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| Dreampepper 35 most recent entries |
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And he's a doctor, so he should know. Twice a year I do a shout out, I ask that everyone speaks up, even if they otherwise stay silent. Like a good house party, it's always fascinating to see who turns up. So, please, tell me your names, post your picture, introduce yourself, tell me why you're here, how you found me, and what inspires you. I want to know who's on the other end of my screen, what fun and fantastic people are out there, waiting to be met. Even if I know you, introduce yourself to others, and tell me what you've done lately. Explain a piece of your world with something beautiful, make something new, or dig up the grave of an old favourite. Anecdotes are welcome, as are pictures, job descriptions, inspiring links, stimulations, titillations, and your pretty hidden treasures. The name of the game is networking, so share what you want everyone else to know. You are artists and scientists, nihilists and dreamers, comic book illustrators, archeologists, hackers, retail managers, photographers, teachers, librarians, hair dressers, and submarine captains. You are novelists, derby girls, musicians, and accountants. Optimists, pragmatists, magicians and politicians, fencers, film addicts, home owners and homeless. You are lighting designers, poets, animators, and lawyers. You are glorious, fabulous, interesting creatures, rich in colour, thick with story - and I want to hear from you all. For those new, my name's Jhayne. I'm a writer and photographer currently trapped in Vancouver, Canada. I live on the internet, work for a media company, and occasionally get paid to set off fireworks. I'm also an amateur taxidermist/cryptozoologist, play french horn and the saw, and edit other people's novels. Last year I started a global initiative to save a local turn-of-last-century theater and turn it into a new multimedia venue called Heart of the World. It fell down, went boom, but oh well. Time to try something else, I guess. Welcome to my journal, a mixture of wonder, pointlessness, isolation, and community where I talk about life, love, art, technology, and try not to hate the world. Now it's your turn. Spill. 115 comments | post a comment
Ravers blinded by lasers.
After all day at the folk fest, I'm wiped out. Too tired for a reasonable, decent, glad report. If you missed it, I'm sorry you did. It's magical, our festival, it's right by the ocean, cradled by mountains and lakes and forest and city, all at once. It's the only event in Vancouver where I regularly look around me and think, "this city is beautiful". I'm going back again today, to sit and listen to music and dance as much as possible. I don't expect to be home until tomorrow.
 365 days one hundred & seventy: between the lines David is going brown in the sun, his pale becoming tan, becoming sepia, a colour stolen from the ink of squid, then fractured, chemically converting silver into sulphide, toning into something more resistant to breakdown over time. Our bodies contrast, as if we're different genres of the same animal. I wonder what he'll look like the other end of this coming up Folk Fest weekend, where people take off their shirts and get happily dusty walking the Jericho paths. I wonder, too, how he'll get on with Mike, how interesting and odd all the interactions will be. There is an anticipation building inside me, bubbling like water over stone. 4 comments | post a comment
Wednesday:
 If Only You Were Here signed and numbered edition of 150 size: 22"x22" on a 24x"24"sheet - with frame: 28.5"x28.5"x2" price of unframed: $220 - framed: $450 It will be made available for purchase on July 19th Saturday at 1:00 pm pacific time. If I had two-hundred dollars to spend on art, this is where it would go. I've been following Audrey's work for years, (her delicate work regularly graces my otherwise cluttered computer desktop), but this is the first print offered that really captures me. There's just something about the composition, the lines, the flowering lights, that tugs at my eyes and won't let go. 5 comments | post a comment
-Abbie Hoffman Barely averted disasters, not quite problems, almost, practically, nearly, verging, uncomfortably close. Yesterday I was right next to the mild downtown explosion, but managed to just miss nasty smoke inhalation; the resulting massive power failure kindly skipped the corner with my building, leaving us with power but no internet, so basically a blank day paid; the heavy wing-backed chair that dropped on David at work didn't break his arm, (he's hurt badly enough that he gets a paid day off work, but not so badly that he isn't glad about it); and we lucked out and managed to rescue Ray's vehicle, which was accidentally locked into a closed parking lot while we sat in the ER waiting room for three hours. There seemed to be a downward spiral. But then there was ice-cream and a Vincent Price film, The Last Man On Earth, (which is what I am Legend should have been), I got a message that my camera should be fixed by the weekend, and we gave Ray a DVD box-set of Bela Lugosi films and a cute stuffed bunny with floppy long ears, so yesterday was alright after all. A white pebble day, by any account. 19 comments | post a comment
You know it's a good day when your camera dies, downtown explodes in an underground electrical fire, taking with it all the power, and your lovely partner texts to say, I've been hurt at work, let's meet at the ER.
