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Dreampepper
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Other places I live: A Thread of Grace - my etsy shop : flickr : facebook : twitter : jesus monkey pants in space : sinister bedfellows: an anthology | |
May 2012
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This is the story of a wonderful idea. Something that had never been done before, a moment of change that shaped the Internet we know today. This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way. Which is to say, the above is an essay on why Flickr has become a niche market site, best for the sort of people who own DSLR's, instead of the place where the majority rules. Facebook is now the largest photo sharing site in the world, even though it has some of the most distasteful user-agreement policies, because it's easy and now everyone is already there. Perhaps, though, Flickr users will trickle back the same way LiveJournal has been recently regaining writers. Short form fast click blogging and photo sharing is great and I love it, but it doesn't curl into life as deeply, and maybe the Yahoo team will eventually understand how to become widely relevant again someday. I don't hold out a lot of hope, though. I only wish I did. Tags: business, flickr, internet evil, news, sad |
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We saw the fire from the freeway, big, bright, smoke like a cloud factory, flames high enough that we thought it was only a fifteen minute drive away. With that in mind, we took the next turn-off, conveniently close, onto a gravel road to investigate, thinking we might get some pictures of a house on fire or a barn, our theories dying one by one as we continued to drive and the fire didn't seem to get closer. "That's too big to be a house." to "Do farmers still burn fields?" The first turn we took turned out to be incorrect, a south road, yes, but ending in a driveway and too far west. From that vantage, though, it was possible to gauge the true size of the fire, easily a mile wide and with flames so high they were dwarfing five story trees, making them into toy-like silhouettes that didn't look real but seemed intricately cut from black paper. By the time we finally found ourselves at right location, it was too late. The massive, incredible flames had burned themselves out with improbable speed while we were driving, as if a knob that controlled the rate of burn had been suddenly turned to "off". All that was left was a dark field of sparkling coals even bigger than we figured, dotted with bonfires, poisonous smoke like a scarf of thick brambles along the ground, and a few scorched oil wells, blackened with soot but still moving. It was eerie, a certifiable vision of somebody's hell, but not a tenth so impressive as the reason-defying wall of fire had been. Our guess is that we happened to witness some sort of industrial accident, an oil well maybe exploding or some kind of pressure failure. It would make sense, too, to explain how quickly the fire vanished - once the oil burned off, there would be nothing else for the fire to feed on except grass. Tags: adventures, roadtrip |
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Tell me a secret. Something you've been wanting to tell me, something you've been wanting to get off your chest, something you need to tell someone. If you want me to respond to you personally, let me know and I will; otherwise, it will remain something between you and me. All comments are screened and IP logging has been turned off. Tags: memes, secrets
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THE EAGLEMAN STAG, the 2011 BAFTA award winning short film from Mikey Please. Find out more about the film here and Mikey Please here. Tags: amazing, animation, art, artpost, video
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Adventure #1: A picnic in a Walmart parking lot. I have never felt so healthy. The moon from here is still "super" large and as copper as a bloodied penny. It's incredible. Astounding. Red, huge, and bright enough to cast shadows sharp as knives. We briefly flicked off our headlights, just to see what it was like, and we could still see every detail to the horizon, even though there weren't any artificial lights. Spooky, beautiful, enchanting. A film negative, glowing world. Oh hooray, my turn to nap. Rock on, roadtrip. Rock on. It's only, what? 6:30 a.m. my time? Once again playing the technogypsy, parked in a Mcdonald's parking lot for free access the intertubes. Whomever invented Montana should have hired an editor. This place looks badly clone-stamped. Also, plz fix the saturation. Thnx. Currently stealing delicious, delicious internet from a McDonald's parking lot somewhere in Idaho. You know that song about where the buffalo roam? We just found it. It's a rest stop in North Dakota. One just threatened a truck. Surreal. Besides the very random, up close and personal surprise encounter with buffalo at a rest stop, my favourite part of Dakota has been the iron oxide dirt roads that twine next to the freeway like some gigantic heavenly brush swept down from the clouds and scored scarlet calligraphy into the earth. Currently taking a picnic break at a ridonkulously windy rest stop somewhere between Bismarck and Fargo, about six to seven hours from Minneapolis. Currently passing through Fargo. All I can think of are wood chippers. Finished the Half Blood Prince. Uncertain. She's still not a good enough writer, but her craft's been improving with each book, so maybe? There is something there. I'm starting to understand. Minneapolis is beautiful. My impression so far is of a comforting mix of Proto Blade Runner and The Beaches in Toronto, with a serious dash of alt culture thrown in. Arrived and swept immediately to "goth prom". Trying to hit the ground running, but it seems obvious that I'm not as spooky as the majority. NEED MOAR BLACK. There's a Ron Mueck piece here at the gallery. Crouching Boy In Mirror. It's breath-taking, as in I-expect-it-to-inhale. Incredible, immaculately real. Beyond illusion or the uncanny valley into completely believable down to the pores. You know you're inured to art when rather than wondering why there's a shabby piece of cardboard in the gallery, you wonder what it's made of. (A: bronze). There's a number to call under some of the pieces of art in the exhibit John Waters curated. If you call it, he reads to you about the piece in pig-latin. Heavy alt-culture here. Currently being awed and confused in a Matthew Barney room, which is what he does best. Tags: minneapolis, travel, unexpected joys
