Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Cats Are Loaded too Much

This cat wiki has the catchiest titles, including some of the hits you may already know and routinely use,
Such as:
Big Cat Longer than One Side of Kotasu
How about:
Too Much Cats Are Packed in a Box
Don't forget, the ever favourite:
Fights of two cats with claw extended
... actually, that last one is my favourite one.

Creative Design


When I was 10, my mom started going to church - without my dad.

My old man wasn't really into religion. More precisely, he wasn't really into the idea that Jesus was the son of God. The immaculate conception really pissed him off. Usually, he would sit in stony silence listening to someone talking about the way of God. His face would get redder and redder and his head would start tic-nodding up and down on a horizontal axis. It was the final sign that he could no longer contain the pure, spitting anger building up on the back of his teeth like Satan's plaque.

Once he built up enough of his jizzy force, he would start foaming at the mouth and hurling headlong statements like, "Mary got knocked up by some guy and to save face she named God as her bastard child's father. Com'on, are we really to believe that God would bother taking the time to come down to earth and impregnate a woman with his child?" And then he'd seethe on and on about the whole fandango, until his face exploded like Veruca Salt. Then he'd quietly walk over to cupboard and pour himself a mug of boxed wine. The conversation was OVER.

I was always shocked that he could get so angry about th whole thing. For a man who vehemently insisted that he didn't believe, he sure believed very strongly in this opinion. He was almost speaking in tongues.

My mom went to curch without my father, but that didn't stop her from dragging us along. It was okay. She was United, which is probably one of the mellowest forms of Christianity out there. Mom stuck with the "pro gay ordination" side when the factions split, so it was pretty interesting watching the flock split ways - I was pretty confused by the "nice" people who went the other way - I though compassion and love of your fellow wo/man was a pretty important aspect of this faith. Guess not.

So, when my grandfather started dying, my mom decided that my brother and I should get baptised. I was about 12 or 13. Now, I had no desire to get baptised. Even to this day, I'm not really into any kind of institutional ritual that deems you are part of the sanctimonious "in" crowd, whether it be through marriage, baptism, or sorority hazing. It seems so weak - like a crutch.

But I was cool with doing it for Grandpa. He was a cool guy. He never pushed anything on me - except for those powdery, white candies in rumpled white bags that, along with salt, Scottish men never seem to be without. So, I figured I'd do it because I loved him. But, if the minister was going to make me give up my belief in evolution, then I was not going to do it. It was then that I forged, what I now call "Creative Design". Yes, I decided to believe that "Adam and Eve" were the first sentient (as those bloody Humanists like to call it) apes.

So, I sat with the minister in his chambers before they dribbled water over my head, and told him I was only willing to get baptised if I could believe that Adam and Eve were apes. He leaned forward, peered at me, and said, "That's fine, but are you a good person?" I figured that I was pretty good, so I said yes. And he leaned back in his leather desk chair and said, "Good, then you can believe what you believe." What a hoot.

These days, I'm truly fostering a belief in "Creative Design". But who wouldn't want to be a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Office for Soft Architecture

For the poetry lovers among us - yes, I'm talking to both of you - let's move to Amsterdam and frequent the art salons: Mediamatic.

What's wrong with Canada? Why can't we integrate art into our daily routine? Why the blockades? Why the fear?

By the sounds of Mediamatic's mandate, Amsterdonians have figured out that embracing the element of suprise does not signify a loss of control, but instead shows confidence in change - and thus, a much more exciting world, they do have: "It matches the topical with heritage in a sometimes fuzzy, but always surprising way." I want to live in a fuzzy, surprising world full of topical history and art!


I finally have time to read - more than one book at one time. Here's what's currently in rotation:
1. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
2. Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture by Lisa Robertson
3. The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay (Why must all sci-fi/fantasy websites be in tones of soft purple? Why?)

Here are all the books that I have read with talking cats in them:
1. The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
2. Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley
3. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Ghetto Pimp Summer vs. Zeus Pimpin' Eternal

Take this and bookmark it - you myth-loving bastards: Encyclopedia Mythica.

It's been a number of years since I read the classics so I'm feeling a bit rusty at the Pantheon gates, but Zeus sure did get around, and around, and around to it: Zeus' consorts and offspring. This god had some serious Freudian issues, which is retarded because gods can't die. He didn't need to make little copies of himself, so why the drive to procreate? What would drive a god to pro... wait, I got it: there's only one thing gods can't have, and that's human nature. And if he couldn't be human, at least his sperm could become human. (Ignore Athena - that was simple revenge.)

Hey there's a goddess named Pheme. So that's where "fame" comes from.

