so I have to pack for Vancouver/Seattle. It's pouring rain there and I'm only going for like 3 days and really the whole point of the whole trip is the five hours we'll spend at El Courazon, however! Going to the spooky wearing jeans and a t-shirt is just not my style. I have this theory:

the folks on stage are working really hard and so. should. you.

this is why standing still is not acceptable. Also, not putting some thought into supporting your scene via a shock of personal style? UNACCEPTABLE.

I do make exception to the boygirl i am going with to seattle since they are just humouring me and proving I do have the best friends in the WHOLE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.

so, I'm in the closet and there's the 2 floor length velvet skirts and the pvc miniskirt and the floor length PVC skirt bought in germany an the seven corsets and the bustier and then:

the slightly romantigoth purple/black dress that wears like pajamas that I could nudge yonder with some stripey socks and arm warmers and huzzah!

yes, i forgo the pvc in favour of the dress that feels like jammies.


*sigh*

i've been cheating on livejournal. I wanted something with more flexibility and better handling, so I loaded and built a wordpress site over on makeshiftdaisy. For some reason the lj-cross poster widget is completely broken, otherwise I would be cross-posting over here, but for now, until the bugs get ironed again, is-a-not gonna happen.

I will, I imagine, do single posts over here as well and will, eventually, I'm hopin', get the cross poster to work, until then I'll probably just drop a link-nudge over, which I know will drive everyone crazy, but!

I wanted a blog I could add photos to, and lj just doesn't have the zippy functionality. It feels all cumbersome and what not. I also kind of like having all of my entries stored somewhere I can get to them without anyone else's rules attached.

Anyway, so, yeah, the girl who never blogs now has 2 blogs. I'm crazy like 'dat.

There's a few posts up there now. I was testing and trying to see if I was amused by it and trying to get used to the wordpress platform, which kind of rocks my socks.

So yes. Visit me here and there and all will be well with the universe.

not complaining about an episode of criminal minds that starts with random goff band covering 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and then blammo, straight into an homage to The Crow, all cracked mirrors and trying to wash the makeup off.

oh, crazy vampire episodes ftw.

and really, no sign of Marilyn Manson in sight, yet. You writers are good.

I realize, to you, this looks like something close to nothing. But I swear to the GODS OF EARLY 80'S UK INDUSTRIAL

if they do not put the vancouver tickets on sale soon, I am so taking co-worker up on that spare ticket to the Depeche Mode/Nizter Ebb show at London's 02 Stadium.

So I am displeased with you, Maine. I joined The Outer Alliance today, finally. Even though I live in Canada and people often think, man, that Canada, they're sensible (and really big) up there, when I first was looking to move here I was staying with friends, one of whom had been gay-bashed on his way home. So. First adventure in a new city and it was the cops and the statements and the bafflement. He's not the only person I've known/spent time with that has been attacked for being queer. I wish I could tell you it was.

Granted, that was a long time ago, but still. So, yes. Maine, sheesh. Outer Alliance, good.

speaking of good, queer things, my girl lotusice's story is up at Crossed Genres and you should go read it.

Also, yesterday Douglas McCarthy friended me back on facebook and I swear it was all I could do not to fall right over.

gods I love this song. So. Very. Much.

/pets iPod.

there were a couple other things I had in mind to say, but they've already been forgotten.

I bought my first Echo & The Bunnymen cd (the self-tightled one) when I was 16 because my hottie driving instructor vj'd a local music video show and he played them.

A couple of days ago I bought their newest release "The Fountain". 22 years later.
There's new Rotersand and new Assemblage 23. I still haven't really gone through the whole of the last VNV release, which is extra super weird, but I did buy a Solitary Experiments ep "Immortal".

I'm trying to build a wordpress blog for my makeshift daisy site and lo' and behold, I actually can't see my way past the clinical-ness of WP which means it's clearly time for me to just either a) do all the graphics myself and figure that crap out with the mighty css (although there's easy ways to do this if I just make a header), or b) just give up on the idea. I can't decide which I'd rather do. So I have waffles, here, on the fence.