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In an extraordinarily unexpected twist, I'm going to Minneapolis tomorrow as an extra tag-along driver to help facilitate someone else's trip. I was only asked about it today. We leave in under four hours. I think I'm packed, but I'm not entirely sure. I was at a house party earlier that had a livingroom DJ who wore a pillow on his head. I was there until three in the morning. It kind of tired me out. I had to look it up to make sure, but Inktea Cole is there, as is David S, and after some restless facebook posting, I now have a place to stay, a borrow bike, and Stranger-Here Karen is going to drive up from Madison to meet me. I can't even remotely pretend this is a responsible financial decision, but Chris A. decided on a whim to help fund my trip, "shine on your crazy diamond", enough that I'll be able to eat along the way if I'm careful, so in spite of my unemployment, in spite of my complete and total lack of any kind of income or next month's rent, I'm going. I've been coming back to life. Embracing the weird is just part of that equation. Oh, also.. I sort of accidently dyed my hair green today. By sort of, I mean completely, so much so that I look like a dryad. Um, whoops? Tags: adventures, hair, lung, travel, u.s.a., unemployment, unexpected joys |
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Andrew called me up yesterday during Twin Peaks Tuesday at eleven:thirty at night to ask, "You know how sometimes when you're unemployed and broke, awesome things happen to you? This is one of those things." Suddenly ignoring the show, I sat a little straighter. "Do you still have a passport?" He had scored two tickets over twitter to see Zoë Keating at one of Chase Jarvis' boutique, nearly private, invitation-only livestream studio sessions in Seattle. Of course I said yes. I said yes before I even knew what was going on, before I properly heard "Seattle" or "concert". Which is why my alarm went off at five:fifteen this morning, even though I only went to bed around two a.m., the better to be ready when Andrew dropped by to pick me up at six, and I spent the day in Seattle, exhausted and emotional. Her music is sublime, a densely woven carpet of bitten off bird's wings, rich with melody, clarity, and grace, and to have her play in such an intimate setting was an amazing experience. The interview, too, was beautiful, a sweetly compelling glimpse into a sparkling, beautiful wit. She speaks with an admirable sincerity, and often, while she was talking, I had to repress an urge to cheer. So, as a glitchy-future souvenir of my unexpected, fantastic day down south, I welcome you to share that precious hour as I present to you the video of the entire event: We're in the front row, stage left. Tags: andrew, concerts, music, seattle, unexpected joys |
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 Please tell me your names, introduce yourself, post a picture! Everyone's invited - friends, strangers, the lurking anonymous - especially those who are otherwise silent. Like a good house party, it's always fascinating to see who turns up. I want to know who's on the other end of my screen, what fun and fantastic people are out there, waiting to be met. You are artists and scientists, nihilists and dreamers, comic book illustrators, archeologists, hackers, retail managers, photographers, teachers, librarians, hair dressers, and submarine captains. You are novelists, derby girls, musicians, and accountants. Optimists, pragmatists, magicians and politicians, fencers, film addicts, home owners and homeless. You are lighting designers, poets, animators, and lawyers. You are glorious, fabulous, interesting creatures, rich in colour, thick with story - and I want to hear from you all. For those new, my name's Jhayne. I'm an unemployed writer and photographer currently trapped in Vancouver, Canada. My website is foxtongue, which is also my on-line name 99% of everywhere. I live on the internet, but share an apartment with two cats, one roommate, and a bunny on the porch. I'm also an amateur taxidermist/cryptozoologist, occasionally play french horn and the saw, and edit other people's novels. I once started a global initiative to save a local turn-of-last-century theater and turn it into a new multimedia venue called Heart of the World. It fell down, went boom, and buried me in crippling debt, but oh well. Other people have recently managed to save it, at least, so I guess that's something. Welcome to my journal, a mixture of wonder, pointlessness, isolation, and community where I talk about life, love, art, technology, and try not to hate the world. Now it's your turn. Spill. Tags: anniversary, innoculation, introduction, query |
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"There was an episode, one of my favorite moments in Star Trek, when Captain Kirk looks over the cosmos and says, ‘Somewhere out there someone is saying the three most beautiful words in any language.’ Of course you heart sinks and you think it’s going to be, ‘I love you’ or whatever. He says, ‘Please help me.’ What a philosophically fantastic idea, that vulnerability and need is a beautiful thing." - Hugh Laurie Tags: quotes |
