and the only ones who read this, so hey let's celebrate us for a bit!
the other side of being offline for so many days is I didn't get a chance to post about our arts and crafts nights.
first of all, I took some pretty pictures of Kat. She looks amazing, we got destroyed by mosquitos, and I learned a lot about how not to shoot against a light source well after dusk and how to aggressively reduce and hide noise. Now I know why I need a flash and some reflectors, so I can shoot like Nikola "number one shooter of drugged out glitterati looking drugged-out-fabulous" Tamindzic). Seriously it was like completely night time when we took these, so the over exposure is all photoshop
such a pretty girl.
then a few days later Gary was in town and we decided to fight the man by spray painting stencils of animals other than fish next to storm drains. We made rum slurpees and drove to a parking lot in richmond to start cutting out stencils
Gary made a lamb and then he and Kerry made a wicked alligator.
I made a Lascaux cave style buffulo and started working on a dinosaur playing guitar, but didn't finish it. I also started work on an orthodox jew, but that seemed inappropriate.
in the end we sprayed like, one drain then drove to Tsawassen for no reason and got all tired. Next time Gary is around though, we will tear shit up like glue huffing hardcore skids. Civil disobedience in the name of nothing at all! non specific societal aggression! anarchy soon-ish!
and then I took a picture of myself in the 10 dollar sunglasses I bought earlier.
and saturday it's the lantern festival! we're gonna make something huge!
my friends are incredibly awesome
returning to the fold
I've been offline since sunday thanks to the fine folks at panda internet security, who released a program so buggy that immediately upon install I am brought before the mighty BSoD to offer up my hard drive in ritual sacrifice. I wind up having to go into the registry and manually remove every trace of this program (that is ironically designed to prevent situations exactly like this) and during this process I deleted some windows file that makes internet work, and it can't be recovered, so it is backup,format, and reinstall time.
It's nice to be back, here's my favourite things from the internet that I missed while I was away:
1) attractive french modern dance students covered in glitter dancing to indie rock
I like this song a lot, but I lovelovelove french girls and glitter, which is why I had this on repeat for most of last week. The girl in the grey tank top who is more or less the lead is amazingly beautiful to me. She is ideal girlfriend material in every way I can think of. all I know about her is that she is into the arts, is amazingly beautiful in a very feminine way, and is either french or is in france. All of these things are 10 out of 10 and I love making myself feel lonely by watching this video of her.
2)comedy
Cat and Girl is usually either actually funny or admirably clever, this one is both.
also, Derek and Simon at Superdeluxe.com just keeps delivering, and the maria bamford show is really good too, even though sometimes it's not so much funny as it sad. her pug is adorable.
3) always knowing exactly where lindsay lohan is at all times and exactly what she is doing.
4) internet shopping is my new late night hobby. I don't actually buy much but I do spend a lot of time on b+h and tokyo flash, trying to decide between the many impractical but chic models they offer. this is the current leader, but I want to get 2 or 3 to match different outfits. I also want to get a flash for my camera and a telephoto lense, even though I know they won't make me any better a photographer.
more scattered depressing rambling.
do you believe in medication?
do you know what it feels like to be disconnected from life? to feel farther and farther from the earth you know with every passing day?
here's a messed up venn diagram to explain the parallel thought processes I have been tracking for the last few hours
what this shows you is that my conscious mind is fucking mess, a mass of a thousand angry snakes trying to decipher quantum physics equations written in braille inside an sensory depravation tank that's been thrown off the top of olympus mons. My conscious brain thinks way to hard, about me, all the time. it overanalyzes life and everything around me trying to figure out the secrets of the universe and in the process I sometimes find myself crippled by depression because at the end of hte day I don't have the secrets of the universe.
my subconcious seems to be a little more aware the real world. Tonight I went to Richards on Richards with everybody and it was super fun but I guess I didn't look happy and so Kat forced me to smile and asked if I was ok as I was leaving and I said yes because that's what you always say. but as I got outside and walked to my car I didn't think any more about her question but I did feel more, and just let my emotions go to the place they wanted to, and once I was suitably depressed and feeling hopeless I realized that in fact I had left because I wasn't ok. I need love and approval and I need it specifically from females, and I need sex because I equate that with love, and when I am at things like that where there are seemingly so many potential partners and none of them give me that attention it makes me think that something is wrong and unattractive about me and that depresses me and makes me think that my own assessment of my self worth is inaccurate and therefore my whole system of organizing the world and my place in it is wrong and therefore I am insane and that depresses me even more. I had total and sincere fun dancing tonight and I am super glad I forced myself to go out but at the end of the night when I am alone in my bed I feel worse than if I had just stayed home. I am so lonely and I can't stop thinking about girls and sex and sex with girls but not like sexy sex, mostly just kissing and napping and cuddling sex. like the way a lovers hand feels on your back on a sunday morning when you've just woken up together and you can stare at each other for what feels like forever just lost in love. that's all I fantasize about now. I don't even look at porn any more, just this picture of this girl in paris france and instead of masturabting I mostly just look at pictures of girls like her and imagine how great it would be to have them be in love with me. this is both pleasurable and emotionally damaging. I just want someone to want me the way I want her.