Zeus should start writing for Ghetto Pimp Summer - they never post, and the only pimping talk going on over there is about music, fiancees, and technology. Yawn. Zeus: If you can hear me, please help these boys out - their blog needs a shot of your prolifically pimpin' attitude.

Friday, November 25, 2005

Canadians: Intergalactic Friends and Alien Lovers

God I love Canadians. And I get such a kick out of being one. Why? Because we make the weirdest news. I spotted on this snappy headline on Drudge: "Former Canadian Minister Of Defence Says UFOs are Real; Warns Of 'Intergalactic War'..."

What a great article. Really. I dig this Former Canadian Minister's style, even though I suspect that he had one too many Laser Floyd nights at his local planetarium. But perhaps this crack politician is onto something. Maybe we Canadians should take a cue from this man and work on fostering our political Star Trekkie-ness. We coined the term "Global Village", and now it's outdated. We house William Gibson, and revere him as a genious. Let's introduce the term "Intergalactic Village" and make it our mission save friendly aliens from America's intergalactic foreign policy! Com'on. It'll be fun. Who's with me?

Let's hit American where it hurts: Roswell. They won't even see it coming. That's right America: we don't like how you intend to treat aliens, and this time we're not going to passively sit here and let you shove your brand of foreign policy up our ass. We'd rather alien probes do that.

I mean really, what if aliens are nice people, and you blow them up first - before we ask them if they have a cure for AIDS? Or worse, before we find out they are, like, totally hot with funky sex organs? We've watched Star Trek: we know that ALIENS ARE HOT. This time we are going to fight for our right to enjoy everything alien: new cuisine, hot sex organs, neat-but-totally-useless tech gadgets.

We crack me up - what other country is cool enough to constantly ignore the childish antics and prater of our big brother, and then get pissed off over THE HUMBLE TURBOT AND ALIENS? That right: us. You can push us Canadians pretty far America, and we just kinda watch and quietly make fun of you. But if you take on our fish or aliens, well, then you will feel the full extent of our wrath and ire. We fight for food... and alien sex. Watch us take you down with our "shock and awe" tactics.

Vote yes to aliens. No to intergallatic war. It's your duty as a Canadian.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

The Poop of Life


I watched a rather sweet, but not at all saccharine, movie last night called "Me and You and Everyone We Know". It's a damn fine movie.

The writer/director Miranda July is an Oregon artist. And I must say, she has a knack for realistically portraying the poop of life.

I loved the instant messaging "poop" scenes. So earnest. Now, everyone knows that poop is a bodily function. But who knew it's also a lovely form for exploring human miss-and-connection. July has really honed in on "communication errors"- between what is said and what is incorrectly assumed - and explored how difficult, uncomfortable, and necessary these breakdowns are, as well as persistance, and the willingness to put yourself in potentally embarassing situations in order to re-align and expose the true intention of the conversation. I can relate.

Scatalogical form over function - this is what makes this film rock. The base art of communication devices explored right down to the solar anus - I'm sure Bataille may shudder at this comparison. But reallly, this film is all about the poop of life, from sunrise to sunset.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Design Whores

For all you Ikea catalogue-weilding design whores out there who just don't have an apartment or budget big enough to satiate your nesting addiction, please introduce yourself to this virtual placebo: Design a Room.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

"Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down!"



Did any of you grow up with weeble wobbles? I did. They were my favourite toys. And they got along famously with my acorn people - Weebles were anglos, and acorns were francophones (obviously: acorn stems are natural tams). I remember giving the little guys baths. Then this rot would grow in between their plastic casings and their cardboard faces, turning them into mutants (maybe why I'm so fond of the Alien series).

Well, they've come back... and they're just not the same. In the good old days, they were egg-shaped, now they are these gawdy plastic-faced McDondald's gifts. And there's no plastic casing! They're nothing without those casings... nothing.

Whoah! I'm getting to the age where I can finally say "It's just not like the good 'ole days, bah!" I am now off to enjoy my new-found curmudgeonly ways... and gather acorns. I'm suddenly feeling crafty.

Friday, November 18, 2005

No quarter

Yeah but guess who the girl is who thinks she's fat but is nothing but gorgeous?

And yes, I was hung over. YEEEEAH!

Three Bottles Later.....

HEY OKSANA! HOW'S THE HANGOVER TREATING YOU, YOU BEAUTIFUL THING? IS YOUR KIND, SMART FRIEND FEELING SHITTY TODAY TODAY TOO?

Props to you for posting drunk. I feel your physical pain.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

how to start

Ooh girls. Let's get a man's perspective here.

So I show a man I love and trust pictures of all of us.

"She thinks she's FAT? My god. What the fuck."