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My Improbability Field's been cranked up this week. Saturday I went to Shane's show at the Vogue, (beautiful as always, moving as always), and left with him after. We went to meet some of his friends, then, once the pub was closed and everyone finally dispersed, we crossed the street to Wraps Plus, a late night drunk-food donair sort of shop to get something to eat in the hotel room. While there, Shane received a text from a girl he knows, "Hey, we're coming to you!" She arrived very soon after, highly excited, "Look! Look outside!" A man was standing outside with his head on fire. Flames at least a foot tall, licking the sky, shooting upward from his hat. Turns out Ole, who it just happened to be, (as he also just happens to be her roommate), had swiped an oil candle from a bar up the street as they'd walked past it, dumped the oil onto his hat, and then set it on fire to impress us. Then, once he knew he had our attention, in a move that would have worked in a perfect universe, he swept the bowler hat from his head to wave out the flames. Instead the flames transferred to his hair. I have to admit, we were, in fact, impressed. The next morning, on my way back home, our weird neighborhood foot fetishist got me again. Months and months ago, I met him on the bus. I was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, making a table for the book I was reading. He sat next to me and pressed his hand against the bottom of my shoe. I apologized and moved my foot to the ground. Natural, right? But then he dropped to the floor of the bus, lifted up my foot and put his hand underneath it, and asked me to step on him, while continuing to press down on my shoe with his other hand. I refused, tore my foot from his grasp, told him he was being inappropriate, and then he got off the bus. End of story. Weird, weird story. Until Sunday morning, when I overshot my bus-stop by a few blocks and found myself walking down the hill home, checking my e-mail on my phone like the little net-addict I am. A stranger caught up to me, then fell into step, then very suddenly pulled off his jacket off and spread it out on the ground in front of my feet! Given my years of reading and walking, I auto-corrected my path and stepped off the sidewalk without even looking up. Assuming he had just pulled some sort of bizarre Walter Raleigh sort of move, I eyed the entire motion with suspicion. What terrible thing did he just unnecessarily cover with his jacket? But no, it was far sillier and almost a little more sinister. As I moved to keep walking, he said, "Wait! Please walk on it, get it dirty." I almost hesitated for a split second, a nearly uncountable sliver of time, but he continued with, "For art!" So I did. I stepped all over that jacket, very deliberately, from one end to the other. It wasn't until about six feet later that I realized what had happened. Sure, I couldn’t help but laugh at myself the whole way home for being so easily profiled, but seriously, I really have to start recognizing that guy. Once home, I started contacting people, scouting for someone to go to the Vancouver Fan Expo with. Chris was game, so we met at the Conference Center and ventured in, running into only half as many of the approximately billion people I expected to. (Yanick was there, in from Montreal as a guest, which was great. It was his birthday on Saturday, so I gave him the best possible present, a tiny sassy miniature of the Bulleteer, the pin-up superhero character he used me as a rough body model for, that Don Debrandt gave me for my birthday many years ago. She’s from a fighting game and comes with a stats card that states, and I kid you not, that she has sixty-nine health points. Fuck the patriarchy, kids.) Eventually exhausted with the endless parade of bizarre anime costumes, and with no further opportunities to stalk John Delancy, we decided to find somewhere to eat. We didn’t have any clue what direction to take, but then! Across the street, a man in a suit, earphones in, wildly dancing the Christopher Walkens piece from Weapon of Choice. So of course we followed him, which led us on the path to Save-On-Meats, where we camped until half past nine, talking about politics, gender relations, authors, and pretty much a little bit of everything. Best possible destination. From there we went to the theater, spur of the moment, to see Cabin In The Woods, the new Joss Whedon film neither one of us particularly knew anything about. Oddly, it was only showing in a very particular theater, one with an acronym neither one of us had heard of. Curious, I asked an usher what it meant, only to have another theater patron stop a moment to listen to the answer. (Which, for those that must know, boiled down to, “we charge you an absurd price for leather seats and call it a premium experience.”) I replied with something that wasn’t quite funny, but the stranger, being a nice sort of stranger, grinned at my joke enough that a dialogue started. Soon all three of us found ourselves standing in the upstairs lobby, deep in conversation, thrilled to have met, until we were almost late for our films. Contact info was exchanged and a possible plan made to meet up after our movies and swap reviews. The film itself was spectacular. I want to gush about how completely fantastic Cabin In The Woods is, but I don’t want to ruin anything. Which is more grace than were given, as the projector shut off at the very end of the film, literally just minutes before the credits rolled. Not the sound, only the screen, leaving us listening to the incredible denouement that the movie had been working towards since the opening scene. Improbability engage! The staff eventually fixed the issue, rewinding the film back, and then forward, and then back again, with the house lights on, then off, then on again, and gave us free ticket coupons for a future film, but it was almost no use. As soon as the projector flicked off, everyone’s phones were out, everyone was texting, and the ending was ruined. Amazing, though, as the movie failure tweaked our exit time just enough to run into the fun stranger again. Noah from Oakland, it turns out, up on holidays for the week, only knows one local and she’s way out in Langley, so he’s completely open to random adventures. Which meant, of course, Hamburger Mary’s at one in the morning until they kicked us out, and then hanging out all yesterday until two a.m. This evening we’re going to Chambar for dinner, with a stop in at Guilt & Co. after for The Decadent Eccentric, a belly-dance, contact juggling, sideshow spectacular with Luciterra and one of my favourite acquaintances, Chris Murdoch. Tomorrow we’re renting a bicycle for two and riding the seawall and dropping in on Salt Tasting Room. The day after that, who knows? Finally my underemployment has changed into funemployment. Tags: adventures, events, friends, improbability, life, strangers |
