j'check du monde

sur le toit. in light.

2010-09-09T21:16:00.008-04:00

The Montreal skyline at five a.m. is a thing to behold with best men friends.

@ Nabi, Blanchette & Vincent. je vous aime.

to patrick and the universe

2010-08-17T18:26:00.003-04:00

I waltzed onstage directly towards you, confident. (I probably would have been less so if I'd known it was you and all your swagger, glamour, glitter, but I didn't, I'll admit that. For the better?) The little wing of the stage was mine for the evening - a go go gig for free drink - and I would stake it, taking the work very seriously. It was mine, this stage. To dance for hours.

I put my purse down on your dj table, grabbed the edges and dipped down for you, locking eyes, letting my long red hair fall to the floor. Hello, I said at the time, I'm here to dance for your party.

The next day I saw your face on the cover of The Hour. I laughed. I gave you an alias name to match my alias persona, but what a friend you might be if I hadn't lied.

I didn't recognize you today, when I happened into your salon with alternative press in hand, and I took me a minute to place those intense eyes and high cheekbones. You are someone here, you know, which is something. Your energy fills a room. I was a stranger but danced for you all night long , my legs in pain in the morning. For you. For the room. But I would dance again until dawn if asked. ask me to.

Today, when I told you who I was that night your perfectly arched eyebrows jumped. You, you said, were so, so fun. We talked about the next time the music could unite us. You'll know, you said, I'll make sure. As I made my leave, shyly putting out my hand to shake, you grabbed it, pulling me close and planting kisses on my cheeks. You are so much fun.

--

Dear, dear Patrick - and things at work beyond what we can know that keep people bumping into each other here - I want to dance for you all night again. I want to dip for you again. I want a wig for you again. Let me know.

haircuts clark

2010-08-13T18:14:00.005-04:00

summer shears: friends, food, wine, clippings and youtube.

smoke is in the air. it is humid here. it is all about to become autumn.
not ready yet. not ready yet. not ready yet. it all begins again in september.

with buildings gone missing like teeth

2010-07-29T12:25:00.004-04:00

* missing

I totally fucked my settings

2010-07-23T01:52:00.001-04:00

help?

oui & winnipeg

2010-07-23T00:02:00.010-04:00

word of the day. word to wed to a noun. word to wed to my finger. word to live for. oui. oui. oui.

---

three years. three! and still I wonder, where is my true home?

---

So the recurring theme of this blog has resurfaced once again, at it's usual, annual time: back and fourth from the land of talk to the land of plenty. How strange it is. How much we forget when we're gone for three hundred and sixty five days, give or take. & how many people and places you can somehow manage to fit into a week of time. Holy shit.

I blitzed through it from start to finish. blitzed! After weeks off from renovated restaurants I worked three shifts to my bone and then booked a flight to Manitoba. "I'll be there at 9:30 tomorrow morning," I told parents, glancing at time and preparing for a white night / nuit blanche of organizing and packing up a place that still feels new, making espresso and drinking it slowly through midnight, taking a 4:20 bus to the airport, 6 a.m. flight and touching down in the 204 less than 12 hours since buying a ticket.

And it didn't stop, thanks to the good times.

There is always that Winnipeg anticipation before boarding the plane: will I be forgotten/ignored, due to a stellar lack of social media? Will I run into someone crazy who will timewarp my brain? (Anyone is possible, really. I saw a girl at PMix who I haven't seen or thought about since the early aughts, when we were obviously both very different people - we actually gawked at each other while making odd conversation and I think I forgot to say goodbye and feel bad, though the chances of seeing her in the next five years are... what?) Will there be anything happening? What's changed? What's the same? Who's haunting my haunts?

And, most importantly I feel, is discovering what I was totally blind to while living in Manitoba. The details I ignored by total lack of context. What nuances I couldn't appreciate. Or the utter romance I couldn't see right in front of my face. This is what kills me each time and keeps me returning.

And because this is quickly going to turn into a Winnipeg diatribe far too long to warrant a brief, but engaging blog post, I will list these things:

> space: four lanes in each direction. a boulevard. a sidewalk. a front yard. space between houses and nothing on top of each other. Also, epic lack of balcony action - why? And no bike infrastructure - what the fuck? There's room. Everywhere.

> sky: each time I find myself staring at it, it's endlessness, it's movement. There was a thunderstorm I saw, miles and miles and miles away, with lightning. the sky is swallowing. it is totally therapeutic. I could look at that sky for hours. I did. It reminded me how small we all are, really.

> the significant bands of native women and girls, teens really, wandering streets. I completely forgot this. I suppose in some sick way their nomadic consistency was normalized to me. I wasn't so shook up then like I am now. I looked/listened more carefully this time, desperately and concentrated. Why are you going missing here in record numbers? What is it that makes you so prevalent to all kinds of abuse and sexism? .... I want them to be empowered. So, so badly. And I feel really fucking guilty and colonial for wanting this, for some unfathomable reason. I also feel helpless, not knowing what "to do" or how "to help." It's just totally fucked up. And, it's made me think about what I really, really want my work to be in this life.

> the donut hole: is where it's all happening. If I ever move back to Winnipeg, which would be a tall order, I would certainly live downtown or in the exchange; the crux of it all. wow yeah.

> potential lovers, but not really: why Winnipeg, why? Curses for throwing good-looking, totally interesting and highly fuckable people in my direction when I'm not even living in town anymore. It's really not nice, or fair, or funny. Timing is everything. I won't go into details, but fuck my (love) life.

---

There is something about Montreal though. You can't even compare them, but I'll keep trying,

more to come and photos I swear,

Lawrence

rings true; ideas

2010-07-11T23:36:00.010-04:00

. montreal mirror predictions .

Have you fallen in omnidirectional love these past few weeks? Are you swooning with such reckless splendor that at times you feel like you're swimming in mid-air?

You have an urgent need to be caught up in a vortex of free-form affection. Your receptivity to being tickled and spun around by an almost insane outpouring of libidinous empathy is crucial to your education. Boisterously tender feelings are what the cosmos are aching to fill you with.

--- lovevelo.velolove

someone gave me a parting gift three years ago: four letters. (e,l,o,v)

two words are made of these letters and, incidentally, the word has changed form in my new room and home. Mostly I have been unscrewing, allen keying, greasing, steel-wool-ing, breaking down and building up a bike. Thinking about mechanics. Yep, it's happening: stereotypical hipster mile end twentysomething making a fixed-gear bicycle to ride in the winter in her apartment. Yep, wouldn't be happening without the red-blooded American twentysomething messenger bike mechanic roommate. Yep, we've devoted a room in our house to whips even though we said we wouldn't. Yep. love velo. velo love.

Good read lately? Bike Snob NYC - the book!

----omnidirectional?

Woah. what a concept. fuck. my. life.

So, maybe you knew this already but I'm single. ono. for the first time during a Montreal summer in my life. So what, right?

Wrong. During a Montreal summer, shit goes crazy for the singles. Something jumps in dark alleyways and crowded dancefloors, on bike paths and in all-night water parcs. Hanging out on balconies bbqing or smoking. Picking up groceries. At the pool. It's bat shit bananas. People! Lusty, lusty people beyond words to describe them. gah.

I'm not going to get into the details. I'll tell you when I get into town, but the most interesting one of allis that lately I have been ... ahem ... pursued by a couple. An "open" couple. A NYC-bred but living in Mtl couple. It's unconventional. This, obviously, has made me really start wrapping my brain about 'monogamy' v. 'plurality'

This, coupled with bouts of no-consistent-spoon blues is just too much. I don't know what to think!

A new friend is currently making a film about the montreal sex scene, which I am very interested in. The open couple in question gave an excellent interview for the project, I'm told. When I can link it, I'll link it and it will be the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me on this blog.

They invited me to an insane body painting party yesterday, and the relics of the night - regular faces in my neighbourhood coffee shop (recently reopened!) - donned the marks of sexy artfag shenanigans via streaks of faded acrylic on tanned or freckled skin. Holy painted plurality.

I often wonder if I can go there, really.

---my wpg

so I'm back again in, like, a day. I'm not ready.
I spoke at length about this with many winnipeggers to date: going back makes you question everything. There's this six-month itch of wondering where you'll fit - here or there - and who you'll be on the flight back "home"

--- lived for weeks without the internet

& I loved it. I almost objected to getting it because we actually read books and listened to the CBC 24/7 and it was lovely. Life without the internet made me seriously consider it as a necessity in an apartment. (maybe that's what the office is for!?)

Life is just too sweet without it: knocking door to door, waking up neighbours from naps, leaving notes to invite you over. we making many, many meals, leafing through yellow-paged, dog-eared cookbooks. Random afternoon salads and tea when a friend nips in on a whim.

Heck, life without the internet is great. Once it came back, I wasted all kinds of time in my underwear obsessively reading (news, blogs and internet garbage).

the internet changes everything and I actually might prefer the real world.

---- flight.

Is expensive, but necessary?
damn I wish Karmen was coming with me,

LB

touch the universe

2010-07-09T16:36:00.003-04:00

best trip ever. one of many consecutive French nights out.

(miss my ginger), LB

Clark

2010-07-09T13:59:00.010-04:00

I am a completely different person; (& I know this sounds insane)

Notably, it's because of Clark - the rue-cum-man of the hour at the moment in my life. (Figurative men are the best kind)

Laying together long nights listening to the random cyclists along bike path outside our window, or spending sunny mornings sitting on the back gallerie with espresso to lips, a book in hand and clothing on the line in the breeze, or eating epic, friend-filed breakfasts, brunches, lunches, mid-afternoon salads and bbq dinners consecutively since moving in, Clark has been, quite frankly, the best thing a not-really-working gal could want for the summer.

And I am ever, ever so grateful that our time has also been peppered with people - mostly winnipeggers mind you - who have dropped in at random, rejuvenating this change, nodding me on, reminding. My lady love was here, followed by my mother, my cousin and a friend. Everyone partied with the best of them, but props to momma for not giving into the peer pressure to smoke up at our "goodbye H2L guido party" or disowning me for dressing like a dirty jersey shore knockoff.

H2L is like another life when I think about it now, which is crazy because it was my life for three years. But it's done. It's over. We've moved on, and some of us even have poke-and-stick tattoos to remind us of our postal code.

Dancing until the sun was up on the front balcon and taking in the Molson sign, the clouds in the sky, and how the light hit our supple, swaying bodies, it was the last morning on that balcony with the cars going by and the elders in rocking chairs. It was the last look at the Jaques Cartier in the morning, (an old roommates voice in the back of my mind: "if you hate it here you can see your way out") or the CBC star at night, lighting my way home from wherever I was on the mountain.

It was a great last everything. Salut Maisonneuve, merci beaucoup for being, literally, my new home...

----

And later, when everything was built and pret, "this is the best it’s ever been," she said on my bed with a frame.

I don't know about that last bit, actually. Maybe the best in Montreal so far, but maybe it's too soon? How can you organize experience hierarchically? Everything is different now, and it feels good, but better? To be continued... (and new apt pictures to come!)

----

Lawrence

alter ego

2010-06-11T00:08:00.003-04:00

yay or nay, dear readers - the slim who remain.

I feel a transformation coming on...
and see you SOON, Winnipeg

----
loco/lo/laurance

La Rock

2010-05-13T01:08:00.005-04:00

this about sums it up. actually. funny, isn't it, how relatable beyonce is in lingerie.

I was told recently that the first thing that comes to his mind is "raw sex" and have since been seriously considering stalling the action in my life completely. I'm out (and this time I mean it). Decided after a dinner "with the wife" of tofu sandwiches over a glass of wine and dark chocolate, we came to the conclusion that celibacy is godliness in terms of eliminating drama in one's life.

And chocolate, she said to me as the cocoa dissolved in her mouth, is pleasure that's consistent.

I literally, and figuratively, fell hard on my ass about this one. Though my tailbone will recover, I'm not sure about my pride.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Funny what a time can do to one's outlook. I had sworn off La Rockette as a place of ill social engagements and disappointment last week, and wound up spending the long weekend there almost exclusively. Har.

Ginger is in town and my heart has exploded. I can't even begin to tell you how easy it was for her to slip into my life here, speak French with my friends and be my Hutch. We've been walking together, up and down the side of the mountain, before and after bouts of total chaos and dancing, while marveling at Montreal and why she doesn't live here (yet).

(Tuesday - random Remouski party. Wednesday- Slow Dance. Thursday - Fuck HOMA, Vive Hochelag, followed by La Rock. Friday - night in. Saturday - Silverdoor. Sunday - La Rock & La Fontaine. Monday - tripping. 3d Hubble movie in the old port, China, bikeride through Place des artes & Jeanne Mance chilling. Tuesday - La Rock. Fuck my liver.)

Strange to say, but the last couple of days have really affirmed my life here. It takes an old friend, a fresh pair of eyes and ears and outlooks, to help you gage where you've been and where you are. "Three years!" we exclaimed, unbelievingly, as we shook our heads and walked to another adventure.

