wildcat

Sleep has started to pour into my head at regular intervals again, and I'm starting to feel not only human, but a bit healthier. Yesterday was Canada Day - the day we reserve for not being understated, and instead get rowdy and things. I was a little doped on aspirin at the time, though. Drag Baseballs - Queens versus Kings - was fun, although I have to say I was disappointed at the lack of effort the Drag Kings put in; the Drag Queens made some efforts with their other personas. JUst dressing up a woman in pants and a tie doesn't really do anything at all, because it's not a taboo. The first pitch was done by Queen Victoria himself.

The evening was at a party at Lance's house, or rather his father's delicious three storey condo with the balcony and the mirrored walls and extravagance everywhere. I was glad to spend time with Michael, Paton, Brendan, and Dan - although I found myself missing Brandon a lot, and we were going to call Joy, Matt and Joy, only we got distracted in between social activities. Didn't really drink, although I had a gin martini with lunch. Have to just make it to Sunday and the Pride Parade.

I crave chocolate badly right now.

In the process of bleaching my hair as blond as it will go. It's been about a year since I've done this, exothermic reactions heating my head up under a head-sarong of saran wrap.

The first issue of Apparatus is done and published, to be distributed one week from now at the launch. Ah, the hot-blooded sex drive of a young publisher in his prime. Sangria was consumed in the Inner Harbour while we waited for Monk's to finish the dirty business. We all looked dashing.

And so do you.

Cole Porter and Joan Jett are an interesting combination. "Let's do it," indeed.

Deciding to go to the bar once this millenium, we ended up in line at Prism for far too long listening to the obnoxious people all around us ("Oh my god," one particularly prize example of why gay people shouldn't breed said, "Why are there all those girls taking up space back there with no gay boys to hang out them?") Rather than listen to every stereotype imaginable nattering away about the most pointless things in the world, a bunch of us decided to skip the line-up to an inevitably bad scene in favour of Hush.

I hadn't actually been to Hush in a while. I think the last time was the "Disco Hell" incident with Matthew and the Hindu Spy Gods. I don't know why, because that wasn't the case this time. The sound system's a bit iffy - way too loud - but the vibe was so much better. Danced, danced, danced for an hour and a half in the screamingly small space, got Michael to dance, Joanna was HI-larious in her own right ("Is my bra showing under the black light?"), and the music was sweet. So were the vodka-cranberrys. Jason was working but I only saw him in fleeting moments while he was collecting glasses; at random, I ran into Fiona when she was about to drain the girl-porpoise, and then she was off into the night.

The upshot was that I had a blast and I am very glad we went there instead of the other place. Sure, girls giggled uncomfortably when Michael and I kissed (did they never notice the rainbow flag on their way in? They must be used to the sexless castrated homo-sexuals on Will and Grace).

Then we took a cab home. My ears rang and I was happy.

Hey, cats! It's a beautiful day out and I ended up downtown for a bit, eating lunch at the Lotus Pond and reading some old Justice League comics from the mid-Eighties. The dialogue is ridiculous.

Last night was the usual writers' binge - writing exercizes and red wine, as expected, as requested. The story ideas are getting weirder and weirder. I have two short-shorts from last night that I want to expand a bit into longer things, maybe short stories. We'll see.

Keep an eye on rantbook and the main Esque website for new developments. Matthew and I chatted on the phone for half an hour the other night and things are developing again. I'm working on another spy story as a result and Meringue is burning to make herself known; perhaps we'll discover the uncanny true story of her miraculous birth---

The Electric Telegraph Printing Apparatus (Yes, Apparatus for short) launched officially today at the Thin Edge of the Wedge - a little pizza joint by the Belfry Theatre in Fernwood. The other readers were all great - Steff did well, so did Matt, Miguel, Colin, and Jason M. It was a pretty solid turn out, in the sense that it was mostly contributors and their friends - and Steff's parents, who were really funny. Made half the money back from the first issue already, and copies will be available soon at SUBText at UVic and downtown at Second Story. I read the opening two scenes to "Drag Race on Mercury," which is one of my better developed stories, I think. I tripped over a lot of words at times (my mouth always goes dry when I'm nervous), but I projected well over the constant WHOOOOOOSH of the coffee machine, even as the potted plant in the corner threatened to eat Steff's head.

