n: vb: the spice of imagination
David LaChappelle is one of the most brillient photographers currently in existance. He’s created some Declare Yourself films. The ‘go register to vote’ shorts. Um, yeah. They’re a bit disturbing. Go watch. The first one actually recieved a split second of shock from me.
To recover, here’s some directed by Kevin Smith.
links thanks to
She’s walking home at one a.m. with a cheap plastic spoon in one hand and a small carton of caramel ice-cream in the other. She just tried to share it with a friend who wasn’t home. Wasn’t last time either, maybe three times the charm. Earlier she’d been at a dinner party. Her friend Aiden’s birthday. Some new people there and one or two she’d known already. Conversation was amusing and animated, a nice change from the long hot day. It’s summertime and the weather is oppressive in her little box of an apartment. Someone had brought unusual little gyroscopic toys that lit up and were hard to hold. No batteries needed nor included. She can still acutely feel the muscles in her right arm, how they feel overly used somehow. She was the last to leave, as usual. Staying behind with Aiden and Nicole. Doing dishes and explaining finally the break-up of six months ago. A new thing to attempt. Setting one piece in front of the other to create the path she walked. She looks embarrassed at some of it, but not overly. Her friends curled on the couch across from her are happy together, happy to have her here, glad to listen. It was the sort of chatting after the party that should have had a bottle of wine or a carafe of coffee. They should have been sitting there adult, sipping from glasses while softly laughing in love at themselves.
She’s walking now, alone in the soft night. A Gibson bit about Tokyo crosses her mind as she walks up the hill on fourth street. “It never gets dark here. Even when you close the door, the light blows under the door like powder.” She agrees completely. Happens in her room all the time. It never gets properly dark in the city. All the extraneous lights. Half of these and we would still be safe. Across Clark now and up a block, next to the school. There’s people talking in the darkness. They’re up at the top of the elementary fire escape. It’s funny where people will go to talk at night. Different places than during the day. Little hidden places, like attempting to be alone with your friends with walls of privacy made of invisible velvet. She’s counting her fingers. July, August, September, November. Five years is an eternity when you’re twenty-two. It’s practically one quarter of your life. It’s not real. Four months though. Four months is real and it’s no time at all. Especially if it’s not really waiting. If the other is there every day, eager as well. Days fly past, utterly meaningless. She’ll tell him this when she logs on at home.
Time for some media sharing, I think. I’ve a little time until I’m taking Robin to the waterpark. Less time until my Gavool comes on-line. There’s nothing I feel like writing today without some serious effort put in, so this is what’s left.
The Cat With Hands is a dark little film. Sweet and something to scare small children with. Heavy on the artistry and some very nicely done stop motion animation. I enjoy slightly creepy things and this is certainly going on the favorites list. If anyone grabs it, I’d love a copy.
There are now glowy popsicles. Gimmicky but I want one anyways. We should scour the land searching for 7-11s that carry them. Foodthings with thier own lightsource are nummier.
I’ll toss Yatta on this list too, because, well, it’s that kind of day. That surreal bit with the girl goes really nicely with the growl and purr of the Indy cars drifting through the window. Plus it’s so easy and happy-go-lucky. For the heck of it. Here’s another strange Japanese short – Seaman Ship.
Something a bit more political and even more disturbing is someone’s personal site. Their American god blesses Presidents that are Cowboys. I wish, of course, this didn’t exist, but also I think it expresses quite succinctly the views of the folk I don’t believe in until I meet them.
To apologise for inflicting the above on you, I now direct you to the eloquent Grandiloquent Dictionary. This is the result of an ongoing project to collect and distribute the most obscure and rare words in the English language. It also contains a few words which do not have equivalent words in English. At present, the dictionary contains approximately 2300 words, though it is constantly growing. It makes me happy. In the same vein is Sniggle: The CultureJammers Encyclopedia.
Also William Shatner, Joe Jackson, and Ben Folds combine like an audio pop playing voltron for your entertainment. Shatner has somehow escaped the horrid doom of B actors by caching in on his cheezefactor. Joe Jackson, on the other hand, is alive?? They’ve got another song that James played for me awhile back that I really must collect off-line sometime.
For those of you who are also little burdgening media pirates, there’s a post up in
This is for the students who are toiling away. (Especially the lovely Victoria). British Depth Study. You’re a young politician in 1908 Britain. The rest of you will find a few minutes distraction. Makes me think somehow, not sure why, of the Museum of Depressionist Art. I think it’s how I’m secretly not bitter at all.
Course, what I’m seriously looking at right now is the Safety and Legal Awareness Courses and Training page of the The Explosives Regulatory Division. I’ve been recently reminded how very much I was hoping to take that course a few years ago, but age restrictions, blah blah. Then I was hit by a truck. I don’t know if I want to get my indoor or outdoor first. They’re $100 each. If I remember in three months, I’m doing it.
Anyhoo – this is likely enough of a list for people to get some strange ideas about what I do with my time late at night. Likely accurate ones too. Ghods I love the net.
Alrighty – this is barely any warning, but ILLUMINAIRES is this Sat!
