Sunday : Breakfast with Lung in Outremont with Jamieson & co, shopping at Simon's, duck in a can dinner at Au Pied de Cocho w. Mike Kitt & Lung, dessert there w. Vanessa & Dee, tea and cider after w. Mike, Dee, & Vanessa at Laika on St. Laurent.

Monday: Shopping at the Le Chateau Warehouse, (coats acquired!), Michel's studio, sandwiches at Atomic.

Tuesday : Breakfast at l'Avenue De Plateau, visit with Michel & Julie at the studio, then Silophone, Body-worlds, and Avesta's Turkish dinner w. Christine, take-home cake.

wednesday: biodome, pecha kucha at SAT [Société des arts technologiques], dinner at Michel & Julie's, dancing at Koi w. Dee and Mike Kitt.

thursday: Patati Patata & La Croissanterie Figaro w. Dee and Vanessa, new moon twilight opening w. lung and melanie at star city at 10pm.

friday: write Lung's Canada Council Grant application essay, dinner at dee's w. vanessa

saturday: brunch at fuchsia w. christine?, Old Montreal, St. Joseph's Oratory, Fairmount bagel bakery, Welcome Winter Prom! w. Mark Berube at 5386 St Laurent

sunday: rent a flash, Michel's wedding

monday: The Musee Des Beaux Arts (Waterhouse til February!)

tuesday: Juliette et Choclat on St-Denis, The croissants at Au Kouign-Amann, just west of the Mont-Royal Métro stop near Mont-Royal and Rue Drolet, Bilboquet, Cocoa Locale bakery,

wednesday: Frank Wimart's movie, "c'est notre histoire" 7 pm, cinematheque, corner of st. denis & maisson, projection room: fernando

thursday:

friday: fly back to vancouver

saturday: bus to seattle w. Tony, That 1 Guy

september, seattle, fire spinning at gasworks park

One of the most amazing things about this trip, past the fact that it's happening at all, is that Tony and I are going to get to spend an entire two weeks together, the longest period of time in each other's company we'll have had since we met in 2002. Once he gets off today's bus, we'll be inseperable until November 29th.

NASA CONFIRMS WATER ON THE MOON.

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Somehow somewhere in the next twenty-four hours, the maddening mess around me has to coalesce into a travel ready me. I've no idea how I'm going to accomplish this, as I've put all my warm clothes into a suitcase and discovered it's still half empty, even when it contains a sleeping cat. Apparently over time I've renounced being an Owner of Sweaters, or even of Pants or Long Sleeved Shirts, essential ingredients during the last biting Montreal winter I gleefully survived. I suppose today I'll take a bit of time, disguised cleverly as my lunch hour, and unearth some, though I'm not entirely sure anymore where such things are sold. The Le Chateau sale place is close, though, as is Winners, and if I don't find anything there, I might as well give up until I can go shopping along Rue St. Denis or St. Catherine's, a plan that gets shiner with every passing hour.

Most of our plans for Montreal are the shiny sort, (Go Directly To Santropol, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Get $200 Dollars, and the equally obvious Purchase A Warm Coat Already You Foolish Girl), though they did a bit of an unexpected shimmy recently, shaking off the drive down to NYC with Melanie and Lung, leaving us with some uncertainty in regards to our adventures. I remain optimistic, however, even as I face the terrible pressure of being an inexpert wedding photographer, as according to a quick poll over on Facebook, which very quickly took on some serious consistency, everyone's favourite thing to do in Montreal is eat delicious food, a skill at which I am pleased to claim to be somewhat of a master. Om nom, om nom indeed.

ITEMS STILL MISSING: warm clothes, camera flash, ear cuff, bras, ipod cord, jammies, one lime stocking.

-::-

A beautiful picture of a crescent Earth, taken by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft.

I wish I'd found out about this sooner. Hells yes I want a CD of my brain. Doesn't everybody?

Hello friends and friends of friends, I'm in a big rush to recruit participants for a brain imaging study I'm doing. If you're a healthy adult and you think it'd be cool to have a CD with images of your brain, and wouldn't mind making some money for your time, let me know. Also feel free to pass this message on to anyone who might be interested.

The brain scanning procedures we're using are totally safe; there's no radiation involved. However, the MRI scanner does involve a really strong magnet, so if you have any metal in your body we can't do the scan (if the metal were to move, it would be 'bad times'). We also need all of our participants to be both physically and mentally healthy and have no history of mental illness (e.g. depression, anxiety problems, etc...) or drug addiction.

If you decide to do the study, we'll need you to do two scans on separate dates. Before the end of Nov, there would be an MEG scan in Burnaby (10 blocks from Sperling Skytrain Stn). Then there would later be an MRI scan at UBC.

To participate, send an email to ubc.mri.study@gmail.com.

Thanks!

When I started packing, it never occured to me the most difficult part would be dealing with a cat's fascination with my suitcase.