 It looks perfectly reasonable, doesn't it? Until you notice this: 
Persistence. It's important to try. The boxes have been melting away, leaving the clear bones of a more functional home behind, newly blue and shiny red, that will be nice to live in, once we've finished sculpting muscle from the remaining meaty mess. I still need to buy brackets for the glass shelves, chemicals to take the tacky glue off the big hall mirror, wall-paper glue and a smoothing brush, put up the shelves and the last mirror, drawer my clean clothes, arrange the hall closet, shelve the still-to-be-mailed packages, rinse the last two batches of the dusty dishes, sort the last pots and pans into under the sink, catalogue what's being given away and post the list on-line, launder the dish towels, fold them away, organize the bathroom, disinfect the counters and sink, bathe the cats, inventory what's left, (as I'm sure to miss something), schedule an optometrist appointment, sweep the hall, vacuum, all of which will likely take me until Friday, if I don't get any help, then take a week off. Finally. That Mike's going to be in town not this weekend, but next weekend, playing the Folk Fest as a featured artist, which will take a bit of the stress away. He might even be coming along to see Crispin Glover with us, (us being, so far, me, Duncan, David, and possibly Lung), which I expect will be oodles of fun. It won't be until after he's left that I'm going to tackle the wall-paper that's going up in the living-room, a vogue knock-off pattern of black and gray flowers on white. I need some time where I'm not concentrating on cleaning, on tidying, on sorting and shelving and assimilation. Hanging the wall-paper will be an entire day's work, even if I move all the furniture and wash the wall the night before. I'm not looking forward to it just yet, though I know after a break I will again. The Folk Fest will be a perfect distraction. Already I've started figuring an itinerary, planning on who to see and when. Start Saturday with Mike at Stage Five, with Kobo Town and Dubblestandart, move on to Eliza Gilkyson at Stage Three, snack on a delicious picnic, spend some time at the super sekrit backstage hammock, wander, dance, find Mike's next show, and end the night with the glorious Béla Fleck. Sunday, more of the same, except with Jayme Stone and Mansa Sissoko, Jorane, and my once acquaintance, (friend of Shane and Mike), Michael Franti, who let me stay on his couch once, back in the nineties. 4 comments | post a comment
LIGHTMARK: incredible long-exposure light painting by Cenci Goepel and Jens Warnecke They've also taken photos Tierra del Fuego, Suomi, Germany, California, Spain, and France, which are available in their absolutely stunning gallery.
