Dreampepper

Eeee! Paint me excited.

2008-07-04T21:14:15Z

Pacific Cinémathèque presents Crispin Glover for three exclusive evenings, July 18-20.

Mr. Glover will be presenting Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Slide Show, an hour-long audiovisual performance-presentation in which he narrates images from his story book series. Following will be his debut feature film, What Is It?, a mind-blowing, taboo-obliterating phantasmagoria and psychodrama which he describes as "the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are snails, salt, a pipe and how to get home, as tormented by an hubristic inner psyche."

Each evening concludes with a Q&A and book signing.

TICKETS: $20 — Advance tickets are on sale now, but are only available on-line at www.cinematheque.bc.ca.

Tickets will also be sold at the door. Box Office opens at 6:30pm nightly. Annual $3 Pacific Cinémathèque membership required. Restricted to 18+. NO PASSES will be accepted for this event.

unhappy staying in, wanting ice-cream

2008-07-04T04:55:09Z

365 days one hundred & fifty-nine: better than me

Neurophysiologist Katherine Rankin has recently discovered that sarcasm is an evolutionary survival skill.

My apartment has finally begun to feel as if I live there after four years in the same place. I blame my godmothers things, taking up all the space. I blame her silver sun framed mirrors, her plants, her rows of carefully chosen objects that took decades to find. When I come home after work, my apartment smells like her, as if somehow she'd been visiting. Flour and myrrh and coconut and frankincense, thick swirls, flavours mixing with my own, the cats, candles, cardboard, and sunshine.

Every box is a new mystery, a penny worth of mystery, full of a mized assortment of silver, food, tiny antiques, and tired moments of what is this, exactly? One very large box is entirely filled with spices, crushed leaves in tiny clear plastic bags, some with labels too faded to read, some in oddly shaped bottles that makes me think they weren't purchased within my life-time. They hint at delicious meals, semi-exotic flavours, interesting combinations of taste. Where will I find room? I still don't know. It was a feat enough collecting them together.

All I need is time, extra time, time tucked into crannies of minutes, the creases of hours meeting hours, needle thin threads of seconds adding up, secretive whispers of moments stolen from inattention, from bad decisions, from missing busses and losing keys, from distraction, procrastination, and the tips of fingernails, all added up. Enough time and it will all be done, the boxes will be unpacked, the things put away, the dust hoovered up, the disaster removed. My living environment will be cosy, friendly, cheerful and clean, the way I want it to be as soon as living possible.

David has gone out to meet with an old friend tonight, someone he hasn't seen in a very long while. They might come back here after dinner, they might not. In either case, I am staying in, seeing what can go where, discarding as much as possible, skipping dinner, clearing space, creating a country, declaring sovereignty over the scattered boxes. I really wanted to go with him, painfully so, especially when he called, asking me to join them, but already I can see progress. There is more than only a path from one end to the other, there is space to walk, space to sit, space to wander around, room to better maneuver through the war.

When I can no longer stand it, when I stand in the kitchen, a dish in hand, seriously contemplating smashing it to save cleaning it, I go back and re-work my summary paragraph for Vitka's dystopia novel, the one that's going to go to the publishers as a Here, Buy This Book! It's a nice distraction, something soothing in the middle of the dusty cardboard love song.

Passive Aggressive Anger Release Machine, an interactive china-smashing sculpture by Yarisal and Kublitz

Ich lebe in einem Kasten.

2008-07-02T21:58:38Z

I've been mistaken for a porn star.

With Silva's departure has come The Great Mess.

I have no floor anymore. There is no floor, only boxes.
They have become my floor, my furnishings, my overwhelming purpose of being.
The boxes have become totality. They are all.

As Kyle shoots it out of the field with Neil frickin' Gaiman!

busted wonder: now better than broken, it's done

2008-07-02T20:04:19Z

Charity Larrison and Kieron Gillen's richly fantastic on-line graphic novel, Busted Wonder, is finally finished!
It's clever, and sweet, and just a teeny bit sad - as perfect as the last bite of a favourite dessert.

click here to start at page one
I've been following Busted Wonder since it started, (Charity is a sizzling sweetheart and a super fun read, you should add her), so I'm extra thrilled to finally read the story from front to back and to know, especially, finally, the why of the title. I have to admit, I'd been wondering.

gosharoonie

2008-06-30T19:04:48Z

Lung just posted the best thing ever.

