Author: foxtongue

thank you, Colin, for living the dream

via moosl:

Upcoming World Record Attempt at Self-Immolation

VANCOUVER — Some of us dream about scoring the Game 7 overtime goal of the Stanley Cup final. Some of us fantasize about winning the Canadian Idol finale. Some of us dream of capturing a Nobel Prize.

Colin Decker’s ambition is to set himself on fire and burn for two minutes and 39 seconds. On Sunday, he’ll have a chance to live the dream.

collaborate


The newest update at The Secret Knots.

Scientists Create Fake DNA

The letter arrives as an unexpected gift, the writing inside looping with the earnest sincerity of reaching out with not much to say. Concern, care, an anecdote misremembered, a stamp very carefully picked. My reply is more dense, close packed words scribbled under pressure, hurried with the knowledge that people-are-going-to-want-my-time-any-minute-now, difficult truth compressed into just under one small page. I barely find space to sign my name. It’s a haunted torrent of words, something released under pressure, as if I’d been holding my breath, waiting for someone to say my name.

The only thing, we’ve never been at the same place at the same time.

Our friendship might be an odd one, growing as it did out of a completely chance on-line encounter, but it feels like home, spilling quarrelsome affection across the planet to someone I’ve never met, flirting, arguing about our friends, fording the unavoidable textual misunderstandings, allowing complexity to flourish long distance. (If it felt strange, I would be someone else.) He seems so familiar, I speak to locals as if he was only just here, though sometimes I wonder details, the gestures of his hands, or the way he might smile, human ingredients only available face to face, how they carry their weight through space.

(I never, for example, would have guessed at the incredible presence commanded by Steen’s hair, no matter how many pictures we might have shared.)

It occurred to me, writing my letter, this might seem strange, almost unfathomable, and yet, here I am, holding closest people who exist father away from me than the end of the sky. Among my papers are other written letters, unsent rough drafts meant for South America as well as New York, aborted confessions, cafe conversation arias scripted as short stories, she said, he said, fictional encounters, scraps of meaning as solid as mercury, certain only in that they prove I care, that I wish we were closer, that I wish I knew a better way for us to meet, as if we are kissing cousins, family unrelated, hiding, seditious accomplices rebelling against our current distant state.

Further Proof that Early Risers are Mutants.

sleep away your troubles

A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention

They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I’m concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.

They dismantled us
Each from the other.
As far as I’m concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.

A pity. We were such a good

And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.

Yehuda Amichai, (translated from Hebrew by Assia Gutmann)

http://isthehorsedead.com

Spent all my time yesterday between work and watching Peter Pan in the park arguing with my computer, shoving at it, wheedling, and just plain being snubbed. I’ve been trying to consolidate my photos, as with the last year of computer havoc, they’ve been summarily scattered over multiple hard-drives, and failing. After days of shifting directories, I have them mostly all in one place, but the result so far has to just been one gigantic folder with thousands of individual photos with no way to sort them except tediously by hand. Right click, new folder. Right click, new folder. Right click, new folder.. That in mind, does anyone know of a program that can collate my photos and group them into folders by date?

Tonight looks like to be much of the same. As does Wednesday and possibly Thursday, all the way until the weekend, by which time I’d better bloody well have a bunch of it figured properly so I can work on my pictures during my eight hours of to and from Seattle or I’m going to be terrible sad. Ray got me a laptop for my birthday, (!!), for precisely such a purpose, and given that it’s Sept. 1st, I’ve now an entire year of neglected material to catch up. I don’t think the battery on it will last the entire trip, but even a few hours of meddling through should put a significant dent in the pile of work still to be done.

Computer complications aside, I can’t overstate how glad I am for this upcoming long weekend, even if eight hours of it are spent on a bus. We’re going to Bumbershoot, a three day music festival friends have played at over and over that neither one of us has ever been to, so even if it turns out to be ten hours on the bus, it will still feel worthwhile for the change of pace and scenery, for the chance to meet new people and try new things. And, of course, to spend more concurrent time with Tony, comforting delicious company he is. (And by comforting, I mean sexy. You hear that, boy? You best be ready.) The more time we spend together, the more convinced I am that he’s wonderful.

Cut by HALF?!? “Massive province-wide gaming grant cuts leave arts community reeling”

“It appears that arts groups waiting for their frozen gaming grant money to flow are out of luck. Numerous arts groups across the province have received letters via email from the Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch informing them that their Direct Access grants have been denied, including organizations who had multi-year funding commitments.”

