I want Edward Teach panties, so I can have pirate booty

The BodyWorlds Exhibit opens today at Scienceworld! (His website’s been updated, it’s nice now. Really).

I went with Alastair to see it when we were down in L.A. It’s beautiful and liberating in a way that’s difficult to describe. I wanted to cradle every body, kiss thier eyes and know thier names. I stared and I stared, I crept as close as they’ll let you to try and memorize every exquisite detail. The exhibition is full of moments of deep, abiding, and very surprising glory, where you find yourself suddenly enraptured with unexpected appreciation for things you’d never think you might see. The volunteer application sheets they have on-line require that all applicants have “Solid comprehension of moral issues regarding death and the displaying of human bodies.” I suspect I would fail the test, if there is one. I am brimming with admiration for what Von Hagen has done, I am delighted in respectful awe, but I doubt I have any idea what other people’s moral issues might be. Mine are unperturbed, only upset that there are not more of these shows, that it is not at least mandatory for school-children at the age of nine or ten.

Censearchip: exploring search engine result differences returned by different countries’ versions of the major search engines. (The Web and image search functions of four national versions of Google and Yahoo!: the United States, China, France, and Germany.)

Summer is over and I’m not sleeping well, though I should be alright. My Oliver-inspired Pirate day is getting posted around as it should be, {it’s come around back to me from three different sources today}, and people are saying they’ll come. (My man Crow: “I was almost an innocent man!”). Last night I was ship building. Stephen supplied all the construction materials, minus silly string and blue glitter, I made the body of the big one, then Michael came over and made me a mermaid and an anchor, and Ed helped make some brackets for the ropes. Cardboard boats with broomstick masts, it looks like the big one will fit three to five people and the little one will fit two or three. That way we’ll have a main ship and an attacker. I plan on simply chucking them off the balcony instead of wrestling them down the stairs when Tuesday comes. Should be fun.

Bush ‘Slush Fund’ possibly courtesy of the Canadian softwood lumber industry. (hell.)

I brought Sam two baby frogs in a fishbowl and a green mint cupcake for his birthday Monday and we curled up in a chair together and talked. It’s comforting to have him back in town, extra special to feel safe and warm while being given small stories from Burning Man. I’m glad he went. He said he didn’t miss me because I was everywhere he looked there. Funny how the man keeps me sane, like he’s a shadowy mirror of a relationship or a wish I made as a child on the dried out fluff of a dandelion.

off to what colour is your parachute coffee

Michael and I are seeing the 7:00 showing of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance tonight at Grandville 7.

It’s the final film in Park Chan-wook’s stunning revenge trilogy; Sympathy for Mister Vengeance, Oldboy, and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance.

We’ve covered all three films at Korean Movie Monday to amazing response. There’s really nothing quite like them. I was introduced to Mr. Vengeance years ago by a friend who brought it over to my house saying, “This is the most depressing movie I’ve ever seen, you simply have to watch it,” and it turned out to be the funniest, blackest comedy I’d ever encountered. I couldn’t breathe for laughing. Each film is a unique story, unrelated by story arc, instead being connected only by theme. Loving them the first time around, (I own copies of all three), I’m thrilled to get a chance to see Lady on the big screen.

If you’re interested, meet us outside the theater from 6:40 onward or call Michael’s cell.

EDIT: The Spaces Between Working Group is presenting Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, (with long-lost original classical score), at 6:45 for free at Commercial and 3rd as part of a two night outdoor film festival. We’re going there, then going to see lady Vengeance, only the 9:00 showing instead of the 7:00. For those who are uninterested in Lady Vengeance, they are showing Amélie at 8:58 after Metropolis.

  • Wal-Mart restroom birth leads to prison.
  • Drug caches found in Home Depot vanities.
  • kind of like guest blogging

    “You know, most people don’t do that,” the farmer remarked off handedly as he tilled his vegetables.

    “What?” the girl asked, genuinely curious, as always.

    The farmer stood up straight, wiped his brow with his red kerchief and locked eyes with the girl. “Walk around with a flower in their mouth,” he replied, nodding to the phenomena.

    This gave the girl pause, she tried to look down at the flower but her eyes got all crossed and made her dizzy. She looked up at the farmer and asked tentatively, “Why?”

    He gave a long sigh and continued with his tilling, “‘Cause it’s strange, that’s why.”

    “Oh…” She thought for a while, her bare toes stabbing idly at the dirt as she balanced on the other foot. “But it’s not strange that people don’t have flowers in their mouths?”

    The old farmer snorted, “That’s right.”

    The girl considered this further and said, “What do you call it when a girl has a flower in her mouth and yet is able to speak without it falling out?”

    The farmer grinned and looked up at her, “Bad story-telling.”

    photo by alois
    text by kindelingboy

    people keep asking how I am

    Fondue was a success thanks to Ryan, Eva, Silva, her two friends, Ian, Ethan, Lung, Michael, Imogyne, Mike, Nick, Duncan, David, Beth, Mike, Alice, and Adam. At one point, the teahouse ran out of seats and I stood, leaning over people to get at the tasty treats.

