... Future with a capital F....

Once again, William Gibson has found the words.

From his blog (bolding is my own, to stress my favourite bits):


"The Future, capital-F, be it crystalline city on the hill or radioactive post-nuclear wasteland, is gone. Ahead of us, there is merely…more stuff. Events. Some tending to the crystalline, some to the wasteland-y. Stuff: the mixed bag of the quotidian.


Please don’t mistake this for one of those “after us, the deluge” moments on my part. I’ve always found those appalling, and most particularly when uttered by aging futurists, who of all people should know better. This newfound state of No Future is, in my opinion, a very good thing. It indicates a kind of maturity, an understanding that every future is someone else’s past, every present someone else’s future. Upon arriving in the capital-F Future, we discover it, invariably, to be the lower-case now."

... the pursuit....

from Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay:

"Oh, Harry," she said, "I wish I were a different kind of person."

He took off his glasses with one hand, a gesture she loved, and studied her. He was exposing himself to her gaze even as he was seeing her with his own eyes.

What kind of person, he wanted to know.

"Someone," she said slowly, "who truly loves life."

He was still looking at her, still cradling his glasses in his left hand. He said, "You're the kind of person who never stops trying."

***********************

i don't know, in some ways, i think that the person always trying has it better off.

... yup... thats just about exactly it...

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz:

"'Let's do it," Bruno said, and immediately my stomach tightened. Why? A strange physical reaction was going on inside me. As soon as my idea was embraced, I no longer liked it. It now seemed to be a stupid idea, really awful. I liked it much better when it was in my head all alone. Now that it was going out in the world, I would be responsible for something that I no longer had any control of.

This was my first of a lifetime of battles with ideas: the battle of which ones to air and which to bury, burn, destroy"

I so totally get that... I have been losing that battle for years now.

... how did i miss four-eyed monsters for three whole years?....

This is the best thing....

From now on it will be the only way I date on the internet... These people decided that, rather than send back and forth lame messages, or meet (she was too shy) they would communicate artistically.

Super fun, right?

I have never gone in for the whole online dating thing... Not that I don't think it works. I just don't think it works for me. I used to make fun of it outright... no go... I did an internship after my first year of university at a PR Firm that was working on the rebranding campaign of webpersonals to lavalife.com. Webpersonals was the Worldwide Interweb extension to the company that runs those party chat line dating things.... you know, the ones with the really lame commercials... yeah, they own lavalife... or they did then. So everyone in the office had to sign up... This was back in 2000. Y2K was still fresh in everyone's mind, People still knew what compuserve was, and dating/meeting people through the internet was just not done.

Suffice it to say, I met some real losers.... but it was for work, so it didn't really count.

Since then I have just said i don't like internet dating... and yes, I make fun of it... So much so that my sister called me on it, told me I couldn't really have a say unless I tried it... so I did.

And it wasn't that bad... It wasn't that great either. Look, its not that internet dating is inherently a bad thing. But you are definitely going to find people looking for relationships... thats the point. But here's the thing. I am not looking for a relationship. The relationship should be the by-product of the person I meet, not the other way around... and that's completely a personal preference. Online daters are looking for the person best suited to the relationship they want to be in....

So you end up dating people's profiles. They have slotted themselves into categories... nice, neat, clean, friendly categories... and there is no context. You know what they like, who they are, before you are ever attracted to them... and that seems backwards to me.

Arin & Susan managed to get themselves out of those boxes... have a little context before they met up... they managed to get a sense of eachother through the quirks and preferences without actually saying flat out "these are my quirks and preferences"

I like it....

...god... i feel cheesy today....

..need to get inspired to make it through holidays with the fam?


...here's everything you could possibly need to hear....

....take me to the midway....

.... i do not post about my personal life very often... in fact, I tend to try and steer clear of it altogether.... obviously everything i write about is something i like, something i've experienced, noticed, thought.... but i mean, i try to keep it out of my personal life... those blogs are interesting to read, but i am just not that interested in exposing myself that way....

that said, I must say that i had a profound thought yesterday that I have the overwhelming desire to share with the world....

