Author: foxtongue

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

    yes, that is a disco in an elevator. Don’t you want one too?

    The dead-rain weather hasn’t been allowing me to continue my pictures. I decided I wanted six when I was done, but so far I’ve only got four of the pretty little things. I have no lights, you see, so I rely on sunlight and my living-room wall. If these clouds keep up, I’m going to have to borrow gear from VFS to finish the set.

    And, apropros of nothing, as more and more of these clips pile up, it’s been solidifying in my mind that the Wacky Right of America are overdue the label postmodern. The republicans seem to have stopped thinking of themselves as a universal entity and more a righteous legion under fire, The Other, a group that, in claiming victimhood, so deny any responsibility they may have for everyone else. I’m sure this could be applied a little deeper, but that’s about as far as I feel like going with it. I’d still like to have a nice evening.

    last night my lover’s brother stripped for me. it broke my internet. never let that happen again

    It’s possible to encode an entire image’s worth of data into a single photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact.

    While cleaning out a jewellery box today, I came across a flat jade heart from my childhood. It’s Asiatic, about an inch wide, and doesn’t fit with anything else here. I’ve never worn it, though it has a hole for a slim chain. It’s from Grade three.

    It was lying dusty in the gravel of the school field at recess and I felt clever for having found it, such a small thing in that wide place. I held it in my pocket all morning, an odd treasure, I didn’t even like it, and wondered where it came from. I don’t remember the girl who accused me of stealing it, only that she had black hair.

    When she claimed it was from her father, I immediately decided she had to have it back. Fathers were large chaotic things to me then, disastrous and violent, to be wary of, not to be ignored. People at school didn’t know what my home life was like, they only saw a very small, awkward girl who read too much and never knew what was cool, (you try talking about Boney M or the Talking Heads to New Kids on the Block worshippers). She didn’t understand my sudden distress. She took it for denial and began to hurl insults at me, accusing me of stealing it from envy. Her words were like bile. I’d never been falsely charged with fault before. She reversed my decision immediately, which is why I still have it, though I don’t care for it and never have.
    Into the Free Box little thing. Into the Free Box and away.

    A pulse of light can be stopped, transported, and restarted again using a cloud of super-cold atoms.