Month: February 2007

for those who didn’t know

Upcoming gigs in Vancouver:

George Clinton with Parliament play Plush on March 4th.

DO MAKE SAY THINK are playing Richards on Richards on March 5th.

The Constantines play The Plaza on April 12th.

Regina Spektor plays the Commodore Ballroom on Saturday, Apr 21. Tickets went on sale today.

The Books play Richards on Richards on April 25th.

Lyrics Born plays The Plaza on Wednesday, April 26.

LCD Soundsystem play the Commodore on May 3rd.

!!! play Richard on Richards on May 4th.

Explosions in the Sky play the Croation Cultural Centre on May 5th.

Peter, Bjorn & John are playing the Commodore on May 12th.

(I only have a ticket to The Books, this is a wish-list / forget-me-not list more than anything else. They’re all going to be wonderful.)

Shane Koyzan’s show at the Cultch is tonight. Duncan and Kyle also plan to be in attendance. I’m still nervous, but not as much. I’m reassuring myself with thoughts of the things I’ve done in that building before. It’s been my playground and stomping grounds since I was six, so it’s an odd list, everything from karaoke to oral sex.

Wednesday Nicole and I are staying in all day and fixing the pretty tile table that has been drying out in my living room. My current plan is to give it to Alastair as thank you for housing Tanith and Tanaquil, who are getting bigger almost every day. Mishi might drop by too, but she’ll have to vanish in time to pick up her little one from school. (Who is apparently ten-ish these days, officially making me feel unfairly old. This is a fact much open to ironic mockery and not just a little bit of serves-me-right.)

Thursday, as much as I adore the lingering fragrance of pure man, I’m throwing over packing for a chance to give Jay his Old-Spice soaked clothing back. (Yes, ladies, that is how I identified it as his.) In the evening will be Andrew and Sara‘s $13 All-You-Can-Eat-Sushi Tampopo birthday party.* Details here.
*Special events, for those interested, are essentially the only way to get me to step foot into a sushi house.

Friday and Saturday are still fairly up in the air, and Sunday, like every Sunday, I’m at the Dance Centre from 3 pm – 9:30.

this is the sea, for him to have a challenge, I must accept one

cultch_webflyer

Larry, my friend who’s master of Sinister Bedfellows and the Sharing Is For Communists t-shirt, is caught in a bit of a financially worrying situation. As a result, he’s put our book on sale.

(I’d very much like to see a printed version of this eventually. I’m told it’s popular in American libraries, but I’ve only a PDF copy, myself.)

My story was about Shane Koyzan, (teaser: here), who is conveniently performing at the Cultch this Tuesday with all the lovely people mentioned in the flyer stage right. I’m told that I’m to be the official photographer for the evening, which is a task I’m beginning to look on with mounting panic. For one, the plate to my tripod’s gone missing. For another, as my mending is at two months behind, I’m going to have to very hurriedly find some theatre blacks with appropriate pockets. (This is where, simultaneously, one of you feels guilty and someone else laughs). Oh, watch me begin to scurry. while. stuck. at. work. Head, this is the desk.

how to properly put on a kimono.

The feet on the floor above me sound like an amplified heartbeat taken from a terrible new age TV show, as if they’re pushing blood through the building by the mystical power of dance. Heads thrown back, arms out, legs crashing in slow motion, blue waving graphics meant to symbolize something drastically spiritual and unlikely to be true. Either that or they sound like feet and I really should have slept more last night than I did. It’s a fifty/fifty bet.

Part of my mock-panic worry are the miniature New York Times Bestseller hallucinations floating around in the penumbra of most of my sensory input today. I’m not so far gone that I’m seriously considering joining the Project 365 Photo-a-Day, but I am beginning to sift through my pictures, trying to pick what to give to A View In Your Mirror. The idea is to create a collection of self-portraits from people all over the world, artists or no, in the medium they prefer. I fall into the categories presented, I like what they’ve chosen to show so far, but most importantly, (not to mention unexpectedly), I can’t think of any reason not to.

public service announcement

thevintagestar, (a Mark Campbell, but not the Mark Campbell I threw underwear at when he played guitar with his teeth), has asked me to spread the word about a rally tomorrow that his wife is helping organize. Apparently Paul Callows is moving into their community. Paul Callows the multiply convicted rapist. Very scary guy. Understandably, they don’t want him living in their community.