There was a man at the bus-stop this morning with a pet speckled pigeon standing on his hat, tied to his shirt by a string. He was perfectly ordinary, apart from the pigeon, so I didn't say anything, though I wondered if I should. 17 comments | post a comment
Mr. Glover will be presenting Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Slide Show, an hour-long audiovisual performance-presentation in which he narrates images from his story book series. Following will be his debut feature film, What Is It?, a mind-blowing, taboo-obliterating phantasmagoria and psychodrama which he describes as "the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are snails, salt, a pipe and how to get home, as tormented by an hubristic inner psyche."Each evening concludes with a Q&A and book signing. TICKETS: $20 — Advance tickets are on sale now, but are only available on-line at www.cinematheque.bc.ca. Tickets will also be sold at the door. Box Office opens at 6:30pm nightly. Annual $3 Pacific Cinémathèque membership required. Restricted to 18+. NO PASSES will be accepted for this event. 8 comments | post a comment
My apartment has finally begun to feel as if I live there after four years in the same place. I blame my godmothers things, taking up all the space. I blame her silver sun framed mirrors, her plants, her rows of carefully chosen objects that took decades to find. When I come home after work, my apartment smells like her, as if somehow she'd been visiting. Flour and myrrh and coconut and frankincense, thick swirls, flavours mixing with my own, the cats, candles, cardboard, and sunshine. Every box is a new mystery, a penny worth of mystery, full of a mized assortment of silver, food, tiny antiques, and tired moments of what is this, exactly? One very large box is entirely filled with spices, crushed leaves in tiny clear plastic bags, some with labels too faded to read, some in oddly shaped bottles that makes me think they weren't purchased within my life-time. They hint at delicious meals, semi-exotic flavours, interesting combinations of taste. Where will I find room? I still don't know. It was a feat enough collecting them together. All I need is time, extra time, time tucked into crannies of minutes, the creases of hours meeting hours, needle thin threads of seconds adding up, secretive whispers of moments stolen from inattention, from bad decisions, from missing busses and losing keys, from distraction, procrastination, and the tips of fingernails, all added up. Enough time and it will all be done, the boxes will be unpacked, the things put away, the dust hoovered up, the disaster removed. My living environment will be cosy, friendly, cheerful and clean, the way I want it to be as soon as living possible. David has gone out to meet with an old friend tonight, someone he hasn't seen in a very long while. They might come back here after dinner, they might not. In either case, I am staying in, seeing what can go where, discarding as much as possible, skipping dinner, clearing space, creating a country, declaring sovereignty over the scattered boxes. I really wanted to go with him, painfully so, especially when he called, asking me to join them, but already I can see progress. There is more than only a path from one end to the other, there is space to walk, space to sit, space to wander around, room to better maneuver through the war. When I can no longer stand it, when I stand in the kitchen, a dish in hand, seriously contemplating smashing it to save cleaning it, I go back and re-work my summary paragraph for Vitka's dystopia novel, the one that's going to go to the publishers as a Here, Buy This Book! It's a nice distraction, something soothing in the middle of the dusty cardboard love song. Passive Aggressive Anger Release Machine, an interactive china-smashing sculpture by Yarisal and Kublitz 13 comments | post a comment
With Silva's departure has come The Great Mess. I have no floor anymore. There is no floor, only boxes. They have become my floor, my furnishings, my overwhelming purpose of being. The boxes have become totality. They are all. As Kyle shoots it out of the field with Neil frickin' Gaiman!
It's clever, and sweet, and just a teeny bit sad - as perfect as the last bite of a favourite dessert.  click here to start at page one I've been following Busted Wonder since it started, (Charity is a sizzling sweetheart and a super fun read, you should add her), so I'm extra thrilled to finally read the story from front to back and to know, especially, finally, the why of the title. I have to admit, I'd been wondering. 6 comments | post a comment
If any of you are in Montreal, now you know where you need to be tonight.
I've been planning this past weekend for weeks. It was going to be my super funtastic weekend, full of dancing, (finally), music, and awesome sauce, but I didn't make it to anything. The Jazz Fest, FUSE, Stephanie's birthday, the Workless Party party.. nada. Instead I was at home, feeling stuck, financially doomed, and not just a little agoraphobic. I'm terrifically lucky David was around. I hate to imagine what my weekend would have hypothetically been like without him. As part of Silva's move, I've been inheriting a lot of her things. Things that don't necessarily have an easy place in my home, so I've been moving furniture and tearing apart the kitchen, moving more furniture, tearing apart my room, unpacking boxes all over the place, and generally being overwhelmed. My house, on Friday, looked as if it had been looted, raped, burned, then looted again. It was driving me utterly crazy, (very likely the sole reason I've felt so awful lately), so instead of going the the KRAZY FUSE which I'd been looking forward to for months, I spent the entirety of Friday night cleaning and organizing and tidying until the sun seared the sky into Saturday morning. When I woke up, it was passable, but I was exhausted, utterly burned out, too drained for my plans. (Especially as it's still not done!) Today I'm hoping to spend a bit of time with Silva, who leaves on Tuesday, and maybe drag myself down to Yaletown for the tail end of some of the free Jazz Fest shows. I've had Pink Martini playing all day. It's helping. "...raccoon carcasses have also been found in the west-end park and were deliberately posed." 2 comments | post a comment
"...even if tomorrow we opened up every square mile of the outer Continental Shelf to offshore rigs, even if we drilled the entire state of Alaska and pulled new refineries out of thin air, the impact on gas prices would be minimal and delayed at best. A 2004 study by the government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that drilling in ANWR would trim the price of gas by 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027."