It's not like we're established or accomplished or in a milieu or anything, but it feels closer to actually being home here. I walk around neighborhoods and regularly run into people I know - which is a small, but beautiful pleasure.

What's strange about the timing in all this is that I'm about to move out of the home-y comforts and take on a new quartier. Since friends live two minutes in every direction from my (fingers-crossed) new apartment I think it'll be different and good, but I wonder what will happen to my French, my Francophone sister and being invited by proximity. We'll see.

I've been considering Facebook, if you can believe it. Hah. But I'm not quite ready to take the plunge just yet. I need to start with a cell phone and work my way slowly. Total Luddite action.

xxxxxxxxxxx

I don't know why this all had to come out like this, but believe it has something to do with Ginger reaffirming my life. Ginger and Patti Smith, that is.

LOCO

burt and bodies

2010-05-05T21:29:00.004-04:00

---these eyes

We embraced—drunkenly after karaoke and 3 a.m. poutine—and when I hugged you fiercely and tightly to me, I didn't remember to thank you for dropping down and reminding through reunion that the life we lived two years ago is not the life we live today. (But that it's still good).

There were no body suits or burlesque numbers this time, but it felt the same and that's why it matters. I wish I could have spent more with you—talking intently about how the UK has shined your boots and studded your jeans—but I treasure the brief mornings shared and the friendly kisses on the shoulder or cheek before leaving to see your family. (You're family).

Thank you for coming back and making me remember. And for living like french fries for dinner three times a week is appropriate. And for embracing my changes. And for loving me.

I love you. London soon.

---the bodies

I woke up wondering how to feel about the whole thing. I looked at my limbs and bruises, bite marks and breasts, and thought about that party. What to feel? What to think? How intertwined feelings are—power.pleasure.passion.confusion.committment.resistance.submission.giving.(living.) Holy fuck. Holy fuck. Holy fuuuuuck.

Before I left for this place three years ago, a man drinking wine at the bar told me, "Good girls go to Ottawa. Bad girls go to Montreal." I've been thinking about that lately, and the way he smiled when he said it. Who is bad? What is bad? (His eyes told me it was good.) Is it good? What is good? At least it's real.

I didn't know then what I know now and I won't know today what I will know tomorrow, you know? Wow.

I really want to write down the details but not all of them. I want to reinforce the softness and hardness, the confusion of limbs and bodies, the breathing and sweating, but you just had to be there. It's impossible to tell you the way the early sun basked on flesh and messy hair, and made the details so very clear and my mind so blank as I rode my bike down the hill in the wind. Arms outstretched. Jacket flying though the air. Thigh high stockings revealed.

This city. It must be this city.

---

you know I don't believe you

2010-04-23T16:53:00.004-04:00

when you say that you don't need me.

---

I sent my first, and last, sext message the other day. It wasn't via cellphone, which was probably the issue, but I have to say it was probably the most exciting, and subsequently humiliating, thing ever. Either way, worth a mention: sleep with the ones who want the fantasy. Noted.

---

this city's a slut, he said, we could never have been my grandparents because we don't live in the mountains. I wonder how much of this is true and why it makes me feel so sad now that I think about it.

----

I showed up at the retreat with sparkles still caked and encrusted on my cheeks. It was a vain attempt to cold-wash remove the fabulous warpaint, run fingers through to tame sexhair and carry a semblance of professionalism amongst colleagues. Not happening.

"where did you go last night?" he asked, running his thumb along my cheekbone, "Studio 54?"

may as well have been. Thank god the erotic photographer was too good a host to get into Facebook mode and take pictures. Likely would love to see them, but it might be better that the (cyber) world at large will never witness the sultry, sparkling moments, the many kisses, the anything-goes dance party in the living room, nor my cleavage.

These spinning, fabulous, free-for-all social moments being strung together day to day yield everything. nothing.

----

the pace of internet is staggering as I play catch-up with Wordpress and ambition. It is sunny, but not quite warm. Spring, but not quite summer. There is something in the air that beckons change, total chaos, and complete reevaluation of "the sour and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called 'reality.'"

I am done school. Done the paper. Done with Maisonneuve. Though everything, these things included, linger just beyond outstretched fingertips amongst fleeting thoughts or ideas; they still define. It's a funny, puzzling place to be on the cusp of it, whatever it will be, however it will change me.

One of my bests drew me in close enough to tell a secret. In the bar we danced amongst people we had kissed and never spoken to again, holding and darting glances. "Something big is going to happen this summer," she said, her breath on my lobe, "I feel it." She, pretending to be my lover upon request, pursed her red lips in a smirk and had a twinkle in her eye I can assure was the real deal. Something. Something soon. Summer.

---

lawrence

managing

2010-04-06T03:07:00.003-04:00

editor;

it is difficult to jump the ranks.

once, we were all equals.

but now, somehow, the power has tipped.

I want respect (fear),

but, of course,

to remain loved*

what is power? really? ... .... determination? ethic? ambition?

who has it? who manipulates it?

especially among friends, lovers, colleagues.

I don't know if I can do it. I really don't.

How do you strike a balance? or eternal composure?

Time, money, energy, curiosity, burnout.

I cried twice today. My god. twice!

I haven't cried in a long, long while.

It soothed me, strangely.

3 a.m. and the production comes to a close.

relationship with a newspaper: complicated.

Now I should just sleep on it.

*this is an impossible desire while on a paper

morning

2010-03-30T23:24:00.005-04:00

how do you convince the body in your bed - broad shoulders and back - to turn around and embrace you in the morning? this time of day, after the night before, we are strangers and it is stranger now. with wild delights diminished and early sunlight blaring through windows on naked skin, we wonder about the other (pretending to sleep?). when he gets up, having to crawl over a naked frame, there is temptation to grab an ankle and trip back to where we were last night. why are you so shy? why don't you spoon? why aren't you comfortable yet? we already fucked/are lovers/are friends.

three days straight

2010-03-09T07:28:00.004-05:00

my life has become a journalism parody.

I have spent the last three days housed up hosting a regional conference, followed by paper production. I crashed with the delegates in a hotel room on de la montagne for the last three days and somehow made it through the third and final "poster night" of wannabe student council politicians scrambling their way up escalators to pillage prime real estate space in a blur of purple.

Through the conscious, slept-and-nourishment deprived, constantly working state, I managed to laugh with colleagues through all the activity, turn down a threesome with teens, kiss a handsome environmentalist one time on each cheek and break a seven-year hiatus from McDonalds breakfast watching the sun rise with my masthead.

I feel accomplished and disgusting at seven thirty a.m., killing time before a feature writing class and washing delicates by hand.

I looked in the mirror at my tired, computer-glazed eyes and it occurred to me that I have stopped writing for myself somehow, even if it is all I seem to do between spurts of socialization.

This is an interesting job. One that kills, tires, excites and challenges me in so many different, changing ways. Have I really found vocation? Fuck.

At the office today, sagging deep into the well-worn couch around two a.m., we talked about how journalism would be so much better if we didn't have to have such intense relationships with a computer screen. The lifeless glow beckons us, clearly (even when it's seven in the morning and my bed cries out), because it is the vehicle in which I have been trained to communicate.

I love this and I hate this.

Often, the image of a throw-back era of reportage—just a (wo)man and his pen—having to explain something experienced, real, present, while capturing and creating it, moulding language, relaying story from a dial up telephone for a copy writer on the other end to transcribe. Dictation! What a concept. Our generation will never live throwback journalism.

But then again, why wax nostalgic about the olden days, many have asked me, when I have the fastest technological tools at my disposable fingertips. Why question the gifts that I have been given by the "ingenuity" of man and machine? Why wonder about how mcuh it has impacted the very basic human condition of communication. It fucks with me sometimes.

I've been trying to write this feature about technology and personal relationships and cannot seem to convince many that this pace and its place in our lives is out of control. It sometimes even seems unfair to demand people to detach from the real experience of skin, breath, exchange, gesture, eyes, words - free flowing and affected by the circumstances.

very literal.

2010-02-16T22:58:00.002-05:00

photo swiped from tsejsajten

licking my wounds?

2010-02-11T02:46:00.008-05:00

It's a two part question. I can't decide. The month of January is gone and I am here, nearly mid-february, back in action and/or licking wounds. I have let my job become my life, and I'm not managing either very well. Somehow in my brain, the paper's been placed higher than school assignments, a respectable GPA, internships, a love life, exercise and friendship. Masochistic or what? I am a glutton for punishment.

I totally forgot about Artistic Things (where I summoned the lovely piece of advertising above), but am now back on the bandwagon. I totally forgot about growing-lists and tried to be a human in a home (goodbye weekend), but am now fully laundered, fed, washed and I spoke with my mother (worth it). I totally forgot about internship deadlines (fuck!), but have started thinking that Europe may be plus necessaire than a newsroom (who needs savings?).

I am off, and on, the bandwagon, for the better some for the worse.

Is balance possible?

The NASHlow

2010-01-20T01:15:00.003-05:00

WHEREAS the cultural landscape of east Edmonton may appear a vapid wasteland of non-sidewalk, strip malls and shitty chain restos to an outside eye,

WHEREAS sketchy Internet connection that was often nonexistent plunged us journalists against our will back to the dark days of "traditional" media where a hard copy, hotel-provided G&M was the only source of outside news besides the interweb on Blackberries and iPhones,

WHEREAS a combination of 10-hour plenary and lack of Interweb made me want to stab out my eyeballs with a pen, and joke motions are only funny for ten minutes,

BIRT, despite these facts, the inside of the Radisson was overwhelmingly abuzz with activity last week, hosting NASH 72: Natural Selection - a Canadian University Press conference that brought people on papers from coast to coast to hear speakers, participate in workshops and party like a good ol' fashioned gin-soaked journalist stereotype.

-----

Much was discussed: "new" media, bilingualism in CUP, the lack of Internet (seriously, wtf. It's the national journalism conference!), authenticity, Jan Wong, Twitter, "innovation" (though just how innovative can a panelist of upper-middle class white guys actually be?), the failed attempts of everyone to have a good time on Whyte Ave, Adrienne Arsenault, line dancing and FUCKING PLENARY JOKE MOTIONS.

Much was learned: the evolution of the craft, our roles in new media, the individual as a media entity (branded - like Perez), how to create good interviews, the importance of connecting with people like you (and the people you like)*, that "you don't stop fighting in this business," the difference between 'linkers' and 'thinkers' on the big ol' blogosphere, the importance of packaging the product, the value-added experience you can't get on the net, defamation, libel and responsible journalism, being better at your job than at your life, and, finally, that Alberta Pure will lead nowhere sanctimonious but a stairwell.

It was a blast.

I had the pleasure to meeting many, many colleagues on Canadian student press—by way of exchanging cards, kudos, ideas, pitches, spliffs, beers, and an overwhelming distaste for Edmonton—and look so, so forward to keeping up with what they're up to in the future.

I left the conference today feeling quite excited and inspired. I have been writing mental lists of things to do to keep connections alive and better the paper, in between obsessively reading CUPpies and my newfound student journalism friends online. I am so impressed with the breadth of skill and labour put into our beloved weeklies, biweekly, monthlies - and have a renewed dedication to creating and challenging my expectations of this craft.

When NASH 73 rolls into MONTREAL, I will be there and it is going to fucking rule.

Expect a forthcoming hyperlink mania, Loco.

*shout out to The Manitoban, The Muse, The McGill Daily, The Aquinian, The Uniter... and fuck, I love The Concordian, too.

awe of scenery and scale

2010-01-08T00:46:00.010-05:00

[edited version: initially, I am too romantic]

I am four-classes-and-three-jobs-deep already & it's not even the first week of 2010. Classes, colleagues, *new* jobs, old job, and daydreams are keeping things busy and slightly distracted.

Since the first, I have undergone a metamorphosis back to server from seller. (It is stellar.) The smell of baked bread and espresso; soppy carpets and children's boots; regulars who will remember my name; constant motion and working hands - it feels so right. & Get this: my boss? His name is Tony! Another town, another Tony. oh, yes.

Since the first, I have also put my name in a hat of extra-curricular challenge.

As of next week, on top of crazy Link duties, I start blogging for Artistic Things as a Montreal correspondent. Really nervous, really excited, and I expect that it will be a very rad kick in the ass to start keeping up with all the artfaggery this city has to offer. yes? fuck yes. Follow me?

Finally, anyone LOOKING TO MOVE TO MONTREAL, or KNOW SOMEONE who wants to and NEEDS A PLACE? Let me know. There is a sweet colloq setup that could use a third.

But that's it for now. O&O and interviews in the morning,

LOCO

To total change and chaos,

2010-01-02T15:01:00.022-05:00

-----------------------------

"You've done it before," he said with a shrug when I explained the triple-threat of change. His nonchalance soothed me—I could do it again, right?