I went to the Ex (the Canadian National exhibition... theex.com) and I was riding the Zipper, this nauseating, flip you around, spin you, upside-down ride that has been around forever and never lost its appeal... and while i was flying, spinning, totally losing my sense of direction, screaming, laughing, crying, totally exhilirated I realized.....


....Sex should be more like the zipper....


Now, I don't think that I have had an above-average share of bad sex... I just think that when we are kids we are taught not to talk about sex, and even now, when kids are encouraged to talk about it, now about it, its something that carries a significance so great, consequemces and responsibilities so major that we come to think of it as the transcendent experience that will far surpass any reaction, sensory overload we have eever experienced.... and while it can be F'n great, it is just never as good as the Zipper....

I think I am gonna print up buttons and t-shirts that say.... "You must be as good as the zipper to ride this ride" and stand at the exit of the ride selling them....

....I think I will make a killing....

...from god's mouth to his.... lego....

... best thing of the day....

... my first ten commandments....

...infinite jest....

... have you ever read this?....

...I have a theory no one ever has... i think it's in one of my notes, somewhere a while back....

...Myself, I have tried it at least a dozen times, make that a baker's dozen... i think it's great, but i always take too long a break before coming back to the middle of it and feel the need to start again... i simply cannot accept that i am SUPPOSED to be that confused....

I did, however, collect, in my experience with this book, that THIS aspect of it was a negative thing....

...do you really want to live in a world that David Foster Wallace's sick imagination created.... especially if no one has read to the end to findd out how it all ends?

.... god i love the british....

Most anyone who knows me knows that I despise Michael Moore, which is especially difficult since I actually agree with his politics... but by the very nature of what he does to his audiences, how he excites them, turns them into an angry ohm, you barely get out the words "I hate him but...." before people are caling you a dirty fascist and asking you to send your dirst born off to iraq......

As someone who places the utmost importance on the importance of film, its capability of social change and, perhaps most importantly, the RESPONSIBILITY of the filmmaker to follow his representations with his own actions, I have to say, I wanted to actually walk up and knock the stupid baseball cap off the smug bastards head when i saw him, literally, hob-knobbing, at the 2006 TIFF.... He doesn't ever lie, or misrepresent the truth, but the fact is, the truth is NEVER as interesting or entertaining as Moore makes it out to be....

That's why no one goes to see documentaries.... the truth is boring.... Moore's flash-fest changes, alters, massages and selectively sees the truth in order to get the attention of rapt audiences.... it's the propaganda of the left....

Apparently a few people agree with me.

All the following are excerpts from an article about Michael Moore that was written by hiw biographer, Roger Rapaport, for the UK Daily, the Independent:



"[Michael Moore's] new dream appears to be turning out Frank-Capra-style features that deliver a high moral message along the lines of Mr Smith Goes to Washington.

"Are his films documentaries, or are they fictional comedies?" Since Moore gets the credit for making documentaries as popular as dramatic films, let's turn to the first cameraman Michael that ever hired, Kevin Rafferty, for the answer. This famed cinéma-vérité film-maker, who is also George W Bush's first cousin, gave Moore his film debut in Blood in the Face, an exposé of the "racialist right". The then Flint journalist Moore scored a major coup when he helped Rafferty's team film a Michigan Ku Klux Klan rally where two lovebirds said their marital vows in a ceremony illuminated by the glow of a burning cross.
Rafferty says that he was stunned when he arrived in Flint and Moore handed him a terrific shot-list for Roger & Me. This was simply not the way cinema verité documentaries were made: a director would create the storyline after shooting was finished. Two-and-a-half years later, Rafferty was even more astonished when he saw that the shot-list had become the movie. Instead of shooting first and editing afterwards, in the traditional manner of documentaries, Michael had scripted Roger & Me like a dramatic feature.

