Tag: birthdays

because people have already started to wish me a happy birthday

365 day one hundred & thirty-one: precious little mind

An amazing, astonishing, astounding, fantastic, fantastical, incredible, marvelous, miraculous, phenomenal, stupendous, unbelievable, wonderful, wondrous party, Jhayne’s Fashionably Late Birthday is back!

(When you only have a birthday party every two years, you really have to make it count.)

When: Friday, June 13, 2008 at 6:00pm
Where: the Foxy House, 1531 east 4th ave

BYO-whatever you like.

Easy suggestions include: Instruments, ice-cream, wine, glitter, spray-on hair dye, sidewalk chalk, chocolate, fruit, bubbles, cake, cookies, sock puppets, music, games, cheeses, fake mustaches, body-paint…

Rumour says there may be a bar and/or a BBQ, to be confirmed closer to the date.

not going to forget this year, you people won’t let me

“It’s been believed in the past that the camera steals souls. I once thought this preposterous. Now I think it’s self-evident.

This is why we photograph. The fear of oblivion, ours and our worlds. We will inevitably die, but our photographs, if they’re honest, if they show our lives with clarity, unafraid, our photographs will preserve us. Our souls at least. Who we were inside, and the things we saw. Our images? Particles of light that have been traveling forever bounced off our subjects, were focused through our lens into the tender tissue of our eye, and our brain, and our film. Now, those very same shapes, made by those very same particles, the same ones we saw, others can see. Forever, they can see that fraction of a second we saw.

That’s immortality.” -Clayton Cubitt, 2005

Scientists discover exotic quantum state of matter.

May is quickly waltzing into being, every day one delicate step closer, bringing with it spring and, with that, my birthday. Fragile, the social ties holding me to it. Already people have started asking about a party, as I worked through my birthday last year. So once again, and this year I mean it, does anyone know of an appropriate venue for my birthday party at the end of May? My apartment is far too small to hold the 100+ people who will wander through during the course of the day and outdoors, really, is never an option I care for. It’s impossible to foster the security of the microcosm we call a kitchen party in a park.

What I’m hoping for is the kind loan of a house with a yard for a BBQ that won’t mind if we go over-night, preferably with crash space, that won’t mind if we cook breakfast in the morning. Last time our resident Stephen was kind enough to lend us his place, but it has since been partitioned and rented out to people. (I think Frankie‘s girlfriend’s sister or something now lives in the basement, like, just to go to show how small this city really can be.) It was perfect, big, two yards, just off the Drive.

It came out unscathed, too, minus a large pile of dishes in the kitchen we cleaned up the next day, two snapped guitar strings, and, I think, one broken glass. The people I know tend to be remarkably tidy when it comes to parties, we’re not hard-drinking bar-stars with anything to prove, more the sort of argue films and physics over spanish guitar on the porch. Profit: fifteen dollars in returnable bottles, a set of car and house keys no one ever claimed, (I still have them, people, identify them and they’re yours), and some wonderfully embarrassing arm-wrestling photos.

So, please, if this sounds remotely feasible, drop me a line if you’ve got a place or know of one. Let’s see if we can’t work something out.

edit: so far we’ve got the foxy house. anyone else?

” I don’t want you to be disappointed”


66-year-old pianist Yosuke Yamashita, via Japan Today

A letter marked in chalk, the name dusty from neglect, the sound of sheets wrinkled September in my bed. The words are statements, the antithesis of lyrics. The paper is silent, lifeless except in memories that supply the absent voice. Well, I suppose that’s it then. Every time the phone rang, I almost wondered, but I couldn’t live like that – hopes hovering pointlessly over the receiver as my hand grasped and woke up my voice from where it had been hiding in the time it takes to light one cigarette, the time it takes to say hello.

One signal, a thread of blueprint, I wanted a reprieve, but that’s not what I received.

Rechargable Biologically Based Battery

It was meant to be Ray’s Mariachi Madness birthday party tonight, except that he came down sick. Some of us went through with the plans anyway, as they were a little too weird to casually pass up. The venue, up on third, proved to be a hole-in-the-wall school of some sort, split between Spanish and music classes, decorated in what I can only label Tijuana Church Basement flea market.

It was a one room affair, similar to a community theater show you might find in a film, complete with low, vaguely unflattering lighting, walls awkwardly studded with various traditional decorations, and streamers that may have been left over from someone’s Mexicana wedding. The stage was a raised area with banisters, like an ornamental bridge over a very tiny stream, but instead of a stream, there was a row of potted plants. Most of the attendees spoke rapid Spanish, as did the host of the evening, leaving our friend Mishka, the violinist, looking like a deer in the headlights. A deer in a jacket three sizes too big and a ridiculous hat, mind, but a deer nonetheless.

Not that we were doing much better. At one point, I turned to Wayne and mouthed, “what have we gotten ourselves into?” He replied, “hell if I know, but it’s awesome.” Not only was there Mariachioake, which is exactly what it sounds like, there was also a Mariachi Idol contest that involved volunteers from the audience getting up and howling, and, for one song, the band was led by a five year old boy who sang at the top of his lungs at the prompting of his pregnant mother in the back who guided him through the lyrics with hand signals.