-------------------------

Usher in the new year: writing emails, flying "home," sleeping off wpg, waking, dressing the fuck up (killer kit of fringe, lace, sequins, fur - FELTED MOUSTACHE), feasting at a chiiiiill-but-slightly-judgmental Holschega-Maisonneuve souper à maison (overdressed), escaping to a scene once midnight struck (dressed to imprexxx apparently), doingdancingdrinkingtakingitin 'til ten a.m., before finally watching as my boots carry me home through a quiet parc while the snow fell, to a bed that was shared with one who had taught me more about comfort and companionship in the last two years than I deserve(d), to... to what? To total change and chaos. To 2010.

-------------------

you know I believe in this shit by now, don't you? So lets have it:

PISCES: Although there will be no shortage of changes and challenges in 2010, with luck planet Jupiter in your sign for much of the year there will also be notable successes and fitting rewards. Something that happens toward the end of February will point you in the right direction but you will have to wait until June to see any material results. However, the influence of your altruistic ruler Neptune will increase your breadth of vision and remind you that there are different kinds of successes. Friendships will flourish, especially in January and July, but a summer love affair will fade as autumn approaches and make you realize that some things are just not meant to be.

----------------------------------

le sigh*

* is a double entendre and may seem backwards at this moment of nouveau seule, but it is absolutely crucial to the plot that I have hung a portrait of a married couple in my bedroom.

-----------------------------------

"In life, change is the only constant."

Avi told me this while we sat at a busy Osborne breakfast place before LM made a joke about my half-shaved dome. Apparently, before his mother - my great-grandmother - passed away, she told him that she was ready because she'd seen everything - from a horse and buggy to a man walking on the moon. I don't think I will ever forget this, or the way my Avi's lined face and glassy eyes looked as they contemplated the idea. That is the mantra of the year. For sure. It's already happening, it's already happened, it's going to happen.

-------------------------------

to 2010 and the changes it may bring,

yours solo and hopeful, L.

where you been so long?

2009-12-23T21:12:00.008-05:00

Winnipeg, j'arriverai; let the eating begin.

Anticipation for healthy doses of all that is the best in my prairie city are nigh. As always, there is slight nervousness about making the trek and greeting the familiar. Some weird pressure to collectively explain that everything here is more, even if it feels like less. I need to return, recharge, read, relaxxx instead of exhaustingly waiting for the lingering, quiet hours to finally snuff out the year.

Hopefully, the heaps of mes devoirs should keep me roosting at my favourite local places that I miss, with fate resting in the social gods of Corydon and Osborne.

Please come out and be merry. I'll see you soon,

Loco

tits (the season) pics

2009-12-21T20:50:00.014-05:00

I'll have a blue Christmas without you

my balls feel blue just thinking about you

Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree

Won't mean a thing dear, if you're not pleasing me

& when those blue snowflakes start falling

thats when those blue memories start calling

You'll be doing all right with your Christmas of white

But I'll have blue, blue balls for Christmas

(curtain call)

crystal ball

2009-12-14T18:09:00.005-05:00

it is never the right time for life.

you know? It swoops down, grabs on, and puts you on a path in a different direction.

I am thinking a lot about my existential life. who are my friends? what is my job? why do I live here? where do I belong? and keep wondering if the people who have turned back home are the ones who are crazy, or if it's me.

I am scared for the staff meeting. shit. Maybe I won't have a job at the end of the day. Then it will be time to BOUGE. or just relax and enjoy my unemployment.

(written ?? published Feb)

blue (balls) for christmas

2009-12-11T00:24:00.005-05:00

so here's my bi-annual(?) burlesque money shot. balls in.
You know, to keep tradition alive.

If you're in MTL show up to:

TITS THE SEASON... to be naughty
Dec. 11 & 12! CAFE CLEOPATRE! 10 p.m.!
Tickets 10 or 8 with perishable food item.

snowsuit to skivvies, LB

light in the tunnel of a winter dark

2009-12-08T20:29:00.010-05:00

There is calm as the snow climbs window sills and flat surfaces, white on white on white. Welcome to Winter, MTL it suits you just fine. A clean change from shades of grey.

------------------

everything imploded: a socially etarded weekend, an email scam, a terrible (un)dress, a possibly-usurped job (by a to-be baby's daddy?!?), an inexcusable application blunder, and the usual doses of existential angst that pull me undertow.

(Breathe into a bag) What am I doing with my life? What is my life doing for my life?

-------------------

Last week Janelle and I sat about her empty house, drank red wine, spoke, literally for hours, about nothing - everything - nothing, and realized at the end of it all that we are both alone over here; we are all we have.

The realization was scary (also a tad overdramatic), but we laughed/loathed about the state of our pathetic weekly dates with each other and the lack of SOMETHING in our lives that makes us want to keep living.

Alternately, we have both been mad about town.

Lo and behold, a mere two days after languishing on her comforter talking doom and gloom,we rode the metro in the morning as the sun was rising, the birds were singing, and people were on their ways to work at wee hours after a wild night of Montreal madness. It was quite funny and quite fucked up. Wild-eyed, lipstick-smeared, at least we are alive. Well, but weathered; morale in a questionable state, lonely for our friends who have left or stayed behind.

visit. return.

--------------------

Are we doomed? Is J'check doomed? Probable. Head over to the manstream.

------------------

Sorry about all of this, really. I have been attempting to bring "blogging" back into my life in some meaningful way,that is both more than business and absolute business. It's difficult to disassociate editing for paper and writing for pleasure these days. This is the in-between moment, so forgive the hiccups in prose and points, as I am sure this whole post makes me sound staccato and strung out. right? right.

-----------------------

no love lost, LOCO

talkin' bout

2009-12-02T17:19:00.006-05:00

"Young lady, I feel really sorry for your generation," she told me.

Looking up from a spot on the metro station floor, indignant face.

"But you don't even know me," was the cool reply - as though her words hadn't stung at all.

"Oh, yes I do," she assured. "I can tell by the way you smiled at me right then. You are all lost. You have lost your individuality. I feel really sad for you."

She got on the metro and me behind her, saying nothing more. We sat across and stared. When the door opened, I went out, representing my generation.

QUEER ISSUE DONE

2009-11-26T11:11:00.002-05:00

Thank the good (gay) lord!

You can check it out here. & my lezzie transformation here.

I have sharply turned my mandate into queering-out the paper on a more regular basis, we'll see how this goes.

these fishy days

2009-11-05T13:10:00.016-05:00

the 'scope this week is excellent. Apparently the stars are aligned and the power to organism from deep thought alone is within sight. I need to harness the pisces birthright, apparently. Owning the equally wild and disciplined parts of personality to experience holy bliss...

I hope—figuratively speaking—to get laid and paid.

Inspiring the sending of mail, the gathering of fruit, the quiet time with guilty pleasure writing, the neglecting all that is necessary for 45 minutes and thinking up all the 'wild' things I can possibly do in the upcoming week instead is just the break I need. Doing it without pants and coffee-stained teeth, vintage fur 'round shoulders, channeling an inner-grandma is also fucking divine. There is something about fur without pants that is reckless chic.

This is also a weak-but-necessary preface into the debauchery of Hween—where they say that people release their inner darkside when they wear what they wish they could the other 360 days of the year. It might be true, considering how everyone's garb was quite fitting really: Aly was the lamb of god, Richard a sun/feather golden boy, JJ was an octopus-wish thrown in that bottle of red by the river last summer (my wish hasn't come true either, william). All fitting. I was the one who changed five times at work before settling on badass blue biker Babcia—naturally sans pants.

The first thing we do once walking onto the metro car is experience a brawl that leaves me kicking a couple of predators as hard as I can in their ribs with raised boot. Costumed Canadiens fans (no less) fight fucking dirty. After that spook—wiping blood from our costumes—the dancing began in living rooms of ex-pats (the lovely Christiane et Benoit), followed by socializing the Mile End, getting on the WRONG bus to industrial St.Laurent North, stranded without pants and blue beehive in the middle of rape-me-alone nowhere and an interesting taxi ride to the wrong party (fifty doors from where I shouldn't have been anyways), before strutting home through the parc with a joint in mouth.

I better be the coolest fucking grandma ever...

The next day was early to the office feeling *just great* before experiencing an aftermath 2 p.m. hangover with just enough energy to put on a bra and attend this.

(the random, cool assignments are the reason I bust my balls on the boring stuff, I think. Just how fabulous a journalists life can be! Munching vegan ChuChai goodness, rubbing elbows with the creme of the non-carne crop, talking to Montreal Canadiens celebrity Georges Laraque... it's fun when it doesn't feel like work.)

But already that was last weekend and this one coming up couldn't be more polar. The Queer issue will kill me. Same with the job. Same with the moonly desire to let the walk on the wild side intersperse with these disciplined, regimented hours.

fuuuuuck those fishy ways. Lo.

do you remember

2009-10-27T18:28:00.010-04:00

why you love where you live?

thanks to my brother, LB

studysergestudysergestudy

2009-10-24T19:01:00.002-04:00

stresssssssickness

2009-10-18T17:33:00.010-04:00

Change is in the air. People are flailing crazy all around me. You can blame it on the temperature, midterms, or maybe even a quarter-life crisis. A quick-fingered count confirms my suspicion of summer babies and running back to winnipeg; ontological anxiety reigns! winter is a son-of-a-bitch!

Juggling, dribbling, outfielding: pick the metaphor. I dropped the ball. Psyching myself up for a neat freelance project on the first day off in over two months, my body recently turned around, shut down (sick, no doubt, from school-work-paper-rinse-repeat) and I barely moved for days. Thinking nonstop about something that should be clear after 23 years of life—the extent of my limits—I let other people down all around me in physical omission, while physically cloaked in sheets of guilt and a temperature sweat. Between stressing and 'resting,' the opportunities squandered. la rhume en chôlis.

This blog has lost its direction and so have I.

It's under the weather, like everything else. L.

clippings

2009-10-06T02:41:00.007-04:00

new work:

loved one:

Today was Madge day. We waltzed through the metro, to (skipped) school, the office, the People's Potato, myriade for beautiful coffees, the EV building, through pouring rain (newspapers sheltering our heads), under steps to smoke cloves, through beaux arts, through parks, up parc, to a record store, through records, down in transit, to hug like long-lost sisters, to power nap by the end of it all. through unsuccessful only in getting matching wedding-band 'oui's' on our fourth fingers, this day was exemplary, necessary & I continues to be impressed to no end.

I feel infused with Winnipeg. Good day. Good day.

LOCO

the editorial

2009-10-03T02:53:00.011-04:00

I think I've figured out what is worth pumping back-to-back 12 hour days in an office, under paling artificial light, working longingly beside a city skyline but not under it, withstanding dry contacts and burning retinas fixed to the glow of a screen, fingers tapping - pausing - tapping in spurts and stops, research gathering, prose forming, word honing : it is the editorial.

As I voluntarily gave up friday night in favour of the editorial, it dawned on me that this was probably the closest platform to postulate upon, addressing hundreds (maybe even a thousand) people and have them think about my personal politics.

With this realization, words have suddenly felt quite heavy, more significant, more meaningful. It dawned that this was both power and responsibility with reputation always dancing in the distance.

On top of shitting on a daily basis about the facts of the matters, I realize more and more that journalism is serious ethical business. The discipline of weighing words is extraordinary; why did I ever think that it would feel more free?

--- or can it be?

feelings bank

2009-09-09T20:59:00.022-04:00

draft

there's a starmaaan, waiting in the sky. he'd like to come and meet us but he thinks it'd blow our minds yeah a staaaarmaaaaan waiting in the sky. he told us not to blow it, cause he knows it's all worthwhile. he told me: let the children use it, let the children loose it, let the children boogie

------ cms

this city was just too small for the one who left me behind. I cried (real) tears before he got into a car and drove away, but they were the selfish kind; how could I cry for him? In fact, I celebrate and the greatness to come of him; it's the one trapped in perpetual responsibility for whom I shed a tear. I will miss him like a rock by the creek, like a boy in a tree, like a brother in arms

----- fuck gossip

I don't mind being generally distrustful of the world at large, but it is another thing entirely to be distrustful of the people in your closest ranks. Recently I have been forced to explain my words to those who were not around to hear them in their proper context and subsequently, the merit of my character has come into question. It has been tiring to redraw fault lines and elaborate the backstory for someone else, certainly with coworkers and especially with friends who should know (or know me) better anyways.

----- workload

Janelle is making boustiers and I am filing freedom of information acts. the world is unfair.

----- lipstick lesbian

The word 'fierce' was flung this direction for the first time in my life. It was a first-year, crying in a bathroom over some boy who didn't care that she thought he was cute. I advised that there are more important things to worry about and then she said it...

