Month: March 2007

wish I heard his voice more often

BABIES AS WEAPONS is the most twisted thing you will see today, even if you’re a regular at ModBlog. It’s the inelegant site of XenoSapien, a man in the States who believes he is “suffering from deep feminist-culture side-effects.” I hope he never discovers gifs, as the flame motif is bad enough already. (Warning: for reasons unknown he plays inappropriate music very loudly). The front page has a pencil sketch named MyPain of a woman dressed as a stripper about to whip a prostrate man with a baby that’s still attached to her by an umbilical cord that snakes from between her legs. For added wtf, the diapered baby seems to be angrily shouting into a microphone. The entire thing gives me the quesy feeling he watches Wicker Man and touches himself on Friday nights.

  • “NASA can no longer afford the future.”
  • Plans for making a Jacob’s Ladder from readily available parts.

    Today has been full of unexpected phone calls, disco light moments, when the blare of music fades into almost silence at the exact moment you see her face. Theatre people, friends, night and day. Someone’s finally read my pen written letters, public transit edited. A long distance shout from an ex-lover, three defeated countries away, sunburned voice peeling across the lines, unexpected and welcome and a little puzzling. I love him, but why now? Little mirrors refracting light, circling in the room. Another chrome ring, pick-up-the-phone – a potential investor, in town from Memphis, surprise, someone I’ve been considering handing the project off to once I get it up on its feet and properly connected to my city. (We all know I want to leave.) I’m cancelling my plans this evening so as to see him.

    Just as a reminder: Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo opens tomorrow at The Western Front. Further details here. I’m going, are you? Especially quick comments have a chance at a comp.

    • everyone I talk to says they had troubled dreams last night


    Watched Tideland with Ryan and Eva last night. A strange journey following a little girl, Jeliza Rose, and her exploration of life, it left me with an unclean feeling, as if we had been witness to a curse. Do not mistake me, the film was excellent, but it worked very hard at making the audience uncomfortable. It whispered of things better left unsaid, the modern abuses of very old stories, of bad things that inevitably happen to the best of good girls and the sad hidden loves buried within the wicked witch of the west. It was very counter-intuitive, though it made perfect sense, (even through the scenes of magic realism), much like watching someone remove a cork that’s fallen into a bottle by inflating a plastic bag. I found myself desperately wanting certain things to not be fact, to have them exist only in the wonderful mythical architecture of Jeliza Rose’s imagination, though knowing, finally, that the true enemy, if there was one, was only the psychotic banality of life.

    I’m not sure if I recommend it, only that you should not let young children see it. As a double-feature with Pan’s Labyrinth, it might cause nightmares, insects crawling under skin, (the classic of the gentleman junkie, wrapped in a red stolen cloak, high on life and wetly muttering dirty stories into a gutter awash with dark fairy-tale glitz). However, everyone should have their kids watch this.

    gives you confidence in doctors, doesn’t it now? reinforcing that people only see what they wish to

    Gravity vanished in the pile of feathers that flew out of all of our enthusiastic pillows yesterday. It was lovely. More people were there than I expected would brave the threatening rain, (which didn’t follow through), too many people to attempt reciting names, but special shout out’s to everyone who came to Taff’s after for lemonade and cranberry ginger-ale floats. Adam has done us the joy of putting up pictures and video, (Vicki has some photographs too), and I have made a PillowFight Flashmob Flickrset.

    On a related note, in that it also involves hilarity, flashmobs and photography, Patrick‘s picture of Eva and I holding hands has drawn the attention of the academic community.

    This is a copy of the letter he received:

    “Subject: lesbian zombie wedding.

    Hi there

    I’m carrying out some research for a book to be published in 2008 by Berg, Oxford. The book is called Fabrics of Desire, and one of the chapters will focus on the selections made of garments for lesbian civil partnerships. I’m interested in the ‘singular iconic and symbolic wedding dress’ and how it gets challenged anew by the possibility of ‘double brides’.

    I should let you know that my partner and I celebrated our CP in September 2006, and that my interest is for genuine scholarly research. I would be happy to anonymise any information as necessary.

    I noticed that you had some civil partnership images on your flickr pages and I was wondering if you could help me in any way with research for the book.

    I would like to contact lesbian couples who would be willing to discuss the significance of the garments they chose, and give me some insight to how they marked their ‘special day’ through their choice of clothes.

    It may be also possible that we could discuss using your images in relation to their interview if this seemed like a good idea. I would be most grateful for any help you are willing to give.

    If you wish to forward my email onwards to any interested people, please feel free to do so.

    I do hope that you will be able to help, and I’m really grateful for any assistance you can give me.

    Many thanks

    Best wishes

    Dr Catherine Harper”

    The picture in question, taken at the 2005 VanZombieWalk:

    Lesbian Zombie Wedding


    Sea Sheep is for kids, you silly rabbit

    SEA SHEEP!

    Darling Min has tagged me with The Sentence Meme. Her result was so charming, I could not resist.


    photobooth 2000
    Originally uploaded by Theremina.

    1. Grab the nearest book.
    2. Open the book to page 23.
    3. Find the fifth sentence.
    4. Post the text of the next three sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
    5. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
    6. Tag five other people to do the same.