If any of you are in Montreal, now you know where you need to be tonight.

looking at the dishes, I almost cried like a silly boy

2008-06-29T18:39:13Z

together forever in luuuurve
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Steamroller used to make french wood-block prints.

I've been planning this past weekend for weeks. It was going to be my super funtastic weekend, full of dancing, (finally), music, and awesome sauce, but I didn't make it to anything. The Jazz Fest, FUSE, Stephanie's birthday, the Workless Party party.. nada. Instead I was at home, feeling stuck, financially doomed, and not just a little agoraphobic. I'm terrifically lucky David was around. I hate to imagine what my weekend would have hypothetically been like without him.

As part of Silva's move, I've been inheriting a lot of her things. Things that don't necessarily have an easy place in my home, so I've been moving furniture and tearing apart the kitchen, moving more furniture, tearing apart my room, unpacking boxes all over the place, and generally being overwhelmed. My house, on Friday, looked as if it had been looted, raped, burned, then looted again. It was driving me utterly crazy, (very likely the sole reason I've felt so awful lately), so instead of going the the KRAZY FUSE which I'd been looking forward to for months, I spent the entirety of Friday night cleaning and organizing and tidying until the sun seared the sky into Saturday morning. When I woke up, it was passable, but I was exhausted, utterly burned out, too drained for my plans. (Especially as it's still not done!)

Today I'm hoping to spend a bit of time with Silva, who leaves on Tuesday, and maybe drag myself down to Yaletown for the tail end of some of the free Jazz Fest shows. I've had Pink Martini playing all day. It's helping.

"...raccoon carcasses have also been found in the west-end park and were deliberately posed."

also, stop using corn for fuel, you cocks

2008-06-26T19:17:40Z

"...even if tomorrow we opened up every square mile of the outer Continental Shelf to offshore rigs, even if we drilled the entire state of Alaska and pulled new refineries out of thin air, the impact on gas prices would be minimal and delayed at best. A 2004 study by the government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that drilling in ANWR would trim the price of gas by 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027."

via Brian Wood

Happy Belated Birthday Mer. May you be swoopily grumptious the whole year through!

2008-06-25T23:48:54Z

Frog Can Fly, by Mila Kalnitskaya & Micha Maslennikov.

Using plastic, metal, and live frogs "because they are small and light."

Two of the frogs involved, Siberian Postman and Fly of Destiny are now pets of the artists.

wanted: people to move boxes

2008-06-24T21:07:00Z

Can you help? Silva's departure date is right around the corner. An essential part of moving, however, involves loading a truck and her and her wife, though they are fierce, brightly shining people, are still two little older ladies, and they can't do it alone.

"We're loading a truck with heavy boxes and a very few pieces of furniture on Thursday morning at 10 am. If this kind of activity appeals to you, and if you want to help, and if you *can* help FOR SURE,and can be here from 9:30ish until noon please let me know. I have to run off to a dentist appointment at 12:30 so it HAS TO be finished by then. There will be non-alcoholic cold beverages and cookies and much gratitude."

I'm going to try and take the morning off to help, but I might not be able to and it's very important that people show up.

I just can't stop laughing at this video. Love it!

2008-06-24T19:15:42Z

That 1 Guy will be playing at the Montreal Festival Intl. De Jazz from June 25 - 30

I can't afford what would fix me

2008-06-23T21:07:50Z

Guy: See you!
Girl: See you!
Guy: I love you!
Girl: You are killing me.
Guy: I ought to kill you.
Girl: What?!

--34th Street Station, B Line

The best thing I overheard recently was a girl saying, "Hell, I'd fuck your dad for money."

...
A blind man on the bus, laughing every time we stop, glad of the sensation like a kid on a circus ride. "Hey guys, what stop are we at?" I glance outside, looking for street signs, "We're at second." "Thanks!" Back to my book, I wonder briefly if anyone else would have bothered to reply. I speak up again when it's my stop, "This is Broadway." "The near side or the far side." "The near side." Then I'm gone, footsteps snapping away on the pavement, out of ear-shot, now invisible.

