a small thing

Though the building I live in has some serious noise problems, (yes, girl-downstairs-with-your-perpetual-marilyn-manson, I’m looking at you), I like that I can hear when the person in the room above me uses their typewriter.

David and I hosted a mellow Sunday Tea yesterday. Not as many people came by as last month, but as it was the first summery Sunday of the year, it was to be expected. (If it weren’t for hosting Tea, I would have been at Wreck Beach, too.) It was still good, though, with people coming in small waves of three or four, staying for a few hours, then drifting out into the golden light again. A drowsy afternoon sort of salon rather than a chattering box of swirling, snacking bodies. We sat on the porch, feet up on the balcony railings. We lounged, we sipped, we shared. It wasn’t exciting, but it was nice. The heat was like honey.

The next tea will be on July 29th.

Sunday Tea!

Just a reminder…

Sunday Tea is a roving weekly social event, an open-invite social salon where we might gather and be social over tea, nibbles, and more tea.

If you’re reading this, you and your delightful friends are invited, along with your favourite treats!
So come on down and catch up before I flee the country, off to bake in the Nevada desert at Black Rock City.

David & Jhayne’s
560 mclean dr

365 days one hundred & sixty-two: being my friend

Sunday ยท 12:00 – 5:30

BYOTasties. We have two tea-pots and many, many cups. We’ll be making mason jars of iced-tea ahead of time to help conquer the heat.

Allergy Alert: Two cats on premises. One rabbit on the porch.

ps. Weather permitting, we’re planning on trying to make sun-tea, (SCIENCE!!).

for the record (yes there is video no you can’t see it)

HIVE3 was as entertaining as ever, yet in spite of the pushy blow up doll horror movie incident, the near death experience, the cupcake rape-baby incest kiss, and the skunk suicide therapy, the most epic thing I witnessed this weekend was in my apartment: late yesterday afternoon, Lung manfully inflicted a brilliant and surpassingly brave four minute lapdance upon Victoria, my very surprised mother.

Lung’s astonishing strip-tease started mildly, with slow hip swings and mild gyration, but gained momentum as clothes came off, until he was throwing pants at my head and using his belt to better capture my mother, finally finishing with a shocking yet shamefully victorous Full Monty flourish of his genitals.

No word yet on if he left on his socks.

happy KLAATU birthday BERADA sunday NIKTO tea

Ray & Tony’s Super Duper Sci-Fi Horror Movie Double Feature Outrageous Day and Night Of Birthday!

bettmann - moon bridal hat - boston - 1956

March 21st
560 Mclean
noon – 11:30


Sunday Tea is a roving Vancouver tradition, an open-invite social event held weekly at different venues, generally from 11am-ish to 2pm-ish, depending on the hosts. Basically, if you’re reading this, you’re invited and so are all your cupcakes, cookies, and most fun friends. This tea is in honour of Ray and Tony’s birthdays, (March 16th and 19th, respectively), and goes from noon until it blends into our Sci-Fi Double Feature, (Eden’s Log & Pandorum), which starts at seven. (They knows nothing about either film, by the way, make sure not to give anything away!) There will be tea and cake! BYO-anything else. Pyjamas welcome, nudity discouraged. We urge people to bring not only the usual trappings of Sunday Tea, which are tasty snacks and good people, but also party hats, just for fun.

General rules for Tea are: New people are excellent, children are welcome, tasty things and interesting kinds of tea are encouraged, but no TimBits are allowed.

Allergy note: our household contains two cats and some nuts.

yum

Chocolate fashion show.Swiss chocolate knife.Chocolate pie chart.

A group of us went out on Friday evening for Kyle’s birthday at the glorious Sutton Place All-You-Can-Eat chocolate buffet. It was wonderful. The weekend isn’t over and already I want to go back.

Today, however, Kyle’s birthday celebrations continue as he hosts Sunday Tea, (a local institution I’m proud to say it still going strong, five years later), as “the conjoined twin of a birthday potluck celebration with a film.”. Nicole and David and I are going to head over together, bringing rented copies of two of the most ultimately amazing movies I know, Strings and Sukiyaki Western Django, to be the evening o’clock entertainment.

If you know Kyle, you are also invited.

sunday tea on a saturday: putting bread to good use

What: French Toast, not quite sunday tea
When: Saturday, May 24th. 11 am – 3 pm


Karen and I have been considering hosting Sunday Tea for awhile now as a bit of a house-warming for her. (Sunday Tea is a weekly social event a group of us started a few years ago out in New West which has since become a roving event. General rules for Tea are: if you know at least one person who knows about or has attended, you’re pretty much invited, and yummy things and interesting kinds of tea are welcome, but no TimBits are allowed.) It just keeps not quite happening, however, so in liue of Sunday Tea, we’re having a French Toast Saturday.

Bring whatever you would bring to tea, but bring whatever you would like to have on french toast too – fruit, butter, syrup, jam, chocolate sauce, caramel, preserves, etc. Whatever floats your boat when it comes to toasted, egg-y bread with a delicate hint of vanilla and cinnamon. Ask for the address if you don’t already have it.

I really want custard and I don’t know why.

Last night I climbed onto the outside railing of a balcony and found on stage an attractively costumed man with painted eyes playing a banjo and crooning into a strange contraption that looked like a sci-fi prop black box had been caught molesting a trumpet.

Sometimes life is alright.

