ashleigh rajala

dear blogspot

2010-10-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Blogspot,

You were like a lover. We kissed, we cuddled, we had good times. But I'm flaky and vain, and never satisfied. Thus, we're through. I wish I could say it's not you, it's me, but that's not true... or maybe it is. I just don't know anymore.

*siiiiiiiigh*

The truth is, I've found someone else. Yes, he's flashy and arrogant, but that's kind of what I'm into right now. He's a little easier to handle. Granted, he makes most of my decisions for me, but any autonomy you granted me always seemed like lip service, you know?

I know you've been trying. Really, I do. You've been dressing better. I noticed. You were afraid I was going to lose interest, I could tell.

I can't help it, Blogspot, I feel like somebody when I'm with him. I know you did that for me once, but it was right after I left Livejournal, which was really just a rebound from Geocities, and we all know how that shook down.

I just don't want my guilt over you to haunt me the same way, Blogspot. Don't do anything drastic. Keep on trucking, Blogspot, doing what you do best: providing a space for emo sobs and pedantic rants.

I'm sorry, Blogspot, that was mean. I know you do your best, and you were there for me for all of my emo sobs and pedantic rants. We had it good, but those times are over.

Just give me your faith, Blogspot, that it will all work out. I know Wordpress and I will be happy together. I don't know how long it will last, but I just can't say no to those customizable fonts.

Love and kisses,

Ash

2010-10-22T13:16:00.000-07:00

Update to last Saturday's post:

Yesterday I saw pink toilet paper. PINK. TOILET. PAPER. If this isn't a sign of the apocalypse, I don't know what is. Companies profiting off the breast cancer "brand" is really starting to get to me. They make way more off those products than actually gets donated to breast cancer research, btw.

pink isn't just 'pink' anymore

2010-10-16T08:09:00.000-07:00

Out of guilt for missing a breast cancer fundraiser last night, I thought I would wander the internet a little this morning, but then I grew disturbed. Google 'breast cancer funding' then google 'breast cancer merchandise.' It's a little outrageous the difference.

It kind of confirms my suspicions that this devastating disease which deserves our respect has been hijacked by a bunch of sick businessmen. I find it ridiculous that they are profiting off this pink merchandise. A small fraction of their markup actually ends up going towards breast cancer research, and the rest to the companies.

I do not mean at all to diminish anyone's suffering or to disrespect anyone living with cancer or their friends and family, but please understand my meaning: it just seems wrong to me for a disease to be a brand.

Perhaps it's one of those 'the end justifies the means' and that this is tolerable because at least some money is getting to breast cancer research, but it all just makes me feel a little uneasy. I'm interested in reading the latest statistics on different funding dollars for different types of cancer, but I just could find them anywhere on the internet. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough.

I'm not entirely sure what else to say. I'm sure this seems offensive enough for now.

Thoughts? I would love to hear I'm wrong, but only if I really am!

five am and all is well

2010-10-16T08:04:00.000-07:00

I was up at five this morning. Intentionally, which is strange. I had a conversation yesterday which let me wander back down that awkward little garden path of memory to the time I came home from Europe, and, with no work for two weeks and jet lag, I was awake every morning at 5 am. I got so much writing done before the rest of the house even woke up.

Bliss!

So this morning, I woke up, wrote about 800 words, and here I sit. Not too shabby, considering I'm not even usually up by this time on a Saturday. Your head enters a weird place when its overtired. Most times you're too tired to do anything, but in the morning you feel like you should be waking up, so it's... bizarre. Perfect for being creative, if you can concentrate.

Perhaps I will get a lot more done before Canzine West this afternoon and the NPODW party tonight!

tony curtis, i tip my hat to you

2010-09-30T10:38:00.001-07:00

Oh Tony Curtis, I tip my hat to you.

You had a career spanning sixty decades, and in my heart of hearts you will always be wearing high heels and chasing after Marilyn Monroe. Whether you were on the run with Sidney Poitier (running from a chain gang to an Oscar nom!), or in the bath with Laurence Olivier, or doing your best 'Cary Grant,' those eyes and that chin made a lot of wives swoon, including six of your own.