I can't help but wonder, with a sunken feeling in my chest, if I should practice with a white cane now rather than later, when it will be more difficult. I've cut down on my reading and learned a couple of tricks that slow my eyes from degeneration, but I can tell they're still getting worse. I close them sometimes when I walk with people to discover how far I can get only listening for the ends of sidewalks, for traffic, for other pedestrians and bumps in the road. I keep my hand tightly around their bicep, or tautly in their hand, and I listen, and walk, and I worry.

One of the more exclusive shows at HIVE2 placed the participant in the role of a convict at a prison. (One woman came back crying). To apply to take part, you wore an arm-band. When they came for you, (the audience was picked two by two), no matter when it was, you had to go or you forfeit. It looked as if it would be harsh, a nasty, hard-core experience, but really, the main body of the experience was ritualistic sensory deprivation. You were dressed in anonymous orange coveralls and a matching orange tuque, then sound dampeners and a blindfold were placed on your head. A rope was put in your hand, and you had to follow, passive, pulled, blind, unable to hear. Hands would reach out, solidly, and guide you through doorways, pull you up stairs. I had been expecting fear or an uncomfortable feeling of powerlessness, but unexpectedly, I smiled, warm and confident in the artificial darkness. "I do this already, minus the barked orders to sit, to stand, to go up a step. This is fine," I thought, "though there's no way the other person feels the same way. I hope she's okay."

There's levels and layers to all of it, though. I was alright at HIVE2, solid and strong, but that was mild, a safe visit to a possible future.

My friend Mishi was paired with a seeing-eye dog recently, a sweet and exuberant black Labrador retriever. She says it takes 6 months to a year to become a smooth, seasoned team, which makes me smile, glad that she's finally got her guide, but shyly, as I try not to imagine too closely what it must all be like.

YES!

2008-06-20T18:14:46Z

finally out...
Where The Hell is Matt 2008

"14 months in the making, 42 countries, and a cast of thousands. "

INCLUDING ME!

And Adam, Andrew, Sara, James, Fitz, and Michael.

today's a low phenylalanine day

2008-06-19T23:19:33Z

David & Lung
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Hey Japan, plz stop. Thanx.

End of the line, the train stops, the bus stops, whichever motion, it's over. Outside the sky is just as dark as it was yesterday, the day burned down, the night entranced. Rough in the back of the eyes.

I've invited Lung and David to come with me to Katie's wedding. It's in Toronto, I have places to stay, options, resources, the temptation to stay. Lung's not sure if he could make it, but he'd like to go. There a chance we could meet Kyle, finally, his lovely lady, and his lots of cats. (Are there more of you in T.O?) I've started looking at bus-tickets, knowing the farther ahead they're booked, the cheaper they'll end up being. There's a companion fare on greyhound. A second ticket with the same itinerary for fourty dollars more. Two people splitting the cost doesn't look like it would be that bad.

The soft drop of gravity when the plane takes off, the wheels as they grind into cloud. Looking down, squares, grid-lock, and a river of motion flowing to another sea, wavy lines representing false cul-de-sac suburb security.

Pregnancy Pact Discovered at Gloucester High School.

sixth severed foot found, (still no mention of the (possible) abandoned-car serial killer)

2008-06-19T20:10:42Z

"Six Feet Under"
"Another Footloose"
"British Columbia Case gets stranger by the foot"
"Bizarre Canadian tale now six feet long"
"The Story's a Foot"

They need to catch this person, the sooner the better. I don't think I can stand it any longer.
Oh heck, see what I did there? THEY'RE GETTING ME TOO.

Yves Saint Laurent passed away at age 71 on June 2nd.

2008-06-19T00:16:05Z

365 day one hundred & fourty-six: feeling hungry day 365 one hundred & fifty-three: tidal wave

situationist comedy

2008-06-18T20:22:40Z

Karriere is a fairly new Copenhagen bar completely designed by over 30 artists, (Robert Stadler, Douglas Gordon, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Olafur Eliasson, etc.), who worked on everything from the name to the interior.