----the hivvy

in the paper will be an article I wrote about the HIV/AIDS walk & I don't know what to think about it. I never seem to have time to let go of my features for a couple of days and get back to them, like a good journalist would. I wonder if I am going to receive angry letters from the queer community about referencing the hypocritical/creepy nature of parc l'espoire or facting the HIVvy inappropriately. time will tell. I need to do a better job about the upcoming violence against Aboriginal women in Canada piece, which is coming up in two weeks. I also need to drop everything and finish application letters, fuck. Why do I want to be a journalist again?

---- tears

I have spent the last two days crying & should probably just admit that it happened.

I'm sure you know how these things work: there is just that one, little, pathetic thing that finally sets it all off, but once it's off, you couldn't stop it if you tried.

When it happened, I left, turned round the corner and openly bawled in the streets.

I howled with the dogs in the parc, sobbed in the Dep (poor Dep guy), sniffled sitting on winding stairs—BAWLED. Once collecting the sobs into intervals laced with breath, I somehow summoned myself to face the party inside, which was followed by a b-line maneuver into to a shower to cry further as the scorching water hit reddening skin, to my room, to hide away, to cry while people danced in my kitchen. ha!

It feels good now that it's out. I believe we humans can only deflect so much for so long before we cash out.

LOCO (emo)

Brome Sweet Brome

2009-09-05T18:44:00.018-04:00

I have alternate titles. many others. they were rambled and recorded while being incredibly early and baking under autumn sun on the side of a highway. standing in dusty gravel with my bike in a bag to the left of me, I listed them off one by one, laughing into the little recorder: Brome Sweet Brome. Bromeance. Beauty and the Brome. When in Brome...

The wind, cars rolling by and other psychedelic effects are completely audible and saved to an MP3, which means that journalism is still looking a lot like Hunter S. these days. Before that really begins, I took off for a couple of blissful days with bests. The agrestic charms of the Eastern townships are beyond my ability to describe so a list shall have to suffice: piled rocks, glass windows, cut lawns, rolling greens, apple trees, cow eyes, rows of corn, (comfort) creeks, quiet nights, clear stars and wallpaper to die for. Brome. Brome. Brome. It felt like home.

what walk?

This stream right here is perfect. The tumbling water, the cascading white bubbles, the fish in the brook, the layered rocks, the freshness and surge of coolness on feet. I love this creek; it told me some secrets about the future and broke my heart with stories of the past. Some tears may have slipped into that creek, before being taken up in strong brown arms, but even this was good.

"soft & hard & cold & comfortable"
vs. "little and beautiful"

okay, THIS is where it all got freaky-deaky. Before our epic 10k walk, we passed a little store in town called 'Grandpa... il était une fois' It was this amazing vintage place where I scored some gem leather sandals and this shirt dress, which matched literally every last pattern in the cabin. I spent the entire night camouflaging my way into curtains, throws and wallpapers, laughing like a madwoman. It worked with EVERYTHING. It even matched the rocks...

Right?? Maybe you had to be there...
SO Brome!
LOCO

LadyHunter

2009-08-31T23:12:00.014-04:00

with a blink of an eye one weekend seamlessly melded with the next; whatever happened to monday, tuesday, wednesday? coming directly down from the stars and into a paper production schedule was a shower-and-sleep-less brush with partyworkdeath by fatigue. following a feature fiasco came yet another fucking st-laurent street fest and a pet shop boys surprise spandex evening that ended with chipping teeth on the vodka bottle. Fear and Loathing in Montreal.

wait, was that one week or two? is it september already? christ. the coming weeks are in denial. my burlesquing better half is leaving town and academia looms. Putting off the usual habits of lengthy list-making and power jogging for other (stupider) habits, notions of personal reform seem inevitable - so why not just search for another tree to climb?

though sleep should be a priority in these dying days of summer, spending wee hours inspired by moby ofallpeople (who was, in fact, inspired by David Lynch), I have decided to not second-guess the market either. that sounds ridiculous, but this position is hard, if not impossible, to come by in these trying times. the metamorphosis of not giving a fuck, while giving a great fuck, is a long road to travel alone. why do we work so hard?

there has been serious thought lately about totally going off the deep end. about changing it up. about moving around my home, priorities, friends, lovers, life. people stare intently at my mouth, like it is brand new, and I have decided to take it as an omen. what has been latent for five years seems to have changed quite suddenly.

---

I should apologize for the random crazy that just happened there, but it should all come together soon. For the best and worst, LOCO

CYBERLESQUE: in photos

2009-08-24T03:23:00.022-04:00

Are you ready to get this sexy mission started?
Are you ready to explore the darkside of our force?
Are you ready to boldly go where no man or woman has gone before?

George Lucas once said that sci-fi was for people who don't like sex, but we at Bad Taste Burlesque think that's FUCKING CRAP.

We invite all you techies, trekkies, star whores, space sluts and anyone else who wonders what type of crazy shit happens in the stars to the CYBERLESQUE.

So take your protein pills, put your helmet on, set your phasers to 'come' and get ready for this raunchy rocket ride. It's time for the Space Jam:

photocredits: anika waddell

...and just like that it's finished.

countless preparatory hours culminating into two nights of utter moon madness. Glowing, slicked by sweat and alien jizz, ecstatic of, for and with the 500, we joined the machine, pelvis pumping all together. flying through stars, dancing until the sun came up again, the finality finally wiping words from our hard daft bodies.

thankyouthankyouthankyou.
and more on the internet...

LOCO

exhib

2009-08-23T05:31:00.001-04:00

just showed my tits to about 500 people. shit.

spoiler!

2009-08-16T18:20:00.007-04:00

So I'm giving it all away but...

CYBERLESQUE TONIGHT!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Cafe Cleopatre, 10pm!

parable

2009-08-16T00:36:00.005-04:00

I feel like that thirsty crow from the parable. You know the one right? Toil with the stones for a drink during drought. Place them, one by one, in the vase until beak reaches liquid. The outcome is worth all the little details, apparently. I am dying of thirst in the meantime, collecting stones. When will we drink?

Humidity and sunshine has descended on this city and we deserve it. There have been too many days this summer spent pedaling in heavy rain and showing up looking drowned but smiling. Something happens between me and the traffic in these times. All of a sudden I get sympathetic smiles, comments like 'il fait bain bein aujourd'hui en chôlis,' and even a little bit of conduissant courtesy. Please go first, you beleaguered wet one. After you.

It would be nice if it would rain again, even though we wished for sunshine. It is exhausting and greasy, lazy and uninspired. It takes too much energy to commit to anything at all and so the commitments grow. We are living days that are not comfortable enough for an afternoon nap with a fan to your face. There is certainly no touching of skin. I want the sky to break again. break!

Like a masochist in heat, I am getting pissy at costumes and scripts and stories and sections. Despite knowing very well that I do it to myself, it still surprises me from time to time, when the cards pile up or when I'm about to bleed. There are SO many things to strike off the list, yet all I want to do is dick around.

I can feel September coming on...

star wars kid

2009-08-15T02:40:00.005-04:00

HA! I could use some of these moves next week....
other inspiration on the manstream. go go go.

LOCO

fungus madness

2009-08-13T12:54:00.018-04:00

overuse of the word 'madness' in this blog is absolutely not hyperbolic, I assure you. Life has been brimming with madness lately. brimming. madness. mostly having to do with the burlesque. burlesque. madness.

in my 'down time,' I have been playing the role of 'tour guide' to my baby bro and his girlfriend. We have been climbing great heights, drinking local beers and taking photos. I have joined in, feeling like a tourist in my own town. The photos from mountain tops and clock towers will follow on here as they always do: a month or so after the actual event in question, dripping in nostalgia. (35mm is good for that.)

Which brings me to the point of these beauties, whom have just been scored off of Colin (my other burlesquing half and pseudo (gay) boyfriend). This is the magical afternoon we spent in that tree I was blogging about...

DRUGS!

about to poster the SHIT outta this town!

2009-08-06T12:23:00.008-04:00

BAD TASTE BURLESQUE IS BACK!

Presenting our latest creation since last years 'Heavy Petting Zoo,' Bad Taste Burlesque is thrilled to announce ''CYBERLESQUE: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A DIRTY MIND!''

BTB is a dynamic troupe of performers that seek to challenge traditional ideas of burlesque. While acknowledging our debt to the classics, we push past them with an aim to shock, arouse, amuse, offend, titillate and, most of all, entertain!

This year's CYBERLESQUE will be no exception: Starwhores, Sexbots, Space Divas, Alien Abductions, TRANSformers, Crotch Rockets, Phallic Phasers, Titty Tasers, and Post-Apocalyptic Sex-Crazed Zombies! PLUS - Kirk and Spock finally get it on!

Don't forget to dress to impress for our costume contest! Bust out your very best intergalactic kink, "Seven-of-(Sixty)Nine" or "Chick-with-Three-Boobs" and win the title of Playmate of the Apes!
Two nights only!

August 21 and 22
Cafe Cleopatra (1230 St Laurent)
Doors 9pm, Showtime 10pm
Tickets $10

mannequin madness

2009-08-06T00:48:00.006-04:00

vanity in check,
LOCO

hello neighbors!

2009-08-04T19:44:00.003-04:00

we have sex. they watch.

countodwn

2009-08-01T20:13:00.006-04:00

mes colloqs,

I am sorry that this is what you are going to be hearing (and seeing) every day for the next three weeks:

21 days,

LOCO

model behaviour

2009-07-30T15:30:00.006-04:00

It was like any other day, really. Too warm to sleep, too lazy to do anything but pick scraps from the floor and port them, too un-enthused with the bad luck of a good day on a work day to really care where I ended up at the end of it. To my bike, up the hill, to the boulevard, to wait, to press, to sweat. He came in rather unassumingly, bought a pair of retro sunglasses and tried on a hoody - all the while telling me about what he was up to in this life. He was here with a gallery from Vienna; he is a photographer. A girl had cancelled on him and what a shame! He had hoped to photograph old port. Too bad he said as he paid, & parted & I continued to wait, press and sweat.

About ten minutes pass. He returns:

- Hello again! Vat ees your shoe size?
- Oh, hey! Uh, size ten... (?!?)
- Do you wear makeup?
- Not usually.
- Vat are you up to later on dis eefning?
- I work until seven.
- Would you like to shoot?
- me?

Me. Rushing home after shift, finding random things that could possibly be categorized as 'street' or 'evening' wear, (learning later that my taste is NOT the same as aforementioned european photographer), to my bike, to the old port, to prepare.

He had gone shopping in the afternoon and presented me with a pair of snakeskin, sequined pants and six-inch heels. I knew immediately that this would be unlike anything I had ever done before (and, as it turns out, it was more difficult than posing nude for the sake of art)

He also presented the other model he found along his way; an urban planning major, part time AA employee who has managed to get by in MTL for three years without knowing a word of French. (Damn the pretty ones!)

We drove, changed, posed, (chin down! lips open!) exchanged information and that was that - strike 'modeling' off the bucket list.

I was discussing this with friends and we couldn't agree upon the verb tense in which to turn the phrase (if it ever needs turning in my favour). I was/am/will be a model when the pictures arrive? Yikes. The word can technically be put on a CV (I would never!) but I still don't really know how it applies...

Anyways. The artist responsible for this experience and who I would like to thank graciously is Mr. Arnd Oetting, whose work can be found here.

Photos à suivre for sure, but WHAT a random day,

LOCO

bonus blurs

2009-07-26T15:01:00.003-04:00

The Winnipeg Village, now flocking to AA

the best men. ever.

this isn't a fashion blog but...

2009-07-26T14:41:00.010-04:00

good find, right?

(Flowers = vaginas, according to Janelle. Oh well.)

today

2009-07-26T01:57:00.006-04:00

6 a.m. bike ride. 24-hour-party-people living. 'Qu'est-ce que on va faire?'

---

- this truth is superior to that truth.
- lying by omission.
- going the other way around, thereby seeing it anew.

---

some characters came into the store.

the memorable guy, open beer in hand and visibly intoxicated said: hey twoie (toi), tu peux tu vend le linge ici, la?

me (quoi!?): excusez-moi monsieur?

guy: hey fais pas ca, la. la, la, c'est oui ou non parait. fait-mwoie (moi) le respet, en tabarnak.

me (quoi!?!?): d'accord man. on fait des impressions ici, la. ca prend cinq minute a fait. les t-shirts pour hommes sont en arriere.

guy: bein bon. bien bon. (takes a look around & then extends his hand) merci et bon apres-midi, la.

me (extending hand): pas probleme

guy: (grabs my mitt and LICKS IT WITH THE WHITEST TONGUE I HAVE EVER SEEN!!)

enter: other customer.

guy: (stumbles out, satisfied)

me: (windexing my own hand until I can get to the sink in the back.) bienvenue au Bang-On.

---
just another day at the office, LOCO

thunderstorm summer.

2009-07-17T23:56:00.000-04:00

ovulation

2009-07-17T22:09:00.014-04:00

- 'I am nice to you because subconsciously I want to have sex.'