Essentially, what the fuck is wrong with women that the beautiful smart ones feel inadequate? That the smart kind handsome men feel lost? Where have we gone wrong, when we're single and we feel like the last ones standing, unmarried at 36 and suddenly feel like old maids, when we can't embrace our beauty, power, intelligence?

Fuck this stupidity. We have to stop this kind of thinking.

Only beauty. Only truth. Only power. OK? No more bullshit.

What is, is.

I looked at a picture of myself tonight taken when I was 26. I remember thinking at the time that I looked incredibly fat. I was in Nepal, covered in coloured powder (it was the huge Hindu festival of Holi). I looked exhausted, exhilarated.

I was tiny.

Dear Bacovegetarian

Dear Bacovegetarian,

I am a 30 year old woman who has been single for over a year now, and
I need some advice. Now, I'm not looking for the Dear Abby style of
advice, I'm looking for some pearls of wisdom from a man who is a
self-proclaimed guilty meat-sneaking vegetarian. Feel free to get off
topic whenever you like.

Why am I coming to you for advice? Well, you have consistently
provided me chicken nuggets of wisdom - and that's the kind of wisdom
this ghetto bitch needs.

(Did you know that their chicken nuggets are infused with beef fat;
their "shakes", with chicken lard? Now that's bacovegetarianism to the
extreme. But I'm getting off topic.)

Here's the thing: I live in a major urban centre that is just too damn
small, and I am finding that my sex, er, six degrees of separation
have whittled down to about two. And in a town like this, that's just
too narrow a dating margin ... "we can't keep meeting like this,
really... no, really. No, I'm not being nice. I mean it: we have to
stop meeting like this".

I know that moving to another city and starting afresh, is really the
only complete solution to my problem, but that's not currently an
option. So, how can I turn my dating pond into a lake? How can I
recover those lost four degrees?

Please Bacovegetarian. You're my only hope. The Last Ghetto Bitch
Standing - the queen of single, the Violette le Duc of Vancouver,
the expert third wheel - needs your advice.

Here's to restating the public/private divide,
Violet

Ya well...



it is a n-affair if you shag in a sprout farm then violently stuff mini cupcakes in your face.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

A new best fiend for Coco

Dear Sprout Hopper,

Now, I know that constantly clearing one's metaphorical cache can suck up what few precious drops of spare time you have remaining after slaving away at a week's worth of white collar labour, so I have found you a new best cyber friend. He is always with you. He will never leave you. And he won't tax you with his psychological hangups. Oh, and he's discreet and very professional: Online Alibi Services.

Yours in hermitage,
Violet

Monday, November 14, 2005

N-affair-ious



Now this ghetto bitch is here to weigh in on a post-love situation: so po-lo it hurts. Real bad. It’s not so much that she didn’t listen but that an agitated state dulled her senses with its’ deafening roar. For days she replayed the Halloween madness: Coco’s ass hanging out of some frilly pink panties sold by a tattooed priest. A doppelganger and a yo boy. The strange thing for Coco was not so much the events that went down through night and on in to day and early evening. Not so much those as the presence of a boy who she barely knew wandering around her house and generally falling in to the role of boyfriend number 2. Watching it all unfold, listening to suggestions of the communal living arrangement that would leave her pulled 3 distinct and different ways (some of them highly pleasurable). Coco started to think that perhaps a 2 boyfriend model might work though never under the same roof. But she’s aged about 6 months for every day that has gone by since then. She has moved quickly through dysfunctional social models to a model of solitary confinement involving a pile of books and maybe a camera. This boy stuff is so damned distracting. As though she’d fallen down the rabbit hole she was determined to watch where she was going in the future. BUT he leaves her just so damned breathless…. Is it a n-affair if all you do is text each other? Is there harm in this? Isn't this some arbitrary conceptual communication-space? What are the boundaries? Does it “depend”? Is it wrong to meet under trees and make new wear patterns with your shifting feet as they tippie toe? Just as long as you don’t lie down says Violet. Be sure to buckle up if you do.

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Not gone yet

Ah yes, thank god I never post. Forget it--am back. Have been too paranoid to post at work since the day some tech in Calgary started moving my cursor around on my monitor, and I realized, probably too late, that they can watch me whenever they want.

So I don't work freelance and can't post as much as Violet. But damn, I thought I had the Lithuanian greeting down correctly... Why does Salesman Toby look so scared?


IMG_6310
Originally uploaded by thermistor.



Speaking of PandaCams...


IMG_6280
Originally uploaded by thermistor.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Parasitic Subway Project by German Mindfuckers


Parasitic Subway Projector: See Sharks Swim in NY Subway Tunnels
View the [Quicktime]

So what if I've ripped this off Metafilter?!? This subway art projector project is so ghetto beautiful (just the way we like it)...and German, it deserves another blog.