So, without further ado, the call to arms:

Paul Callows, a convicted rapist, recently completed his 20 year prison sentence. During this time he did receive some therapy, but did not seem to respond to it. He admitted to his psychologist that he had indeed raped 26 women, not only the 5 he was convicted of and showed no remorse. He also, while in jail, attempted to rape a nurse during drug counseling.

As he committed the crimes in Ontario and is never allowed to set foot in Ontario again, this man is apparently moving into the Newton area. He was incarcerated before the dangerous offenders act came into play so, instead of being slowly integrated into society, he was released. As of Feb 23rd he is a free man choosing to reside in Newton.

Mrs. Campbell has contacted the Mayor of Surrey, Dianne Watts, and together they are organizing a rally. If you want something to say about this or want to support the protection of women over the protection of a convicted rapist, she urges you to join.

Make a sign, (something along the lines of “Safety of the community” or “Protect Women” “Every woman is someone’s daughter” or anything you come up with yourself), and join us at the Newton Exchange Bus Loop at 72nd and 138th near the Newton Wave Pool at 2pm on Sunday February 25th, 2007. Bring your family, friends and please forward this to everyone on your email lists. We have to get the word out that a convicted rapist, who is at high risk to re-offend is living in our area.

News crews will be on the scene.

Even if you can’t make it to the rally, please show your support by sending this to everyone you can.

— FYI — NEWSFLASH —

Burrow is staying with me this weekend. (She just got a new XKCD t-shirt and it being super squealy happy about it). 2 o’clock tomorrow we’re going down to Suspended, Boca Del Lupo’s WinterRuption show at Granville island with Nicole and Duncan.

At four, she’ll be playing bike-polo at Grandview Park, and then we’re going to SinCity in the evening with Wayne.

You are invited to any and all of these things. (Bike polo, obviously, requires a bicycle.)

Return of the Son of Monster Magnet


picture by Lung Liu.

Well, fine, doom us all, you petulant country, you. You’re not very original.

Quote of the Day goes to my good friend Ian. He says: “Oy. Geek boys going after you is like a guy with one week of martial arts classes under his belt going to a bar and looking for the hugest guy in there. And then pissing in his shoes.” Ian’s known me a long time.

Today at work I was reading Carl Sagan and a collection of re-contextualized post-modern fairy-tales. Possibly, I need to get out more. More likely, I need to figure out which of these books are mine and which are borrowed and from where.

Terence McKenna’s library was just destroyed in a fire.

He had been a well-lathed challenge, a good time waiting to be had. She didn’t know about the long drive, about the night. In her astonished stride, motivations were uneasy, rote, at war. She said, like kicking a small cat in the ribs, “I’ll wait if I have to.” Almost instinctively, he had flinched and reached for her body.

“Why does the wolf care,” she asked, “for your voice?” She sat alone in a wooden room, a crumpled red cloak a metaphor at her feet. Her tongue flickered when she spoke. The floor was littered with spices; sugar, cloves, and cinnamon. She had prepared a bed of leaves, flowers, pine-needles and double-starched sheets, her smile as lemon pie. Streaked across the ceiling was a moment suspended in time, static clouds she had painted in gold. Anxious, she spoke to herself again, “It’s only a story.” She remembers how his fur had felt in the taxi. Like the forest, she is barefoot, in a soft and fragile state of grace.

Blood and beauty. “Fill his belly full of stones. Cut open his belly and fill it with memories, reasons, excuses, stones. Wear his skin. The old formula – remember to breathe.” His teeth retracted, his eyes closed, their mouths had opened, they had kissed. Almost ceremonially, she had taken off her clothes, undone his belt. Wood fell under the axe of her tongue.