- the flicked ash misses the tray completely.

- apparently ovulation makes us more likely to CHEAT

- equations have been surfacing lately, mostly involving algebra where y = context and x = likelihood of commitment. boy, there are variables.

- I. want. to. eat. everything. If a golden bikini wasn't in the immediate future, I'd pack on.

- engrish.com =

- babies, babies, babies.

- goodbye, Myspace.

- Hello Monday

detox

2009-07-16T15:50:00.007-04:00

the five letter word of the week starting now. there will be no booze, no bars, no dancing on tables, and certainly no gastro du village. coming home from winnipeg, there was no way to justify the many montreal antics (besides spending many waking/walking minutes with one mr. r. bars by my side) that have gone down lately. In short, the state has been that of a karaoke zombie (cue thriller) and the hints of jaundice now have my full attention . I would have written drunken, regretful emails had I had the time or space to do so. Maybe I will start them, soberly and with correct grammar, in the next couple of days as I get my blood levels back to normal. stay tuned.

-- -- --

psyching myself up...

2009-07-14T22:40:00.000-04:00

... for school

big sighs,

LB

...this is the long version

2009-07-09T12:57:00.010-04:00

there is always a moment of hesitation to pick up and write about winnipeg. it may just be stemming from the estranged-lover complex we share, the simultaneously painful/joyful memories that are inspired by the old nouns, or the community politics that I am/am not apart of - and therefore don't know if I can speak to. A thesaurus, at this point, would be much appreciated. It is difficult to find the specific words to write about something loved and hated. Inspiring a list of dichotomies - the tired model of difference - I have come up with the following:

- bear hugs / bisoux
- here / there
- memory / reality
- old / new
- babies / adults
- summer / winter
- english / french
- fruit / vegetable

aforementioned lists like these remind me that I can't confuse the two; my towns have different faces. Last week, I stumbled on a newfound, self-conscious Winnipeg. It was like catching someone looking in the mirror, though I couldn't describe what was in her eyes. Love? Hate? Confusion Corner? (someone remind me what that email address is, if you know). It is nice to peek at someone who doesn't realize you are watching them.

... a few quick embellishments:

The immediate, salutatory gesture of a bear hug v. double bisoux is so blazingly opposite I feel required to draw on it and draw it out. On many instances in the last whirlwind winnipeg tour a cool double kiss was half-expected, half-desired in the first few moments of every greeting, but promptly turned into the embrace and closeness of a hug. I had forgotten this, having since grown accustomed to the custom of a kiss or two, and it was a nice reminder. Being vulnurable and comforted by the crush and squeeze of another person's entire body pressed to your own (literally) took my breath away. I was surprised by the familiar touch of a ribcage, shoulderblade, hip, arm, hand. & locked eyes when bodies break apart. This is the Friendly Manitoba style. After a hug like that, it doesn't matter if years have passed, histories have been forgotten, correspondences have been nonexistent and you feel like a bad friend. All that is squeezed out when you have hands on your back.

In terms of the others on the list, connect dots; though perhaps the categorized foodstuffs acting as s bookend seems strange. Before I left the frenchman and frenchtown for winnipeg, my horoscope was read out loud. The abridged version (I should have kept it, as it was so beautifully written) was something along the lines of: "In the coming weeks you will be presented with some forbidden fruit. In the stars, it is not clear whether or not you should take a bite of the fruit or just contemplate its very act of temptation, but either way it will be significant. Good luck." Frenchman and I had a pretty long discussion about who or what the fruit may symbolize, coming to the conclusion that I was a huge fool to admit whom I believed it might be. As it turned out, it was certainly NOT who/what I expected, but tempted nonetheless. It was - vaguely - winnipeg as a whole, winnipeg in specific situations: It was stumbling shamelessly home from the mansion at six in the morning, twice, not really knowing what will (smith?) was up to. It was grooving with no regrets on a dance floor with charming strangers. It was teasing the notion of return, without the (sober) reality. It was getting away with it all, or just feeling like I could get away with it all because I believed I could get away with it all. It was MTL duties and politics as an afterthought, WPG as the present.

---Now that I am 'home' though, the forbidden fruit is still on my mind and an interesting proposal has complicated its matters further. Instead of acknowledging the fruit, discussing it, feeling it out, naming it, owning it, admitting it - I have since slept it off or danced solo on tables at boy's night in rooms full of people who will never know me and with a couple who know me the best. Receiving a garden-variety of advice, I am still no closer to figuring it all out and it could very well stagnate. I could become a vegetable.

--- this is what my horoscope says about it now (which also applies to Richard):

'May you live in interesting times.' That old toast is actually a droll curse meant to be heaped upon an enemy. 'Interesting' implies rapid change, rampant uncertainty, and constant adjustment. What's preferable is to live during a boring era when stability reigns. Or so the argument goes. Reject this line of thought. Celebrate the fact that we're embroiled in interesting times. Proclaim our struggles to navigate the sharp turns and uphill climbs to be a jubilee of the first degree. What fantastic luck it is to be on the planet when everything mutates! May we be up to the task of bringing heaven down to earth. May we be worthy of the trust the universe is placing in us. Now get out there, Pisces, and enjoy the hell out of the epic and entertaining drama we're stewarding. This is the time to be a leader and a luminary.

- Freewill Astrology.

---

I want to thank Winnipeg, again. Every time I return I am, once more, thrown into the unknown, the desire to know, the knowing. Once a year, a spoonful of situational existentialism is just what the doctor ordered.

The medicine goes down, pictures to follow,
LOCO

& here they be. st. b:

real men pose nude

this about sums it up.

2009-07-09T11:35:00.002-04:00

When routine bites hard
& ambitions are low
& resentment runs high
but emotions won't grow
so we're changing our ways
taking different roads

& love, love will tear us apart again
love, love will tear us apart again

why is our bedroom so cold?
turned away on your side
was the timing that flawed
the respect has run dry
& yet there is still this appeal
that we've kept through our lives...

& love, love will tear us apart again
love, love will tear us apart again

you cry out in your sleep
all my failings exposed
get the taste in my mouth
as desperation takes hold
& there is something so good
just can't push it no more

& love, love will tear us apart again
love, love will tear us apart again.
love, love will tear us apart again
love, love will tear us apart again....

- Joy Division

thanks again, Winnipeg

LOCO

this makes things a bet better.

2009-06-23T13:34:00.000-04:00

je danse la mia, LOCO

old news but...

2009-06-23T11:29:00.006-04:00

COPS ARE PIGS!

the $37 bike incident I can handle, I deserved it. The $144 sitting in a parc ticket??! Fuck you, guys.

Open warning to anyone who is in Parc La Fontaine after midnight: those DICKS only have a quota to serve and nothing better to protect.

Fuck the police, Loco

STL haps

2009-06-21T00:46:00.006-04:00

two days ago an old woman took my ring finger in her hand and looked at the beady jeweled eyes of the pig that sat upon it. She told me a Quebecois fairy tale that I immediately mistook with the three little pigs but actually only involved one. This pig, to the best of my French ability, collected something or ate something or did something magical. (or ate something magical?).

yesterday an old woman took the wood plate necklace from my chest and started fiddling with the beads. She, to the best of my French ability, was an artesian jeweler who worked with wood and showed me something she had made which looked like plastic. We discussed collecting something magical in frippe-prix for quatre-vinght-dix-neuf soux, while her long, yellow fingernails remained attached to my neck.

Today a small Spanish child and I danced to Riders on the Storm as it was being blasted through my store windows. He had some pretty good moves for a two-year old and boogied with me through the entire seven minutes and sixteen seconds of Jim Morrison wailing in the rain. His mother, who spoke neither English nor French, smiled and nodded, whipping out her digi to blog us like crazy. I hope it ends up on the internet somewhere in Mexico and that The Doors have an acute affect on his cognitive development.

Also today: single dads were flirting like crazy.

...It has been an interesting couple of days...

Most recently, St. Laurent has been home home home in the heart of the city. I straddle the line between language and geography, flirt with boy neighbors for free everything, bang-ON boss-style and clocked in a cool sixty-four hour workweek. I can hardly believe that one year has passed since I saw the Dov strolling down the street with AA beauties humming all around him. How things have changed. Still here.

----

in other news, I am coming there. I am blowing this weeks work on preloved and a plane ticket. I have been doing a daily blog cleanse to psych myself up. Familiar faces, bad tattoos, awkward family photos, and, most importantly, why the fuck do you have a kid? I have been doing a daily jog and dreaming of karaoke at Lo Pub. I have been doing a terrible job of telling people that I want to party with them, but I will find a way. Can't wait, Winnipeg.

----

bizzies (the english bisoux), Loco.

2009-06-14T23:27:00.002-04:00

literally just spent the day in a tree.

the things we leave behind

2009-06-05T21:28:00.003-04:00

workpartypartywork II

2009-06-05T21:07:00.012-04:00

alternate title: we found a keg on the street.

wait a minute, that's will!

winnipeg is never far, loco

workpartypartywork

2009-06-05T19:26:00.007-04:00

this is what we do

the next incarnation

2009-05-30T20:11:00.005-04:00

August 21, 22, 23
Bad Taste Cyberlesque: Close Encounters of the Kinky Kind.

a photoblog

2009-05-29T22:24:00.015-04:00

I am going to break this off in chunks. starting with the most recent trip to NYC of course, then moving back-back-backwards in time when I have the intervals at my disposal. The most elder of fotos stuck in the innards of my camera until now were taken at approximately this time last year and will probably be the very last post of photos entitled avant winnipeg (again) but hopefully it won't take a month.

So, What can you say about New York City? Besides being one of the most congested, polluted places on earth and packed to the titties with tourists, there are some sites to see.

Since it was my mother and sisters first time in the big apple, I had little choice but to meander with them and hit up the 'touristy' things that keep people flocking. On our second day we walked to the boatyard piers to take a ferry trip around the island when we realized: oh shit, this is MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND. ... the horny sailors hadn't tipped us off ...

Looming in the distance as we walked towards the water sat enormous army fighter boats with about 1000 tourists taking pictures of them.

including me.

I bit my bottom lip, ignored the service men in white who were eyeing me and my sister (who, according to at LEAST 3 people a day, looks like Britney Spears?!) and got into line. I have never seen more fanny packs, nor 'I heart NY' logos in one line in my life, but so be it.

We cruised around the island (as our boatman mentioned money more times than I could count on both hands) to Staten Island and the Statue of Liberty, who we learned is a gift from the French. (Freedom Fries moment? Anyone?)

a couple hours and a neck-burn later, we were strolling the streets of the city. they, feeling far more cosmopolitan than I, I finding bits and pieces of inspiration along our trails. I think that being to New York before had taken a little bit of excitement and sense of adventure from me (living in harlem projects and one missed subway to brooklyn hardened me like that). But every once in awhile I found something. Mostly it was buildings upon buildings or artwork upon buildings. Here is a random sampling.

In retrospect I feel like a bit of a dick. Notice any pictures of the women I was traveling with? Nada. Bad Daughter.

Also, I feel like a dick because I was absolutely one of those types of people in an art gallery in the MoMA. I couldn't help it; I had never experienced so many classics so close to me. Save the billions of other people exhibiting at the same time, I had a little love affair with most of the art and couldn't help but want to remember them...

so I suck, but...

This, essentially, is where we were staying... ugh...

and finally, what would a trip to NYC be without a late-night tv taping??

we saw him. & the musical guests?? BEASTIE BOYS (& some random dave cook american a-hole... er... idol... )

SO that's that. Other, non-NYC photos to follow...

bisoux. LB

Manhattan to MTL

2009-05-27T21:15:00.007-04:00

I’m baaaack. Not to steal a noteworthy entrance from another blogging bird, but it seems applicable. I have survived another round of the big apple and I couldn’t be happier to have left manhattan.

It feels good to be home. It feels good to be home. It feels good to be home. Dick, I don’t know how you do it (though I do believe I may have bumped into Ryan?) It is too much for me. Too much motion, too much eating, too much shopping, too much humanity! Too much! To be fair, we were staying a stones throw from times square – which is mental – but after about day three I just couldn’t take it!

Almost certainly I am not the first person to declare a disdain for the infamous ‘I heart NY’ but I’m gonna do it again: NYC is not for me. Today I made myself a shirt by printing OVER one of those iconic logos and added three little letters – wpg – to remind myself that the next time I need a vacation I should go where I belong. Where I do not feel overwhelmed or swallowed. Where I can see skies instead of haze and know my bearings and the ones around me. next stop is definitely my darling Winnipeg. I don’t care how small of an apple she is.

I am both refreshed and exhausted in these times. The hill of things to do is growing taller by the minute as we approach our June issue and a fat camp flaked on my feature & I, and there are serious correspondences with a person on the other side of the globe looming in the distance.

