( Je t'aime vraiment beaucoup, Montréal. )

Sunday, 10 August 2008
Sun location: Leo
Moon location: Sagittarius
Moon phase: second quarter
Dream type: subjective

     dream one:

     I'm at work, seated in a chair directly facing another chair. In the opposite chair is one of my Taiwanese coworkers. She insists (not for the first time), gently, that I Really Don't Need All That Hair and if I would just cut some off... "Not that much, just..." She pins my arms down and whips out some shears. (The professional kind that I have, the kind that cost $130 ten years ago. Bog knows what they cost now.) I start squirming and saying, "No..." She keeps insisting, cajoling, gently, and begins to cut my hair. I start trying to flail, and I scream hysterically. She cuts more off, and I start to cry. I probably started cursing at this point. The good news is that she's nice enough to stop at bra-strap length (none of that Akane Tendou-Ryouga Hibiki business of Extreme Hair Cutting). But it was still, what, a third of my hair? I didn't give my consent, so I felt horribly violated. I'm reminded of that old Scottish belief that hair equals power, and that to cut off the hair of someone like one of the little people, or a merperson, or a witch, meant to strip them of their power.

     It's worth noting that if Cecil Adams is right, all those fucks telling me to donate my hair to charity are being duped. If he's right, anyone who has in the past maybe got a tax deduction at best. Meanwhile, charities claiming to make hair into wigs to donate to cancer patients are probably just a troupe of farmers conning people out of their hair... just so they can have the world's finest fertiliser for free.

     dream two:

     isochronous dies. I can't remember if he committed suicide or got into a car accident, but I think it's the latter. It was particularly devastating to me - both in and of itself and because of one very important thing.

     Few things are worth more than someone who will stand up for you, especially one who will do it against anyone. He has always done so in the name of what he knows to be true, and he defends that unceasingly. The world is so goddamn full of people who claim to be your friends, then bully you for no reason (except, perhaps, that they're assholes who get their rocks off of abusing other people). In a parallel situation, I find it to have far too many people who rail on people for being on their side (or, at least, not being against them). People who ask for something, which you give to them just as they asked... and then they verbally crucify you for it, wailing that That is SO Not What I Asked For when it damn well is. These same people, in that same vein, will twist and contort the things you say and insist that you think and feel the complete opposite of what you really do think and feel. They will lose faith in you just when they should have the most of it, just when you need it. They will wilfully ignore most, if not all, hard work you do towards life and coping with it. And they will do all of the above clear in the face of any evidence contrary to their bullshit opinions. Real friends listen. Fake friends just contradict... and then abandon.

     I find the infinite, wide-eyed, comforting wisdom of relevantpink to add to this train of thought. Somehow she's always on a wavelength I pick up on a few weeks later, completely unwittingly. She has said, "No one loves you for what you give. They love you for who you are. I will have a critical eye turned towards those who only take. And I learned to recognize them from the best." I identify with these statements so strongly, they resonate in my every cell.

     This is a roundabout way of saying he doesn't fit any of the above categories, and that is a rare treasure. To lose something like that, something with that inestimable worth, would be a loss for the ages.

8 août 2008

me: holy fuck
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/entertainment/newsid_7238000/7238743.stm
and holy shit http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/music/newsid_7546000/7546991.stm
embryomystic: Holy fuck indeed. ALSO, HOLY SHITFUCK.
me: Yes indeed. Strangest news I've heard since I heard about Lost Highway: The Opera. I still haven't seen Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical.
embryomystic: Oh, crêpes.
me: Evil Nine's new album is out. I'm so going to have to change my panties now.
embryomystic: Oh, you.
me: They make me hot all over. What can I say. The newsletter I got with the news in it said this: "They will make you laugh, yet tremble with fear. They will make you feel that the world has come to an end. They will make you question your own sanity. They will make you thirst for blood, for the taste of flesh - or at the very least, get you to dance your ass off like a motherfucker... " The last bit is mind-numbingly true, and I can vouch for it personally.
embryomystic: haha. Man, okay. I'm interested.
me: You don't have to be.
embryomystic: No no. I mean it. Anything for a weird life. My interest is piqued.
me: In my underwear, right. Or what's in it, anyway.
embryomystic: HAHA. Maybe that too.

me: "So the Two Fat Ladies in its entirety was just released on region 1 DVDs. I vote for getting that. I know the food is just awful, but it was such an entertaining show."
Spider: "I thought the food sounded pretty good."
me: "Good, but not good for you. I mean, really! Stuff like bacon-wrapped venison?"
Spider: "One day I'll have to take you to this place that serves chicken-fried bacon."
me: "Well, while we're on the subject of food that is terrible for you, Gordon Ramsay has this book called The F Word. I assume that means 'fry,' because I can't think of what else it could mean."
Spider: "Fricassee. Flambé."