My tv just went kaboom. It seems to be trying to restart, and I'd like this to happen because I was in the middle of watching a pvr'd episode of TRAUMA, which, yes, is like some dumb ambulance show but it's secretly awesome because the main hot character is Not A White Dude.

Also, there's some extra-hintings of the gay, which we always appreciate in our television shows.

gadzooks what is my tv doing. Oh, I see, it's stuck in the reset. Ah, there we go. Pinwheel means something is happening.

Really, I should go do something useful but I fell asleep at 4am (my time, not daylight savings time), and woke up around 7:30 and so my system is all wack and I'm bagged and only semi-useful, but I ate a large bowl of spicy peanut stirfry and broccoli makes everything better.

really I could just dye my hair and be done with it. That'd help.

I realize the lyrics are not going to change the world or anything, but just listen. The world will be a sadder place if I do not see this live.


i came two thousand miles
for just one of your smiles
I'm so sorry

that could be a thousand million things. Apology and the passive aggressive martyr and the giving up when something is just over and you just know.

I was feeling kind of spry, for some reason. Wanted to test my mettle for some ridiculous reason (other people jump out of areoplanes - I watch television) and see if I could watch a tidbit of Queer as Folk, and I did, I made it exactly 4 minutes into the last 14 minutes of the season finale before the waterworks started and then went to write today's (tomorrow post) 365 and holy crap, depressing. It started out with romance and star wars references and ended up, well, you can read it and see. I edited out Dagobah.

I want to crawl around in John Cameron Mitchell's head for a while and come out on the other side with a slightly dystopic Alice in Wonderland riff that makes me feel like his movies do. I just don't know if I can. Maybe. Maybe not. Nothing will happen if I don't get the beginning right and I've been working on it for a year and it's still wrong.

This whole watching movies things is doing me a world of good. Other people read to get their brain in writing mode, I need to watch movies.

Next up we have Wall-E and Rhinoceros Eyes (which I half-saw in the middle of the night at the film festival, but Child of Cronenberg was too much for me after 14 hours of working.. but hey, Michael Pitt AND Gale Harold.)

and yes, now it's bed time and although today I only had 2 hours of meetings, tomorrow I am fully booked from 8:30-4pm. In fact, I have THREE meetings booked at 1pm, so go me.

good night, people of the interwebs.

Yesterday was one of those awesome days in which the inside of the brain is weirdly emo+introspective+grey+perfect. Some combination of something that included a lot of finishing my mittens (my guage is terrible but they're cute), re-analyzing the bracelet I made that needs some more adjusting of charms to be perfect, doing 9 loads of laundry, catching up on my weekly pvr'd tv, watching the amazing Shortbus, which upon reflection is possibly one of the best movies I've seen in a long long time (Milk and Zombieland not withstanding; they were both perfect in their own way), then I watched a short 15 minute interview with Randy Harrison (Justin: QaF) on the Rutger's version of Inside the Actor's Studio (on the youtubes) and because of my weird attachment to QaF my insides got all gooey and mopey.

Then later, Let the Right One In was on, but I recorded it and just kept the sound on (subtitled, so really I had no idea what was going on except when I looked at the screen), and it was snowy and perfect and just added to the awesome (I mean this literally) mood I was in.

Also, I realized I tend to watch/read things for how they make me feel rather than how they make me think (not a new revelation, I assure you) but I believe this is why I am having the challenges with Amanda's book "The Drowning City" - I love the atmosphere/setting because it puts me in a good headspace but the spy-trickery and mutli-pov's is just like "hrmity!" because my big brain doesn't want to figure it out because it's still back in the raining marshes singing Cure songs. Which might mean I have a small brain. Or, alternately, it explains why I quite like abstract art.

Or something.

i have indeed watched many more movies.