And, after that poor advertizing copy, I'm back at Michael's house afterward. It's been a long day. We woke up and had to help the new roommate, Lisa, move all her stuff in with a lot of exasperating directions and crises and I ended up venting about Michelle for a while; things are okay, but lately the idea of living by myself has cropped up in my head and I'm thinking that's a good goal to work towards for at least this time next year. Or, perhaps, earlier than that depending on various circumstances. A little bachelor pad for $400 or $500 a month would be doable at some point.

Michael dealt with my neurotic flashes and compulsive emotional flailing with amiable charm and eerie calm, which probably means we're a good match because I've always lived on a perpetual roller coaster of emotions; I also wouldn't have it any other way.

I want to write more poems, I think.

Saw Spiderman 2 last night - it was a struggle at times, but I enjoyed the movie overall. The action sequences were fluid and well put together, the script jumped over some bad spots to have some solid decisions made. Mary Jane Watson, happily, does more in this film and makes the really tough decision that changes the world at the end; especially interesting because she's also pursuing a risky career in show business rather than something more "solid" and "practical." The first hour or so is a salute to kicking Peter Parker in the face (over and over and over) - if he's not having shitty things happen to him, somebody (MJ, Aunt May, Harry, Doctor Octavius) is giving him a lecture about something. Constantly. It got a bit old, but I did like that the emphasis was more on Peter than on Spider-Man.

And James Franco was hot. And Toby Maguire was hot. And Kirtsen Dunst was hot. There was a kinky scene with Spider-Man tied up with barbed wire, lying on a chaise-lounge unconscious, while James Franco stands over him in a silk suit, about to take his mask off. Way dirtier in my head than it was on the screen, but, well, you have to give me something.

The idea of moving keeps lingering. I've decided to make a list in the next little while of all the practical decisions, requirements, things to remember, things which need to be paid for, and things I'd need to get in the event of moving into a place by myself. Kitchenware on one end, and two months' rent (or rent plus damage deposit) on the other. Then I'll have a map of everything I need to worry about as I approach my deadline - which I need to set for myself. The great thing about my cell phone - this is a piece of my father's wisdom - is that it removes one item from the list, dealing with phone transfers.

Which reminds me. When I get home from work today there's going to be boxes everywhere, someone's else's stuff littered all over the house, and decorating decisions made downstairs that don't involve me. I'm just going to slink into my bedroom and clean it for a while.

She snores at night, which I can hear through the wall, loudly, like a Tell-Tale Sinus Infection. Edgar Allen Poe is desperate to clench bottles of cold medication and two-fist them.

Writing session. Erotica seems to be the order of the night for my stuff, something to do with the next issue of Apparatus, and I've been reading Ginsberg again -- I'm all burnt up and blazing on deviant sexuality. T.S. Eliot. I want to write a lot of poems and explode poetry bombs in post offices and shopping malls, fortune-cookie-thin papers in the air, each one full of nonsense rhymes and inappropriate phrases like "His pubic hair was astroturf - close-curled and clearly fake."

The snoring is in fact just part of a greater arsenal -- there is the thrashing around, the calling out, the possessed moaning, the heavy breathing and the choking noises. I ended up downstairs -- partly because of the heat -- at 2:30 this morning.

In a dunce-like manner, I bought a booklet of stamps today for five dollars, so that I could send off my signed student loan form and then keep the rest for various and sundry mailings. Only to discover that -- yes -- I had walked all the way home (with a stop at the grocery store) having forgotten to pick the stamps up after I mailed the form. "Dunce," the children squeal, as if I were the old duck woman--

My dad arrives today, this afternoon, while I'm at work. Should be a fun couple of days, but the house is going to be a bit crowded for the next little while (especially because Michelle has some random friend from Calgary staying over on Saturday night). Whatever. The plan includes a trip to the museum for the big, shiny, new Egyptology exhibit, which promises to include a lot of ornate artifacts and golden sceptres.

It's a sloppy Monday. I didn't sleep too well last night because it was too hot, and also I think I still need to get used to sleeping with ear plugs - there was one night, mysteriously, where the new roommate slept in silence, but then it was back to the usual and I've got some ear plugs to pull me through. Very hot. I suspect with the plugs in I can sleep with the window open too, so I'll try that tonight and hope that I don't go completely insane. Work was slow and disoriented, I didn't get much of anything really done. A yapping dog made noise outside for over an hour and we all wanted it to stop.