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Still Life at Dusk by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer It happens surprisingly fast, the way your shadow leaves you. All day you’ve been linked by the light, but now that darkness gathers the world in a great black tide, your shadow leaves you to join the sea of all other shadows. If you stand here long enough, you, too, will forget your lines and merge with the tall grass and old trees, with the crows and the flooding river—all these pieces of the world that daylight has broken into objects of singular loneliness. It happens surprisingly fast, the loss of your shadow, and standing in the field, you become the field, and standing in the night, you are gathered by night. Invisible birds sing to the memory of light but then even those separate songs fade into the one big silence that always seems to be waiting. Once upon a time, before the invention of touch but long after writing, there was a voice on the wind that spoke to a boy and the voice sounded like the petals of a rose unfolding. "I offer you a wish", said the voice. "What is the price?" asked the boy. The voice came closer, with a rustle like red feathers. "You must remember that I am real, even when it will make you unhappy." The boy stood and thought, his face as serious as his face could be, then said, "That is a fair price. I will accept your wish." And then there was a flash and he flew away. I have now filled an entire recycling bin with discarded photographs. Close to an entire ten year history, destined for shredding. I have been scanning them, envelope by envelope, and throwing out the negatives, taking an entire day to do it, digitizing my past in the name of a better future. (Lung visited yesterday, looked through some of them, said, "Fuck, you need better memories.") It is interesting how it still feels a tiny bit taboo, even as I find myself enjoying the act of throwing them away. Two piles: one for recycling, the other to be burned. Meanwhile, I wonder if I should be better documenting this apartment, this nest that David and I have built together. Taking pictures of what we've done with the walls, how we've arranged our furniture, decorated the windowsills with plants. The place is changing, the illusion of permanence dissolving as my things leave, either given away or sold. I wonder how I will look back on this apartment, at our time together. Will I miss it? Or do I feel it's more a duty to take note of my existence, archive it, surroundings included? Going through old photos has only reinforced the notion, as I've been discovering that I don't have any photographs of the many, many places I've lived, like my teenage bedroom, wallpapered in art posters and poetry, or the room I painted over by Victoria Drive to look like a sunset, stars made from pie tins thumb-tacked to the ceiling, with the tree in the corner that I hauled in from a wind storm and hollowed and carved into a shelf. Rare, even, to find pictures set in my old places, like the one of a friend who happened to be sitting on the couch in the converted storage unit I lived in with my first love in Toronto. Not that it shows nothing of any relevance, only a guy playing video games, homeless as his own apartment was being sprayed for roaches. You can't see the absurd scope of the place, the huge roll-up door that sounded like thunder anytime anyone went in or out, or the hobbit-sized floor above, accessible only by a rough wooden ladder, which was our "room", our bed under green hand-prints which probably only now exist as echoes in my mind. The list goes on - the cavernous ex-bank with the working vault that Grady found in the downtown east side, the terrible basement on the north shore with the deviant landlord, the house on 53rd with the gold and black velvet wall where that old guy tried to kidnap me - all of them worthy of being preserved, if only so I remember that once upon a time I lived there. It's like I abandoned my history, as if because my life wasn't happy, none of it was worth keeping. It seems negligent, as if I should have been preserving these places as I went, offering evidence that we existed there, that our lives once gave these buildings meaning. Tags: history, life, love letters, memories, narrative, photography, places, poem, static |
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Separation By W. S. Merwin Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color. I started wearing perfume again just over a year ago, not daily, but on occasions I want to be remembered. Because the olfactory bulb in the brain has such an intimate relationship with the emotional amygdala and the hippocampus, responsible for associative learning, scent can conjure memories like nothing else. Therefore my perfume, warmed by my body, becomes a language, waterlily sweet thickened with amber musk, sharp with vanilla, my name as a ripple through the air, ever changing, the apple bright notes fading quickly, replaced by apricot skin, delicious with chocolate and as smooth to welcome hands. It was chosen specifically to be as honest a self-representation as possible, so that I can be conjured with it, a spirit named. Triggered, linked, set, and match. My scent part of the toolkit, like my pen, like my tongue. Mercenary social graces, my hair my banner, my fight my own. A touch in the fiery