A happy birthday, five days late, shout out to my sweet singing gal pal, the incredible, laudable, utterly fantastic Jess Hill!

May your next year cost you nothing you did not want to lose, may it offer you everything you set out hope to find.
May it bring you roses and ravens of song, kisses lit by moonbeams and travel more than rain.

And happy birthday to Michael, who woke another year new only yesterday.

Scientific concepts depicted with photos of everyday objects.

-::-
The rather intense list of things that need done before we step on a plane to Montreal on Saturday morning is shrinking, but not fast enough.

The rent for the month is paid, the furniture David and I listed on Craigslist has all been spoken for, (the biggest piece already gone), the two smaller sets of shelves we needed to replace the sold items have been brought home and put in place, and finally, after a month of pestering, the landlord has blessed us with laundry tokens.

In turn, I still need to see Silva, get a paycheque, do my laundry, all of it, hours worth, final polish the latest Secret Knots, purchase a warm coat, sort through and clean all my camera cards, my room, and my suitcase, find my appropriate power cords, find a bloody flash for the wedding, contact my friends in Montreal, pry out their schedules, get Lung's address, arrange a possible ride to and or from the airport, and finally, blessedly, pack.

"A city can't be too small. Size guarantees anonymity—if you make an embarrassing mistake in a large city, and it's not on the cover of the Post, you can probably try again. The generous attitude towards failure that big cities afford is invaluable—it's how things get created. In a small town everyone knows about your failures, so you are more careful about what you might attempt." - David Byrne

What surprised me most about the Tiger Lillies show is how gorgeous it was. I was expecting raucous suicide songs, but instead found their show delightful fun, but also rather haunting, as if they were playing the full weight of their twenty years together with every note. The Moore Theater is awfully pretty, which helped, but it really was something in their timbre, a sweetness that ached, sugar in a tooth during the best french kiss you'll ever remember on the birthday you decide you finally feel old. It was blood shivering. Their best trick was to have the audience laugh to the worst, most terrible things, then to mock the laughter with more of the same. I've never heard such dark subject matter vivisected with so much whimsical mirth. It shone a light upon the heart, even as they sang like a house on fire, all bizarre theatrics and kicking kittens down stairs, with voices like elegant flashing sirens.

The after party wasn't half bad either, a mad robot-themed dance review at the Can Can underground cabaret bar, (delicious food, crazy entertainment), involving two astonishingly limber girls and some not too terrible young men gyrating two feet in front of our front row table, then a set by The Bad Things, a band I crashed with once in a Bellingham squat with the Dandelion Junk Queens. (Because the world really can be that small sometimes). Most memorable, after Rainbow, the intense spinning-from-a-chandelier awe inspiring blond girl who looked uncannily like Sara, was the bachelorette unicorn lap-dance. Sounds unlikely, I know, but it was quite the experience. He whinnied, he pawed, he wore embarrassing sunglasses that matched his skintight bodysuit. It was beyond pretty great. It was, in fact, fantastic.

The next day, Saturday, was Seacompression, a Seattle burner party held in a repurposed military hanger. Burner parties are much the same wherever you go, a fun fur collision of invention, wacky art, fire sculpture, dance, music, costumes, and people hanging from the ceiling, sometimes with no clothes on. It was a good time, with good people. We drove over with Robin and Rafael, to find Frank and Claire were there, and Adam and Anna, as well as Craig, Richard, Jordan, and Stephanie, though with the crowd, it was rare to run into people more than twice. Most of everyone we found wandering around, except for Jordan, who was hanging out in the white geodesic dome full of pillows, watching as people were locked into a spinning globe machine by crystal tipped metal arms.

To give you an idea of what it was like, around front was a hacked bus with a fire sculpture on the roof, a hot-rod with a BBQ instead of a trunk, the giant flaming metal hand Tobasco and his crew made, and a pumpkin death pachinko machine. Inside, to the right of the entrance, was a photo booth and a small movie theater (complete with Marquee), and the white chill-out dome. To the left, some couches, the Wheel Of Judgment, a hammock garden, and the hall that led to the main dancefloor, a large room with a raised area in the middle made of cages. Past those, in the main space, were two bouncy ropes hanging from the ceiling, various girls dangling from the ends, tied in by experts, and a performance space behind another bus, where fire dancers were spinning fire and live music played. Mostly we wandered, content to mingle in the madness, though we danced to the EQLateral String Trio and submit ourselves to the Wheel of Judgment. (Tony got a ticket for being "too fury". We think they meant "too furry".) We didn't stay to the end, exhaustion and a desire to be curled up naked won over, but it was a lovely party.

To top it off, we bought a strand of electric pussy-willows yesterday. Plugged in, they look like the future colliding with magic.

There are no easy words for how blessed I feel to have such lovely adventures in my life. Also, I had the Tiger Lillies sign my decolletage. Pictures soon.

Reposted from Sean:

The definition of love.

