right for the job

  • The Creators Project, in partnership with VICE and Intel, presents Amon Tobin.
  • Sticker Robot & ObeyGiant have teamed up to give away silkscreened stickers in support of Occupy.

    Been steadily trashing my room since I returned to Vancouver, hauling things off shelves, spreading clothes, books, and miscellany on every surface, sleeping curled up in the middle of everything, then getting up and doing it all again. It’s refreshing, if messy, sorting everything into cascading piles of to-do list, forward progress evinced by time lapse, the layers thinning, hopefully to eventually disappear. Chaos with a purpose, with an eye towards a goal.

    The problem is that our things-to-get-rid-of are taking up space planned for things-to-keep, like the overly large chandelier currently lording over our front closet, hogging all the room the linens should be living in instead of in the bottom of my bedroom closet in the space meant for my french horn. Like that. But everywhere. And the more I uncover, the more I discover needs to be addressed. The box of mending that had been hiding in the suitcase that I listed on Craigslist. The bag of massive red paper lanterns under my bed where I planned on putting the lightbox.

    I tell myself this is the prelude, that once everything gathers enough momentum, there will be cohesion, and order will follow with the flashy grace of a well practiced ceremony, the sort tourists gawp over in countries far from their own. My apartment will be so well organized I could sell tickets and the stubs would be postcards, so you too could show your family and friends, until the entire world holds its breath for a moment in awe.

  • Hey Seattle! Mutaytor’s playing the Neumos on Sunday. It’s going to be a fine good time. Be there!

  • Alice in Wonderland on the iPad
  • The Kids Are Alright, a refreshing review of the iPad.

    Spent an extra day in Seattle yesterday just cleaning, scrubbing the apartment from ceiling to floor, collecting enough cat-hair out of corners to make an eccentric fur coat. My entire body hurt by the end of it. Given Tony’s propensity to neglect his surroundings, even the laundry was a trial, six heavy loads of sheets, towels, blankets, and various miscellany carried wet up two flights of stairs, left hanging to dry in the windows and on doors, the better to save quarters from the dryer.

    My place, thankfully, isn’t half as bad, but even so, I can’t imagine what could inspire me to put that much concentrated effort into my own place in Vancouver. I tend to let dishes sit a few days, clutter tends to obscure my shelves, and my carpet only appears whole and intact for sporadic patches of time, generally short. Cleaning my room takes about a week, as I tidy in small doses, multitasking my way through various chores until I’ve crossed enough off the to-do list that I can take a break without guilt.

    In this case, it was the imminent possibility of fourteen (splendid) houseguests descending all at once, as my friends, the Mutaytor, only found out last minute that Neumos, their Sunday night venue in Seattle, isn’t going to cover a hotel. They found alternate crash space, thankfully, as I suspected they might, but as excellent excuses go for a hard day of spring cleaning, I can’t think of anything better, except maybe a suprise visit from the Queen.

  • the trials and travails of nothing in particular

    Anyone want a chandelier? How about a lamp? Please?

    The weekend was spent moving David from his cave apartment of the mysterious smells to a pleasantly crooked #9932CC-darkorchid room in an old heritage style house on Arbutus street, right across the street from the Ridge Theater. It was an alright move, as such things go. Nothing irreplaceable was broken, nothing precious was lost. It involved many, many boxes of books, one might say too many, really, a veritable library of books, and little else. Some clothes, some furniture, two rabbits, but mostly boxes and boxes of books. I drew a floor-plan before we moved anything, so the chaos was almost instantly organized. Already it’s a habitable room, minus the stuffy proximity of the rabbits, who are currently living under the desk. I feel I should be proud of what I accomplished, though right now I’m too tired, too worn out, and too absently annoyed at my life. (I’m not sure I would date the man who would bring me back to that room.)

    My house remains untidy, though order has been emerging in leaps and bounds. It’s possible to see how nice it will look when everything is done, which is new, as before I would examine the apartment and see only disaster. Boxes of extra kitchen stuff, old clothes, and unwanted books have left, either given away to friends or donated, and what’s left is shrinking almost daily as we recycle, sort, and dispose of what we don’t need, want, or could possibly use. It helps, too, that our landlord has finally given in and provided our building with recycling. Where there were piles of folded cardboard and plastic containers, now we have floor-space. It’s almost novel. I’m only sorry I won’t be able to finish everything before I leave for back east.

    I’m packing too much into too little time, with too little money, and not enough resources, yet somehow, I plan to survive. To start with, my next two weekends are going to be spent in Seattle. This weekend, I’m biking down with my mother to visit with Kyle “freaking” Cassidy, (who has just proved himself to be utterly fantabulous YET AGAIN), and his lovely beau Trillian, who are in for a wedding, and next weekend I’m going down with Nicole to shot-gun shoot at hipsters with Eliza, who has an art opening. Then, I’m gone for two weeks as I travel by bus to Montreal and Toronto and pray to whatever is available that I’ll manage to pay for it all and still be able to eat.

    going to take you home

    Katie West is having a blow-out print sale.