Tony Curtis, I salute you.

first against the wall when the revolution comes

2010-09-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

The machines are rebelling and I am first against the wall. At work today, I took a break from pushing paper around and started pushing pixels, via Excel. I love Excel. There is something perverse in the ease with which one can organise by simply copying and pasting. Need to add things up? JUST. ONE. CLICK. No scratching things out on notepads and using your brain. The fact that I remain amazed by machines adding things up might just give a slight hint towards my Luddite tendencies, but as I was in Excel this morning, the program LOCKED ME OUT. It told me that I could not save my work, as 'this file is already in use by Ashleigh Rajala.' I am Ashleigh Rajala. How dare it talk back? It was like an insolent teenager refusing to come out of its room once the grounding was over.

I closed out of Excel. Still nothing. Logged in and out of the workstation. Still nothing. And then I resorted to that oh-so-technical of solutions, turning the computer off then on. Still nothing. There goes everything I know about trouble-shooting computers. Time to call IT. Hours later, the problem was solved, all the while this phantom Ashleigh Rajala was logged into Excel. I began to wonder if perhaps this Nega Ashleigh, this Washleigh, was also starting underground fight clubs or something just as nefarious. The end result is the same, whether or not this was a glitch in the Matrix, our days are numbered. The machines are rebelling, and the time is nigh to relearn how to do simple math in our heads. Viva la long division!

That's my spiel for the day. You're welcome.

one of my favourites

2010-09-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

File this under "Songs That Are Really Depressing When You Actually Listen To Them."

anything you can do i can do meta-- phorically

2010-08-29T21:31:00.002-07:00

Someone I was in the presence of the other day made the off-hand remark that writers use too many metaphors. So, let's ignore all possible explanations for why I was in the presence of anyone who could possibly drop that aphoristic gem into a normal conversation, and focus on the exact magnitude of the statement made. Too many metaphors? I'm sorry, peach, but metaphors are the spice of life - from the most boring (like that, the ironically bland usage of the word 'spice'), to those metaphors so complex they can only be described as literary cunnilingus. See? Another metaphor. A saucy one, too. Metaphors... pah! Let's see how mastubatory we can get with metaphors. Let's meta the SHIT outta them. You've heard of trillions of things being metaphors for a trillion other things. Especially life. Fucking "life". Everything's a metaphor for life. But that's the beauty of language. That's why some of us get up in the morning. Especially us English majors and artist types.

Ponder this:

Please explain that in 300 words or less.

issues insane demands

2010-08-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

Since officially relegating My Funny Valentine to the 'done' drawer of my mental filing cabinet, I've got my metaphorical "shit" together and am ready to start writing again. For the past eight months, I've done naught but scroll miscellaneous scribbles in the margins of notebooks; ideas that have stayed just that... miserably pencilled in my journal between to-do lists and how-to references. I have a lot of momentum behind me, and as such, I quoth to thee the proverbial snowball rolling down a hill. The momentum continually picks up, but there's always the queasy feeling that you're still going downhill at an alarming rate, am I right?

Anticipating this, about a month ago I dug out a small notepad labelled "Great Ideas" that my well-intentional (or naively optimistic) mother stuffed in my stocking last Christmas. I've made it part of my routine, somewhere between the first and fortieth cup of tea, to write down at least one new logline or story idea. It's been marvellously beneficial, as I've spent the last couple of years living past glories and grinding the only few decent ideas I've ever had into the ground. New ideas are nice.

I'm currently in the draft stage of several shorts, and I've forced myself to revisit those old notebooks and scribbled margin-trolls to organize my larger ideas. If I could possibly summarize my last eight months of higher education into one little logline, it would be "Organization and structure make movies." With that firmly cemented into the appropriate parts of my grey matter, I got my aforementioned shit together. Each feature or novel is in a neatly labelled bin - and I mean 'neatly.' My craftsmanship with a Sharpie is remarkable. All notes, all concept drawings, all inspirational photos or song lyrics, all research - is dumped into that bin. Each bin is accompanied by his or her (gender pending) mate: a bulletin board. With title, logline, central question, and inspirational phrases scrawls around the frame, these bulletin boards have Post-its marking out the scenes and plot points.

I have eight bin/board partnerships. Eight movies/novels. Well, seven movies and one novel.

I'm going to be writing for years.

*sigh*

But at least I'm organized.

tell me about your corndog

2010-08-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

There are reasons why Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is one of my most favourite movies ever. Sure, it's the cinematic equivalent of the least genetically blessed lovechild of a dimestore novel and everything terrible about the eighties, but it holds a certain je ne sais quoi. I literally Do. Not. Know. What.

A few possibilities echo through my mind, metacortexually (yes, it's a word I just made up, but go with it):

*I really want to see a spin-off sitcom with Billy the Kid and Socrates as roommates a la the Odd Couple.
*I love how two ridiculously stupid stoner kids can throw out such eloquent verbiage as: "Strange things are afoot at the Circle K."
*I think they really, really, really - and I mean, really - nailed Napoleon's character, especially with how he cheats at bowling.