Alone now, she remembers how his fur felt in the taxi, and waits.

Lung and I took pictures today

“LANGUAGES divide the spectrum up in different ways. Welsh speakers use “gwyrdd” (pronounced “goo-irrrth”) as a general word for green. Yet “grass” literally translates as “blue straw”. That is because the Welsh word for blue (“glas”) can accommodate all shades of green. English-speaking anthropologists affectionately squish “green” and “blue” together to call Welsh an example of a “grue” language. A few of them think grue languages are spoken by societies that live up mountains or near the equator because ultraviolet radiation, which is stronger in such places, causes a progressive yellowing of the lens. This, the theory goes, makes the eye less sensitive to short wavelengths (those that correspond to the green and blue parts of the spectrum). Unfortunately, though the Welsh do live in a hilly country, it is hardly mountainous enough—let alone sunny enough—to qualify.

The ultraviolet theory, however, is just one idea among many in the debate about the psychology of colour. Like many debates in psychology, this one pits congenital, fundamentally genetic, explanations against explanations that rely on environmental determinism. Psychologists in the former camp think people are born with ingrained ideas about how hues are grouped. They believe the brain is preconditioned to pick out the six colours on a Rubik’s cube whatever tongue it is taught to think in. The other camp, by contrast, thinks that the spectrum can be chopped into categories anywhere along its length. Moreover, they suspect that the language an individual learns from his parents is the main explanation for where that chopping takes place.

… There is a fundamental—presumably congenital—distinction, as shown by the fact that the non-linguistic side of the brain distinguishes between blue and green. But there is also a language-mediated one, as shown by the linguistic side’s greater response.”

article link from the clever lucaskrech, lighting engineer extraordinaire

introduce yourself

Watch this, please.

These are three of the more anonymous messages I recieved through Valintinr:

  • i wish you loved me as much as you love him

  • you want to flee into the ocean? curl up there, lungs filling up while you wait to be rescued but you didn’t tell anyone where you were going. shine our light we do, all of us in the sky by the millions, each too-soft song of praise too small to measure alone. a chorus, then, tiny whispers in the deep. our frozen princess, bathed in love, rise when you will and walk. we long to shine on you and pave your path with petals. hear us and claim your throne.

  • The old mask was grown unfamiliar, but already the joins are harder to see. With teeth sharper than memory I have been chewing on the sweet sinews of your heart, keeping fragments safe, saving shrapnel.
    and somewhere, amongst warm socks and soap, lie the eyes that saw and the lips that tasted.

    I have been thinking of you.

  • I admit I post these with a slight hesitation, but I claim my grace from their beautiful and fragile anonymity. In this strange age, secrets are a new kind of social politics. Who to filter, who to write to, what you can say, what you can see – the lines between are easily blurred, writing without a name is a liberation. One step away, but not too far.

    They, very obviously, remind me of the letters I was recieving last spring. Mysterious things, slick with meaning, that I felt I should be able to swallow and, in consuming, unflinchingly grasp the author by the name. I still do not know who wrote them, but part of me hopes that they are the writer of one of the above quotations. There is still a familiarity, a cessation of breath that says to me that we were not strangers.

    There were people who were worried for me, nervous of the idea of a “stalker”, a man who knew not only my name, but where I lived and the blood of my mythology, as if I had been studied, tracked, and dangerously hunted. One person asked me to call the police if they ever turned threatening, but it was a sentiment I could understand but never respect. All of the sudden, a stranger is dangerous? Whatever happened to clever innocence? I was not long-suffering, it was a sharp loss when they ended. My mail-box, empty, felt like an accusation. I still feel the failing was mine for not identifying my admirer, for lacking the depth required to slueth my fascinating writer, my sweet daydream.

