.S. finally gives up on upgrading missile defense.

    • beat me to it because I forget

    I tried to dye my hair bright pink today. It didn’t take, something deep in my physiology rejecting such a painfully vivid colour, but it’s coated my hands adequately as proof of after the fact. Otherwise, there would be no sign. I suspect it’s the first time I’ve ever attempted to paint myself something so.. cheerful. Here’s hoping that it didn’t take because my body’s learned how to reject falsities.

    Ms. Kelly Foxton does very unusual things with her pet squirrel. Her website is mostly photo galleries. When I link to this sort of thing, can you believe I forgot the day before yesterday to link to the incest baby-death news story here? (similar somehow to the ‘only in the land of the free’ man charged for shocking his 8 year old daughter with electric coller.)

    It’s like I’m slipping.

    Another nice bit of news, a mysterious ‘half-animal, half-plant’ marine microbe was discovered by Japanese researchers.

    Today I had my first time on a scooter and my first time driving one. It was terrifyingly easy. I’ve decided that I need to drop by ICBC and find myself one of those horrid little books on The Rules Of Our Roads so that when I play with such things, it’s legal. oh canada, we stand on guard for thee. My papers from the government should have arrived by now, the ones confirming my english citizenship, so I don’t think that I can stand to trust the office that said they would mail me one. Instead, this might become this weeks miniature crusade for meaning. Seems likely I need one.