    “The map does puzzle Tantivy. It cannot be put down to the usual loud-mouthed American ass-banditry, except as a fraternity-boy reflex in a vacuum, a reflex Slothrop can’t help, barking on into an empty lab, into a wormhole of echoing hallways, long after their need has vanished and the brothers gone to WW II and their chances for death. Slothrop really doesn’t like to talk about his girls: Tantivy has to steer him diplomatically, even now.”

    … from Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

    This is where instruction number 6 asks me to place five of your names in a row. However, rather than pick and prod at the lot of you, I’m going to add two favourite passages from Books I Have Never Read.

    ”The light changes and he has that wish again: that every step he ever took left a neon footprint. Every step, from his first to these. That way he could catch up with himself, track himself through the city and years. See that the last time he walked this block he was tipsy or in love. Here determined, there aimless like today, no particular place to go. If he could see his footprints, he’d know his uncharted territories, what was yet, and where never to return. Some of the old stores are gone since last time. What comes at their address is bright and shiny like new keys. New keys fit new locks. It is rare here that the new establishment is more downscale and if only he could make his self and ideas like real estate: ever higher. God knows he has tried to keep up with the changing market but his new shirt will only go so far- once they step inside they recognize the same old merchandise and demur. He has swept up, his brain gets so dingy sometimes, but they will not see his renovations and he is a dead trade, something remembered only by old phonebooks. Blacksmith, knife sharpener. Walk faster.”

    …from The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead.

    “From the sky a frail black fragment, tumbling as in a dream, drifts down to settle on my arm. Upon it, barely visible against its black, the faintest silver tracery of lines may yet be seen: a gentle curve that is perhaps a stream or else some buried lane, the clustered spidermarks that may be trees viewed from above.

    It breaks against my wrist and falls to dust, caught by the wind to scatter over the cremation fields.”

    … from Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore.

    FYI: Van-flakiness alert!

    Seemingly at the Very Last Minute, Boca Del Lupo has pulled out from their show at FUSE tonight. As a result, I am not going.

    Nor is Duncan and Gerald couldn’t make it anyway. So there. (FUSE will be notably less full of tall people by their absence). Sorry if anyone else was planning on finding me there. Instead, Silva and I are going to go to Locus through Michael‘s good graces. (Which should cheer him up too).

    I’ll very likely be available for other shenanigans later in the evening. If you want to get ahold of me, I suggest leaving a message either here or on my phone. Rumour says there’s a house-party.

    a slack annual production

    It has come time again to call out all my readers – even you lurkers.

    Announce who you are and what you do. It’s introduction time.

    I want to see who it is that I talk to here, so please, post a picture of yourself to put a face to your name when you tell us your newest dirty schemes, fallacious claims to scattershot innocence, bitter pet peeves or religious abuses.

    Whatever you like – as long as it’s true.

    Most of you are lovely people, in some twisted way or another – scientists, students, artists, writers – so show off. I expect the social incest to kick up a notch when this is through.
    For those late to the game, I am a writer and amateur photographer currently living in Vancouver, Canada, who is trying to create a new venue from an old Bollywood theatre through sheer force of will.

    Ready?

    Go.

    whoring the vancity cine

    Rob Mann’s first feature documentary, IMAGINE THE SOUND, (a tribute to Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon and Paul Bley, four of the artists who helped sculpt the avante-garde jazz of the 1960’s), has been digitally remastered and will be playing at the VanCity Cinema on March 28th at 9:30pm. Being a fan of jazz, I’m strongly considering going. From all accounts it’s an elegant film. Would anyone else be interested?

    A few days later, they’re showing KLIMT, a weird biopic on Gustav Klimt as played by John Malkovitch. If you don’t know who they are, shame. The director, Raoul Ruiz, says, “The time portrayed in the film was one of the highlights of Viennese culture, which had burst onto the scene very quickly and in which the first seeds of decay were evident almost straight away, since such brilliance rarely lasts. We have Klimt, his private life, the world around him in all its splendour, but in the background we feel something malignant that quietly gains prominence, something contagious.” He’s my mother’s favourite painter, so I’m going to be trying to kidnap her to the the April 5th screening at 7 pm.

    And to round it off, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore”, they’re playing NETWORK on Tuesday, April 3, at 7:30 as part of their Salon Series, where once a month a guest presents their favourite film and there are snacks after. (Yes, drinks too, but I care about the snacks.) For April, that guest is Kirk LaPointe, the Managing Editor of the Vancouver Sun. I’m curious as to why he chose Network, of all things, as he works for a paper that’s not particularly known for being on top of the news.

    You know I want you to want to

    FUSE: who’s with me?

    Boca Del Lupo is a guarantee of a good time, and Steve Reich is one of those people who’s so good at what he does I continually forget he’s a real person. So far Duncan’s says he’s coming, and I have a Maybe from Gerald, (the Bowan Island rock-star viking).

    Also at the Art Gallery – this Saturday is the Annual Pillow-Fight Flashmob. The time for pillow-bopping, rain or shine, is 3 pm sharp, not a minute sooner. (Set your watches to Transit Time.) Bring your fluffiest weapons of mass-destruction The pillow-fight will end at 3:15.

    There are very few rules, but they’re essential.

    1. Look inconspicuous. Hide your pillow until it’s time. You’ll spoil the surprise if you draw attention to yourself. No obvious congregating beforehand. There are plenty of places nearby to casually wait.

    2. Do not boff anyone without a pillow. Do not boff people with cameras unless invited to do so. USE COMMON SENSE.

    3. At 3:15, vanish like feathery ninjas.