tangle on top of my head and a touch on the collar of his shirt, a drop to the hollow of my throat, a drop behind his ear, a mist that became my invisible self, recognized as deep as the lizard brain. Knife bearer, dream walker, post-geographic mythologist. I have been claimed again, a shadow drifting through space and time, a gift I left in a small green bag. He was downstairs, I was helping upstairs, packing alone. Enough time to leave my memory in his luggage, the only way I could think of to go with him, the scent clinging to his things like we did to each other, rarely farther than arm's reach, as brassy but as certain as when I met his eyes, picked his necklace up from the dresser, and slipped the pendant into my mouth, (I, too, am like you), defiance, acceptance, a dare and a promise both. Story-telling subconscious, unconscious together, our minds told the same narrative while asleep our first night, something I had forgotten could happen, if I even ever knew, a cold-reading shared between us, a city to explore, climbing old buildings with rusted stairs, our footsteps clanging, a ladder. When we woke, even as it defied logic, all I wanted was to say, "Thank you", "That was beautiful", "I love you", and "Let's do that again." He unearthed it this week. I had been wondering when he would find my hidden, invisible gift, the only way I could be there when I need to be, even if only as a conditioned response. My ghost sent, wrapped in memory, a reminder of comfort and love during troubled times. My hope had been pinned on the chance that he wouldn't open the bag during a mundane day, but only when he traveled again, leaving home to take care of heavy events. Now it has happened, a relative dying, I find myself waiting, my breath held, for the other penny to drop. Tags: damned right, dreaming, love, miss you, missing people, secrets, sorrow, static |
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 "Have you seen Drive yet? You should." I keep saying this, sometimes to strangers. It has become my sleeper hit, the film that sank into my skin and stayed there, an invisible tattoo just under the surface, built of silence, violence, and those terrifying, honest moments when you realize just how much you can mean to someone. The plot is nearly forgettable, yet there were moments in the film that felt so honest that I can't properly express why they were important, except to say that I miss some people, the same way all of us do. They're far away or they're dead or they don't talk to you anymore and that's just how it is. And this movie, Drive, a silly heist-gone-wrong movie with guns and blood and broken teeth, captured that completely. He shyly smiles at her, then she looks out the window of the car as they drive through night-time L.A., (as you do if you live there, it's just part of the experience, part of the mythology, as essential to the city's identity as the palm trees that line every block), and he looks away and then, in that moment where they are both looking away and both of them are silent, only the radio plays, she reaches out and puts her hand on his on the gear-shift and it's a revelation. He laces his fingers with hers and yes, I've been there, that precise feeling, I know it exactly, oh my chest hurts, this entire thing hurts, I want to cry, and the music swells up again and everything is just right. Meanwhile the entire thing ticks on as calmly as it can, fueled by a killer, dreamy soundtrack, a quiet and efficient character piece dipped in low-rent Hollywood action. I'm a sucker for lovingly evocative images of downtown Los Angeles, but the true power of the film rests in how subtle the real story is, how intense its raw poetry. As far as I'm concerned, the title isn't Drive for the expected reasons, but after the main character's will and motivations, impeccably brought to life by Ryan Gosling. It's a very fine trick for a revenge film, given how limiting the heavy narrative structure of a crime drama generally is, to have such a sincere respect for the complexity of human relationships, but underneath the cliché bag-of-money device and the scathing mob bosses, (played beautifully by Albert Brooks and an almost shockingly foul mouthed Ron Perlman), there runs an incredible focus on intimacy, interaction stylistically pared down to the basics. The film unfolds scene after scene like vivisection lessons on how much it's possible to communicate without words. Even the clockwork-plot murders seem to be legitimate, less fiction than a memory that someone has chosen to share. Some people don't like it, you might not, (one friend of mine went so far as to say it was like watching unlikeable robots), but the fact remains that you should see it anyway. If only for the soundtrack. Or the bit in the elevator. I'd marry that scene. Tags: cinema, films, l.a., movies, review |
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 From Magical Game Time, a beautiful punch-to-the-chest video game themed comics and art blog by Zac Gorman, a professional cartoonist and illustrator currently based out of Detroit. You may know him as the artist responsible for and we never got old or dumb-running-sonic. (My favourite that I've seen so far is I don't expect for you to wait for me -- I don't expect anything. I just want to see you. And to see what happens next --). I recommend the recent The Metro Times interview with him regarding his career and sudden viral success, Allow Him To Illustrate. Tags: art, artists, artpost, illustration |
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Rain outside, but light, too, hard and sharp edged as crystal. The bright world glistens, freshly rinsed. I love it here. Tags: seattle