     ( for future reference )

embryomystic, whilst standing outside a gift shop on Rue St. Vincent, Montréal, and trying on some huge aviator-style sunglasses:
"What do you think?"
me: "Kanye called. He wants his sunglasses back."

me: What the hell is a Cinncinnati Bowtie?
auritech: Sorry, I don't know anything about kinky sex stuff.
me: Come on. You used to live in Cinncinnati!

---

auritech: Birmingham is the Cinncinnati of England
auritech: and I've lived in both

     I seem to be emotionally dependent on dancing, which begets a indirect emotional dependence on music. I can only go so long without going somewhere where music can proverbially swipe me off the face of this open sore of a planet for a few hours. I've always said I'm too stingy to do drugs, but I realise now this is my drug - one of them, anyway. It's telling that I'd rather go to a raucous all-night long dance party than get drunk. Getting drunk just last a few hours, maybe. You risk getting sick and you usually don't care to move the whole time. But when you go dance nonstop for five hours straight, and the next day you're so sore you can barely move - then your endorphins kick into high gear. The second day after a show, you're untouchable. It's the best high, nothing alcohol can come close to.

     I look at the little clubber girls that show up at the shows I go to - you know, the ones in short, tight, dresses, with their ass-length hair hanging free, wearing little strappy high-heels - and I think, "Bitch, I know you ain't here to dance." This is the distinguishing factor, the yin-yang balance that has been there since the early days of dance music. According to the old-school vernacular, they belong to the clubber faction, the ones who show up to see and be seen, oh your prissy Dolce and Gabbana, yes, save that for cocktail parties, will you. Yes, you look hot, but how long can you even stand in that getup? Suffice to say, you don't see these divas with anything glowing on their person. I stop at shitloads of glitter eye makeup. I belong to the raver faction of people who wear practical clothes because we throw down all night and knock back about four litres of water in the process. You'll see us on the fringes of the audience, where there's space to glowstick, glowstring, and take on a variation of pen spinning with the sticks (which, in this case, involves bouncing the sticks off various body parts, like shoulders and knees).



     Note to prospective glowstringers: get battery-operated LED glowsticks to practise with. They're wonderfully lightweight. You risk the sticks flying off their bases, mind, but there's always superglue. You will Beat the Shit out of yourself if you start out trying to use chemical glowsticks, which are way, way heavier - heavier than you ever gave thought to, probably. (It'd be like trying to use nunchaku without using the foam ones first.) For one thing, you'll probably end up whacking them against each other and breaking the vial inside, despite trying to leave them unbroken. You'll also come out of practise looking like you just went to a paintball gun range instead. (Taking lots of vitamin C helps lessen the bruising. Read your labels - women's daily multivitamins tend to have far more vitamin C than men's formulas, which is why you may see some male paintballers taking them.) Later on, the chemical sort might, just might, be more practical for some tricks - but I don't know enough to know. But many of those come with painfully flimsy lanyards in the package that don't look like they'll withstand hours of tricks with those heavy sticks. Best to get better ones on the side.

     I barely listen to melancholy music any longer, and this has been the case since 2006. Hybrid dances on the tripwire between melancholy and dance; Delerium is more of a spiritual sound; Autechre is atmospheric; I skip the heartbreaking Ladytron tracks. Skinny Puppy's just violent, but that doesn't come up much these days as there's almost nothing danceable in the mix. Nine Inch Nails is just a shade too angry to be debilitatingly depressing.

     Good girls keep a diary... party girls don't have time. Good girls go to heaven, party girls go to hours-long DJ sets. It all makes sense now, and I'm not so sure this is worth trading for anything. Oh yeah, my birthday's coming up, and I'd choke a bitch for a pair of battery-operated glow poi. Just a friendly suggestion. I'll dance for whoever gets them for me.

     Other gift ideas (damn, too late to ask for $30 for my driver's license renewal):

• One of those aluminum Arrêt signs (not the bilingual Arrêt/Stop ones - this may require some hunting in the shops on Rue St. Paul Ouest, Montréal)
  
• Funds to cover my very own concealed weapons permit
  
• One of those Complete Handbook of Firearms or whatever they're called - the ones usually in the bargain section at Borders (often on the sidewalk or vestibule)
  
• A copy of Ron Jeremy's autobiography (I already have Jenna Jameson's, thanks)
  
• A copy of Diablo Cody's Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper
  
• That book Macaulay Culkin wrote (though I have no idea if it's any good)
  
• Tickets to any of the following: Nine Inch Nails; the Presets; Delerium (with members of Skinny Puppy).
  

