America’s foremost magazine for the discerning corpse afficionado

Hola, comrades! I’m the slackingest blogger you know, but here’s what’s up: I got a new job at my fifth (yes, fifth) cafe in Halifax. The boyfriend-type and I, once more an item, are finally employed. He’ll be selling you Mac parts and getting sweet deals on iPods. I’ll be making you lattes and trying on pin-up dresses like I was born to do.

Here’s some crazy shit from the internet you guys!!! Twilight Barbies!

You have to wonder if the Ken doll glitters in sunlight

Girls and corpses!

For more about that magazine, clicky over to Current TV and fast-forward two minutes in the video.

That’s about it. I dyed my hair orange and I’m having a zombie party on Saturday and I’d better mow the damn lawn.

 

A weekly check-in

If you enjoyed or got a tiny chuckle from last week’s ‘I Google You’ video, I present an alternative:

Because sometimes linking to videos is easier than just updating! What what? I took a lot of pictures at Sappyfest which are all on my Facebook, and if you’re a friend or a friend of a friend, you can see. Otherwise, here are my favourites:

A totally successful weekend. Sappyfest was my first music festival and it was the weekend of the summer, for me. The crew I went with and I saw dozens of bands and had a slew of incredible experiences. We saw the release of home-made miniature hot-air balloons at 3AM outside of a dive bar, followed by fireworks in a parking lot. Friday night found 10 of us crammed into a van to escape the torrential rain, listening to Mermaid Avenue in peaceful, exhausted silence after a night of shows. On Sunday, a supergroup of the Constantines, 100 Dollars and Ladyhawk did a secret show of Neil Young covers and we met Dan Bejar outside who was too drunk to hold a cigarette.

Natalie and Destroyer, Destroyed

For those unfamiliar with him (as I was), he is a member of The New Pornographers, who I love. He performed solo with a guitar in a church which may have doubled as a sauna. We all hope he got home all right.

Other highlights include some friends of mine getting tattoos (a bunny, ‘Class of 39′ and… ‘Willow St’), seeing Mount Eerie in the Vogue Theatre, The D’urbervilles’ performance on Saturday night, two swimming trips, Patterson’s Family Restaurant, Mel’s Diner, cramming 12+ tents into one backyard and of course The Burning Hell covering ‘Bills, Bills, Bills’ by Destiny’s Child:

SAPPYFEST, GUYS. Go next year. It was beautiful. I only regret not seeing Mitchell Wiebe’s dance piece.

 

YOUTUBE ROUNDUP

Choice cuts from the great gargantuan heiffer that calls herself Viral Videos!

Indian Superman! If you get bored, fast-forward about 4 minutes in… Then get ready to turn around, bright eyes:

Mullet with headlights! Have you been rickrolled today? No? Go for it:

The chorus is best. Of course, no update would be complete without Amanda Palmer, so:

And to close the circle, her beaux and mine, Mr. Gaiman, discussing the harmlessness of buttons:

Now go about your day, and please, if you have a tent: can I borrow it for three days?

 

Drabbles

My partners in crime last Saturday, James and Meghan.

All the way home tonight I was singing to myself a vaguely tuneless song about how unduly stressed out I am. Kate Leth, at sixteen, would have written free-verse on her livejournal about it, waxing melancholic. As I am now, at twenty, I’m fighting the urge. At 24, I’m sure I’ll regret them both equally. I was fearless of consequence, then. Once. Before the world came for me.

I used to have no concept of a future, of a life past eighteen. I dyed my hair black and wore collars and listened to Evanescence without irony. I didn’t feel lost; just sad, and without reason. Now every day is threaded through with anxiety attacks and worry. How did I get here, and where am I going? Was going back to school the right choice? Why am I so paranoid? Is this apartment a good idea? What career am I actually trying to get into? Why am I not as good at makeup as I thought I’d be? Why can’t I keep a job? How do I stop being poor and make something of myself? Why do I care, when I’m so young and have a good 70 years left to live and will just up as dust and earth anyway? I often refer to myself as having a ‘Catholic sense of guilt’ and I hyper-analyze my decisions as if the fear of God was in me, yet call myself agnostic, if not atheist. I hope, at 28, I’ll look back and be thankful that I got over this paralyzing uncertainty.

I miss waking up and listening to This American Life and all of the storms we slept through, but I also miss wearing stupid swirls of eyeliner and living for Improv practice and really, I’m supposed to be learning as I go. I’m an unbeliever waiting for a sign that may never come.

It’s not normal to be this anxious, I’m sure, but I don’t know how else to be.

 

Yoho, ahoy

WAKE UP! HELLO! YOUR HEAD ASPLODE!

All this week I am working at Pretty Things Boutique and it’s great. All day every day I am surrounded by the world’s loveliest dresses and cannot help but grin as I intermittently listen to Elvis and Jian Ghomeshi. It’s like being in a giant tickle trunk. Almost as amazing as my favourite store in Toronto, Fashion Crimes, and with a nicer atmosphere than Biscuit (though I may be biased). My boss is a makeup artist/burlesque dancer/entrepreneur who dresses her cats in devil costumes and looks like this:

If you live in Halifax, though, I’m sure you already know her.

Anyway, in the last little while I’ve broken up, gotten a job, been tattooed, seen Paul McCartney, climbed some ruins, traveled, you name it. It’s been hectic. The blog, she has fallen behind, and who knows how she’ll fare? I have too much of an internet presence as is.

BUT HELLO!