After him a girl in a black dress sang about the moon in New Orleans, holding her black curly head and complaining that she could hear people making love, then was a projector based shadow play with happy-face gelati spoons and a masked clown. The audience is entirely artists, strange clothes, odd conversations, a lot of raw talent. Beautiful Joanna stood in front of the velvet next and enchanted us while she played the guitar and sang everyone in love with her, and after her were women who started with thier feet on fire above thier heads, who became throaty chess-pieces in black and white hooped dresses who played matching clarinets.

Just another party at The Big Yellow House. I never feel as inadequate as I do when I visit.

How to remove Logos from your PDA / cell phone with sugar. found by lynchwalker.

Once again, I wanted to remind everyone that the fine establishment that is Sunday Tea tm is being held at my apartment this week.

Sunday Tea is a roving Vancouver tradition, an open-invite social event held weekly at different venues, generally from 11am-ish to 2pm-ish, depending on the hosts. Basically, if you’re reading this, you’re invited and so are all your muffins and your most fun friends. If you want to come but don’t know where I live, drop me a line and I’ll give you directions.

This time, it will also be a culture-jamming preparation day.

Here’s a quote from my roommate Graham: “This Monday will mark the five-year anniversary of September 11th; the day where a tragedy marked the beginning of the erosion of civil liberties throughout the Western world. I am organizing some humorous culture-jamming for the night of the 10th and the morning of the 11th to remind the world that not all demands for security are reasonable.

If you would like to participate, or are just curious, you should come to my house between 11 am and 2pm on the 10th. There, all will be explained.”

“You are welcome to invite other people if you think they’re reliable, interested and discreet (i.e. Zombie Militia, Rhino Party).”

He urges people to bring not only the usual trappings of Sunday Tea, which are tasty snacks and good people, but also tape.

listening to deep forest so as to connect myself with the first link in this entry. it makes me happ


next to city hall
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Strangely, I found myself in a house last night that I used to be intimately familiar with. It’s a small place just off Cambie, an odd little duplex left over from the sixties. Almost ten years ago, the tree out front had bicycles lashed to the length of it. It used to be a party house. If there was a crowd gathered out front, I would just walk in. Being there again was like looking through an incredibly distorted photograph. All the furniture was gone, replaced, different, but the underlying structure remained identical. I remember sweeping things off the tile counter that separates the kitchen and the dining room and using it as a small square bed. I curled with candles in my hands in the little window nook, my bare toes against the old thin glass, offering fire to the smokers congealing on the tiny porch next to it. Now Alec lives there, with his twin brother, gradually filling it with strange mechanical bits of home-made light-up furniture and rich vintage finds gleaned from local alleys.

I met him Friday, at Alicia‘s delightful Anti-Valentines party, and we spent from there until 7:40 this Sunday evening together. If he never talks to me again, I’ll quite understand. However, I found him marvelous company. We stayed up late last night watching Six String Samurai and, honestly, anyone who doesn’t question my sleeping with a knife is probably that much closer to being okay in my books. Thank you Alicia for the goodly gracious idea of inviting him. (Though you’re only half right. He can out-geek me on technicals, but I out-geek him with culture).

Earlier than that, Friday, I was caught being ridiculous at my workplace by someone off the street I vaguely hope will either never see me again or spread the legend farther. See, the computer had been played with by the owner, James, the previous night and something he did had destroyed the sound card drivers. Silence drives me crazy. It was hours before he called me back and I received permission to do a RESTORE on the system. Hence, singing Gorillaz at the top of my lungs, trying to echo off the very back wall, and dancing on top of the counters in a lull between actual bouts of working. In my defense, it happened gradually. First I was simply singing, then louder, then dancing as I put shoes away and filled out little bits of paperwork. Finally I vaulted up and did the deed, shaking booty for the entire walking world to see. We have incredibly large front windows. People think I’m strange, but really, it’s just that I forget what I’m doing.

The year 2005 may have been the warmest year in a century, according to NASA scientists studying temperature data from around the world.

I made a brilliant deal at the club tonight. Nicole and Matt brought me to Sanctuary and by chance we sat next to a friendly stranger. When I first began talking to him, I asked why he wasn’t dancing. When he replied that he’d recently wrecked his ankle, I politely enquired how he’d hurt himself. He clipped a starling while sky-diving, he said. He’d been bringing his seven year old nephew up for a run and had turned on his back to show him what falling through a cloud looked like. Hitting a bird is a one in a thousand chance, he said, in an airplane. Million to one when you’re free-falling.

I was impressed.

More so when I found out that he’s illiterate. “How on earth did that happen to you?” I asked, taken entirely aback. He grew up in Northern Ireland. A bomb blast when he was twelve. “Oh right, you’re the people who leave bullets in your post-office walls.” A quarter of his bones are now made of steel, his right hand is warped, and his skull is almost entirely artificial. He still knows Gaelic, however, as that’s what he’d been taught as a child. Home-schooling, apparently, though he’s lost almost all his mandarin. (go figure?) So I struck a deal. First, before I entirely had a grasp of the bizarre situation, I offered to swap some English for some Gaelic. When he’d filled me in a little more, explaining that it hadn’t been for lack of language programs with incredibly impressive pedigree, I offered something different. He chooses the book and I read to him in exchange for Gaelic lessons.

He stopped mid-thought, struck by that. “I just might, you know. That’s a new one.” I hope he takes it.

I’ve invited him to Korean Movie Night. I drew him a map.