Most interestingly, the cost of certain drinks at the Karriere Bar have been reworked into an installation piece by Kenneth Balfelt, who conceived of a price policy that experiments with perceived social structures. The new prices are determined by how you display yourself and it's the waiters and bartenders who decide if someone qualifies.

Some examples: Activist and hippie types pay extra for organic soda, unless they're homeless, in which case they get a discount on cafe cortado, yuppies pay extra for beer, and gay couples who french kiss get a discount on apfelschorle.

There's many of various discounts, and for all sorts of things, speaking danish when you're obviously foreign, being a multiracial table, etc., hardly any which seem politically correct, but all of which might prove interesting to interact with. I imagine friends gathering in groups, trying to work out how many discounts they can snag in one go.

cleaning out the closets

2008-06-18T00:26:48Z

The Secret Knots: "The Unspeakable" pt. 6

I started writing a book this week. "This book begins and ends with a birthday, twenty five years after my story started." The internet at work was down, leaving me with nothing productive to do except open Word and begin to write. Two hours later, I had twenty five pages and the beginning of an out-line. I don't know if it's a good idea, what I'm doing, or if I will finish it, or anything, but I've started one.

It's not the autobiography people have been asking me to write, full of oddball miniature adventures, names changed and details blurred to protect almost everyone involved, but the story of my parents, my dangerous childhood, and how it relates to me now.

As many of you know, my sociopath father, (who I generally tell people is dead), has been sending me letters since I sent him a hello on my birthday last year. He writes a minimum of once a day, though I never reply and rarely read anything. The more he writes, the more ingrown the stories become, the more pathological, until the only way to understand the later letters is to start at the beginning, to see where certain codes began. Now that an entire year has passed, there's hundreds of replies to my one small note, poisonous, hateful, and full of self aggrandizing lies, that I haven't even looked at. They're just sitting there, taking up server space somewhere in the states, not quite ignored, but dormant.

As a body of work, it reminds me most of case studies I've read about violent obsessives who paper their walls with scribbles about jesus. The tone is similar, but with my mother and I featured in place of religious figures. My intention is to use his letters as material, as something to respond to. "Find inspiration where you can." I'm not sure what else there is to do, (perhaps I can donate it to a psychological institution?), I don't like his bright confusion speaking to an empty room. It feels like I'm neglecting a chore, an old bit of furniture that needs to be painted.

set that fox on fire

2008-06-17T21:11:20Z

It's Firefox 3 Day!

Firefox releases it's 3.0 today. It's free. It's open. I use it, you use it, and if you don't, you should. Go download it!

They're trying to set the world record for most downloads in a single day.

getting everything down to six boxes

2008-06-16T21:36:17Z

via neat-o-rama:

Dave Bruno looked around his San Diego home one summer and realized just how much of his family’s belongings were cluttering their lives. So he decided to do something about it, in a project he called The 100 Thing Challenge:

By my thirty-seventh birthday on November 12, 2008 I will have only 100 personal items. I will live for at least one year (God willing) maintaining an inventory of only 100 personal things. This challenge will help me "put stuff in its place" and also explore my belief that "stuff can be good when it serves a purpose greater than possession alone."

Lisa McLaughlin of TIME Magazine covered this story:

Excess consumption is practically an American religion. But as anyone with a filled-to-the-gills closet knows, the things we accumulate can become oppressive. With all this stuff piling up and never quite getting put away, we’re no longer huddled masses yearning to breathe free; we’re huddled masses yearning to free up space on a countertop. Which is why people are so intrigued by the 100 Thing Challenge, a grass-roots movement in which otherwise seemingly normal folks are pledging to whittle down their possessions to a mere 100 items. [...]

"It comes down to the products vs. the promise," says organizational consultant Peter Walsh, who characterizes himself as part contractor, part therapist. "It’s not necessarily about the new pots and pans but the idea of the cozy family meals that they will provide. People are finding that their homes are full of stuff, but their lives are littered with unfulfilled promises."

Dave’s progress blog, guynameddave.

hot damn

2008-06-15T23:53:10Z

Thank you to the 200+ people who came out and made my birthday party awesome!

With special thanks to the Creaking Planks, you rock the house.