It was like culture shock, but in our own back-yard. If the backwards dancing midget from Twin Peaks had stepped from the audience and taken the mic at any point, I would not even blinked. Staying until the end of the show already felt like suspension of disbelief.

I highly recommend giving it a try. If nothing else, the food is delicious and the beer very, very cheap. Friday nights at 150 e3rd ave, just off Main st. Music starts at 9 o’clock, goes until approximately midnight.

nine months ago, some parents got it ON

pour des dents d’un blanc éclatant et saines (2005) stuffed birds play records by putting their bill into the groove by Jeroen Diepenmaat. thank you Larry.

Happy Birthday to Sam, David, Victoria, Jordan, and my un-cousin Darren today!

The Fountain, by the way, directed by Darren Aronofsky, (Pi, Requiem for a Dream), opens here as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival on Wednesday, October 11th. Tickets are only $9.50, so you have no excuse not to go. I will be attending even if I have to roll pennies off the street to pay for my ticket.

Head On, one part of a three-part installation by Cai Guo-Qiang commisioned by the Deutsche Bank Collection in Berlin, consists of 99 life-sized wolves made over a period of six months out of sheepskin, straw, and other such materials, crashing into a wall of glass. thank you Andrew.

Penn and Teller in Bullshit! take on PETA. thank you Vicky.

Today Ryan sent me a letter from work:

“I think that the word ‘Amputee’ should be amended to ‘Amputeer’ in the English language. Amputeer is a much better word. It implies the sort of person who would consider keeping there taxiderm’ed limb in an umbrella stand, and I fell that this is a behaviour that should be encouraged.”

I think he’s onto something. I miss my taxidermy. I haven’t done any work on it since I’ve been unemployed, feeling somehow like time spent polishing bones is time taken away from my job hunt, that pleasurable or relaxing activities aren’t productive ones and that until I find myself a reliable pay-cheque, I don’t deserve to affix wings onto mink.

People are just monkeys who worry. thank you Stephen.

charmed, I’m sure


how old-fashioned
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Every day has been something new that stretches late. Dawn has been the time I put my head to the pillow for sleep, quarter past the sun has begun to come up. I’m buried in this thing then that thing. It’s good and I wonder where my phone-call is. There’s a boy in the shower and I wonder if I’m going to do anything about him. Cult of personality and we had sandwiches for breakfast at four in the afternoon because we’d been up watching Emma Thompson swan ravishingly through Much Ado About Nothing.

  • EU launches first phase of satellite navigation project.

    I breathe and the story continues. Backward, last night was Patti‘s birthday, the night before that was Tilly’s. Sitting on a ball at the Treehouse, eating green icing from a giant glass measuring cup and harmlessly flirting with old friends. Wednesday was Kareoke at the Veterans Hall, spending time with Ray alone for once and Tuesday I’m not even sure I remember, except I know I walked home from Christopher‘s place, a bedraggled leftover from Monday night Korean Movies.

    The days go back like that until the flatline day I got off the plane. It’s an obvious try to pick up the telephone and connect the wires between me and the rest of the world. It’s been so long that I feel like I’ve forgotten the number and I know that’s terribly wrong for me. Horror movie music inching under my door like a flat killer realization, that’s what that is. Walking into a basement with only a flickering flashlight, the spark-plug smashing the car window moment of let’s Split Up.

  • Retrievr is a Flickr hack that searches a database of images based on drawings instead of tags.

    The window didn’t give me light today. The city’s closed against it, our ceiling of cloud is endless. Ice-skating will be the brightest place in the past twenty-four hours. The inside of my eyes are thinking of a bed underneath a star of lights. Ask me over or come yourself. You knew where I was living before anyone yet you’ve never visited. The number’s been the same, electric tattoo easy. Consider this an invitation.

    • the spell check does not auto-correct

    Sunday night, after the excitement that is Morris Dancing, there’s going to be a small group going ice-skating at the Burnaby 8-Rinks. The plan is to meet on the Metrotown Station platform between 8 – 8:15 pm. If you miss us, take the 144 to Sprott Street. (If you’re driving, there’s a Sprott Street Exit from the highway.) I don’t know the price of things, but I suspect ten dollars would be enough to cover both skate rentals and ice-time.

    I’m carrying myself lightly. My feet are lifting slightly off the ground, though the toes are still dragging. Again, I am lifting my head and holy. Welcome to the sacred. Service begins at waking.

    Patti’s hot-tub party was relaxing, a pleasant group of people in the house I spent my Christmas in. Nick had a smaller turn-out than expected on Thursday. At least five sparkling people who had asked if I was going to go were no-shows. Silly people, they missed out on cake.

    Sociability is breathing into me. On my return, I have taken up the ropes of friendship and madness and have begun tying myself back into having some sort of family. It’s difficult, relearning all the different knots, the phone-numbers, the remembering names, the confidant stride and swing of contentment. I’ve held in these hands the strength to carry on, but it’s like the callouses are gone. Everything wears anew, roughing up aspects of myself that were all but forgotten.

    Oh yes, and TooTaLute will be playing at the Work Less Party’s showing of “Alarm Clocks Kill Dreams” on Tuesday at 8 at the Pacific Cinemateque on Howe. (Which, by the way, is showing Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance January 5-9. Excitement!)