"Milk", which was just beautiful.
"Funny Games", the american version which just caused my head to tilt sideways, although I am always enamoured with Michael Pitt.
"Shortbus", which I am kind of in love with in about three hundred different ways.
and "Wake", another indie film (I must get my Gale Harold love somewhere, which I liked but didn't love)

I'm also looking at moving to wordpress and migrating entries over here like the big kids do. I suspect it will be a long process.

this is just bananas pretty. If you're me or someone like me.

so vancouver was awesome. Clearly I'm the constant in all of my trips anywhere but I found the folks far friendlier than I have, ever. I don't mean like the peeps that had to be friendly because I was in their house, but regular everyday people that we engage with at cash registers and what not.

speaking of cash registers, aside from getting some kind of super head start on the Christmas Shopping (I know! Huge for me, I'm captain procrastinator when it comes to these sorts of upcoming holiday seasons) I bought Fun! things, and will show them to you, now:

first. I totally wanted a laptop bag and what's the deal with the ugliest bags in the known universe costing like $100 at staples? For serious. Lame. Anyhoodles -- I had been on a mad hunt and wanted something super fun and awesome and Yes, except super fun isn't always super protective and there's no point in buying a marginally padded bag with deer and antelope and polka dots on it if one brisk wind will cause the whole thing to go kablooie.

Hence, Acme. I have been stalking Acme Made laptop bags forEver but the prices, oh, they thwart. Or did.

but I wandered into Paper-Ya and saw the chili pepper Acme and swooned and realized it was a must have item if only but not if only because the little critter matches my sofa. Seriously.

Anyway, Acme Made!







the buttons are from one of the One of A Kind vendors whose tiny small card I can not find at the moment. She was hilarious. I could have gone with the ballgag/hitachi/handcuff trio, but was kind of digging the modern simplicity of the cord/plug/rice cooker (or crock pot, we can't decide) and also its g-rated-ness.

and more! Huzzah!

on the lookout for more Serv-O-Matics I instead found the Mechtorians! And now am the tickled owner of Doctor A's D.J. Gramo Mechtorian:

"Entertainer and celebrity. Dermot Joshua Gramo spins the tunes in the most popular of night spots. His personal collection of 78's is legendary, the largest in the world they say. It has to be noted that his rise in popularity has put pay to the careers of a great deal of the city's wax cylinder hawkers and peddlers. Everyone wants the new flat disk records these days. It's what's hip don't you know."

kind of awesome, yes?

and then because I am the only person that needs to go to another province to aquire things that are, indeed, available 2 blocks from her office:



the Flora & Fauna eclectonote. Uppercase is this great gallery/typoraphy/all things nifty store I wander through now and then - not unlike the Regional Assembly of Text in Vancouver. Also, I was on Main street but how I missed the Text, I do not know. But perhaps good for it would have resulted in more mass consumerism but you know, I just can not deny the allure of things that understand me as I understand them.

the other purchases can not be photographed but you will see them shortly. Especially as some of you will be getting them in the mailings.

Hrm. What else? We were on the same street as a Twilight set - Eclipse in the rain, kiddos. Too many cops for an RPatz sighting, but kind of amusing none the less.

I re-realized I really want a pair of Fluevog angels, because I find them more comfortable than Docs.

not that I've worn docs since like 2004, but my memory, she is good when she wants to be.

Today is movies and PVR'd tv and things that go bump in the sunshiney cold.

i really did like the weather in Vancouver. I've been back all of like 12 hours and I already can't breathe, here. Argh, dry annoying desert climates.

I shake my fist at you.

and then today I:

cleaned my office (for reals and done)

moved the treadmill to make it usable

washed 1/2 of my HeadRazor wavy electra goth wig (which is now far less wavy, but really needed to be cleaned, so, alas and alack, now to do the other half - technically, they're falls - so the wavy matches.

sorted out some spilled Buddhist mandala sand

made some home-made pasta sauce (dudes, put high quality butter in your tomato sauce. I am so not kidding about this)

put away the laundry

watched MILK, which was lovely and outstanding and it's weird, when I was smaller and volunteering, I was totally heading down the road of AIDS activism. I have no idea what happened. Anyway.

that's the list so far. We'll see what the second half of the day brings!

the last recorded Watched Movie here was Rob Zombie's "Halloween", but there's been a few after that and I wish I could recall them all -

our Pacey in "One Week" (Hai, canada except I couldn't help but think I would have filmed canada *differently*)
Inglorious Basterds (which I liked but didn't love)
Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince (twice) (I love my HP!)
District 9
9
Zombieland

Which I think brings me up to about erm, 31 movies this year, so far?