From the Vancouver Arts Alliance:

Alliance for Arts and Culture – ARTS COMMUNITY MEETING
Wednesday, September 2, 2009 – 1 pm to 3 pm
Museum of Vancouver, 1100 Chestunut Street

The Alliance for Arts and Culture will convene a community meeting on Wednesday, September 2 at the Museum of Vancouver to discuss our options in response to this week’s announcements regarding BC Gaming Commission Direct Access Grants. The meeting will run from 1 pm to 3 pm.

We will attempt to quantify the damage, bring one-another up-to-date on protest initiatives currently being taken by individual artists, organizations and discipline sectors, and discuss the pros and cons of several possible courses of action for the future.

This meeting will NOT be open to the media, elected officials or cultural sector bureaucrats. While we appreciate the support we are receiving from many in each of these sectors, the arts community needs this opportunity to “talk among ourselves”.

This is NOT a “rally” so we are only looking for one or two persons from each arts organizations to attend. A full-scale arts community rally in the near future will be one of the options discussed. So please don’t send your entire staff and/or membership!

Arts organizations that are not members of the Alliance are welcome to send representatives to this gathering.

Please RSVP to kdm@allianceforarts.com indicating how many representatives from your organization will be attending. Seating is limited, so we need to count noses. We will begin at precisely 1 pm, so plan to arrive early.

QUANTIFYING THE DAMAGE
We have had numerous emails over the past few days from Alliance members and non-members informing us of declined Direct Access grants.

To help us quantify the damage to our community in advance of Wednesday’s community meeting, could you take a moment to email us the following details, in the order noted:

– Name of your organization.
– Amount of declined grant request.
– Whether this was a one-year or multi-year grant.
– If multi-year, which year was declined.
– How many years your organization has been receiving Direct Access funding.
– Whether your organization has a BC Arts Council grant pending.

The government now seems to be mixing apples with oranges in order to make it as difficult as possible to understand our exact standing with various sources of funding. At least one arts organization has received confirmation of a BCAC grant which cites the Gaming Grants Program as the source of the funds, and states that the money will be deposited to the recipient’s Gaming account.

If you receive a similar BCAC grant confirmation, please let us know whether that grant is for the full amount of your original BCAC funding request.

We would also like to hear from any organization which received a Direct Access Grant or grant confirmation in the past week, or does so in the coming days. So far, the only approved grants seem to be those confirmed prior to the freeze — most of them in May.

Please keep your responses to the above questions brief and factual. I will have to compile the answers in a spreadsheet, and lengthy and anecdotal replies will slow down the process.

Send your responses, along with your RSVP for Wednesday’s meeting, to kdm@allianceforarts.com

Thank you for your collaboration.

MEDIA CONFERENCE

The Alliance for Arts and Culture will hold a media conference to announce the outcomes of Wednesday’s community meeting on Thursday, September 3, at a time and place to be determined.

Y’rs,
KDM

Kevin Dale McKeown
Director of Communications
Alliance for Arts & Culture

o: 604.681.3535 (215)
c: 778.228.2548
kdm@allianceforarts.com

robots need love too

My darling friend Dan Mangan has just been dubbed the Next Big Indie King by the Georgia Straight this week, just in time for his sold out CD Release party shows tonight and tomorrow at the grand re-opening of the Cultch. Apparently he’s even on the cover! I can’t wait to snag a copy.

Tony and I have tickets to his show tomorrow. Who else is going?


dan mangan – basket
dan mangan – the indie queens are waiting
dan managan – journal of a narcoleptic
dan mangan – robots (performed live at the vancouver folk fest)
dan mangan – so much for everyone (live at the vancouver folk fest)

For those who aren’t local, check his site for upcoming dates.

if it wasn’t worth it, then you’ve killed us both

I love him like fire. Warmth, light. Temptation drives me farther away, of desire, malicious, feigned, humming electric through my body like waking up to a kiss, welcome in the middle of the night. Chorus end, refrain. My hands flex, the desire to blacken his eyes, break his fingers, as I say to him as he clatters down the stairs next to me, invisible as I refuse to look up, “because that would mean more to you.” The verses repeated, wait, I love you. Funny way of showing it. Every day, a song that sounds the same. Bridge. Sharps, flats. Chorus again, our voices together. Refrain.