nothing like it
Author: foxtongue
visions of fire, of his clumsy explanations our first night
I am a canadian
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.
I received an odd e-mail today, proving that relationships may end but mailing lists never die, from Joseph, the rock angel I was with when I lived in Toronto. Zye, his band I lived with in the crazy converted storage hanger in Scarborough, is having a reunion concert July 20th at Holy Joe’s, a place at Queen and Bathurst above The Reverb that I’m almost certain I’ve never visited. Apparently it’s a double-bill with one of his newer projects, Camel Joe. If the MySpace is to believed, Camel Joe is some sort of rock-metal nostalgia band.
If there’s anyone in the Toronto area willing to go take pictures, I would deeply appreciate it.
I don’t ask that you stay for the music, though I would be thankful for a simple hello on my behalf. A connection back to my most beautiful lover would be priceless. Everything I treasure was born that golden summer. It was like my world was set spinning. Everything was perfect, even properly crying over Brenda’s death for the very first time while I crouched between the seats of his orange van as we delivered magazines in the Gay Village. Linger on, your pale blue eyes. His eyes are gold and they drowned me in fire. We never were alone long enough, not once. Now I wonder, but not very often. His hair in the shower went down to our waists.
mass meet-up’s are so in style
Maybe with a beach party.
Starting at 3pm at the Vancouver Art Gallery (Howe and Robson).
To combat zombie exhaustion the route will be shorter!
To combat zombie boredom the route will be different!
To combat zombie short attention spans more info will come closer to the date.
. . . although these are really the only things you need to know.
Mark your calendars!
I’m at my mother‘s right now, wondering where the paperwork that was to be waiting for me is hiding in the massive piles of stuff that occlude her kitchen. It’s an oven here, perspiringly humid, especially the top floor where I am, tucked in next to antique stereo equipment and a massive plastic castle. She’s out house-hunting the Drive today, trying to find somewhere for her and the boys to live now that her school is done and her student housing’s run out. She’s been looking into grants, too, that would let her buy a house, but even with all of the bursaries and interest free loans and special dispensations for single mothers from the government, Vancouver prices are so exceedingly high that she could only raise half a mortgage downpayment. We’ve been talking about how we could fund-raise to get the rest, but I’m not sure what we could do. I’m thinking a website not unlike the one that belonged to that ditzy girl that had the internet pay her foolish credit card bills, but with perks for donors. She’s a musician, we know creative people, I’m sure we could work something out. If anyone has any suggestions, it would be appreciated.
What: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
When: Movie starts at midnight on Thursday and it will be busy so meet at 10:30. If you’ll be late, get someone to get tickets for you.
Where: The Paramount theatre, downtown at the corner of Burrard and Smithe
Who: You & anyone else you’d like to bring!
In a similar vein, though on a much smaller scale, is there anyone interested in being press-ganged by two fascinating women? Silva, my mother.2, and I need a human or two at her house to help shift some small furniture around either Monday or Tuesday afternoon. It’s a job that would take us an entire exhausting day, but an able-bodied person could handle it with us in just a few hours. You would get the extraordinary gift of her company and possibly some traditional you’re-bodily-helping-in-the-summertime lemonade. Maybe. If you’re lucky. Otherwise, no, just tea. Tea and fantastic conversation. And neat decor. And big black cats. And, well, you’ll just have to see!
library on fire
We’re ghosts haunting the wrong houses, spooks without a C.I.A. Neon signs fading into the distance and motels empty of newlyweds. We’re what influential german dramatists pictured when they had fever dreams, two people with shiny smiles anxiously standing by the side of a blind sea. Your hand in mine, how dangerous. Your graceful fingers spell out initiative while mine tactfully promise a lack of sleep. We’re going to spell out the end of the world together, in the movement of lines on palms and programmable languages directed by the tilt of a wrist. We’re the sound of a solitary radio while driving through Nevada at night. We’re the 327000 feet languishing between the earth and the edge of her atmosphere. No sleep and we’re speaking in punctuation. No dreams.
Burrow‘s laptop recently got stolen while she was in Seattle. To try and raise money to buy a new one, she’s selling prints of her artwork. If lithographs aren’t your thing, but you’d still like to help, her link for donations is here.
Me, I’m house-cleaning in prep for my trip to Europe. I’ve got a list of books I’d like to sell. I’m wanting them to go for 30% cover price OBO with probable discounts for wholesale.
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.