Even some of Moore's fans worry that he partially stages scenes, undercutting the value of his own work. I spoke about this recently with the cameraman Bruce Schermer, who was paid $5,000 for shooting about 60 per cent of Roger & Me (which was sold to Warner Brothers for $3m). He points out that, during the shooting of the film's famous Christmas Eve eviction of impoverished Flint tenants, Moore was apparently not getting what he wanted. Off camera, he discussed the problem with an unemotional mother. When Schermer turned his camera back on, this evictee amped-up the scene by screaming. Ironically, adds the cameraman, some of the auxiliary lighting power required to shoot this scene came from the evictee's electricity outlet.

Throughout his career, Moore has been the master of constructive failure"








................Michael Moore... I hate you

...it's impossible....

....to have as much fun as a drag queen.... it just can't be done... they are living their fucking DREAM..... do your clothes make you that happy?

.... yeah, i didn't think so.....

...no harm in trying though..... always try....

...do you ever just wanna bust shit up?....

....Martin Klimas does.... but when he does it, it's art.....

....His new exhibition, entitled "Temporary Statues" is up at the Foley Gallery in NYC. Basically. Klimas throws stuff at the ground, and photographs it at the point of impact. Creating images of statues that will only ever exist in the moment they are created.....

It got me to thinking.... art is supposed to be representative of experience, emotion, externalizing the essence of the human drama... right?

I think that's what makes these successful... like the need to throw something, create that kind of chos.. fragments splintering off, it is sort of the externalization of what's going on with you... well, with me, I guess.... the need to break something is sort of like the explosion, the fragmentation of everything... that's what frustration is... everything going a million different ways... it'll get cleaned up, sorted out... but just for a second - brain, heart, patience - they go in a kabillion different directions.

Anyway.... enough of what i think, because whether what I just said is so much bullshit, or whether you're kinda pickin' up what I'm laying down... you have to admit, these pictures are fucking cool..... On the other hand, if you're into the whole "what others think" thing you can check out the Foley Gallery Blog... it's pretty cool... no entry on Klimas yet... but I am sure one is to come forthwith....

Klimas, a German photographer, who is succesful commercially, as well as in the arts community, does a lot of capturing "moments in time". By definition, all still photography is but a fleeting frame... but his workdraws attention to this fact... it's meaning exists purely on the surface... without any message exhibit the self-awareness of it's fragility, its uniqueness....

It kinda reminds of that Pleix video Birds:Vitalic. Its so random... and defends itself from analysis by having no meaning beyond its own image...

If you try and read into it you will become so frustrated you just may need to bust shit up.

.... a matter of brine....

.... the politics of food can lead to many a debate.... sharing, ordering, preparing, savouring..... all these can lead to many hours-long discussions (i have had more than one turn into shouting matches).... People are serious about food, and when it comes to matters of taste nothing can be taken lightly.....

.... that said..... one should know the deep-seated (or is it deep-seeded) love I have for pickles.... it's nearly fanatical.... The following is a quote from a fellow pickle enthusiast, which I found on a page dedicated to such discussions. It is highly informative, intelligent and logical....

(and for those of you who don't speak hebrew, or it's english transliteration, tzedakah means charity):


"At a deli, the venerable pickle is cut length-wise either into quarters or eighths. That notwithstanding, the entire pickle should be served as a matter of good graces. The reason for it is known to any proper yiddishkite proprietor- when sitting at a table with other, the pickle is necessarily public property and parts of said pickle shall be eaten by all and sundry. By providing the full pickle, you allow the person who ordered the pickle to perform tzedakah by giving some away while keeping some for his own consumption." -Matt Consky

...so it goes....

... these were the words uttered by author/narrator Kurt Vonnegut in slaughterhouse five, every time a character would die....

... and now, it is time to use the words for the prolific man himself....

Kurt Vonnegut passed yesterday, after falling almost two weeks ago in his home in
NYC, which caused irreversible brain injuries. A legend, a genius, a writer and 'just a guy'.

...he will be missed by all who knew him, if only through his words (which may be deeper than you most people you actually know)

... I unearthed this quote from an interview done with Vonnegut a while back, it perfectly sums up the man, his sombre nature, his twisted humour, and his light approach to the worlds heaviest issues. I will close my post with it:

"I'm embarrassed to have lived this long. It's in terrible taste (laughs). You know I had a fire several years ago, and it would have been so shapely if I'd died in the fire. But here I am, and of course I'm suing the cigarette company because on the package they promised to kill me, and here I am."

-Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

... i fall down a lot....

... and perhaps that was why i was so drawn to the work of Kerry Skarbakka.....

It's kinda fucking awesome..... any image that you see in this post is from his website.... I claim credit for nothing, except the complete awe that strikes the viewer..... I am all over the sense of wonder......

He bases the works on Heidigger who described human existence as a process of perpetual falling. On his site Skarbakka claims that, "it is the responsibility of each individual to "catch ourselves" from our own uncertainty. [His] work is in response to this delicate state. It questions what it means to resist the struggle, to simply let go, and the consequences of holding on. The images stand as reminders that we are all vulnerable to losing our footing and grasp, symbolizing the precarious balancing act between the struggle against our desire to survive and our fantasy to transcend our humanness."

Fuck.... and I just thought I was clumsy... turns out i am being philosophical and shit..... cool

.....timing and circumstance.....

....Can really fuck you, even when it seems to be working in your favour. you just can convince yourself that the world wants you to win.... It seems so great, you are wooing, lulling in softly. The beauty is in the numbers.... it's so far away, there's no way I can get into trouble with this one. It's an impossibility. That's the beauty of this game. With so much distance, so much warning. There is NO way you can possibly get into trouble

...truth is, you are just talking yourself into a big ass hole.... It's always trouble. There may be distance, and the timing may seem right, but the matters of your heart, the bad habits you can't get over, they are with you always.... You have gotten in the jam this time, sticky and sweet, but you look up and its all suddenly too real....

.... and now you owe toronto hydro a kajillion dollars, and you are left thinking, how the fuck did that happen? I swear to god, I just paid this off... I had so much time... they gave me an extra month...... you know how it happened

.... a band of misfits....

... I am sitting amidst memory. The sounds of stories, and voices and laughter and song tell the story of who i am, at the heart. The people around me are where I have come from and, more importantly, who I have become. More than ever I realize that I am who I am because at 14 - wide-eyed, scared, lonely and alone - a group of people, thrown together by privilege and circumstance, showed me that all i was afraid of was being who i could become, and that who i could become was a person worth being.....

....She plays my goosebumps, my memory and my dreams. She plays my happy memories, my courage and my fears. She plays my sense of humour, my curiousity and my calm. And as i watch her from my seat, singing, joking, making fun of herself in a way that shows humility, yet awareness of her own power, her own talent, i am transported to another time, another realization....

....A rooftop amidst trees, the cool, granular tarring of rough roof on my back and a hot summer wind flowing over my front, I watched a million stars, lieing silently, still, amidst broken chords... they must have a name, but to me they are the chords that sound like water, dropping and breaking apart in waves on a glassy pool.... I lie and listen as music comes at me from above, on the peak of the roof, from her guitar.... her hands.... her voice.... her heart.....And that is the love that sustained me, nurtured me and gave me heart, strength and pride.... Humble and strong, soft, yet rugged. A mountain guide. And the goosebumps that come from knowing that this, this is a moment. Like, a 'moment'... that will stay with me, that i will remember, that will change me.... and i do, and it has. It was a moment of realization... not of anything in particular. just an awareness that it was a moment. As simple as that, or rather, as complex as the things that conspire to lead to awareness. The stars, the sky, the music and me. That was enough, it was everything.

A decade later. Another sky, another night and her voice brings it all back. To a room where the same people laugh, tell the same stories, the same jokes, that have linked us for a generation. Through time and change and distance and all that is growing up (or growing older). And we have, at our centre, a bond that is bigger than the stories we tell, the summer space we shared, the memories that exist for each of us. We are eachothers teachers, each others students, audiences, co-conspirators, cheerleaders, celebrators and shoulder to lean on. Life has taken us down different roads, we are a band of misfits, an unnatural table. We draw attention with our size, our disparity, the noise. there are suits and students and lawyers and singles and actors and wives and homeowners and worldtravellers and uncles and teachers and orphans and liquidity and renters... But somehow we are all the same.