  • The origin of HIV has been found in wild chimpanzees living in southern Cameroon.
    we look like we're related

    It doesn’t seem real that my birthday is so close again. Just Monday, Monday and the number clicks over another digit. Three to four. My mother got it wrong, thought I was older. It was her graduation from the University of British Columbia yesterday. I got the day off work to watch her walk across the stage to receive paper proof of her achievement. The pride that thrilled through me was burnished bright by the satisfied smile on her face. I took pictures after of her in her cap and gown, holding the blue folder that contains her degree. Then we took pictures of me in the gown on the basis that it’s very likely the only chance I’ll ever have to wear one. Driving home with her through the sharp rain on the motorcycle, I had to lean forward and hug her, the love and respect simply swelled to more than I could contain. She’s survived a ridiculous amount of harm to get where she is, and though it’s not ideal, she’s still scraping to get by, it’s a testament to her tenacity that she persevered and put herself through university as a single mother with three kids. It’s more than most have done.

    Tonight I have dinner with friends, tomorrow I have dinner with Silva, Saturday Ray is rescuing me possibly from my masque-panic hell and sweeping me about town to try and find something to wear, (suggestions bloody appreciated), and there’s (as yet unverified) rumour of a second SinCity to be held at Richards on Richards. (If there is no Sin, who wants to have a party?) Sunday I’m still planning on being down in Seattle with Eliza, though it’s looking less and less likely as the day approaches and no rides have been forthcoming. Monday my mother is bringing me to a soiree at the Mansion, and Tuesday is the last May Mandarin Movie Tuesday.

  • faster than speeding water


    Originally uploaded by noveltywearsoff.

    KindelingBoy Michael is having a party tomorrow evening to celebrate his final freedom from Too Much School TM.

    My cool news today is this letter:

    Hi,

    Just a head’s up to let you know that I’ve added your blog, Dreampepper, to the British Columbia Blogs directory and aggregator at publicbroadcasting.ca – if for any reason you do not want your blog listed, please let me know and I’ll take it back down immediately.

    Cheers,
    Justin

    I don’t know how they found me, but the list looks pretty small, so I’m pleased. Apparently the main criteria be that they’re well written, been around for awhile, and update frequently, as well as having that undefinable “something”.

    Max Headroom creator made Roswell alien.
    Deathboy makes a song based on the very first episode.

    This week has been a successful book of matches, every day burning when I strike it with my eyes. I feel like a chemical reaction, sparkling and fizzing, exploding strong-box secrets and licking what’s inside. If I were Rapunzel, this would be me letting down my hair, suddenly afraid that my princes were just a dream. This would be taking myself and my bedding and my famous blue raincoat to wind my fairy-tales a rope, offering them a way in instead of a noose, banishing my fears, losing them one by one like beads from a broken string.

    AXE’s GameKillers advertisement series.
    Adidas Idicolor viral-marketing films. (watch PINK especially)


    is it true? I don’t know of any other really great talents he has like that.

    Michael and I are huddled like literate junkie street kids around the stolen wireless outside Andrew‘s apartment. Andrew, however, is apparently on Denman street. Eating sushi. The death food.

    Michael is being a rebel without a cause, as I say he shouldn’t. It’s too silly with his black leather jacket. Especially with that hair of his. What is he thinking? When he was writing his entry, I was reading Murakami. Sputnik Sweetheart. A woman walked past us, looking confused, but not minding us. She stepped over my second rate pastries and smiled. She had thick ankles.

    Now Michael’s singing endearments to the wall. I don’t know if he’s making up the song, but I doubt it. He says it’s from the internet.

    there’s a membrane drawn over my week


    axismundi
    Originally uploaded by camil tulcan.

    A sound like god, what happens when a man covered in microphones walks into a room full of speakers.

    I have been measuring things more in my eyes than my hands this week, which leads to interesting bits of missing time that I worry for, as if they’re my children and I’ve abandoned them for that crucial minute too long in the shopping mall where now the only way to get them back is in newspaper articles I clip out and tape to my fridge.

    Last weekend, Burrow was in town. I know that for certain. The order of her arrival is written down, there were pictures taken. She stayed over Friday night with Sam, the evening of Meat Eatery. Sam and I had walked to BJ’s after dinner, watched atrocious movies with Bob and his girl-darling from Parksville, then returned to curl up with Burrow asleep in my bed. We were quiet, but woke her unintentionally.

    Saturday we crawled out of bed in time for the Fool’s Parade. Sam went home to shackle himself to his desk and Burrow and I rolled like tired thunder downtown and met with Duncan, Jenn, Georg, and her pink-dyed ferret, Silky. The parade was rainy and under-attended, so after coming close to winning the Fool of the Year award with ferret breasts, we abandoned the street for Taf’s. When work didn’t have my paycheque ready, we turned around and walked to the Bay to visit with Eva at her clinical cosmetics booth. It was fascinating, in a quiet colourful way, but not enough to keep Burrow and I from going home to rest before Duncan pulled us out to the graceful Fool’s Cabaret on Main st. Reine‘s mother was there, and Siobhan, a friend of friend’s we went to dinner with after.