 

Greater than or equal to

Less bars, more bikes.
Less nightlife, more sunlight.
Less drinking, more cooking.
Less 3 AM, more 8 AM.
Less hangovers, more brunch get-togethers.
Less Sociables, more Trivial Pursuit.

Less elitism, more Harry Potter at midnight.
Less panic, more accomplishments.
Less Twitter, more books.
Less coffee, more fruits.
Less aimlessness, more film studies.

More fun, less irony.
More good secrets, less regrets.
More laughter, less yawning.
More art, less trash.
More art made from trash.

I picked my major and minor today. I figured out what it is that I want to study, like a big idiot epiphany wet slapping me in the throat. I found a path I want to follow after months of looking at courses and mumbling a cowardly ‘I guess’ at the registrars, doubly doubting my choices week after week. A single word: aesthetics. Shallow as it is, I am most interested in how things look and it’s always been that way. In photography and in film, as well as on stage, I forget characters and plots. It’s a sad truth. What I remember is the town of Spectre in Big Fish, with the long grass road and the string lights hanging from giant white tents. I remember the perfect gritty interpretation of the house on Paper Street and Brad Pitt’s rubber gloves. I am the first to point out when you and I are wearing the same colour socks or if we’re all standing in order of height, and it has been this way since long before we met.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

More set design, less paint and print.
More visual film analysis, less foundation computer.
More costume studies, less writing requirements.
More body paint, less covergirl.
More university, less wasting two years of my life.

Are you excited?

 

In absentia

I haven’t been posting.

Maybe you’ve noticed or maybe you haven’t, but I’m told the odd friend or acquaintance checks once in awhile. To you and to him, my apologies. I haven’t been able to write. I’m not even sure I am now.

I’m still trying to find a job, but nobody likes to hear about that. It’s a downer. I’ve been lost, metaphorically speaking, and can’t seem to find my way out of what seems to be a deepening rut. It’s as if I’m flailing around, trying to find something to catch on, but nothing sticks. Catch my similies? Life’s been rough and terribly inconsistent. I have no sure things.

I’ve stopped taking pictures and reading. My camera’s been sitting, sullen and lonely, on top of my bookcase. It might be because my mom ordered herself a brand new digital SLR which she will never use and I now feel silly for trying, or perhaps it’s a lack of inspiration. Who could say?

I’m broke, lonely, uninspired and, worst of all, morose. The rain keeps pouring and I keep wondering why, why? Why won’t the circus come to town and take me away with it? I could be a juggler, a fire eater, a backbender. I could be covered in tattoos and dance around with fans for flustered townsfolk.

Maybe I need a life coach.

HERE ARE MY THOUGHTS IN A SHORT POEM TO APPEASE YOU:

I think I could wander the streets of Paris
In 1914 or 1923
A wandering busker in dark, crowded bars
I’d learn read palms and decipher the stars

I think I’d be happy to travel by train
Along with the circus through Cairo and Spain
Between the great wars I’d become a magician
A tattooed con-artist and mathematician

I think I’d be happy to live in the trees
Watch sunsets in August and do as I please
Aware of the things lurking just out of sight
Who sleep in the day and assemble by night

I think I am twenty, but still I deny
That horrible, deafening, maddening cry:
‘Grow up! Get a job! Go to school! Give a care!’
I can’t make it stop so I’ll feign unaware…

 

‘Sup internet!

That's right, world, I'm charming as all get-out.

Forever and ever and even after I have kids and go through menopause and lose jobs, move, get ill and then better again, that owl will be just about to get the little mouse. When I’m seventy-five and rocking blue hair at some nursing home in Venice, she’ll be flyin’ high. She’ll be in my wedding photos, my kids’ graduation videos, touched up for my open-casket. Long after I go blonde, brunette and red again for the fiftieth time.

I have to be the owl. I cannot be a mouse!

More photos when it heals/the blue fades out.

PS: Go to Lydia at Utility. Total sweetheart, efficient, understanding and reasonable. Plus talented as is possible, really. She and I will meet again.

 

Not the carefulest of girls

Today I’ve got the urge. Have you ever had it? You’d know; it prickles under the skin like goosebumps, like some kind of hunger. You can feel it when you’re biting your cheeks, picking your nails and staring off into the middle distance with a feverish determination to move.

The urge manifests itself as this, right now: I want to go. I want to pay my rent, pay my tuition, get my tattoo and then just go as far from goddamn Halifax as planes will take me. I want to quit my job with a fiery flourish and rip my posters off the walls. I want to pack it up into three bags and hop a train to Montreal and start over. Somewhere with cabarets and circuses, repertory cinemas, a nightlife worth living and art on the streets. A city with fashion and culture that extends beyond Lululemon or American Apparel.

I want Boston. I want Copenhagen. I want Venice and Athens and New York. I do not want to pay $30,000 for a degree in something I’m not even sure I want to study for three years of my life. I do not want to work at a coffeeshop every day just so I can get drunk at Gus’ Pub every night. In 2012 I will have a BFA in Photography, no money, no job and the same life I have now. Some days I don’t even leave a 2km radius, you know?

I’m… I’m going on. I ought to be good and have a drink and a shower and get over it. I can’t help it, though. The urge is in me today, rattling around, and it won’t shake loose. Every day I’m sad or angry at least once and it’s eating away faster and faster, digging deeper, festering inside. It’s telling me to make mistakes and break bones. Whispering sweet somethings about the world outside.

What is there – aside from the obvious – for me here?

 

Images by which I am inspired this week:

I am going out to vote today even though I do not particularly care for any of the three parties I can choose from. I still want to run away and join the circus.