We are the ones who put a lot of weight in sentiment. Empathy, Sincerity, Dependability, Integrity, Tolerance, Courtesy, Courage. These were words with meaning. Are words with meaning, for a group that devoted time, months at a stretch, to nothing but learning the value of the human spirit. Though I still feel silly spouting sentiment in a world where I am largely a cynic, I push through and put it out there. Tonight I am happy to be the fool who believes. To live in another moment. have a perfect moment live again through me. Tonight I trust that happiness and trust, purity of spirit exists. I saw it, in each memory changing, yet frozen in time, and perhaps in the spaces between us.




ps. the goosebumpsreside here - http://www.abandofowls.ca/

I have been talking about this for a while now....

.... and still no one has gotten it for me?


This is really the coolest thing I have ever seen. For someone who likes books, design, equality, and playing with meaning, it ties it all together in one kickass package.

I love that it didn't stop with the big three, I love that it is a big fuck you to so much history, while maintaining respect for the product of it, for the faith in it.... I love that I can have it at my house (well, one day, when I can afford to be cool). That it is a statement in ownership... not through swooshes or arches or logoes of anysort. It takes the original logo and brands it, through the unbranding of it, the evening out of what it is supposed to be.

I was talking about this the other day actually.... After I read this article I tried to engage a friend in the debate.... well, to be fair, I tried to get him to listen to me rant about what a great theory this is.... I miss my old college roommate. She was a theology and poli sci student. I majored in (pop) culture studies, and sociology. And it was the days where theory was king, no idea had to be applied. Only had to make sense. We had some zinger debates. I guess I look for that in anyone.

But I digress, since I could not get anyone to talk religion/branding with me I will simply rant here. There is less input from anyone, but also less dissent, which we all know I prefer. It seems like a smple concept, I know that people have caught on to it.... Religion was the first major brand. It had everything: logo/icon, visioning, brand loyalty, promise of fulfillment....lack of fulfillment, advertising/marketing teams.... the whole megillah, if I may.

And now that branding is the new religion, the old school is adapting..... (Buddy Jesus? anyone remember that from Dogma ?) All this adaptation is just trying to make religion more brand identified. It is the faith, the solidarity that are the points now, instead of the beliefs, the content of the "name brand" Even atheists are now a religion, in this new sense.

Because what is religion for, in this world of skepticism, intellectuallism, rationalism and, ultimately, loneliness? We are simply looking for something to believe in. It no longer has to be a deity, it just has to look good.

...boys....

...I am no longer curious about them....

.... I am now quite certain.... with no degree of confusion or inquisitiveness that they are simply the MOST confusing thing..... since girls....

....Whether you have dated them, slept with them, talked to them, looked at them funny, looked at them at all, flirted with them, broken up with them, gotten an std from one, given a gift to one, told any of them the truth (god forbid), walked by one, accidently let a nipple slip infront of one, breathed on one, smelled one, let one smell you, paid one a compliment, worked for one, employ one, work with one, been in the same room as one.......

.... I have lost my thought, oh yeah, there is no understanding them, no matter what, they manage to not be thinking anything that is rational, or even understandably irrational....

.... and i no longer care..... but, this, for some reason i am not (i repeat not) interestedin, will probably make me more attractive to them....

Let me tell you an epitomical story....

.... There was once a boy, we'll call him sammy (names have been changed to protect identity, plus, I could never actually have this happen with a guy named sam, way too weird) Anyway sammy and I were friends, and one new years (when I decided that drinking two bottles of champagne through a straw was a really great idea) we ended up making out. Just kissing, standing in a room full of people. At the end of the night I went my way, he went his....