Last night was Klezmer at Pagliacci's, which was a lot of fun; Michael, my dad, Dan, Nathan, Erika, and Rob went. Dad left quickly to "wander around" and such because I guess the number of people was screwing with his comfort zone a bit, he left before the music started and ended up outside reading and listening to it out there. It was great, the music rocked, although the waitresses were all stressed out, it was busy, the owner was making an ass of himself, and the number of people at our table kept fluctuating. We had to make a point of telling the waitress she was doing a good job, considering she'd been yelled at, ordered around, injured, and other things.

Joanna showed up - it was her birthday - and we took my dad home before a couple hours of mad dancing at Evolution. It was Sunday, five-dollar triples night, and most of the music was crap, although I got them to play some Basement Jaxx, "Romeo" - the last time I heard that played at a club was back in Prince George, at the trashy Metro which opened up in the Yellowhead Inn with the same management that used to run the Underworld. The Metro was a tragic affair where certain girls from my high school worked (Heidi, one of them, was a "megabitch" in the Shannon Doherty sense of the word), it was always dark and never terribly busy.

The Yellowhead Inn, for those paying attention, burnt down in a freak (i.e. potentially arson-related) fire at least a year ago. Nothing has been built on the site since, and it's basically a shitty parking lot.

Got moderately drunk - drunk enough to notice only to feel it fade instantly. But I had a lovely Virgin Suicide at Pag's, along with the Sophia dish, a fettucine thing with a white wine cream sauce, crab, shrimp, and smoked salmon.

Tonight, the scene of the crime is probably going to be at Cinecenta to see Federicko Fellini's Amaracord, which I've seen once before in the company of Matthew on a trip to Vancouver. I think my father's going to wander around campus and take pictures and read or something, he seems cagey.

McSweeney's is entertaining me with an open letter to hummingbirds and one to the radioactive spider.

I feel like writing a story. I'm going to write a story.

Incidentially: watched a film called Pieces of April yesterday. Good. Solid. Lots of strong character work and handheld cinematography which impressed me. Patricia Clarkson was particularly good. It's about Thanksgiving, and families, and the ending is very American (I would have ended it at utter disappointment rather than continuing on to the conclusion), but otherwise it was a good, solid movie. Katie Holmes gets on the nerves a bit - can she only play one character - but otherwise it was a fine, fine movie.

Also watched Rushmore last night because the Fellini film fell through. I love this movie more and more every time I see it. I immediately wanted to write, and I did - although it didn't click properly. I need to work on a solid idea for a story to get some follow through happening.

I just lost an entry about the silverfish that just scuttled - yes, scuttled - across the desk and disappeared behind a phone book. It kept to the side to prevent squashing. You know, silverfish appear to have a second set of antennae on their derriere.

I've always wanted a set of antennae. You know, they could recognize psychic impressions of things like how people look without their clothes on. You know. Sexy people. Sexy people. I could call myself Bug-Boy and I could fight crime in highly ineffective ways.

Michael gave his image compression presentation last night, in a little tiny room of the mysterious Engineering Building. There was a small group of people listening and he did a very good job of it altogether. After that we wheeled around campus a bit and took pictures, then headed off to Christie's Pub, gathering people in our wake (telecommunicatively). Got a little bit sauced, began to crave mashed potatoes (a lack of potassium) and fell asleep after a midnight rerun of Family Guy.

A good day altogether.

Made mashed potatoes with Michael this morning and watched pointless TV before a car wash! Car washes are ridiculously fun, but seem to have lost something since I hit the age double-digits. Maybe it's the heat, the heat, the heat - all of which oppresses my seething brain. My temper's been very short of late and I wish to channel some of that low-level aggression toward productive things.

Michelle's litho-whatsit (the procedure to get rid of her kidney stones via sonic waves) has been moved up to August 3rd, which is great because that'll be a good step back to her feeling healthy again. We had a pretty good talk today while I walked her to the MDS lab to get a blood test done, then I headed off to work.

Last night I had a funny dream that I was going on my fifth skydive. Peculiar.

My belly is full of homestyle potato salad and sushi - washed down with a bottle of Lipton ice tea. Lemon flavoured, of course. I have another four hours and a half hours before I can waltz home and watch the two remaining episodes of the Avengers that I borrowed.