My birthday weekend in pictures, just in time for the party

2008-06-13T17:57:20Z

Thursday, my actual birthday:

Friday, the unicorn, kits beach, bingo:

Saturday, playland, chinatown night market, pho:

welcome to global warming. it isn't what you think it is

2008-06-13T01:04:18Z

Apple Store Paris set to open under Louvre Pyramid.

For a moment of amusement, I went and took a look at the yahoo-search referral terms that led people to my Flickr. In order, the top thirty are were: postsecret, cute puppies, maine coon cat, topless, oralsex, tiara tattoos, apartments, oldboy, alien animals, lesbianism, opus bloom county, gamelan, goths, animated club gif, cannibalism, sex oral, cute puppies wallpaper, maple leaf tattoo, dionysius god, pussy licking, steven meisal photography, blind eyes, beetle plate, tattoo koi, kris millering, columbia sailboat, lung, licking pussy, ferret, and topless girls.

Now we know. Go team internet.

I want to take a day soon where all I do is take pictures. Where I get up, shove furniture out of the way, do ridiculous things with random objects, cover the floor in newspaper, pin sheets to my ceiling, and treat my apartment like a set. I haven't done it in a long time, though really, we haven't had the greatest weather lately either. It's like winter just never got the hint to sod off. If I owned even one light, it wouldn't matter, I could just set it up and call it the races, but serious as rain, I'm stuck waiting for sunlight in a city where the cloud cover is so thick that two in the afternoon looks like dusk. And the cold! All of the local pundits have dubbed this month Junuary, as if it's sort of cute that our seasons have shifted by a solid three months.

Hotel Elda offers a fifteen percent discount to bloggers.

people like smoke

2008-06-12T22:32:33Z

City of Shadows, long exposure shots of crowds in St. Petersburg, Russia by Alexey Titarenko.

via bldgblog.

kt: self-esteem

2008-06-11T23:35:41Z

My mad friend Katie has just released a book of photography.

It will mostly be self-portraits, and they will mostly be nude. So go to and conquer, people.
If you'd like your book to be signed, you can email Katie at iamkatiewest at the yahoo.ca.
Maybe if she makes enough, she can help finance my trip to her wedding.

BUY IT HERE

RUN DMCA

2008-06-11T23:22:51Z

Government of Canada to Table Bill to Amend the Copyright Act: "OTTAWA, June 11, 2008 -- The Honourable Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry, and the Honourable Josée Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages, and Minister for La Francophonie, will deliver brief statements and answer media inquiries shortly after the tabling of a bill to amend the Copyright Act. Members of the media will also be able to attend a technical briefing and lock-up prior to the tabling of the bill to amend the Copyright Act."

from Corey Doctorow via bOINGbOING, (emphasis mine):

Here it is, folks, at long last: Industry Canada Minister Jim Prentice is about to introduce his Canadian version of America's disastrous Digital Millennium Copyright Act tomorrow. In so doing, he is violating his own party's promise to seek public consultation on all treaty accession bills, he's ignoring the cries of rightsholders, industry, educators, artists, librarians, citizens' rights groups, legal scholars and pretty much everyone with a stake in this, except the US Trade Representative and the US Ambassador, who, apparently, have had ample opportunity to chat with the Minister and give him his marching orders.

Watch this space [the bOINGbOING post - jh] -- we'll have all kinds of ways for you to call your MP, the Minister's office, and everyone else with a say in this sordid, ugly sellout. In 1998, the US bill criminalized the majority of American net-users at the stroke of a pen with a bill that cost tens of thousands of downloaders their life's savings, allowed the entertainment industry to destroy innovative companies and devices, and did not reduced infringement or pay a single artist. Ten years of this misery and absurdity, ten years of trying to make the Internet worse at copying, and all it's done is drive a rift between customers and musicians and allowed the music industry to piss away the business opportunity of a lifetime with lawsuits and saber-rattling.

Canada can do better. Certainly, it can't possibly do any worse -- unless men like Prentice continue to make law without allowing Canadians to get a say in it.

Help this article on Digg.

UPDATE: Turns out the proposed Canadian DMCA is worse than the American one.