  Frog Can Fly, by Mila Kalnitskaya & Micha Maslennikov. Using plastic, metal, and live frogs "because they are small and light." Two of the frogs involved, Siberian Postman and Fly of Destiny are now pets of the artists.
Can you help? Silva's departure date is right around the corner. An essential part of moving, however, involves loading a truck and her and her wife, though they are fierce, brightly shining people, are still two little older ladies, and they can't do it alone. "We're loading a truck with heavy boxes and a very few pieces of furniture on Thursday morning at 10 am. If this kind of activity appeals to you, and if you want to help, and if you *can* help FOR SURE,and can be here from 9:30ish until noon please let me know. I have to run off to a dentist appointment at 12:30 so it HAS TO be finished by then. There will be non-alcoholic cold beverages and cookies and much gratitude."I'm going to try and take the morning off to help, but I might not be able to and it's very important that people show up. 7 comments | post a comment
That 1 Guy will be playing at the Montreal Festival Intl. De Jazz from June 25 - 30
 Girl: See you! Guy: I love you! Girl: You are killing me. Guy: I ought to kill you. Girl: What?! --34th Street Station, B Line The best thing I overheard recently was a girl saying, "Hell, I'd fuck your dad for money." A blind man on the bus, laughing every time we stop, glad of the sensation like a kid on a circus ride. "Hey guys, what stop are we at?" I glance outside, looking for street signs, "We're at second." "Thanks!" Back to my book, I wonder briefly if anyone else would have bothered to reply. I speak up again when it's my stop, "This is Broadway." "The near side or the far side." "The near side." Then I'm gone, footsteps snapping away on the pavement, out of ear-shot, now invisible. I can't help but wonder, with a sunken feeling in my chest, if I should practice with a white cane now rather than later, when it will be more difficult. I've cut down on my reading and learned a couple of tricks that slow my eyes from degeneration, but I can tell they're still getting worse. I close them sometimes when I walk with people to discover how far I can get only listening for the ends of sidewalks, for traffic, for other pedestrians and bumps in the road. I keep my hand tightly around their bicep, or tautly in their hand, and I listen, and walk, and I worry. One of the more exclusive shows at HIVE2 placed the participant in the role of a convict at a prison. (One woman came back crying). To apply to take part, you wore an arm-band. When they came for you, (the audience was picked two by two), no matter when it was, you had to go or you forfeit. It looked as if it would be harsh, a nasty, hard-core experience, but really, the main body of the experience was ritualistic sensory deprivation. You were dressed in anonymous orange coveralls and a matching orange tuque, then sound dampeners and a blindfold were placed on your head. A rope was put in your hand, and you had to follow, passive, pulled, blind, unable to hear. Hands would reach out, solidly, and guide you through doorways, pull you up stairs. I had been expecting fear or an uncomfortable feeling of powerlessness, but unexpectedly, I smiled, warm and confident in the artificial darkness. "I do this already, minus the barked orders to sit, to stand, to go up a step. This is fine," I thought, "though there's no way the other person feels the same way. I hope she's okay." There's levels and layers to all of it, though. I was alright at HIVE2, solid and strong, but that was mild, a safe visit to a possible future. My friend Mishi was paired with a seeing-eye dog recently, a sweet and exuberant black Labrador retriever. She says it takes 6 months to a year to become a smooth, seasoned team, which makes me smile, glad that she's finally got her guide, but shyly, as I try not to imagine too closely what it must all be like. 47 comments | post a comment
finally out... Where The Hell is Matt 2008 "14 months in the making, 42 countries, and a cast of thousands. " INCLUDING ME! And Adam, Andrew, Sara, James, Fitz, and Michael.