and yes, as an addendum in regards to that last sentence, I know it's selfish and insane to think that my capacity to love someone is somehow larger or more sincere than any one else in the world and the great tragedy of my life is that I will never truly be happy because I'll never feel a sunshine as bright as the one that emanates from myself. I know conciously that this is not true and I am trying to stop believing it. tomorrow, I will edit this. I'm guessing I will replace all the words and ideas with completely different words and ideas.
mc abominable
things in my room last night.
I'm remembering how much I like movies lately. For a long time my brain had deteriorated to the point where I couldn't fathom the idea of dedicating two whole hours to just sitting there and only watching a movie, not multitasking at all. But having seen a few in the last week or so, I'm being reminded of how engrossing they can be, how you actually care about the story, and how they can make you feel. Not to sound cliched, but you laugh, you cry, you hurl. I saw the new harry potter on tuesday night at midnight with Brad, and I quite liked it. It was a touch slow moving, but it did a very respectable job of progressing and expanding the story. as a stand alone work it perhaps is not very worthwhile, not like the last one (which I loved.) but it's still good.
On Monday Greg and Josh and Rayme and I saw Oceans 13 and Knocked up at the Clova, which is by far the best place to see movies around here. Oceans 13 is forgotten before the credits are over but was pleasant to watch, but Knocked up was really excellent. Funny and touching and smart, it made me want to have a baby, do shrooms in vegas, and be married to someone as beautiful and funny as Leslie Mann. It also makes me think that if there was a show called " Paul Rudd is your friend." that it we would all watch it. It would just be footage of him like, watching a basketball game and occasionally asking the camera if you wanted another beer, or barbecuing and listening, while you talk to the screen to your problems with your girlfriend and then he's like "just fuck it, fuck it man." and then shaky cam of him at a bar being like, "Woooooohoo! this is what you need! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!This is what you need man!". It would make him the biggest star in the world.
Namefight Forever
Cat and girl makes me smile, it's like Calvin and Hobbes for the knit or die set. Webcomics are medium in which great work is being done en mass, from the surreal genius of White Ninja Comics and the PBF to the extremely specific language and static images of Ryan North's Dinosaur Comics.
the somewhat less original but still funny sticks and stones and unchecked success of Penny Arcade are also noteworthy.
I'm thinking about this right now because I have been working on my own comic for a while now, about our bike gang. or rather, a bike gang. I think I would call it the violent years, and it would be about people who ride bikes at night in the city and out in the forest, while they ride around and discuss things. It would be like Calvin and Hobbes meets Fantastic 4 for the people who love pavement. If tyler has time maybe he can start drawing some concept sketches. Ideally I want to have mini stories, reviews and interviews and stuff, but it's all comic book, so if we are interviewing someone there is a drawing of them talking to us. This would be a nice project to work on every now and then and publish every two months or so. I figure I can make about 200 copies for about 40 dollars on my laser printer, and just give them away for free. this will lead to all the fame, respect and girlfriends I can choke on.
my partner in crime:
Short films are much like poetry and rhinoceros attacks in the sense that when they hit they hit hard. Cashback was a short film I saw a while ago on cbc late one night that was really amazing. It was smart and funny and meaningful and one of those movies like Brick or Magnolia where not a single shot is out of place or haphhazzard and everything is the way it is for a reason. Now they are making it a full length and I'm beyond jazzed to see it.
also, the Golden Compass. And Invasion of the body snatchers looks either way cool or way lame.and Superbad. Micheal Cera is comedy gold
I saw transformers last night and it was ok, except for it's not really transformers. they don't look the like the autobots, they don't move like the autobots, and they just don't really feel like the autobots. so it's a good popcorn movie about giant robots that turn into cars, except that the turning into cars thing is incidental and it's not really about the robots, they are just plot. the whole thing really runs like a commercial for the army and for GM, which is probably because that's exactly what it is.
I am terrified of the blank page, and all it implies. Every morning when I first sit down at my computer and I pull up a word doc to start working on that days pages, I wind up staring it vacantly for what feels like a brief millennia. I have ideas, I have the desire to create, but none of my words seem to look right on the page, and the monolithic pressure I put on myself to GET IT RIGHT OR NO ONE WILL THINK YOU ARE THE SMARTEST AND CLEVEREST PERSON ALIVE reliably crushes my spirit, and I go to read blogs and news and look at pictures of girls for 2 hours or so, and then before I know it my day is ending.