Today, if I end up watching JCVD/Milk/Funny games, we'll be doing well.

we've this belief that anything you buy at the healthfood store, be it carbonated beverages, high-end chocolate or organic potato chips, is absolutely better for you and Not Junk Food At All.

of course it's a lie, but it's a lie we live with.

I did not buy junk food. I bought milk. I am not a huge milk drinker but I absolutely DIEFORLOVE Avalon Dairy milk from The Island (this would be Vancouver Island) and now, they have this new fancy omega-3 milk (we veggies don't get a lot of omega-3's you see)that comes in the fanciest packaging ever -




seriously. I am a sucker for milk in a glass jug (I think Avalon's glass-bottled milk destroys every other milk ever in the history of milk), but come on. This is like milk for royalty or some bananas.

I will drink it and give Report.

I also bought tri-coloured Hotchkiss carrots and spinach (no arugula, the day is sad when there is no Hotchkiss arugula), and potatoes because I bought "vegetarian brown gravy mix", let me tell you, my mama makes the best gravy in the history of gravy and MAN I miss it sometimes. So we'll see. I do not have high, high hopes. Perhaps hopes like small foothills, but I like this idea of mashed taters and gravy and roast carrots.

I also bought miso, for soup.

we had pannekoek for breakfast (YUM!) and then, Smaff and I went to see Zombieland, which was just about the funniest movie I have seen in years. I often protest the comedies because I generally find most humour kind of not funny but this? OMG FUNNY.

and it snowed and i wore my new purple knee socks and I bought Dexter all the food in the world from the fancy parrot store where I've always been convinced the cash-fellow thinks I'm completely dorky, but today I came in and his face lit up and he waved at me and I waved at him and really, he's cute in the Wil Wheaton kind of way and it was nice to finally not have to leave there thinking "man, that dude thinks I'm a yahoo".

That was before Zombieland, so it could not have been a result of my overwhelmingly delightful post-comedy good mood.

I really think it was the purple knee socks and perhaps the purple hair. I am so enamored of this hair I can not even freaking tell you.

I have to say, things around my birthday of late have been pretty good. 2007 I saw VNV Nation on my birthday-day exactly -- I've seen Mattie Good around my birthday time, SITD came to Edmontonia just about around the birthday period and today I got to take half a day off of work to go hang out with about 18,000 other people and the Dalai Lama.

I used to wonder how I'd get to see the Dalai Lama in my lifetime. He is not, as they say, much of a spring chicken anymore, even though he's healthy like what, save that small gall bladder problem.

anyway, I went, and the line moved slightly slower, but not much, than the line up for NIN and the security was about the same, but I didn't actually *cry* at the NIN show, either of them, except possibly when my little chubby arm was on the NIN jumbotron, but that's a little bit different.

anyway. You know what Natalie Goldberg says? And you should, because I quote her all the damn time, but it was a bit like the Garden of Eden opening in my chest.

I'm not good at being overly chatty on this blog about The Emotions. I have an overwhelmingly difficult time expressing myself in a non-fiction setting (well, not the Nutty Joy and Ridiculousness, those I am quite fine at getting out and in the open), so you'll just have to accept it when I say it was pretty damn freakin' fantastic and it's not every day you get to do one of those things you always wanted to do before you died.

and i did and now I have and yes.

then I came home and wednesday seems to be TV night, so I watched The Shows and put together the Ikea shoe rack (always harder than it looks, people of the internets), had this overwhelming urge to watch this specific part of the last episode of Season 5 of QaF, but then I realized upon loading the video that I was probably going to *start* crying even before the advertisement for Michael Moore's new movie was over, so I quickly shut the browser, post-haste. I'm annoyed. I really want to be able to watch that series again, but maybe I won't be able to. We'll see.

I have music like that, too, that exists in this very specific emotional context and as such it ends up belonging not to me but to the emotional whatever I was going through at the time which means I have a hard time listening to it.

It's weird. It's also why I can't listen to the Beautiful South anymore even though they write outrageously beautiful songs that will tell you everything you ever needed to know about something that happened, once:

so you know how decide some song, whatever song is SUPER PRETTY and then the more you listen to it you realize it's mostly about suicide? Except it's also a love song?
It's like that.
Todays three/60/five is kind of all about that, I think, thanks to my friends Bon Harris and Douglas McCarthy.