.... well, Sammy went absolutely insane. He wouldn't talk to me anymore... When we were in the same bar, he avoided me like the plague... by the by it came out through mutual friends that he was afraid that I had fallen for him, that our drunken (sloppy) new years kiss had been misconstrued by me.... and that I actually believed that there was some future for us based on this kiss.... Do guys think we all fell off the pages of Cosmo magazine?..... Anyway... That is just half the tale

.... Thinking how RIDICULOUS Sammy was being I decided I would teach him a lesson. One night, a common friends birthday, I conspired with a couple of his friends to make sure he got to the bar first.... I wanted a dramatic entrance. So they tipped me off when he was settled and surrounded (this needed an audience) and I strutted into the bar and walked right up to Sammy, and started relling off his greatest fears, right to his face, to the stunned silence of the bar around me...

"How could you?" I cried, "I thought we had something special... you really meant something to me sammy... I mean, it was real, you felt it, I know you did.... and nothing? you don't even call, I mean, I thought we could really have had something, thatwe DID have something... you disgust me Sammy, no.... don't talk, nothing you can say will make this right... you know what, I can't even look at you right now, I just can't be here"

And with that I turned on my heel and strodeout of the bar, no looking back, expecting that all my co-conspirators would fill him in on the joke.... well, they did, and guess what...

.... It worked for him!!!!!! After that there was nothing I could do to keep him away from me, he wanted to take me out, he wanted to start something up. He found out I was kidding about the whole thing, that I was so surprised by the fact he thought I wanted something with him, and was so appalled by his behaviour that I would play such a joke, and all of a sudden, I was the girl he wanted....

.... seriously, who the fuck are they? I think all boys may be martians from the planet Whatthefuck, in sector, Itmakesnosense

by jove, i think i got it

I had one of those huge state of the union talks with one of my friends tonight. He is in a new relationship... as he has been several times over the last year... and he said something that struck me as so true that i felt the need to share it with everyone (if anyone actually is reading this) he said:

I think love is what happens after you stop wondering why it has to be so hard.

I loved it so much i almost leaped across the table and kissed him! It's so true. cuz you can care for someone so deeply and be in such the wrong place that it can't possibly be right. It's the whole right place right time thing... and it brings in that "you just know" thing. you don't know cuz it's easy, you know because...well... because you just know. And no matter how easy, or right on paper it may be, it can be just not right, and if you are worrying about whether it is, it probably isn't.

The truth is, if it is meant to work, you are gonna worry about how, not why. Why isn't even a factor.

That was my parents problem, or rather, they are the illustration of their generations problem.... they didn't care about why...Not at first anyway. See, our grandparents way worked... they didn't care about why, they just asked the other questions. the answer to why was "because" or even "we have to"... Our parents, they were raised this way, and then collective consciousness showed them that there were other options... than they started to se them, make them attainable, and stop thinking they owed anyone anything.... Now we "owe it to ourselves," and to the people around us, as we cannot serve them until we know how to serve ourselves... we have been somewhat forced into self-analysis. In this modern world of pop psychology and over-rationalization, "WHY" has been drilled into us, and we can't even begin to consider how, where, when, or anything else, unless that ever-ethereal why, is not an issue.

The problem of course is that why is always countered by "why not?" The problem now is, that why not has also grown exponentially, with quicky divorce, fast food, microwave, internet mentality. Everything that is done can be done faster, and undone just as quickly. It can be erased, and with valium, be like it never happened at all.

I think this may be why i am so relationship-phobic. I due to circumstance and parent-induced psychosis, got forced, very young, to ask myself "why" when it wasn't even a quetion i could even begin to answer, or even have the courage to deal with. Now it is so ever-present in my mind that that gut feeling, that fear, that doubt, has become so familiar that even the slightest whiff of it can send me running.

Am I luckier? cuz I won't end up in the wrong situation? or am i dooming myself to fail? cuz I am not allowing myself the chance to make something of nothing. Can you make something from nothing, or must you discover something that was there all along?

there are no answers, I know. and my own solution will happen as it happens, no matter what anyone says... I really don't care that much... I think, even at 20-whatever, I have seen and experienced enough to know that it all keeps going, and like it or not, I will end up somewhere, somehow, and that my own nature won't let me stay if it ain't no good (yes, I likes me some honky-talk)....

This seem to take a more stream of consciousness approach that I was not really going for... If you read this far you must be fucking bored out of your mind.