    These notes, wrapped softly in the digital realm, are both easier and more difficult. I cannot hold them in my hand and try to analyze the writing script, instead I must rely on the idosyncrasies, the clues and choice of words exclusively.

    The first, direct yet oblique, is a note that I might leave, and very much have in other times, but can’t be from anyone who knows me well. A crucial understanding of my social situation is missing. The second, enchanting though it is, doesn’t even give me that much information. All I know is they’re a long time reader, someone in tune with what I appreciate. It’s the third that’s keeping me up tonight, certain there’s enough information available for me to pluck the author from the crowd. My mind is trying to compile a list of people I have kissed and is finding it a short one. As three a.m. approaches, I’ve whittled it down to only four names.

    I hope, whoever you are, you’re happy. The soap is throwing me off.

    It’s the little things.

    edit: Ryan? there’s more (at the bottom).

    • I want them to sing the philosophers song next

    This is the first time that I’ve enjoyed a video of “Dead Parrot Sketch” performed by anyone but John Cleese and Michael Palin:




    The story: A pair of Nigerian 419 scammers were scammed into performing the sketch by a group who pride themselves on wasting the time and resources of such scammers. If you haven’t heard about this before, they’re known as Scambaiters and have perpetrated some pretty amusing hoaxes.

    The solemnity with which Nigerian John Cleese recites his lines is more than I expected.

    dinner with penumbra tonight

    Meet the World.

    My to-do list is smaller every day. Take my certificate to the police, pick up a cheque from the lawyers, pack more in boxes, sneak more recycling across the street to the other building’s bins, and always, always, take care of the kittens.

    There is still no sky to speak of. From horizon to horizon, it is the same blank wall it was yesterday and the day before. We live in a dome, a bubble of nothing in particular. I need out of here and yet I can barely leave my house. This makes me home-sick like nothing else I’ve ever seen.

    Nicholas, I am appropriating your clothing. In return, to make up for stretching your sweater, I present to you JazzTube. Enjoy.

    edit: apparently I need a writing portfolio – anyone have any favourites?

    Happy Chinese New Year, everyone. Gong Xi Fa Cai.


    danger
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    I got a bright rush out from a poster I saw on my way to work today: George Clinton with Parliament, March 4th at Plush. I stopped and immediately scribbled the details on my wrist. (“If anyone gets funked up, it’s gonna be you“). Is anyone else excited about this? I’ve been a burning square the last few months, I need to get out and boogie. Tickets are a terrifying $60, but if it’s anything as catchy as the Afrikaa Bombaataa last year, it’ll be worth it. (I danced through my favourite pin-stripe fishnet stockings at that concert.)

    —

    It’s like he was made to be played on the piano, his body all black key self confidence and gentle pale ideals, a skeptic caught in the violent wake of an irrefutable miracle. I liked him on sight. His dreaming mouth, too busy to notice me, giving smart voice to idiosyncratic creatures of feigned precision, reminded me of an unconscious Rembrandt. I rolled up my mental shirtsleeves and tried to think of other things. Six thoughts at once, I decided, and found five easily to replace him – until he looked up and met my eyes. They were the colour of a favourite song of hard-earned nostalgia or an elegant walking stick from another age, polished from two generations of impeccably gloved hands.

    Too stubborn to look away, trapped by the pure audacious mechanics of competition, I was suddenly too close to a vanishing point to get proper perspective. Lines were being drawn around me, inked with subsumed intention, in the shape of a conversation with conspicuously missing words. Unbidden, I imagined the mark of his teeth on my neck and our bodies together like Tristan’s handmade boat, rocking soundly through a storm wherever next we encountered a flat surface. The ghost of my faith shook in its sheets, unable to consolidate this encounter with its bitter heart. We crossed the space between us in an indecent freefall, threading through the crowd suddenly as insubstantial as clouds, as charming as grocery shopping alone.
    —

    (Just as an aside, baby-ballerinas are possibly the most doll-like human beings I have ever encountered outside of a fetish club.)

    books for sale