I came two thousand miles
for just one of your smiles
and i'm sorry..

--

cut deep into your wrist
it's hard to resist
being someone else
for a change

--

i still love the song and need to stop listening to it on repeate.

also, in an effort to keep this pale purple hairdye for longer, I'm trying the "don't wash your hair every day trick", which is not to say I don't de-gunk it, etc, but man, on days where I wash but don't shampoo, my hair is like Robert Smith huge.

Hello.

and! only like two hours til I leave for the Dalai Lama. WOO! Dalai!

I have brought Amanda's "The Drowning City" to read while waiting to go thru security. Huzzah!

had the weirdest dream last night that I went on a Queer as Folk reunion/camping adventure. I suspect I was fly-on-the-wall, or, alternately one of the QaF gang, Honestly, if I were ever to inhabit any of the QaF bodies, I'd be Emmett Honeycut or some such because he is Fabulous (did a quick google search for a representational photo of said fabulousness but searching QaF characters always leads to semi NSFW photos of Justin/Brian rendevous-ez. Not a bad thing, just DISTRACTING!) Saying all that I'd probably really end up being Justin, chasing the semi-unavailable dink for years. Not to say theirs was not a special sort of love, but you know.

The camping went well, I assume. I woke up before the bears came.

also, was listening to new Ebb last night and am in totally love with "Never Known", so. freaking. pretty.

also, i'm way cute today in my bow-tied shoes and knee socks and sassy skirt and houndstooth bolero. If only my hair was fully lavender, I'd be in business. In order to ensure future pastels I ordered proper dye on the interwebs. Now, we wait.

also my sock-dreams order is missing, which is very very sad making. :(

also, also, it must be winter, or it must be a-coming. All I want to do is hole up in cozy blankets in my office and write my not a steampunk book. Which is good and happy making.

almost finished "The Red Tree", still having weird moments of omg this is really autobiographical (not me, Kiernan) and it's a bit, erm, strange, but I'm way enjoying the book. So, go figure.

Next up will be "Locke & Key: Headgames" and then, who knows! I kind of just want to read nothing but ghost stories.

hrm. So, recommend some. Ghost stories. Go!

my hair is this weird mint green except baby blue colour when i dyed it lavender. I have no idea but Smaff calling at oh-dark-thirty is clearly a blessing in disguise because I am now redying with High Hopes that some lavender will show up. Not that the baby blue wasn't pretty. It was just a just that my roots are lavender and the rest was some pastel adventure i didn't sign up for.

freaking crazy.

have a Yummo.

later we go see The Informant as Smaff was underwhelmed by the Film Fest movie offerings, and eat fancy pizza. Mmm. Pulcinella. It is also: YUMMO.

gods i'm sleepy. YAWNS.

and still so very excited about my Nitzer. I think I will continue to embed You Tubes that you will not watch (even though you should, really, you never know when your life will ALSO BE CHANGED) until tomorrow when I can determine Time Off and GO GO GO.

anyway, this is one of my favourite songs:




also, when I was like, 19, a girlfriend asked what kind of music I'd be listening to when I turned 40.
As I'm not so far from 40, now (and seriously? 40? WTF?!) and even back then I said "The same stuff I'm listening to, now" - and for a long while (and still, maybe) I considered getting a little NEP (nitzer ebb, product) commemorative tattoo to mark my tastes not changing since like 1987 :P

so i booked a trip to vancouver b/c i needed to not be in the city for a while and also because Adventures!

and today, post-booking, I find out out that MotherFreaking NITZER EBB are playing in Vancouver in November.

You are SERIOUSLY MISTAKEN if you do not think I am going to do everything in my POWER to get out there. Fortunately there's enough time between now and then that I can use my airmiles, but still.

also: NITZER EBB.

My head is currently flying Off. Of. My. Body.

speaking of bodies, let's play a little Ebb, shall we?




Seriously.

and 2008:



and 1989, right before THEY CHANGED MY LIFE.




*happy sighs*