Oh, and Stuart Ross hasn't gotten back to me yet. (fuck?)
--- --- ---

So I am back and my world has changed. I forgot how lofty and brilliant my apartment is in the summer. I forgot how it feels to MANAGE. I forgot how it feels to sex&spoon in just the right position. But mostly, I forgot how small we actually are where we are. Swimming amongst millions will do that.

AND, I am full of Voisinage news! this cartier’s gonna be a BIT smaller in the coming months, since best friends will be moving in with best friends and live a two minute walk from my front door. It feels priceless. Welcome to French Winnipeg.

But as one comes, another goes. I feel it necessary to give a public adieu to my darling Red: I can’t even believe the story of this friendship we have crafted. I am so grateful. good LUCK in Winnipeg this summer (calzone upon my return) and all the endeavors to follow in Ottawa. God knows that only two hours away can never stop our man-eating power!

---

Finally, I was going to upload some fotos and allow those who linger on to amuse themselves with random NY photography and all that was found inspiring (& some random acts of tourism), but I have misplaced my cable.

… I think the Frenchman ate it.

So here is all there is at the moment. Taken at the godly hour of six in the morning en route from mtl.

Until the cable comes around, bisoux.

oh ps: pour la Reine du Reves! J’ai eu und reve malade:

I was working on Canada day at Paramix and it was nuts. People everywhere, faces painted, the whole fucking ball of wax. To my distaste, Candy presented me a tray of meat to be basted, grilled and served. Though thinking it completely odd I complied, and took the tray down the streets of Osborne, along the streets of Corydon, up McMillan, down Grosvenor, around my town. Caught up in a New-York-style frenzy of people in motion – without seeing a soul I knew. On top of that, I fully blew my responsibility of heating meat and showed up at para and was scolded! SO disappointed in uncooked meat!

This whole thing made me completely stressed out as I realized I was actually in New York and waiting for the sun to rise, another day to start and my mother and sister to wake.

… weird.

to janelle

2009-05-16T04:18:00.001-04:00

will we be remembered as the women without shirts?

my three

2009-05-15T00:27:00.008-04:00

I now live in a new apartment.

well, technically it is the same, fixed address - but it has taken on another form. we (he) pulled down the wall to make our space and I feel like I could give ballet lessons. Calking, screwing, sweeping, planning, placing, arranging, moving from one side of the place to the other has energized this space and the ones who live here. I am never moving out.

I now have a new job.

well, technically it is the same, but it is now fully my responsibility. I am on a power-trip to say the least and the place has never been more organized because of it; I wear it like a badge. its the two year mark and it feels rewarding. not just a store but my store.

I now have a new wardrobe.

well, technically it isn't 'new' but frippe-prix has been good to me. lauren ralph lauren. holt. made in france. the good thing is that I care more for the garments than the tags, but the tags are classics. who needs commercial retail? (oh wait, my place!)

---
---
---

they (being my mom) say things come in threes. this is my three. It's like the karma gods have lined me up lately, though I fear admitting this will reverse the goodness flowing in my direction. conversely they (being my mom and family) have had three little blows in the last while, which makes me feel guilty for all the good vibes on the island.

specifically, my family dog died yesterday. I was talking to my baby bro on the phone & he gave me the news. sucks. I loved that huge dog. we ran hard.

--- as I was typing, the cat came & did this:

its crazy how animals can sometimes know how to make you feel better.

---

Life is full and good. Life is full and good. Life is full and good.

& my roommate made cheesecake,
Loco.

live young and prosper

2009-05-09T21:58:00.007-04:00

I feel sorry that I deleted the picture I took before running down the spiral iron staircases and out to town. It was pretty epic in afterthought, if only because my style was inspired by the birthday girl: gels, dress, dickie, dangling earring. We went chez elle to eat cupcakes and then to Graham's place for a crazy house music dance party with 'wild planet' projected onto the wall of his loft. we danced our faces off, needless to say, escaping outside intermediately - past the bare legs and jocks (anglophones) to storefronts, stoops and bangon bathrooms in order to cool down our dripping bodies and cherish each other independently from the raging party above our heads. the cops were called to the cocaine party even higher above our heads & stumbled upon us 200 sweaty, dancing twentysomethings by fluke - overreacting just a BIT with what could have been a swat team and a fleet of vans. sensing a need to leave, we waltzed between idling cabs and cop cars to la belle province across the street to satisfy a greasy tooth, where I proceeded to call my server "a dick" and propel even more madness behind the counter where he flips his fries. After the fat, he called me "a dick" as we walked out. my copilot flipped him the bird. fearless verbal prowess has been too much to hold in, lately. I am a dick.

---

that being said, trekkies really don't dig it when you talk through their movie. even IF it is horribly sexist, with a weird oedipal-hero-cycle complex. a woman approached me after the show and, instead of asking me out, she gave me a lecture on 'public' versus 'private' space and conversation. she was nice about it, so I wasn't a complete dick, but I did end the conversation with a 'live long and prosper' hand signal, so you get the picture.

kirk and spock should just make out already.

---

& speaking of which...

FAGGITY ASS FRIDAYS on FRIDAY!

Dick, you should be here...

dinner parties

2009-05-07T11:57:00.003-04:00

sunday: karaoke colin
monday: twilight vampire haters
tuesday: brit, brett and kilo
wednesday: graham and my new best friend
thursday: a bowl with bang-on brit
friday: wanna make dinner?

--- --- --- Food preparation.

the communal buying of groceries, splurging on honey or the expensive extra-firm tofu. the orchestration of hands and bodies around a table, a cutting board, the sink. the gulp of wine as it slips from its bottle into awaiting glasses or punchbowls - depending upon the availability of fruit. the wash, chop, sizzle, steam, bake in all its divine fluidity, floating around the warm conversation and the pink of our cheeks. the brush of hand, gentle collision of bodies, pivoting hips, stepping feet. we all clumsily move with the slow jazz playing beyond the foreground. the time it takes for things to prepare, to flavour, to find themselves on plates is enjoyed almost as much as the food itself.

--- --- on mange

hopefully this week has set a precedent for a summer to be filled with good food and friends.

with the desire to play host/guest forever, Loco

ps: dick

2009-05-05T20:01:00.003-04:00

thanks for the bottle of vodka.
you have no idea what it has done for my hostess capabilities.
I miss you. move here already.

Loco

pouce, index, majeur, auriculaire

2009-05-01T11:58:00.007-04:00

Life is ----

---- greener.

I waltzed around a foreign part of the city (the suburbs) with an old roommate and lover. I love(d) her. She was off to Europe to blaze trails and accumulate languages, but had a seven hour layaway in la belle. So we jumped a bus from the airport and let it take us to somewhere neither of us had been before It felt like we were neither here nor there but it was still familiar - akin to lounging as we did before, above urban waves in the village. me, feeling free. her, forever working. always meeting at the end of the day in the half-way point of our apartment - the kitchen- to discuss the varying levels of drama in my love life and what she would be when she grew up (I was going to be an educator). It was funny to feel that way again, together. people can recall feeling for me like the tune of a song. melody + lyrics = nostalgia and the same can be said about the people who I just do not see as often anymore, but whom I still love dearly.

she remarked, numerous times, how the grass was so much greener here. I looked around at the herb on the ground, the leaves pushing their way out into the sun, and imagined the brown/yellow straw-like splendor or manitoba grass in the springtime.

The parable came to mind... you know the one... things are always greener.... and I said it, even if it is cliché.

this incident has presented itself and made me wonder. with ongoing news of people coming and going, jumping ship and heading east, or west, or anywhere else, I often want to expect what experiences will come. is it really any better here or there or anywhere? what are we running from, or to?

----- even more surprising.

we 514 bangers are really changing it up. two of my bests/bosses are heading back to van city, so (with mild trepidation over replacements) we partied like you wouldn't believe. Certain images came fluttering to memory today while I did what we all do for a living... stomping heels on hardwood floors to fight for our right to party, walking onto the terrasse to be greeted by my new boss - who happens to be from winnipeg - and who I happen to have known since grade ten, drinking foamily from a keg that was found on the front walk of malcoms apartment building and ended up in the bathtub, riding home wildly in the rain to wake up, rinse, repeat.

fuck real jobs and occupations. I feel very lucky to work/have worked with my friends. It makes the drudgery of any 9-5 so. much. sweeter.

------ filled with song and dance

karaoke party on a sunday. a personal invite from the DJ turned into a crazy night at club date, which ended on a high-note with someone asking me if Janelle and I are a couple while we shared some cheese curds... (did we say no?? don't recall...)

so now, post-karaoke pitchers, two glorious days off lay in front of me and the forecast calls for sunny days. The aforementioned life-partner & I spent today lazing and drinking the quebec version of a slurpee (not as good), and curing our hangovers with vitamin D on the front terasse.

---- lazy in a good way.

spending hours drinking coffee and strolling blogs? half-pathetic, half-priceless. J'(heart) passive aggressive notes.

plus twenty weekend...

2009-04-24T11:55:00.005-04:00

... for the twenty plus!

are there really better things to do with a thursday morning than sitting on a sunny terrasse in pajamas (and a questionable faux-fur fashion statement?) with a coffee (...among other leisurely vices...) looking out at the montreal skyline? non.

Come join me! This view could be your guest room! (though I feel inclined to warn about the creeeepster neighbor across the street who has a staring problem)

Who needs a vacation?

complot coverage

2009-04-21T16:51:00.002-04:00

the art show I wrote for was covered by le VOIR, an independent weekly that is pretty huge in the (french) 514... cliquez le titre pour voir le critique!

& If you want to read what I contributed, I posted it a little while ago...

not off the grid !

2009-04-19T21:52:00.008-04:00

oh, internet!

what else has the power to bring you allllll the way back to those rolling perspectives? those days that have since been shook off & shelved. barely whispered about. carried around like a cross. those times that are remembered - faintly - and then all at once, one more time, with a single image accessible to anyone and now to me. what might lies in the form! an arm around an arm and sets of knowing eyes (and smiles) should not be so strong to pull up those old wants. those ghosts. especially since the context of those times was understood as momentary.

perhaps the strength lies in its cyber immortality, for it has since taken on a fixed state of permanence and voyeurism. the transcendence and complete disregard of all that has been learned in a year can be captured by a single lens and fixed to a wall. what is dead can actually be quite alive on the internet. and it can live forever

-------

oh, the fear of irrelevance!

how quickly validated we are by it all! it is the proof that I was there & you were there & someone else has seen it too & can see it again whenever they want. It was captured and added to the system of symbols and significance. the bank of all banks. it narrates us, a little.

-------

on the eve of freedom, with a mind (and mouse) that wanders knowingly into emotionally volatile and unchartered territories, I have been thinking about the distances (or lack thereof) between cyberspace and social relationships. between here and there, my bed and yours, her body and mine. Though futile by now (as I have worn it around, down and out), I was just struck by the magnitude and depth of this paradoxical marriage. & I wondered how it will continue to make me feel when I click it again in weeks, months, years, from now.

--------

timing may be everything, but the internet is another matter entirely.

back to the books, Loco

Paper Jam

2009-04-18T22:08:00.004-04:00

The Link had a BBQ to top off the end of a successful production cycle.
I was in charge of the veggies & became drunk with power.
You can catch our last issue here.

photo creds: Elsa Jabre

lunette debate

2009-04-03T21:45:00.005-04:00

new specs. four eyes. thick prescription. minus seven. yay? nay? whatayasay?

POST TEXT: who knew that a simple pair of sunglasses-turned-realdeal glasses could cause such a commotion! People feel strongly in either direction, but the numbers are neck & neck. It pleases me to break even this way; I enjoy provoking people's assumptions and expectations of glasses. The blunt-edged honesty about the state of my face today had me cresting peaks and valleys of self-esteem and I appreciate this. Especially if it inspires a best friend on the other side of the country to be in touch after six months and tell me " ... ... hmmm ... ... yeaaaaaaah not so much." (I love you Pape.)

So what is it? the girl who lived? or the girl who lived in a fishbowl?
The jury isn't out yet.

party girl/party blog

2009-04-02T22:56:00.001-04:00

--- --- ---

oh the times we had!

twitter

2009-04-01T23:13:00.002-04:00

THIS is what I just did while I should have been studying. though finishing up an exam instead of pa-reuse-ing the news should be a priority but I feel a sort of reckless abandon at the moment. The list in front of me? staggering. absolutely staggering. tonight I have to finish a profile, a take home exam and a paper. tomorrow I am the lucky recipient of ANOTHER exam, will participate in a (fakey) focus group, apply for NEXT years courses, and prepare for masthead for my second night in the office. After working both Saturday and Sunday with my job and my job with the paper, I will write and finish ANOTHER exam and paper before putting out a second round of features. welcome to my life. one would think, in the shadow of mountainous academia such as this, that I would hunker down - and I have been - and get to fucking work - but I have been. It is in these times, when screen, brain and retina have been interlocked in an orgy of exhaustive hours, that I wonder why we academics do it to ourselves. what is it that really motivates the sacrifice to the institution? what is it that makes us weigh and merit these systems? these processes of consuming knowledge? what is the fucking point?