Hidden Landscapes
SILENT LONDON
March 2005 – 735x500mm – Blind embossed etching
by Simon Elvins
Using information the government has collected on noise levels within London, a map has been plotted of the capitals most silent spaces. The map intends to reveal a hidden landscape of quiet spaces and shows an alternate side of the city that would normally go unnoticed.
how embarrassing
“TVfolk.net now presents 409 videos of traditional music from northern Europe.” via sir w. vitka.
http://www.tvfolk.net/
First video: Oort: Öised orjad.
Have you ever felt such a connection with someone that you knew it must be broken? That you would have to walk away for fear that, no matter how inappropriately, you would kiss them on the street? It’s darkly entertaining, catching yourself about to forsake everything anyone knows about you, understanding that your decision would be irrevocable, and simply not caring.
There might be something wrong with me. I found Outkast on my computer, and.. well.. it’s groovy. A lot. To the point where I have Hey Ya on repeat. Is it sleep dep? I don’t know. I just know that I really want a pair of loose shiny pants and somewhere to wear them while dancing to this. (This and some Gnarls Barkley, please.)
Don’t get me wrong, Speakerboxxx is still perhaps the worst dirty south hip-hop album I have ever flipped through, and you won’t catch me defending these lyrics unless under extreme duress, (“Don’t want to meet your momma, just want to make you cum’ma”), but this song is rocking me. There is bop happening. Head nodding. Shaky things in my hips that remind me of the twitchy tip of a purring cat’s tail.
Dear porphyre,
You have a nice______. You make me _______. You should _______. Someday I will ______. You + me =________. If I saw you now I’d __________. I would build a _______ just for you. If I could sing you any song it would be _________.
Love,
_______________
(P.S. ______________.)
this album is too sexy
In memory of language, I will spit you, craven, from my mouth. Every day that was a letter with you, I will burn. In memory of words, of meaning, of the double-handed dealings of my tongue between your lips, I will tear you from me, reject your chrome sensationalism, my infatuation, my glorified attachment to your acquisitive frame. I will deny and repeal all rights your hands had, all liberties of motion, all the rapacious, itching greed I had mistakenly, lasciviously, authorized and stamped with the sanctioned approval of my gentlest kiss.
I will not allow you the animistic gift of speech. It is mine.
In respect for adoration, I will not name you. Your face will be blank, as slate on concrete, as lacking in feature as you were in grace. In respect for devotion, I will not need you, not crave or desire your golden smile, your irrevocable beauty, your unfortunate habit of junk crashing my mind. I flatly refuse to focus on your absence or notice the anger on my hands, my thwarted fingers, or my dizzying feeling of rejection. Your singular admiration will sink into time like twinkling stars into a cold winter sea, your voice will be like an aftertaste, and the flame of your being will be as to ashes dusted out of a failed marriage bed.
Medical-tophat, the creator of The Doctor Pepper Show, has a flickr account.
The latest in WTFJapan: “I think I have that song for DDR” with dubious thanks to Ed, who wants to know why Japanese women “sound so uncomfortable?”
Stevie Wonder setting fire to Sesame Street with an injection of pure funk into the Sesame St. Song and Superstitious.
another day applying
Matthew Hurst of Nielsen BuzzMetrics created a map of some thousand or so of the web’s most popular blogs.
One for Livejournal is posted to his blog.
Almost fifteen years ago, celtic arm band tattoos took Vancouver by storm. It was the big trend, the most awesome fad. It went well with the Irish pubs that were quietly springing up all over downtown and the Xtreme sports and the short spiky hair that looked fried into position.
The driver of the bus I was just on, he had one on his right arm. His hair was just beginning to go white.
I like things like that, cultural ways to mark time.
Websites as graphs.
I’m playing a silly meme game that’s wandering around livejournal right now, a dungeons and dragons maze, where it takes your list of interests and the names off your friends list to decorate and populate a simple dungeon. Mine are turning up some really pretty ideas, embarrassingly like the sort of thing I write, like “Across one wall is a faded fresco of thoughts.” or “You notice some graffiti about explaining intuition.” or “It tastes like climbing trees.” It’s sort of a little one-handed thing I can do instead of reading a book while I’m eating my sad five dollar lasagna dinner from Quest for the Holy Donair. The only drawback is my sudden deep and abiding desire to dig up a copy of ADOM and tap away little ASCII monsters until dawn.
I win at the internet
I’ve somehow finagled tickets to a Douglas Coupland reading/Q&A/CBC taping tonight. If anyone has any questions they’d like asked, post them here and I’ll see what I can do.