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There are things sadder than you and I. Some people do not even touch. Sonia Sanchez, Haiku. I've been trying to teach myself to write again, insisting on consecutive events, playing catch up from a month ago - the science conference, cansec, the whistler trip, and now Seattle; Sean Corey Adams, the emerald city comicon, friends, productivity, love, and witnessing the birth of a scarlet wall squid. Not sure how well it's serving me yet, but here's hoping. In the meantime, I want to mark this as one of those rare occasions when my life is actually nice. Thank you. Tags: aaas, cansec, interesting, life, love, poem, seattle, static eddie, whistler
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Friday morning was also a trial, though I crept out of it like a cat. I still had work, so I had to skip the symposiums, which hurt, but I made on-line plans from there with Alan to meet at the Science World party that night. So after, once I'd gone home and showered and changed into new clothes and did all the things regular people do when they're about to go seriously crash the largest science conference in the western hemisphere, I packed a duffel to bring to the hotel after the party, so I wouldn't have to return to the apartment again until the conference was over. (Could have done it the day before, but whatever. Dinner! Whales! Plus Science World has a significantly better coat check that the Aquarium.) Once there, the only question was finding my people in the crush of people pointedly lingering next to the open bars and clumping in the areas where the waiters would cruise by with tasty nibbles. It all came together eventually, but I spent the first twenty minutes completely on my own, wandering through the exhibits, going from table to table, attempting to find the promised non-fish based food, as well as scouting for my clever partner in crime. The trick, apparently, was to stop looking for the shortest gregarious person and instead make for the tallest, Erik, as naturally they would be speaking together. I didn't know Erik, but it was instantly clear that I should. He was funny, eloquent, and involved in his topics in a way I utterly envy. Truly, there may never be a group of people I immediately get on with more than journalists. There's just something about a profession that attracts the intelligent, literate, and perpetually curious that gets under my skin in the best kind of way. He wasn't selling his story to Cosmos that night, though. It wasn't quite the right fit, even though I found it personally fascinating. Even so, we all walked up the ramp together to the massive dome of the IMAX Theater, for the Kavli Foundation Awards, just in time for me to somehow lose everyone all over again at the door. Just my luck, I almost sat alone for the show, stranded in the empty seats I tried to save. Thankfully a very nice woman from Berlin came and sat with me, social orphans together. I have regretfully misplaced her name, but she was wonderful company, telling me about her goth days back in Germany, about her lab, about her adorable daughter. She saved me as easily as grabbing the keys to the car on the way out the door. We stayed together downstairs for nearly the rest of the night, playing on the exhibits, sitting on spinny things and climbing the hollowed tree in the nature room. If we'd been children we would have been running through the yard, thrown together by chance but making the best of it, playing tag by the overpass. Tags: aaas, cloud chamber, conferences, friends, parties, vancouver, writers
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                        Tags: architecture, photography, seattle, tony |
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I had a bit of a failed evening on Friday night, in spite of great plans. First was a dessert themed birthday party, then an electro-swing event with live bands, stilt-walkers, fire, and a fashion show, and a BBQ at the batcave to nicely round off the evening. But then the toilet broke and flooded the bathroom, five different people cancelled on me, someone else stood me up at a bus-stop for an hour, and a homeless crackhead stole the box of strawberries I'd bought for the birthday party. So instead of forging forward and going to the wonderful events I still had time for, I went home, took off my pretty costume, and burrowed into my bed with home-made chinese food and the endings to every movie I'd fallen asleep in front of over the past month. (Gasland, I Love You Phillip Morris, Marwencol, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life). Not the best or bravest reaction, but it wasn't the worst, either, so there's that. Sunday wasn't much better, but at least I put together an entire box of clothing to donate and got a start on my taxes. Small steps. Almost productivity. Tomorrow is David's birthday, (and it was just Ray's and Lori's birthdays, too), so we're going to see John Carter tonight in 3D. Then the day after, I leave on the early train out of Vancouver to go down to Seattle for a week. Don't have a solid plan on where I'm staying yet, but sometimes just about anywhere is better than here. It's going to be nice to see my people there. It's been far, far too long. Tags: movies
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"This week the Georgia State Legislature debated a bill in the House, that would make it necessary for some women to carry stillborn or dying fetuses until they 'naturally' go into labor. In arguing for this bill Representative Terry England described his empathy for pregnant cows and pigs in the same situation." The rest of the civilized world thinks this country has lost its mind. It's no wonder. Look at this list of frenzied misogyny: Tags: awful, grim meathook future, politics, sexuality, u.s.a. |