It's always something to do with a patriarchal representative of the British upper class, usually industrial or military. In fact, there's a recurring theme of upper-crust, uniformed soldiers going mad and becoming demented in some way - trying to steal secrets, or subjecting themselves to greater and greater arrays of danger to maintain their high.

And the opponents of these madmen? Emma Peel, who is the ultimate unattainable (the absentee husband) and highly unflappable; clad in her sizeable array of high class mod clothing, she fights with her hands (and feet) against primarily male opponents. And the use of sex as a weapon is prevalent, but she manages to pull it off because she's always completely in control of the situation and always in stylish clothing that don't actually show much skin. The other one is Steed, a gentleman about town - he's not bound by society's restrictions either, and while he's clearly straight, he gives off a slight homoerotic undertone - the dapper Dandy who can operate among the upper-crusts when he needs to, but can also break in through the back door or the curiously never locked windows found in high ranking businessmen's studies.

All this and it was Nineteen Sixty-Seven!

Well, Troy managed to somehow upstage Last Tango in Paris as a shining example of American Masculinity exploded into a bloated cancer. I wanted to be violently ill at several points of the movie, and learned that intelligent girls who show strength of character - especially during times of war - lose all their personality and free will once they have sex with someone from the enemy camp; it doesn't matter that they've killed people in your family and are essentially a brooding psychopath with certain neanderthal like qualities - you fall in love with that man and you damn well stop thinking for yourself! Bad editing, plain cinematography, horrific screenwriting (dialogue? They spout off an endless supply of trite statements about the nature of war and honour and vengeance and BLAH, BLAH, BLAH). The only positive thing in the movie was Orlando Bloom in a sarong. The. Only. Positive. Thing. Peter O'Toole looked under constant threat of stroke.

Friday night featured martinis for four dollars - 4.64 with tax - and a trip out to Dallas Road to sit on a rock and stare at the moon with a bunch of people, while Vodka-Seven ran down my throat. Good company and a delightful moon. Michael and I also went to Hime Sushi that night, had an amazing meal with an amazing waitress, and I am firm that this is my favourite restaurant in Victoria, bar none.

Pam-Cakes!

Dreams over the last few nights: Chasing a psychopathic killer through the streets, I never did catch up with him - and what would have happened if I did? The other one was dragging about twenty people over to Jason and Stephen's apartment (which was actually a designer's wet dream huge custom-made house) while they were out and having a party there; the people upstairs and downstairs caused a massive fuss and the boys got kicked out. The rest of us slunked away in shame. Apparently, I have guilt-related nightmares. Big surprise.

On the fourth story, "Araby" of James Joyce's The Dubliners. I don't know; they're interesting stories but something's not clicking. Reading them one by one. Maybe I'll write down an entry with ruminations about the process. Eventually I want to restart Ulysses (or maybe just rewrite it).

I rather dislike getting up at 6:30 in the morning to go to work. Scheduling time for showers is a drag.

Other than that, the world is my Louis Vutton imitation oyster. Vancouver trip on Saturday for the pride parade. Hope to see Matthew - there will be a vengeful gong show, I say! It's rather time for one.

Chaotic as the trip to Vancouver draws nearer and nearer - something about going on a brief sabbatical makes me confused, thinking of all the things I need to get done after work tonight. Laundry, pack the bag, remember my toothbrush, clean underwear, reading material (Two Jerry Cornelius novels by Michael Moorcock), all of those little bits and pieces you're supposed to worry about. I also need to make sure my room is clean so that it isn't terrifying in a week when I return.

That's right. A week; when I get back from Vancouver, Michelle's sister and her cat will be in our house and I'll be living in brief exile. The positives defy the negatives, of course - right now, Michelle could use a visit from her sister, what with the horrible treatment she's getting from the bank and the medical conditions.

Vancouver will be a madhouse: a trip to Science World with Brown and a few other people (while the rest of the friends go to Playland - meh), inevitably crashing on somebody's floor like six-year-olds at a drunken orgiastic slumber party (what? Muppet Babies? Ha?), the riotious reiteration of the semi-regular Matthew/Ben team-up (I hear this time we're fighting Lex Luthor and the Joker) with cynicism and biting wit going up against drunken, rowdy homosexuals. Then there's going to be a parade. Probably be brunch in there somewhere. All to get home by Sunday night.

And remember kids: Nice. And. Smooth.