    I’m worried that I’m slowly transforming into one of those domestic goddess types, where every time you talk to them, the topic leans hard on decorating, cooking, and new ways to clean out your closet, try now! Fill in pin prick holes in your white walls with toothpaste, (it also takes wax and crayons off walls), use cigarette ashes to clean your silver, and newspaper to wipe down the mirrors. Don’t stand your brooms on their bristles, use equal parts vinegar and water to remove wall-paper, use salt to clean cast iron pans, and remember sunlight is a free UV disinfectant.

    I suppose it’s because outside of Zombiewalk, all my news is apartment related. The mirror I painted has been wrestled onto the wall, I bought a batch of pictures frames and a black, epoxy/polyester powder-coated steel coat rack from IKEA, a birch wood IKEA bed-frame from Craigslist, and replaced every shared-space lighting fixture in the entire apartment with brushed steel fixtures I bought from Jane, an exceptionally nice woman who lives next to Paul Plimley. (It’s amazing what a difference lighting makes to a space). Soon I’ll be purchasing a little pot of raspberry/strawberry-daiquiri coloured paint for the kitchen, replacing the behemoth cupboard in the closet with something more functional, and putting up wall-paper.

    Last night I framed the letter and the photos Lady Anomaly sent me, put them on the wall, abandoned the old lighting fixtures in the lobby of my building with a note saying they’re for my landlord, and sorted all the recycling that’s been languishing on the porch. (Does anyone want an easel? I’m not sure which ex-roommate ditched it here, but it’s a good one, if a bit rusty legged from being outside.) Tonight I’m going to do a last check around the house for things that need to be sent to Silva, itemize the boxes of things we’re giving away, (after Silva has a shot, as she left some things behind she’d still like to own), post my give-away list, and find a charity willing to take away what’s left. (That said, does anyone know a good place to give books to? David‘s got literally hundreds he wants to give away.)

    Small changes, but creating order from chaos. Neg-entropy, the impregnation of order and coherence into the structure of matter.

    I’m also thinking it would be a good idea to whip round a petition that the landlord put a bicycle rack into the space next to the stairs on the bottom floor. It’s empty, just the right size, and would save us all hauling our cycles upstairs away from the perpetual thieves that prowl the neighborhood. Is there a way to make this easy? I know he won’t want to put the money in, but maybe we could pool resources, buy the thing ourselves, and simply have him install it.

    Ha Ha Ha America

    Bad grammar makes me [sic]


    Canon Powershot S2 IS User
    Originally uploaded by Airchinapilot.

    Summer is about to break upon the back of my birthday. I’ve been tracking the pulse of my cleaning with small packages I’ve been randomly sending through the post office. Some of them might not have been successful gifts, but it’s stimulating, and I tell myself it’s not a test. I dreamed last night that my room had finally been scoured clean; to see my shelves empty was like to see with a strange light.

    As I’ve been dissembling the strata of my things, the waste and wrack of past romances has been floating to the surface from hiding places, inside the pale pockets of long lost envelopes or messily scribbled in the elusive margins and days of old calendars, and successfully distracting me. Sometimes it is only images, imagos, ghost trapped in a gesture or the form of a book, as if these objects were merely receptacles for memory – a muted production line of manufactured what-if’s, to handle them is to release precise chemical triggers.. These letters and gifts, small inscriptions that say I love you my darling, my sly kitten cat, enjoy this, smile, until later, I love you, I cannot put them as easily aside in a pile like I do ticket stubs or Christmas lights, they arrest me, trap me in uncertain amber, instead. I do not know what to do with them. My practical reasoning says to let them go, recycle them, but would it be injustice? I hesitate. These once meant something visceral, but my emotions reach no immediate consensus. If I feel nostalgia, it seems to be really only a scented-hanky kind of nostalgia, the vague wish that clutters antique shops or even that cable documentary-type nostalgia for people and places I’ve never known, not a longing for the relationship we had, but a longing for our “relationship”. As if the letters represent the sort of dusky melodrama that movies and TV tell us we should want rather than most of what was actually experienced, day-long crying jags, sharp elbows that defiantly attacked me in sleep, or worse – a savage belief in astrology. Mostly I have been putting on cheerful California sunshine riff music, thinking of my delicious April, and spinning them out the door. However, once they are gone, they are gone – unrecoverable. When I am older, will they matter again? Will my feelings loop back, recursive, and successfully recapture the singing nervous system these words used to bring? I simply don’t know.

    As the digital age reaches out to swallow more and more people, I find my papers feel less and less essential. I prefer the talismans I carry now, that are objects instead of words, useful as well as meaningful. Every day I wear a striped scarf that I stole, was given, took, carried, love, and still, a month later, it almost feels like something he has handed to me, as if underneath the black and gray wool, there is a way to continue to touch his hands, thread my captured fingers with his, or meet his eyes like seeing the playground wonder of the milky way again after spending years trapped under a city sky. It is not something I can imagine growing tired of carrying around, like these aging piles of paper, or consider putting into storage, a trait I find wasteful. It is true the memory connection will fade, as such things do over time, but the scarf will remain a scarf, cherished for its protection from rain and its soft ability to muffle the wind.