Plus we're ghetto bitches, and so, it is our duty to comment on these German Artist Boys' flair (they all look like the dude squatting down in the lower right-hand corner of the image)...

Ready? Suck some air in. And spew forth.....

What the hell?!? The stereotypes abound in these artist-boy units - they are, like, totally German: high-concept artists in all-black, tailored clothing. Cyber Bald. Neatly-cropped hair and pointy, black leather shoes. Obsessive-compulsively clean. Techno-fetishists. Design hoars. Invisible uber-American humour.

German boys are such mind fuckers. We kinda find that hot (et tu Coco?)

Friday, November 11, 2005

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

We!rdo Manifesto

Hey you! We!rdo...Yeah, I'm talking to you. See this image? The cute little orange creature hanging out on a Montreal trash can, looking all classy and DIY? Well, that creature is you. That's right. You're a We!rdo. But then, who isn't?

So, let me take this opportunity to welcome you - my dear We!rdo - to the group.

It's pretty fun here. We do goofy things: it keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously. "Serious" is murder—something will die if you take yourself too seriously, whether it be your vim, your vigor, or your art and soul. Just take a look at the news from the "norms": it's killing them...and their ratings.

Now, my new little We!rdling, don't you go conflating serious with integrity— we have a healthy regard for the latter. As you can see from the picture, you still choose to wear a crown. You know a little pride enrichens the spirit; itegrity, the world.

But what? What are you saying? You won't join us if you can't be ironic? Well, We!rdo, check out your t-shirt logo. It's an inverted crown. Hell, if irony is dead, it means that we're all zombies ... so we prefer to think of our irony as turned upside down—jumbo shrimp, if you will. We say screw hiding the scarlet letters, we're proudly wearing ours in orange!

Alright We!rdo. (Yes, I'm talking to you.) Now that you're officially in our group, you must help us write a manifesto. What should a We!rdo manifesto should include?

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Tequila Face Redux and Revised


IMG_6214
Originally uploaded by thermistor.
Okay. I don't remember Halloween so good. But thankfully I had three wits still hanging about my very inibriated person: one, you're drunk; two, you're bored; three, get out and grab a cab. So I ever so gracefully exited the party and and left my gun holster of tequila with Juan Valdez (no joke).

But what the hell? Look to your right: Who is this sales man? And why is my tongue fondling his moustache?

Oh. Wait. The tequila haze is lifting... I'm rrre-member-ing: he's Oksana's new boyfriend. I think his name's Toby... that's right. I remember now: He's Lithuanian. He told me this is how Lithuanian's greet each other. Whew. I thought it was something sexual! But I was only being polite.

THANK GOD OKSANA NO LONGER POSTS HERE. Because she is one jealous byatch. If she saw me greeting her new squeeze, or saw me post a picture of it on this blog, she'd don her saucy ninja outfit and slowly gouge my eyes out with her Tai Chi Sword.

(Hey, if this is a Lithuanian greeting, I wonder what a Lithuanian squeeze is like?)

On another note: My roomate and I were discussing the content of my last posted link. (I've left the dirty parts out - brown bunny my ass, he's just a lonely guy.)

Roomate: I think Gallo is becoming barely un-retarded. You know, he's _________ and that means she _________. Of course if his mother ___________ then he might be _________.
Violet: Mother? Mother! No! What's that got to do with _____? He's not about the mother. Leave her out of this.
Roomate: That post redeemed him: his irony is straight up. He's a particular kind of voyeur. It's not the attention he's seeking, it's the response. Of course he also found the one way he could _________ with ___________ and have splattered all over ___________. 'Tits gotta be nice to piss off ________ers.
Violet I think that Gallo is suffering Kristeva's Melancholia. I mean, look at how he _________ with the ____________. He just found a contract, and swapped up the language. It's legally sound. I mean that's the real horror, not the content.
Roomate: Yeah, I think he's okay with that.
Violet: What?
Roomate: Yeah. I guess...

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Clear you Cache

Dear Cookie (aka Heartless),

May I suggest clearing your cache - literally and metaphorically? No electronic residue. No poetic trail. And remember to buckle up. Better re-freeze that key.

~Violet

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

I'm like a Fig

A boy gave me a compliment:
He told me I was like a fig.

I gave him a quizzical look.

He explained that I was as rich like one.

And so I considered its merit:
sweet pink flesh
safely encased in a teardrop skin,
the secret to a fine lamb stew...

How delightful. I'll take it.

I am a fig.
And rich like one.

What a wholly unique and delicious compliment.