When I sat down today to write this mornings post I though a bit about that blank page and how much certainty and confidence it takes to conquer the blank page nerves. I thought about the creative visualization meditation we used to do in martial arts and how it always started with going to mu shin, the state of no mind, the blank page. We would clear our minds, to free ourselves from context, from expectation, and just exist in that moment and then once we were free of everything but ourselves, we would let our thoughts go where we wanted them too. And I want to do that with my writing, but it never seems to work. And now I'm thinking that for fiction that works, but for anything you want to put some genuine emotion in, you have to have to sheer force of will to sit at the blank page and forget nothing at all. You have to realize that the blank page is not everything, it is nothing, and if you know who you are and what you want to say then all you have to to is say it. For your work to have meaning and clarity, you don't write from mu shin, you don't free yourself from context, you write from every moment you have ever experienced, you and you alone ARE THE CONTEXT, the words are just a reflection of who you are and your position in mental space and time at that moment. and more than anything lately , I want to have that confidence to know who I am and what I want to say, and start making marks on the page.
apologies all around.
last night was a very bad night for me, and I said some harsh things. I don't always feel like stabbing myself in the chest, so don't worry about me. I'm leaving the post up, because it accurately describes how I feel at times like that, and maybe that helps me understand. maybe I want anyone who cares to read it, because it says what I want to say to them in person but I never really can when I'm lost in the moment.
more importantly, it says I am sorry that I can't hold it all inside of me and I take it out on those I love, and I am truly sorry for that. I apologize with all of my conscious self for my actions and manipulative egotistical grandstanding. I apologize knowing words will never be enough. Don't forgive me, make it hurt more that I let you down and maybe I can become strong enough to overcome these feelings.
truth
Everything hurts.
Right now tonight I am the closest I have been to stabbing myself in the chest in a long time. that's a lie. I am having the strongest spikes in negative emotion I have had in a long time, and when I'm like, this, I want to stab myself or do something woefully dramatic and be dead and loved. I hate this.
it's just, like, cacaphonus inside right now.
I couldn't put it into words earlier because I lie about it. I'm lying about it right now. I'm trying to make it sound better.
I'm not sad all the time. depression, let;s call it, that choking feeling of hating myself and feeling worthless and embarrassed, is with me always. it's like my shadow. it's like the sound of the air around us. I can't get away from it, but sometimes it's not so bad. and then sometimes it's so loud it drowns out everything else around me. it's like, I'm always feeling hollow, and that hollowness is like a white light white noise, and I see you there talking to me but the white is all I can feel. I want to be a part of it. I want to be popular and I want to be strong and happy and I know everyone loves me and wants me to be that too, but it's like I know all of you are around me holding me but I can't FEEL you, your presence. or maybe it's more that I can't love you back. I don't know. fuck life.
this is about me, not feeling loved, or not feeling anything. or maybe it's about sex, and watching happy couples. part of this is about sex. more of it is probably about respect, and me needing to feel accepted. all of it is in my head. I hate myself. right now, as I type this sentence, I want to die. but that fades. the white fades. and I feel normal for a second then I feel ashamed that I am so crazy and not proud of myself cause I am a joke, I 've made myself a joke I made myself everything I am right now. I hate jokes. why is everyone always so goddamn happy. i am so lonely. I give up. on the ride home tonight in a trance and I'd have these moments where Iwould almost cry and kat and nicole were pretending to be asleep for my sake and I hated my self for being so goddamn weak and I am so sorry to them. and then when they were out of the car I wanted to crash my car, and I did about 140 the whole way home. I couldn't do it though. my impulses to harm myself are strong but they are just that, impulses. my internal logic, the real concious me gave up on suicide at the end of the bad old days.
grow your hair, rip your jeans, stop caring.
It's like the internet never happened when you look at the new smashing pumpkins video.
First of all, they made a video. A real honest to god music video. Not a mini movie with music, not any kind of low-budget-but clever viral, it's one of the old fashioned performance clips where the band lip synch's on a sound stage surrounded by a mildy exciting visual aesthetic and some trippy coloured lights and effects. It has a quintessentially mid 90's, pre internet major label kind of feel, the exact kind they used to make and we used to see on muchmusic, all the time, when we were bored teenagers. here's some backstory:
-Billy Corgan was a cuntface asshole and pretentious blowhard last we really saw of him, and everyone hated him for it.
-he's reformed the pumpkins without james iha or either of the bass players.