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 alt-text: i hear smashing glass in my head, ever time i laugh I awoke a little panicked, aware of a certain dreadful absence of pinging alarm, not quite damning my day job, but coming close to it. The entire morning thing seemed insurmountable. It had been a long, unexpected evening, the sort I am generally familiar with, but never actually had, so all I wanted to do was sleep in. Drinks in a bar, an invitation up, my cue to pass out chastely on half of a hotel bed, that's how it goes, how it suits my blood. But he was impossibly sweet and it seemed, after an indeterminate sleepy amount of cuddling, that my desire to cling to the familiar had evaporated somewhere, possibly seared from existence by his fiercely protective intellect, and the only path available was towards a new choice. We went to the Aquarium after dinner later that night, (foreign dishes in a basement, the beginning of my stories, the tragic litany, the darker side of a thousand and one nights), me to crash the party, him with legitimacy, both with an equally sound purpose. Mine was to sneak in, the better to get me into even more later. We split up right away, once it was assured I had successfully bluffed past security, and that was that, I was on my own, a mercenary butterfly released into the opening party of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It's startlingly easy to make fast friends at the beginning of conferences. There are always a few people who've been attending since the dawn of time, but the majority of the crowd are strangers thrown together or people who've only known each-other tangentially or on-line, so the ground is primed for the sort of introduction that doesn't generally fly in public, where you simply walk up like a little kid to a friendly looking face and say, "hi!". I almost immediately fell in a lovely women, Shauna, a fellow burner from Berkeley I knew I would like, then together, after taking pictures with the sharks, we found Elizabeth, there for CNN, best characterized by her amazing smile, as permanent as the moon. We chatted about the fish and science and wondered about the whale, elusive and grand, sequestered in an area of the aquarium that the conference hadn't rented. Occasionally I drifted away, encountering new conversations and faces, making mental notes for later, attaching myself here and there, but made sure to keep swinging back to touch base, so as the night progressed, as I fluttered, I forged a little group with which to found a conspiracy. Eventually we made a feint at sneaking past security to see the whale, but we'd gained mass, our core blossoming as we went into an unwieldy six or seven, too many to slyly saunter into an area we weren't supposed to go. Then, sadly, after some magic with the otters and the dolphins, it was time to leave, the staff ushering us past the sleeping octopus and the shimmering glass cube of tiny blue fish that look like living streaks of light to a queue in the the parking lot for the hired buses that were shuttling everyone back downtown. I lost my partner in the crush, perhaps because I lingered too long, loitering in a hope to find him, yet I found surprisingly good company in his wake - Alan, Estrella, and Marc, who I first met inside as part of the attempt on the beluga tank. They wanted to walk, but didn't know the way, so I put aside my concerns regarding my misplaced self as less important than the possibility of an entire lost group and appointed myself their guide. The walk home was beautiful, if long. Mostly I fell in step with Marc, who I pressed for details about the Ig Nobels and traded stories of odd employment paths, but got on well with Alan, too, who possesses a Patient Zero level of infectious cheer. By the time everyone peeled off for their separate hotels, we'd discussed several adventures, planned a couple more, and all traded business cards, a habit I was to pick up even more as the conference went on. (The trick is to remember later which card goes to which face). My fellow turned out to be table camping with the rest of his crew at the hotel bar, which I walked through on a whim, hoping to stumble across where he might be, my lack of cell phone again a strangely crippling artifact of the shockingly recent past. I joined them, of course, and was immediately taken with RJ, a clever young man from Waterloo University who was sitting at my end of the table. I spent the rest of the evening pulling ideas from him, chatting about clean energy and the internet, until the table finally dissolved, leaving me and mine to drift upstairs into the sweet oblivion that promises endless wonder but only ever delivers tomorrow. Tags: a change in plans, aaas, about damned time, acadamia, accomplishments, cloud chamber, conferences, crashing, friends, life in general, science, social event horizon
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Middle Aged Lovers by Erica Jong Unable to bear the uncertainty of the future, we consulted seers, mediums, stock market gurus, psychics who promised happiness on this or another planet, astrologists of love, seekers of the Holy Grail. Looking for certainty we asked for promises, lover’s knots, pledges, rings, certificates, deeds of ownership, when it was always enough to let your hand pass over my body, your eyes find the depths of my own, and the wind pass over our faces as it will pass through our bones, sooner than we think. The current is love, is poetry, the blood beat in the thighs, the electrical charge in the brain. Our long leap into the unknown began nearly a half century ago and is almost over. I think of the amphorae of stored honey at Paestum far out-lasting their Grecian eaters, or of the furniture in a pharoah’s tomb on which no one sits. Trust the wind, my lover, and the water. They have the answers to all your questions and mine. Tags: love, poem, poetry
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Woke up in a massive hotel bed in the sky, fluffy and white and perfect, after an evening of late night hot-tubbing and room service, with a cell phone next to me connected to London. On the table in the main room is a small black robot that walks and dances, next to a package of Dita Von Teese brand bottled Perrier brought in from Paris. The laptop's spring loaded keys light up blue and it runs facial recognition password software which loads quickly but doesn't like the lighting. Today is the booze run, checking and fixing the stickers, booking the arcade machines, planning for the Whistler cabins, setting up the staff room, and programming our phones to talk to the white plastic surveillance bunny, so we can instruct it to say ridiculous things. (We're all addicted to the creepy bunny. It watches you masturbate). Tomorrow the conference starts all proper like and then the real fun begins. Tags: cansec, friends, robots, science, technology |