My housemate works at a men's formal wear shop in downtown Vancouver. Yesterday, a customer by the name of Justin came into her shop with both his mother and girlfriend, wanting to rent a tuxedo. Justin is eight years old, his girlfriend is ten, and Justin decided that he wanted to rent a tuxedo for a party that was being thrown on behalf of his girlfriend, so he tried on some of the finest suits in the shop for the love of his young life, accessorized with his brightest smile.

Nothing out of the ordinary, right? Well, the party is being hosted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. You see, Justin's girlfriend has a brain tumor which recently started growing at an alarming rate - so quickly, in fact, that she's not expected to make it past this coming weekend. Justin's in love with a girl whose life is being measured in minutes, hours if she's lucky.

Justin got his rental for free.

His smile crackles, a semi permanent halo. I watch him from the window as he jauntily walks to work, fizzing with the knowledge that I am lucky, so lucky, to have him in my life. As he turns to wave, vanishing behind a building, I smile back, and mock groom the fluffy ears of our shared white monster hat. I love him so much in this moment, as I am sure he loves me, and with that thought, he turns, pouncing from behind the corner with his hands up like paws, trying to surprise me, as if his backpack hadn't been poking past the bricks as he hid, the feet of a child who hasn't quite grasped the intricacies of being unseen.

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Hundreds of free animated all kinds of films now available through National Film Board's new iPhone app.

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We're going to Montreal soon, for Michel's wedding to a very clever woman I'm not sure I've met and to visit with Lung and Christine and Dee. I've hit that place in my travel plans where the imminent departure date has begun to make me nervous. Do we know where we're staying? Where we're going? Does everyone know when we get there? Daft concerns, the sort of fretting that helps no one. If I don't know yet, I soon shall, so put a lid on it, will you brain? It's not a panic so much as a very low grade adrenaline hum, as my subcutaneous tissue tenses in anticipation, as if I'm about to run in a race, pounding the pavement to music playing slightly too loud but just under the edge of my hearing.

It was our six month anniversary this past weekend, so we went to Teatro ZinZanni, the dinner theater circus we went to on our very first date, as part of our glorious Halloween. Teatro ZinZanni celebrated with us, in turn, by signing us up for their costume contest, where we won third place! I'd never been in a costume contest before, so I was nervous, but it was ridiculously fun, and we won silly Teatro ZinZombie t-shirts. Plus, as a bonus, we were informed after that we were the number one staff pick! We're still thrilled. What better way to start an evening?

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What was your costume(s)? Post pictures!

I found out second hand, when you cheated on the girl you were fucking behind my back. She came to me, crying,
and asked what she had done wrong.
She didn't know that we lived together, that you and I spelled a mutual m-i-n-e.
All she knew was that I was her friend.
I considered the satisfaction of throwing your things out the window then,
the meticulous movie moment of exploding chaos, socks spiraling to the street, books flapping their pages like miraculous paper birds attempting futile flight.
I had your childhood pictures and birthday cards from your sister.
Your special keepsakes in a box you had brought with you all the way from Australia, all the way from when you were born.
Perhaps it would be raining, when I did this Hollywood thing, this burst of scripted anger.
Even in August, it rains here a lot.
Your letters would get wet and the ink run in the gutters. Your jeans would soak through and become too heavy to carry.
Enough water and you would have nothing left with to remember your mother.
I thought about these things, and the mess, and the shouting, wondering if it would be satisfying, if I would feel absolved from your crime,
and I whispered a statement to the empty room, claiming it, before saying it to her,
and somehow, to you, rich with disappointment, I am sorry.

And now, once more, a drawer. What's inside? This time I do not know. Clothes, a toothbrush perhaps. It is a mystery contained, hard-edged. A simple pull on the handle and the secret is out, but I do not want to look. The idea makes me flinch. It is terrible how small I am in your absence.

I do not wish to be reminded, nor read again the topography of your things.

Lollyphile: delicious, hand-made lollipops in flavours like Pomegranate-Tangerine, Maple-Bacon, and Absinthe.

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Juan's been working overtime putting together a luscious Hallowe'en countdown series for The Secret Knots entitled The Brides of Dracula, that each showcasing a tiny short story about one of the mysterious women in question. Part I: Elena the Seer and Part II: Stana the Beautiful are now up, with Part III to come soon. Working on them has been really special, as hammering the language dents out of the scripts has been one of the creative highlights of my week, and I hope people like them enough to leave some positive reviews and tell their friends. They're really quite pretty, and as a bonus, Juan's posted a haunting little four panel he created several years ago, simply titled Vampire. Go see!

Ray and I are going to Ravishing Beasts this evening, the taxidermy exhibit curated by Rachel Poliquin at the Vancouver Museum, tucked away under the Planetarium. (Ravishing Beasts runs until February 28th, 2010.) I was meant to go to the opening night with Fitz, but missed it. My own mistake, and one that's still bothering me. Perhaps tonight I will excise my feelings of failure in the glassy eyed embrace of a room sweetly full of stuffed meat.