-He's releasing 4 different versions of his new album on the same day, each containing exclusive different tracks at 4 DIFFERENT big box stores, which has incensed customers and confirmed that this only slightly above average band was reforming just for the cash, and we should expect even less than we expected from the last pumpkins album.
-zwan really bit.
so no one wants billy to be happy or successful since he seems to hate all of mankind, no one really misses the band, and the whole thing sounds like a very obvious cash in. everyone WANTS to hate this reunion. it's a recipe for disaster but somehow awesome delicious came out instead.
the new song is FAN TASTIC. like, one of the best they're ever done. it's so catchy and invigorating. it's like the new feist album that is selling so well at starbucks these days but is just too good to deny. like, what are you going to do with songs these good? NOT like them? and also the video is awesome. they have a cute girl bass player like it isn't a cynical market driven cliche these days. the attitude is straight of the mid 90's too. they rock without the ugly ambition and flailing desperation of todays emo princess' and without the detached irony of the post punk set. 2:34 seconds in there is the first awesome and efficient guitar solo, and he pumps his fist sincerely at the camera. At this moment I forgive all of billy's sins. of the hubris, of the pomposity, of the undeniable selfishness in everything he does, so long as the rest of the album has songs that are that good.
it's SO fucking catchy
-update: turns out the other people in the video are fans who made their own greenscreen versions at the bands behest, online. this makes the whole thing totally post internet and bad. it's still a great song though. stupid fucking greenscreen contests...fucking decemberists...double fucking css...out of touch jerkface control freak pumpkins...
the new year
I heart Seattle, I heart Seattle bad. I kind of want to move there. Something about the city is just nice. maybe it seems to not try as hard as Vancouver, or maybe it's just that they have more shows, and there always seems to be stuff to do. However, they lack mountains beaches, socialized health care, degrassi: the next generation, and all the phantasmaticly beautiful girls Vancouver has. anyways, I saw 4 shows there in the last 2 months or so, and 2 of them ruled my headspace for days afterwards. this was me and greg going down to see bedhead. no, sorry, the new year.
Our friend Steph was the first to pose like this and was cuter and more convincing than
we will ever be.
Dear Steph, you were cool. Why did we not hang out more? for you we pretended to give
a shit about video games and anime. in fact for you, we actually kind of DID give a shit
about video games and anime.
We pass this statue on our way to Everyday music, where we inevitably spend at least 2
hours. They have almost everything, are cheap, are not pretentious, and have great
deals on stuff that is mildly scratched. on this day I spent $90 on 100% all killer
media, including the new black lips and dinosaur jr, and a documentary about friends
forever.
We saw the new year because the main guys used to be Bedhead, who were really great.
The new year is their faster, more conventional offering, and so far is less good but
still ok. We figured they had to play at least one bedhead song because everyone who
was there was there to see the ashes of one of their favourite bands. Instead they
played all new year stuff the exact same way bedhead would play it, which turns out
to be just as good and slow and shoegazing as bedhead ever was. As Dave Bazan (who
opened and was great)was leaving the stage he said it best:
"the New year is going to come out now and make us all feel human for a while."
then they did and it was quietly mind blowing.
I know the world needs more pictures of boats like it needs holes in it's heads, but
when you're at the harbour and none of your pretty friends are around, what the fuck
else is there to do.
Brad said these pictures are hacky. He's not wrong. also, fuck picassa hard.
commmmmmmmmmmmpressionnnnnnnnnnn! aarrrgggggghhh!
my new favourite shoes that will look far more fantastic after they are all destryoed.
this little girl was at that stage where she's juuuuuust learned to run, and was
so incredibly happy to be running back and forth between her parents and the empty
space. and since she can't run very fast, it was awkward and adorable, like a
panda bear trying to do neurosurgery.
sunshine is the new noir. also, martin scorcese is the new martin scorese.
personal favourite. I need a new host for images.
the outback...Pangea...it's starting, again....
Dave moved to Australia for a year to find himself, or his spirit animal, or something. It makes me happy for Dave that he has forward momentum in his life, but sad for me because he won't be around. Also, Dave was 100% of our physics teachers, leaving no one but the internet to help us calculate velocity and have scientastic adventures. here is his going away.
Man of the Hour
Tasha!
the Alchemist
Knit and Destroy
chelsea was sad.
tyler do you have glasses now?
yes I have these ones
are they awesome?
FUCK, YES.
Tasha owns the Blur singles box set. based on this information alone I kind of want to marry her. Then once I think about all the other cool things about Tasha, I realize that both myself and most of the civilized world would be pretty happy marrying her.
and then it got all sad. At one point we were talking about Dave fucking a shark to death, and Eugene was laughing really hard unitl he cried for like, 2 seconds. It was so motherfucking poignant.
everyone will miss you ,Man. Come back someday.