    Monday is missing, a played out afterburn. I took some self-portraits, but I don’t know if I slept there at home or not. There was one, two ideas. A number, undifferentiated. Something.

    Tuesday is more concrete, not only written down, but recorded. Video, audio, photographs. Imogyne and I at Hawksley Workman with darling Sophie. The Cultch in all it’s warmly worn desiccating glory, intimate, red curtained. I remembered all the shows I’d played there. Running through the back when I was a child, that one time making love inside the roof. Downstairs hot-boxing the worn office, how there was once a pane of glass violently shattered in the middle of an orchestral piece, how the beads of my necklace clattered as I bounced and clapped. The music was good too, his acoustic version of striptease sincerely captivating.

    After, Devon came over and we stayed up until the last bus, listening to our bootlegs and drinking weary tea. Imogyne eventually went home, and Devon and I talked until far too late, making me late for work Wednesday. The day I went to Andrew‘s after work and Georg and I re-dyed my hair into the colour of sticky quill ink while watching Ghost in the Shell. She came back to my place after, and we let the ferret run free through my apartment as we talked about partners and lives lost, the soulmates of just then and not today and maybe yesterday we knew something and maybe tomorrow we’ll have some hope. She wrote poetry and I woke up in the morning holding her hand.

    Thursday I had a date with Sam, a real live date, not one of those on-line long-distance approximations my life seems to enjoy lauding me with. Cleaned up versions of us met at Tinseltown for the Brick preview and had dinner at Wild Ginger before walking out to False Creek to hang out on a water fountain and eat caramel ice-cream. We sat under the moon passing the tub back and forth like a cheap cigarette and talked about some of the same things that Georg did. We’re all divorced, the lot of us. It’s like a curse or a disease catching in all the social circles. It seems like every split has had very little to do with love and everything to do with a basic need to keep evolving, to keep trying to touch forever.

    Friday Michael stole me out from under dinner with Andrew, Navi, Ryan, and Eva, and accompanied Robin and I to Thank You For Smoking instead. It was gleeful, with some damned nice moments, (there was a montage of Bad People that slaughtered us like baby seals), and led well into creeping alone up the stairs into Duello for the end of Fight Practice, a small red flower as my sword. I sat on the couch with Lee, letting him show me knife tricks, as people cleaned up and we sat for coffee until it was too late to think of going anywhere else but home. Friday nights, however, traditionally lead into mornings without work, so we survived.

    We survived well, in fact, not doing a damned thing until somewhere after two in the afternoon, until the body-call to breakfast was too deafening to ignore.

    when a priest walks into my bar

    Old music on, the sort of stuff I associate with far away from here, though nowhere in particular. Songs rarely on my playlist and only in the middle of a lot of other things. Canada midwest, this music, feeling nostalgic for a period that was over before I was born. My mother as a young girl, listening to records and wearing lambskin jackets. Older men. It almost goes without saying these days.

    Flow, an artistically minimalist, highly addictive flash game, easy to control. mouse determines direction, hold down the button for speed. eat anything smaller than you, pick away at anything bigger until you can that too. blue bugs take you up a level, red takes you down

    Perspective shift, we’re writing about different things for similar reasons. Low basement ceiling, low furniture that obviously came with the suite. It’s late. He has a pen and a lined paper book, I have the clacking-engine. I steal glances, theft in the air between us, and study the social interaction. I wonder if he’s aware how someone else would stumble here, silence being unusual in new friends, how they would feel awkward and too assuming, not used to the habits of long cohabitation as tightly woven as silk. I notice because mine have been eroding, evaporating away with my depleting intimacies. I notice and realize how generally unexpected I must be. Mental note: ask before you use the toothbrush or become a secondary mother to someone’s child.

    Google Mars, exceedingly pretty, far more detailed that Google Moon. there are marked sites with links to corresponding articles.

    Tonight is unknown territory. Korean Movie Night’s been replaced by Don Giovanni at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre this week, leaving me to vacillate between a gift-swap dinner, the Cafe Du Soliex poetry slam or the stitch-&-bitch that sprung out of Navi’s head last night. Though there is a certain temptation involved in going to Don Giovanna with super-feminists, I have to pass. A concrete solid week of theater will take me into the back alley and rough me up. This is my night off, my ducking out the back for a metaphorical quiet cigarette, and though I’m not responsible enough to go home and righteously wrest my bed from the ferret, neither am I entirely stupid.

    Wednesday night Here Be Monsters presents Fidel Castro’s Birthday Party opening for Lazy Susan with Michael Green performing The Whaler after. There will be puppets, murder, nudity and water. Everything starts at 8pm and goes to approximately midnight. Tickets are $12.