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I was going to be sending postcards on Saturday to everyone I met at the conference, to be friendly, for fun, the better to keep in touch, but I have been neglecting those plans and nearly everything else this past weekend, (the hundred other things that I wanted to get done before being sucked into CanSec), caught up instead by a personal catastrophe - the partial erasure of my only photography archive. The quick and dirty background: Everything has been on one drive. Because I am financially strapped, I've never been able to afford a back-up. Tony, in his wisdom, was kind enough to give me a 2 terabyte drive as a holiday present, destined to become the new archive when my 1 terabyte drive filled up, which happened this past week. The quick and dirty events: I let a programmer friend help set up the transfer of my archive of over 110,000 files from the 1 terabyte to the new 2 terabyte. There was an error, so instead of merely copying what was left to copy, it cross-referenced the drives and deleted a great swath of files before I could shut it off. The quick and dirty result: I've spent the majority of the past two days on data recovery, staying up late, getting up early, trying different programs. I believe that I have recovered as many of the files as I will ever get back, approximately 50% of what was erased. It is difficult to tell what is gone, but so far it seems I have lost my childhood photos, an entire wedding, a massive block of personal pictures from 2007, 2008, and 2009, three days of 2011, seven folders of client work, and every video I've taken in the past five years. I expect to discover more gaps as time goes on, but the damage seems negligible compared to what it could have been. Everyone who knows about the tragedy has assumed that I would be livid or heart-broken or a mix of the two, but instead the loss seems to have struck a far deeper, nihilistic chord, more appropriate for death, thickly flavoured with the acceptance and understanding that at the heart of things, we are all, every one of us, completely doomed, so why care? Odd, maybe, but I believe it speaks well of me, that I am depression-immune to this disaster, still carrying the seed of happiness that was planted at the conference, the new, uncorrupted self that refuses to be cursed. Tags: disaster, headache, oh my fucking god, photography, technology |
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Sally Adee, a science writer lucky enough to try a DARPA experiment that uses targeted electrical stimulation of the brain during training exercises to induce flow state for a New Scientist article, has some really fascinating things to say about what it was like: The experience wasn't simply about the easy pleasure of undeserved expertise. When the nice neuroscientists put the electrodes on me, the thing that made the earth drop out from under my feet was that for the first time in my life, everything in my head finally shut the fuck up. Tags: brains, medicine, neuro-lingustics, news, science |
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One of my tasks for CanSec this year was to find some last-minute artists for a new line of merch, stickers and t-shirts. I immediately tapped Eliza. As gigs go, it was quick and dirty, but her work, as always, is splendid. These are the two of the three designs she offered that we're going with, a cyber re-mix of the New Yorker's most iconic cover and a tribute to Jamie Hewlett. If you would like to hire her for a commission of your own, you can find her portfolio at ElizaGauger or follow her personal blog at 3liza. She also runs regular live video art broadcasts at Sweatshop.tv, (which are announced on her Twitter), and occasionally has work for sale at Sweatshop's BigCartel.   Tags: art, cansec, eliza
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 "That must be impossibly hard," he says, "How do you survive?" "I don't," I reply, and he nods, "Of course." He looks at me as if I am a wonder, a myth. He says, "It is incredible that you can bear it, that you don't fall apart." Gently, he teases more from me, as if delicately pulling threads from a loom. I am Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus, unraveling at his feet, spilling everything across the table. He describes how he thinks it must be, mentions the word brittle, and it is so accurate I almost cry, but not quite. He keeps me balanced, he keeps me safe. It is amazing. "So this is part of the shadow underneath your skin." When I am done my story, terrible in all its grand detail, he sits a moment, somber. "I understand why you stopped writing." A rush of heat, not quite anger, flushes up my throat, "I wouldn't have stopped unless I had a good reason." It tastes bitter. What sort of person does he think I am? But then he continues, "So. This is the point where if I were to answer as a woman, I would offer a similar story about my life, the better to offer empathy and make you feel less alone. Shared understanding, emotional community support." I laugh. "I don't think you have anything like that." "No," he says, "not really." He gestures, one hand, then the other, not quite smiling. "Or, if I were to answer as a man, this is where I would try to offer a solution, something constructive, to address and fix your problems. Make everything better." I am blinded by adoration. This is precisely the sort of reply I have always needed, but never been given. Just like that, I am relieved of my burden. He is sublime. "Which kind of answer would you prefer goes first?" Tags: cloud chamber, conversations, flickr, hotw, therapy
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