Granted, I have the coffee shakes. I am grumpy. I am stressed when I look at the list in my agenda, so perhaps these elements are lending themselves straight to the heart of my subjectivity about school at the moment. fuck school. schools for geeks.

look what I found

2009-03-26T23:12:00.000-04:00

leguman.

cause = time

2009-03-24T21:49:00.006-04:00

... is not just for broken social scenes.

the ways in which we measure time in the western world has been a subject of inquiry rattling around my brain for some time now. I say this on the threshold of freedom, mere weeks away from final projects or exams being nothing more than a memory. It seems misguided to calculate life in scholastic terms, but during crunch time I just can't help it. I anxiously make lists and make follow up interviews. I wonder where I will find time in the future, how I will use (or misuse, considering the very act of blogging) time in the present and where my time has gone in days past. In the aftermath of a weekend spent like a party girl, (likely to produce a party blog when picking up film is a chore that is remembered) the past is the contemplation that hits me now like a phantom headache of hangovers gone by.

William and I bid a gracious adieu tonight via the telephone and I was a little sad about it. Having someone to invite out & show & entertain & introduce fills me with a warmth that only montreal pride inspires.

break.

J. just came by to do her laundry and feed me cupcake. bless her. we sat around drinking white dep wine and talked at length about where we came from and where we are going. I appreciate the people in my life who are reciprocating moral compasses. especially ones who were there, are here and will be there. these are the ones who know me best. quote of the evening: "being a wife fucking sucks."

to the woman inspired me to try the waist high, love.

2009-03-20T22:25:00.003-04:00

Lately, I have been speaking with the lucky ones. The ones who have always had their eye on the prize. The ones who have committed to 'doing' what they are meant to 'do' and have 'done' it since they can remember. The ones who declare, with the strong defiance of those who know, that they have known forever. I envy them.

It has been an interesting day and I feel like I haven't learned anything at all. This was a humbling epiphany after enjoying meaty conversation and registering the verbal or bodylanguaged translation of people doing what they have been meant to do. It was overwhelming.

The presence and proximity of these people has inspired existential anguish on my part, as you can well imagine.
Proof of people who know what they are doing with their lives make me wonder what I am doing with mine?

je sais pas, loco

an open letter to a lady bird

2009-03-17T22:12:00.003-04:00

this is exactly how I feel at the moment; the locations do not correspond.
you will understand when you get my letter, but this was an instant frozen.
the strange thing is how the posture correlates to the feelings
or how the words correlate to the emotions
but we are not in the same time
as it was just the past.

how time will play tricks on us,

Loco.

I feel another pisces weekend coming on...

2009-03-08T23:10:00.005-04:00

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happy birthday mikel baby. . Tomorrow, I am off to radical queer semaine & art show, & then to this beefcake's birthday party. can't wait. he's the one that drew out the burlesque in me I never knew existed. yess.

----- ---- ---

things people, things. after previously putting on my 'reporters hat' I am back in action blog-wise. I need to get more graphic, though I prefer to yield a pen, but perhaps a workshop with the ginger coons will do the trick for the next couple of posts. wait and see.

I feel like I am going to be learning about a lot of webliness and image/layout trickery in the next couple weeks. I do not want to reveal the reason for this strong sentiment but fingers are crossed behind my back that the couple of pints are in my favor tonight. (ohh. mystere.)

--- --- ---

(On that note, let it be known that I would like to be taken at no-fuck face value. please stop asking about my status.)

---------

finally. I have been staring at the size 3-6 baby "veggie kid" lap-t for so long my eyes are beginning to cross. two out of three co-workers agree that 'fuck that' best describes what my future course of action should entail...

----

no, this is the real finally:

bars: when the fuck are you getting out here? bass: I have been looking at your pictures online for ages and you are wonderful. belford: where the heck are you, bro? st. laurent? call a lady up. budyk: how is south america? pape: I am coming to BC to protest the olympics. I assume I can crash. golden vilar: when the fuck are YOU getting out here? (we have a show in Avril, peut-etre) madge: still haven't put the letter in the mail, excuse me, it will come. red: telephone tag just isn't the same. I miss you. we need wine soon. jj: the hottest girl I have ever blown kisses to from a metro.

all the rest: bonne nuit. Loco.

writers bloc quebecoise

2009-03-08T23:01:00.005-04:00

How hard could it be to think up interview questions, really?

But Look what I found! is Facebook finally faux pas?

& this is a funny sort of feminism

my winnipeg

2009-03-07T22:20:00.004-05:00

is a film I just watched which was beautiful, heartbreaking truth.
a hundred people said it was a must-see for the ex-pats and inhabitants alike.
this is also the beautiful, heartbreaking truth. wanting to simultaneously leave & stay is nothing new for winnipeggers.

though there are mountains of things to be written and rehearsed, I sat down and watched my winnipeg without a care for scholastic consequence. though a single month remains, I find myself dawdling and making good excuses. phoning loved ones, spirit lifting, lazing in warm beds; mes devoirs are often thrust into the back of my skull for hours at a time these times, disconnected.

my winnipeg, what a good excuse to do nothing for awhile. when bikes abound and patios cram. when friends are seen and babies are born. when we will find time to stoop & jaunt, where the people you know are in the streets. when it can be mine and ours, even if it's the one I left. my winnipeg. my winnipeg. my winnipeg.

and then... I will leave again. the dually tragic and perfect part of the plan.

--- ---

other news: the LINK put my story out about the First Peoples Major happening at Concordia and it was picked up by the CUP wire. alllllllright.

--- --- ---

finally, things will get better. I haven't been doing much monde checking lately, but a bunch of ad stuff, a couple candid cameras and a roll of film being processed as we speak will make things exciting soon, promise.

fish weekend

2009-03-03T18:58:00.004-05:00

I wrote this at the close of last weekend, still in the haze of party mode, drifting along on T3s...

pisces party, indeed! myself, r. budyk, pape's dad, alfredo, rob vilar and dick: six good reasons to party last weekend.

although I failed to trek it back to where I come from for my birthday, which was game plan no. 1, I celebrated in spirit and raised a glass to each of the aforementioned. what a few! it happened like this: toothache, Link'd 1000 words, huge party fixing fix, shira from the airport, huge party, followed by karaoke, a bust (aforementioned princess of power, blatantly (drunkenly) pouring an outside beer on the bar tables, getting caught and somehow getting away with it), broken pharmaceutical promises of abstinence due to the dj flamboyantly grabbing by arm and whisking me away to the bar for "surprises" even though I explained in clear french that I was on pills... home again, party raging, drunken clean up, bed. Day 2: shira shenanigans and nuit blanche, (the belgo, second-hand phone call to alfie, art, more art, poutine) Day 3: shira shenanigans again before she goes to fleetwood mac, a call to rob v, bed. Day 4: wait, I have an exam today? powerstudy, exam, 100 last minute words to Link again, bed...

shira was a treat and a half to host. her arrival was the first winnipegger in quite awhile and felt good.

--- --- --- ---

I have forgotten how to blog, so can you forgive me? the few who linger on these lines from time to time?

backlash bonne fete

2009-02-26T20:41:00.003-05:00

happy birthday to me. I am twenty-three on T3s.

(I should probably quit the rhyme right about here; I imagine it would turn out badly.)

I am actually on T3s right now though, given to me in prescription form by a new dentist. That and some anti-inflammatory pill which is enormous, red and yellow. this whole thing started with a toothache and now I am sitting here, bloated on one side of my face and in pain, on the eve of my anniversary and the advent of shira, princess of power.

timing is everything; perhaps this will be the inscription on my other foot.

its strange. I can remember my twenty one (forever young) very clearly; it was charged, it was change. twenty two was in two languages & I don't know what it really was trying to say, as a year in a life. new, confusing, half-verbal, I sort of stumbled through it. half-fluent about where or who I was.

existentialism to the max. pardon me, but I am on T3s.

The other day richard bars wrote me an email that was very symmetrical. I often wonder about the order of things, like he does. how words and items and people and things on a list will stack and prioritize themselves in an inner-hierarchy, chain-of-events, working itself out darwinian style. you know, those people, occasions. incidents. affairs. experiences.

then bam! chalk another year of life and reflect upon it.

---

it is a little pathetic that I am sitting here, high on T3s and red and yellow pills, blogging. there are definitely more important things to write at this point, but I am blocked. bloated and buoyant on foreign chemicals. jaw clenched, bun high, enclosed in dark and warmness of my place in montreal, I embrace a lucid evening turning into twenty three. I have decided to, momentarily, "fuck the backlash" but I know I will get back to it.

Is productivity even possible on T3s? non.

--- -- ok back to it.

tomorrow's my party; a party sobriety.

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bisoux, the birthday girl.

post script:

my mother just told me the greatest story of my very own birth.

apparently, after a full night of no sleep and full-on contractions I came into the world at 10:01. this I knew. what I didn't know is that, once out, all the nurses stopped their tracks and commented to my exhausted mother that I was acting like a babe who had been out at least two weeks in the world; that I was aware of everything. for my brother and my sister (and many babies, I am told) there are lingering moments in a newborns disposition signaling great discomfort and annoyance to be out of the warmth of the womb. not I.

janis

2009-02-17T00:11:00.004-05:00

is my karaoke wet dream .
the song: preferential women's studies study tune. Her, wailing. Me, solo. drinking, papers abounding, thinking about women & wanting to wail.

last minute art project

2009-02-16T15:48:00.002-05:00

AMILENTATION (sic):
RÉMI COSNIER

Dans ces travaux récents, Rémi Cosnier tente de simplifier par la réduction à un répertoire de symboles cette surabondance visuelle contemporaine qui sculpte autant l’expérience de la nord-américanité que les habitudes quotidiennes de consommation.

Ces chips, ces triangles, ces mains, ces tables, sont d’évidents reflets de nos tendances post-industielles : manger mal et jeter ce qui reste.

Dans Amilentation, Cosnier construit une scène relationnelle entre ces représentations, créant ainsi entre elles un système multidirectionnel de communication.

Les seuls symboles palpables qui persistent sont ces emballages posés sur la table qui font office de repas.

Paradoxalement, on utilise « l’essaim » pour créer un sentiment d’équilibre. Cette nuée de triangles colorés agit à la fois comme principe associatif et comme forme antinomique aux éléments concrets.

Cette forme « essaimante », dans toute son ambiguïté, deviendrait synonyme d’action, d’information, de désordre, de relation ou de rédemption. Autant ces formes semblent mutuellement aléatoires, autant elles sont séquentiellement encodées; autant incarnent-elles un flot logique, autant ce flot n’a ni origine ni destination. En ce sens, la direction et le contenu de ces diverses connections restent irrésolues.

L’oeuvre de Cosnier demande que nous nous interrogions sur la coexistence d’une multitude de liens symbolique avec une perte généralisée d’information. Ainsi, les sens que l’auteur donne aux concepts de productions et de consommations sont dissimulés dans cet essaim de triangles colorés.

Dans Amilentation, il est possible de s’extraire de la critique simpliste du gaspillage inhérent à l’industrie de consommation, pour considérer plutôt les propriétés magiques de cette représentation comme une forme d’art.

En « esthétisant » ces sacs de chips, en exprimant de manière stylisée et avec netteté leurs contours, en les assimilant à la charge mystique de la forme triangulaire, ce n’est pas seulement la consommation que valide Cosnier, en un sens, cette œuvre est l’affirmation sans équivoque de son amour pour les chips.

--- --- --- an obvious translation by laura beeston.

ps: go here to see what I am talking about.

link me. link me harder.

2009-02-12T18:38:00.003-05:00

old scoop

new scoop: currently I am writing about the new BA Major in First Peoples Studies at my school. This 42 credit hour program will be the first of its kind in Quebec, has taken 10 years in the making and is expected to triple the native population at Concordia.

I talked to the Native Students Association and the Native Student Center (along with their awesome Department Native Elder Morning Star) about the FPS and it was just wonderful. Quebec doesn't know enough about first nations, Metis or Inuit. period. Ask any separatist spewing the regular radical colonial crap and they won't know a damn thing about native history.

Thankfully, there is a critical mass youth generation across Canada nearing 2 million. although no one acknowledges it NOW the times, they are a changin'. Although they have been systematically removed from the history books (which is the fault of the limitations of a PROVINCIAL education) they're strong in demographic. As John Raulson Saul has said "this has the potential to be the most fabulous success story." I hope it is.

yesterday, when I sat in the Native student center reading materials, asking questions, meeting people, I have never felt so all the way back at the University of Winnipeg. I was stoaked. it was warm. I am going to eat heart-shaped bannok breakfast in the morning. yesss.

As for my story, we will see. The program isn't being offered until 2010, they predict, which doesn't exactly make it a 'timely' news story... whatever.