Illuminares, an evening lantern procession around Trout Lake, July 24, 2004
I know it’s been going a bit downhill the past few years, but still – want to give it the doubt? I hate going to things alone. I won’t make you build a lantern even.
I’m keeping myself up trying to talk to you here. Writing words and phrases and now it’s two o’clock. You’re long asleep with Bliss. Wish for some sort of transfer, like polaroid onto paper, that would let me ride her mind for the night. Be a shedding curl of fur alongside your body. I was almost sorry that I didn’t get to spend the night at the studio that once when Ian and Mishka were off and like lost. I think it would have been that much of a true feeling to wake there than the basement. Sleeping alone but without other bodies in the room. Waking to colour. Seems such a strangely familiar place, that studio, as if I’ve been there in a dreaming. Nothing of it was strange when I got there, more like I was reminding myself of the details. Being me, I apply logic to it though. I’m one of the Voltaire Bastards. I figure that it must be that I grew up in such places, though that feels like the wrong explanation. Instruments instead of paintings perhaps, so less of a warm feel, emptier maybe, with power cords and false chrome stands, but similar spaces. Rooms forgotten by everyone else and so available for living in by the creative poor.
Irma’s quote of the day: “I don’t know why people put drugs in thier arms when it feels so very good when you just squish them”
We watched Plunkett & Macleane today and I was reminded about just how much I love the Tiger Lillies and the Talking Heads. I love having a playlist with both intermixed with perhaps a few random Catherine Wheel tunes. Eat My Dust you Insensitive Fuck maybe or Judy Staring at the Sun with Our House in the Middle of Our Street.
Such an odd artform, the playlist order and mix. Sounds have to shift properly, sudden surprises and slow burn fades like liquid metal. This one ends in drumroll, this one starts with chimes, now I need one with thundering voices and de sotto cello. This is a warm up tune, gaining rhythym as it hits the beat. I want one next that makes the girl feel like kissing the dragon. Taking its smokey head and touching lips to that burning mouth.
Mmmmmm, like raining or seeing me cry glittering tears in sunlight. Honey on skin. Amber on pale. Time for the coda, then BREAK. Close your eyes for just a moment and feel it twist your shoulders. The head tilts with these notes, it’s involuntary. Thoughts flying so far away, but close enough to touch, to tingle. Oh, oh, ohhh oh, that feeling of water on the face, salty and stinging and full of fresh sticky freedom. I love the sounds you make.
Woke depressed today. Pressed down and emptied. My people are vanishing one by one by one. Apparently I don’t know how to care for some properly, others in the right way. No-one telling me anything in time for the fact. Then there’s the very few who don’t want to leave, but must. I’ve got something I don’t know about the world, and I like that, but not this morning. This morning is hard. Difficult. Weight is filling my lungs to the point where I don’t want to breathe. I rise from continuously waking, reaching out for someone who isn’t there, to my fathers increasingly disturbing letters. This is not what I need when I’m bloody and bleeding.
I could call out now, but you would not come.
I love how quickly I can slip into accepting things. Adaptation without thinking about it. I am here and this is What Is so this is What I Do. I wish it was something I could explain better, this feeling of Yes. Everything is as it should be because this is how it is. There is no It Would Be Better If.
*sighs*
One of these days everything will click snick into place and clarity will befall me, like the idea of rain washing something clean. I’ll be able to explain myself, I’ll be able to write and create that “this is for me” understanding in whoever reads.
Gavools on-line now. He swished straight on from the airport. Burbled up on messenger at two o’clock almost on the dot. Surprise and relief. I know what I know and I know he cares, so I’m happy. Anyone who revels in my independance with me is to be kept. I followed you home, can I keep it?
We stepped out, me to meet Domnique, him to re-arrange his life into Calgary again. My walk up the Drive was pleasant and punctuated by people stopping me on account of my hat. A police M.O. went out today for someone in a purple hat. Nevermind it was for a young male, mid-twenties, in a tight black t-shirt and bright long shorts. I have a purple hat. I must be stopped and questioned by the Filth. Made me a little late for meeting Dominique, but she’d collected Woody, so I don’t feel guilty in the slightest. After assiduously not guarding some fellows truck, we dropped in Wazubi’s for spicy prawns and chocolate cake. The waitress brought a dish of whipped cream with chocolate sauce. After the ordeal of the spice, I think I fully assuaged my girliness for the week in eating it straight with a baby dessert fork.
Ethan and Ian are on thier way over for some Full Contact Frisbee. I think we’ll walk up to Grandview. We’ll be that much closer to strawberries. Yummy freedom red on the tongue.
Um wow. Holy flying monkays and cheesecake cats on pogosticks. Utterly bugflagging crazyness. I’ve recieved replies to the little note I sent my father. They’re sort of “I would contact you, but they would kill us, because the government is secretly run by nazi aliens” letters. I wish I was exaggerating. I asked my mother for his middle name and offered to forward them to her. Vicki doesn’t want them and I don’t blame her. I, however, am going to reply. I want to know more. Where in the city to avoid, if nothing else. As I said to someone already, I would point you to a film illustrating his violence if that sort of film weren’t banned in Canada.
here’s the tame one