"Love as eros and love as philia cannot be readily distinguished in any culture, or indeed in many social situations, as well today as in the eighteenth century; [...] it is too easy to eliminate the erotic when dealing with relations between men.
"[...]
"It would be a mistake to dismiss [male-male friendship expressions of] love as 'simple friendship,' not only because in certain cases [...] it is definitely more, but also because there is no such thing as the 'simple friendship' the phrase implies. Friendship can be animated by many things, including rivalry, jealousy, desire, and love."

— George Haggerty, on Noel Coward's Design for Living

     Originally quoted by embryomystic, 7 March 2007. Mmm-hmm.

     It occurs to me that a necklace made of human nipples would be a stunning fashion accessory. *cough*

     Warren Ellis, thou art a god among insects. Of course I've known this since I read Transmetropolitan all those years ago, but you forever reassert your godlike awesomeness.

me: Are you a floor? Please tell me you're a floor.
nobbynobbs: I'm a total floor. I don't sit down unless I have to puke.

     Apparently urbandictionary.com can't be fucked with noting that's UK slang for a fan of electronic music that shows up to DJ sets to dance, as opposed to people who show up to quietly sit and contemplate the music or play dress-up to see and be seen. And neither can I, at the moment. I need some kind of raver icon, don't I?

     ...Oh Sir Nobb. I love you and want to marry you and have your abortion.

     Whilst watching Neverwhere:

me: "Damn. Door's outfit in this looks nothing like the one from the comic."
embryomystic: "Why, what's it look like?"
me: "Half green, half red, low-cut, it's got this long coat over it... it has kind of a court jester feel to it. And Door is deathly white, but not creepily so. It's a very cool effect overall. I'd love to cosplay as Door in that guise, but I'd need the body for it."
embryomystic: "Try a morgue."

     Be proud of me, for the last five days have been a Motherfucking Disaster and I have not panicked once. That's remarkable, even for me before I had serious anxiety problems. P.S., I'm not on any psychiatric medication. Is your casbah rocked? It should be. I should be in hysterics and instead I'm trying to figure out how to make my own poutine and if I can get bottles of apricot St. Ambroise and Éphémère pomme in these parts. (No, I don't like Boreale. At least that narrows down the amount of things I can't get in dodge.) Éphémère is The Sex when served with a pile of poutine. Trust me. I'm tempted to jestingly call it "Champagne Québécois" because it is delightfully dry, fizzy, and full of The Happy. Though nowhere in Québec did I see the cranberry, peach, raspberry, or blackcurrent varieties of it (as listed here). Hmm. I may be a beer snob yet.

     Today's good, all things considered, because nothing can be wrong with a day that Threadless has chosen to reprint The Communist Party. Who says I don't look at the bright side?

     Richard Cheese hugged me last night. KICK ASS. My freshly-signed copy of I'd Like a Virgin is icing on the cake.

     Apparently when a phone post prompt dies in the middle, it assumes you want it to be private (as with this one)... not that I'm complaining.

...Because that's what being away from the US will do to you. It's sick to find that out by trying to call yr bank.

When Quebec celebrates its 400th year, those RCMP will parade down the streets in pissing rain. RCMP chicks are hot.

@ Parc Jean-Drapeau in Montreal, @ Piknic Electronik w/embryomystic. Can't use the US ph. # to make a voice post. Damn...

(for embryomystic... jta bcp ♥)

     Réglisse, the drag queen of some renown in Québec City, star of Le Drague, has a youtube channel for all their ongoings. Looks like TQS interviewed her recently as well...



     That get-up she's in gives me insane cravings to watch Party Monster, particularly at 5:24 when the camera closes in on that far-out plastic bling on her wrists and hands.

     I also love the video below, but the audio makes it distinctly not work-safe. (It reminds me of some long mix Diplo posted on his lastfm page... not worth listening to, but includes that track rattling on about "where the big dicks at, where they at, where they at?")



     The skirt hoop with flashing lights attached to it is just awesome. This is also fabulous. I think I'll be hitting the "personnificateur," "féminin," "travestie," and "transformiste," tags more often.

10 juin 2008

me: http://piknicelectronik.com/#/news/15
I love the comment that just says "MALADE!!!"
embryomystic: Young people today.
'Sick' does not mean cool. IT JUST DOESN'T.