End of the line, the train stops, the bus stops, whichever motion, it's over. Outside the sky is just as dark as it was yesterday, the day burned down, the night entranced. Rough in the back of the eyes. I've invited Lung and David to come with me to Katie's wedding. It's in Toronto, I have places to stay, options, resources, the temptation to stay. Lung's not sure if he could make it, but he'd like to go. There a chance we could meet Kyle, finally, his lovely lady, and his lots of cats. (Are there more of you in T.O?) I've started looking at bus-tickets, knowing the farther ahead they're booked, the cheaper they'll end up being. There's a companion fare on greyhound. A second ticket with the same itinerary for fourty dollars more. Two people splitting the cost doesn't look like it would be that bad. The soft drop of gravity when the plane takes off, the wheels as they grind into cloud. Looking down, squares, grid-lock, and a river of motion flowing to another sea, wavy lines representing false cul-de-sac suburb security. Pregnancy Pact Discovered at Gloucester High School. 14 comments | post a comment
"Six Feet Under"
  365 day one hundred & fourty-six: feeling hungry day 365 one hundred & fifty-three: tidal wave
Karriere is a fairly new Copenhagen bar completely designed by over 30 artists, (Robert Stadler, Douglas Gordon, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Olafur Eliasson, etc.), who worked on everything from the name to the interior.
It's not the autobiography people have been asking me to write, full of oddball miniature adventures, names changed and details blurred to protect almost everyone involved, but the story of my parents, my dangerous childhood, and how it relates to me now. As many of you know, my sociopath father, (who I generally tell people is dead), has been sending me letters since I sent him a hello on my birthday last year. He writes a minimum of once a day, though I never reply and rarely read anything. The more he writes, the more ingrown the stories become, the more pathological, until the only way to understand the later letters is to start at the beginning, to see where certain codes began. Now that an entire year has passed, there's hundreds of replies to my one small note, poisonous, hateful, and full of self aggrandizing lies, that I haven't even looked at. They're just sitting there, taking up server space somewhere in the states, not quite ignored, but dormant. As a body of work, it reminds me most of case studies I've read about violent obsessives who paper their walls with scribbles about jesus. The tone is similar, but with my mother and I featured in place of religious figures. My intention is to use his letters as material, as something to respond to. "Find inspiration where you can." I'm not sure what else there is to do, (perhaps I can donate it to a psychological institution?), I don't like his bright confusion speaking to an empty room. It feels like I'm neglecting a chore, an old bit of furniture that needs to be painted. 22 comments | post a comment
 Firefox releases it's 3.0 today. It's free. It's open. I use it, you use it, and if you don't, you should. Go download it! They're trying to set the world record for most downloads in a single day. 
via neat-o-rama: Dave Bruno looked around his San Diego home one summer and realized just how much of his family’s belongings were cluttering their lives. So he decided to do something about it, in a project he called The 100 Thing Challenge:Dave’s progress blog, guynameddave. 13 comments | post a comment
With special thanks to the Creaking Planks, you rock the house.
    ( more people ) Friday, the unicorn, kits beach, bingo: ( every flavour of ice-cream they had )    ( see who won )    ( who's that in bed? ) Saturday, playland, chinatown night market, pho: ( those darned kids )     ( rockstars of the amusement park )      ( not quite what it looks like )
Apple Store Paris set to open under Louvre Pyramid.
City of Shadows, long exposure shots of crowds in St. Petersburg, Russia by Alexey Titarenko. via bldgblog. |
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