ANYWAYS, all my homework has gone by the wayside in place of le link. couldn't be happier nor more fucked for midterms, so I should get on it.

happy hallmark weekend, folks. loco.

debbie debutante

2009-02-06T17:29:00.007-05:00

so there was a themed party last night, composed almost exclusively of ex-pats from winnipeg. Everybody knows kevin bacon. The original theme of the party (because parties always have a purpose in mtl & usually involve some type of costume) was 'gitch hat' but was then changed to 'debutante.' This is what I came up with. Finding inspiration from Brett Donahugh's old gitch elastic (the pure & simple bit), I combined the two thematically. The elastic was bestowed to me on another one of our red-wine-and-dine weeklies because, in the actors words, 'it is a waste to throw away perfectly-good gitch elastic' though the gitch themselves have become thinned & holey. whatever, I stitch ripped that sucker into a party costume, wore it as a bow, headband, and garter (white-wedding style. I will be proposed to come vday) & could not be more content. Brett, from this point forward, will save his gitch elastic for me forever; expect gitch crafts in the mail, friends.

(In addition to my gitch craft pics, I took a roll 35mm that will make its way on here ....apparently red attempted the splits)

god, what a ramble. but last night was crazy. my head feels in the same state as the eggs in my lap. I am a sorry excuse for 'breakfast as dinner.' time is meaningless at the moment. There were perhaps a few too many bevvies down the hatch heir soir, too much new information/drama about the various goings-ons of one great city (weddings! babies! divorces!), bountiful drunken french spoken, nay, drunken franco-manitoban french spoken, and SO many st viateur bagles to sop up poison in the last 48 hours. check those bags. I am going to be straight for the week...

or, not. "I went to harvard to become a lesbian" & I was not the first... (judith. judith butler everyone) but, straight or gay, I have a shit ton of homework to do. mostly of the reading and paper-writing variety. so I should probably quit wasting away on here and get at er.

but expect a link to the link on tuesday & pictures to follow; I am HOT for a clipping & britt splits, loco.

anticipation

2009-02-04T20:40:00.004-05:00

in multiple forms and reasons:

a) shira bellan is coming for my birthday and nuit blanche.
b) I am being published on Tuesdays edition of the link after picking up a scoop. (my first break!)
c) linda kay called me 'my dear'

love this business, loco

the politics of location

2009-02-03T01:19:00.002-05:00

so I lied, people. & although Adrienne Rich had nothing to do with the bluff, she provides the perfect anomaly to satisfy my sentimental predicament.

first: location. here I am, on maisonneuve, in montreal, in quebec, in canada, on the content of north america, the western hemisphere, the earth, the solar system, the universe. second (for my favourite virginia woolf addict) 'as a woman I have no country, as I woman I want no country, as a woman my country is the whole world,' the politics of the body. a convergence of contradictory impulses. lacking absolute conclusions. to stay? to go? to return? I don't think I can do it.

recently & as previously posted, I have been listmaking with the passion of a thousand swords. today it is thank you card, rent, adbusters, the link, Borough background info, print meeting agenda, group two readings and commentaries (my canadian icons were the famous racist five, unfortunately), NY times article Re: bonobo pornography and female desire (check it out) term paper(s): media and women, women and the media, advertising, objectivity v. subjectivity, activist media, culture jam, all of the above?, presentation: Brettell, CB 'Inside the Glass Box: Editing the Women's Pages'

also, unfortunately, the tempo looks like it will persist this way until reading week, with three papers PLUS journalism on the helm of things to write. I forgot what drowning in mental tasks felt like for a brief little year there, but now it is back full-throttle. I dig it. (total sidenote: I talked to Terrine Friday (news editor for the Link) about her job the other day and she told me, straight faced, that she hadn't slept in thirty four hours. This, for me, was a premonition. psyched.) so all is well.

or is it? (stage left: a contradictory impulse)

the essences of ambiguity, essential & non-essential love, double consciousness, institutionalized relationships, deconstruction of experience, the limit of linguistics, babies.

sdb is devouring me.
I'm not coming back.

---- pause

while we are on the subject of listmaking, I posted something I think is clever on the manstream; can we overcome?

anyways people, it is 2am and I'm still writing, fuck. I need a warm body & bed. bonne nuit.

2009

2009-01-26T22:14:00.003-05:00

please take my advice; open up the giant eye

2009-01-26T13:45:00.008-05:00

it has been awhile, not like anyone checks this anyways but, apologies.

I was earnest in the first couple weeks to try to write up a little "weekly" about everything going down, academically & otherwise, but have since declined into the throes of a mighty, mighty menstrual flow & haven't felt inspired to lift a finger. This, I hope, is temporary. There are too many things afloat at the moment. A quick few being an interview (or two) tomorrow, theory to read, class to attend, & a resume to drop off at a place which is 100% Quebecois. I need to be en pointe. & instead, I am bleeding.

This is what my horoscope says:

PISCES: Once every few years, a panel of Hindu and Buddhist judges in Nepal chooses a new "living goddess," a young girl who serves, until she reaches puberty, as an incarnation of the deity Taleju. One of the tests each candidate must pass in order to be eligible for the role is this: she must show no fear as she spends a night alone in a room filled with the bloody heads of ritually killed buffalos and goats. Consider the possibility of carrying out a more humane equivalent of that ceremony, Pisces. For one night, keep symbols of what you're afraid of in the place where you sleep. To do so would be an excellent way to earn the right to graduate to the next level of your spiritual evolution.

Pisces like me love this shit.

In lieu of a biblical 'bath water' interpretation of my astrological assignment, I figured a simple list would suffice. Also, quite frankly, I do not want the relics of my fears surrounding me as I sleep; my lover would wonder wtf I was up to. They are the following:

-babies
-silence
-lovers
-bailouts
-indifference
-french

admitting these things blog-wide could also make the list somewhere, categorized under 'exposure' I suppose; I am exposed.

as a kindred birth-mother of feeling mentioned in her blog, list making is an art form in and of itself, perpetually continued, accomplished in spurts and bouts of efficiency or alternately left malignant, lingering, lengthening day by day. I hope I am on an upward swing towards of the former. Here it is:

"Decade" 2 disc cd set - Neil Young

-the void (for fun)
-momentum mag (for a feature)
-citizenshift (news distribution)
- CV to cinematheque quebecoise (for money)

- make rob vilar a shirt before he goes, preferably mashables

NEWS REACT STORY - develop questions, meet c.townshead, remember to breathe and smile

Readings WS 290, 291, 292 & Gender & Journalism 320:
- "experience"
- The Second Sex: "Destiny"
- TB, hooks Ch 1-4

LOOK UP APOCALYPTIC IMAGES (written in caps, of course)

this is my life, people.

--- --- ---

the other day I was walking down a metro platform and my favorite sassy redhead screamed my name from across the tracks. Prior to this public salutation, I haven't run into anyone on streets in MONTHS and it is starting to feel normal. Thank goodness for Winnipeggers & their saturated but inevitable social situations. I miss(ed) this.

& speaking of winnipeggers, I should apologize to all of you for commencing tactical attempts to lure one of your finest away thisaway. the confession being that I delivered a pr-etty convincing argument to one mr. rob 'golden' vilar (over 3 bottles of red, a quiche, and a bar of chocolate) that montreal is the place for him. we will see what transpires, but the prod is on. I am nudging.

& finally, for visual pleasure:

culturejam (more on manstream) & an infatuating lady drawn in class.

thats all I got, loco.

le deuxieme sexe

2009-01-18T02:23:00.005-05:00

today I went to a radical queer dance party.
it was lovely; I have hope for humanity, despite gaza.
this was after a day of intensive feminist theory and existentialism.
I managed to throw it all together on the manstream, if you're interested.
it is crazy how fast conceptions are crumbling. Journalism can eat me out.
But I have had too much wine and need to go to bed. Long live two thousand and nine.

katy perry style, larryb.

ten heads

2009-01-05T22:45:00.013-05:00

I couldn't rant and rave about the beautiful backside of simone de beauvoir on my 'serious' blog, so I will do it here. I love her. love her. love her. look at her. if my profs only knew how I perv on her I would be kicked out of the institute...

and, in addition to a glorious french tush, what an institute it is! today was the second day and I feel the intoxicating, academic buzz. I feel like I fit; a sentiment which, admittedly, is likely to wear off as soon as term papers and projects begin to mount and eat away at my motivation... but I will express this elation now: what a tush! what an institution!

Feeling both dichotomies of full & empty in unison (from paying far too much for course packs and then stuffing myself heartily with the (free) vegan goodness of the peoples potato), I spent the afternoon with a new professor, new school, new peers and new ideas about feminism.

In fact, I don't even think that I can title myself in this manner anymore, it is too simple, too limited, requires too many additives.

Today we learned that the ambiguous 'fourth wave' of feminism takes on much more than equality, sexual liberation, autonomy and the ilk and is battling much more than the traditional 'patriarchy' in the home, the public, and politics.

The contemporary arena of feminism requires much, much more. It is a political analysis of race, sexuality, orientation, social class, constructed categories of gender, hierarchies & wealth distribution, media domination, capital. It is about egalitarianism in an age where dismantlingchallengingtransforming the structures that construct these contexts seems, well, daunting.

and, more personally, it is an analysis of accountability and participation in these systems. everyday.

---

but perhaps no one can take this seriously because I am really a female chauvinist pig for exploiting the beauty of simone & her beautiful bum to try to make a point. maybe if we stare at it long enough the answers will suddenly appear, but probably not. from this point forward I vow to put the collective lady-perv on hold & get down to what she wrote & what she stands for and put her behind behind me.

---

& in other news, totally, this man is home & back in my arms.

to spoonfilled nights and mornings, loco.

the ball drops

2009-01-01T18:21:00.013-05:00

because blogging just so happens to be more fashionable than an email en masse, I will lay the play-by-play of NYE while orphaned in montreal for the second consecutive countdown. exhibit a: the mirror.

this hip little weekly (for whom my roommate LR writes about art from time to time) had a FIVE PAGE SPREAD about all the shit that goes down when the ball drops on this crazy island. From Erotic Circus to Ye Olde Orchard to everything in between.

it also had a lovely little top 10 of 2008s 'best' movies, music, art, dance, et al; which I read at one of the DEADEST HOURS I have ever worked while singing at the top of my lungs to the best of janis joplin.

while reading this guide to the ever-so-cool montreal new years experience (and wondering once again to myself how-the-heck Raf Katigbak landed the job as editor of vice canada), it dawned on me that I was reading the bible of expectation. the overdrinking, overdancing, overflirting expected. the perpetual anticlimactic cock tease countdown followed by the question: who is the kiss?

sort of trite, right?

so this new years, with a five page spread atop a heat press, I decided to go where the wind takes me, zero plan steeze. after checking in with my tightest of homies (an email to the lover in france, a phone call to a cherished lady bird, a meeting with alex boy, a plan with britt, a call from saraj, an invite from gram) I decided to forego the velvet rope, the cool hunting, the dance party, the dinner, the expectation, and just stick with the couple of peeps I have made into a mtl fam jam.

thus, with winnipeg phone numbers written on my hand (I didn't call a soul though - life is complicated sans cellulaire) I set off into the night in my grandmothers foxy boots (a gift from my mom). high-fiving my bro at saloon, to the Dep (where a cabby bought me a seven up 'je vais payer votre premiere brauvage de la nuit, mademoiselle') to the metro, up a hill, past the lineups and ridiculous bare skin of st. laurent, through the people in the streets, past the noise, the lights, into the loitering hallways of corridor, up to the warm energy of the wide eyed to my friends -best friends- my cross-canadiana friends who have art on their walls and there was wine in my hand and thinly rolled joints passed between lips and a mellow countdown and many friendly kisses and a beat and new friends and a russian fox wearing a little black dress and a photo-shoot which is likely on the internet somewhere (is anything sacred?)

and after, a break from the wide-eyed, blood flowing up the hill, a saucy redhead to meet, chili (non-carne) and champagne at casa (exhibit b), to an unexpected and sweaty dance party, to the famous 24 hour bagel place, to my saucy redheads abode, to sleep, to wake, to sip tea and eat more bagels, to work, to home, to here, to laze in haze & to sleep again.

7:30 dec 31 2008 - 7:30 jan 1 2009 in a nutshell.

someone once told me the way a person spends their nye is how they will spend the coming year after it; this proverb has whispered in my ear like a ghost each holiday season, proving to be - subjectively - accurate. (notable example: an incident I would like to call 'stealing Janelles new years cab and the madness that ensued')

If this tale is true, I am hot in anticipation.

left the house in hot grandma boots: style & comfort.
ten lines of winnipeg phone numbers stylo-d on my hand like some booked dance card: staying in touch.
surrounded by lovelies (old and new): I love 'em
not once phased by expectation: flow going.

seems like the very best way to start up 09.

happy fucking new year. loco.