Tag: world cup

out of the house for summer

rubus strigosus

Mushrooms and bok choy simmering in butter and black pepper, the windows all open, sentences running through my mind, practiced words falling off my tongue like dry, pressed flower petals, to divide fractions, invert the second fraction and multiply, to multiply fractions, multiply the numerators, then multiply the denominators, reduce all to their lowest terms, attempting a memorization of everything I can before my tests this weekend. A gift, but terrifying. I am more hopeful than I was a week ago, but I can’t stop feeling doomed. According to the website, the five tests take seven hours and twenty-five minutes to complete. Doomed.

Tests aside, this upcoming weekend looks fun. Not only is there going to be a steampunk minicon at Barclay Manor on Saturday, World Cup is wrapping up this weekend, which means my neighborhood, Commercial Drive, will be closed to cars and open to PARTY!! Flags, shouting, free food, noise-makers, facepaint, dancing, music, and thousands of people gleefully losing their minds from how utterly freaking awesome it is that some guys in ridiculous socks kicked a ball around some other guys in ridiculous socks and between some posts. Wahoo! Seriously, though, it’s epic. EPIC. People travel from as far away as Portland to celebrate here. I came out of the last celebration with a frighteningly scarlet sunburn because my trusty SPF 75 was washed off by an intensely enthusiastic restaurateur shouting ITALIA! ITALY! ITALIA! and spraying the crowd with shaken bottles of champagne. Fwish. No more sunscreen. And rainbows everywhere. Did you know champagne makes especially pretty rainbows when misted through the air? Me neither, not until that party.

Also coming up: The Vancouver Folk Festival from July 16-18th, the Celebration of Light nee The Symphony of Fire, (USA July 21st, Spain July 24th, Mexico July 28th, and China July 31st), and a castrated Illuminares Lantern Procession on July 24th for those who want to try and cram thousands of people into a small building after parading their children through Crackton.

now I’m at Sam’s, wondering where he is. it’s been over an hour. I was going to help him pack.



Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

I found out that the computer dot in Kashmir is my godmother’s amazing best friend, Joy. One down, 800 to go. All these mysterious places, I’ve been learning the world map a little at a time, just from peeking into where everyone seems to be. (The most interesting bit, I think, is how accurately my map globally describes what areas are spread with internet access.)

This summer weather makes me wish I drank alcohol. It rains a little, is cold at night, and when I open my eyes in a sticky hot room, companion in my bed to a clutter of books, an antique hunting horn, a handful of plush roses, my feet tangled in a pile of clean laundry, a wish for a wine bottle flashes into my hands. It’s part of being unemployed, of feeling that my accomplishments are accumulating too slowly to change anything. I want the melodrama of a morning swig of sour intoxication to insulate me against the passage of empty time. Not that I’ve ever managed to be drunk in my life, my thought comes fleshed only in media, but French television shows, Spanish movies full of lovers and taxi-cabs that drive too fast, one hand out the window, hair being tossed back by the weight of the sun, make saturated hydrocarbons look fun, meaningful and nice instead of unpleasant, a wretched taste similar to cassette-head cleaner.

  • Beautiful Day Without You, an animated video by Damien Ferri for Royksopp.
  • A Million Ways, a home-made music video by Ok Go! that sparked a make-your-own contest.

    I skipped out on Graham‘s movie night to visit with David and his last night of the big-screen TV he’d rented for World Cup. (As of today, he’s back off to Macbeth it up at the Caravan). We watched Requiem, took a dive into the perturbing anthropology that is modern television, and just generally stayed up too late eating pizza and drinking tea strong enough to dye skin. (Dear me, You Forgot the Pizza in the Fridge, Leave a Note on the Front Door for the House Sitters, Otherwise it Will be Two Weeks. Sincerely, Your Sudden Realization). I think we packed it in around four in the morning, but stayed up reading in bed until closer to five. The New Yorker, Lila Says. Comforting to be so domestic. The younger kids who stay the night at my place, crashing over after movies so we can all have breakfast the next day before work, they don’t know the subtleties yet, they can’t sink into it.

    Our first blanket arrangement was called the Too Hot War, but that one sank into the swamp. So we built a second blanket arrangement: the Too Warm War. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. So we built a third one: the Cold Toes War. And that one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, lad, when you get people like us together, the strongest castle upstairs of England.