Thanks to Janin for getting the above image for me after I fruitlessly scoured all that Google images could barf up yesterday. You rule.

FOUND

2010-08-11T20:52:00.001-07:00

Langara College Film Arts Unlock the Vault

2010-08-09T22:42:00.000-07:00

Come one, come all to Unlock the Vault, the night we unleash our final project films upon the world!

7 pm on August 20 at Langara College (100 W 49th, Vancouver)

My little labour of love, My Funny Valentine (ecrit par Robyn Thomas, realise par moi) will be closing the night, following:

Sparrow, written by Robyn Thomas, directed by Kaitlyn Reid
Zeldon's Excursion, written & directed by Liz Bailey
Missing Link, written by Erik Hoffman, directed by Jordie Keith
Puppet Magic!, written by Lauren Richardson, directed by Michael Goyert
Junk TV, written by Shayan Bayat, directed by Anna Larrina
Next Door, written by Shayan Bayat, directed by Doug Ferguson
Identity Thief, written & directed by Mitchell Politeski

Come and check it out, we're proud little parents of our cinematic offspring.

the olympics are an extravagant wedding you think will end in divorce

2010-02-17T18:23:00.000-08:00

I've been experiencing a severe amount of cognitive dissonance regarding the Olympics. As a Vancouverite, for the last seven years I've dealt with the 2010 Winter Olympics by simply ignoring the situation, but then last Friday, it arrived on my doorstep like a an e-Bay purchase you forgot you made. Since then, I've just let it wash over me, while struggling to comprehend what is actually going on. It reminds me of a similar predicament I've borne witness to over the last year or so. A family friend is getting married in Disneyland in May, and while I care about her in the way you sorta care about people who are nearly relatives, I am sick to death with the drama and expense of her impending wedding. A crisis occurs, money is thrown at the crisis, words are said, protests are made, protesters are forced into silence. Repeat. Repeat again. Over and over again, until you just can't take it anymore.

To further draw parallels to the olympics, if this Bridezilla is VANOC, her parents would be the IOC, while the rest of us drawn along are the poor residents and taxpayers of Vancouver forced to put up with the noise, construction, expense, and general hoopla all for the promise of a party and a photograph taken with Mickey Mouse. It's somewhat fitting that visiting downtown Vancouver during the Olympics is like visiting a Disneyland version of Vancouver. It's strange. It's like seeing an elaborate simulacra of Vancouver: a combination of stereotypes and blatant facades. And a lot of people taking photographs... of everything. Fences. Street corners. Concrete. Everything.

Without delving into the details here of every pro and con about the Olympics, all I can add to the overwhelming amount of literature on that topic is that I am experiencing multiple conflicting emotional and intellectual responses. A small part of me feels a cliched pride at being Canadian. That's the part of me that nearly wept at the opening ceremonies. Another part of me is fed up with everything. That's the part that just wants to walk into a store downtown and not have to stare at multiple images of Miga and Quatchi, and whatever the hell the rest of their names are. Another part of me is excited and frantically checking the Official Vancouver 2010 website for updates and medal standings. That's the part that spent the better half of yesterday learning everything I could about curling (quite the strategy game when you really get into it). Another part of me - the subversive side - relishes a little bit of "we told you so" every time something goes wrong. That's the part that wants to violently choke Gordon Campbell to death every time I see him on screen in a red sweater waving a flag and grinning like a over-medicated mule. And the last little bit of me is feeling patriotic - in spite of myself - and really just wants to stick it to the Americans. That's the part of me that is happy to be Canadian... despite however many times I've read Althusser. It's mind-boggling, I know.

This last part of me, despite my love of things going wrong, is really quite angry with all the negative international press, especially in Britain. I consider The Guardian *my* paper, but I can't yet forgive them for their "worst games ever" comment. As much as we here in Vancouver complain, it's exactly the same as when you complain about your parents to your friends. You're allowed to complain about your parents, but heaven forbid anyone else should. That's just taboo. We Vancouverites can complain all we want about the Olympics. We can criticize the tackiness, the cost, the disrespect to BC residents and taxpayers, the lack of organization, and so on, and we are justified. Yet, as soon as anyone outside of BC or Canada does, then it's personal. You insult our games, you insult us. As Canadians I just don't think we're used to that yet.

But we do love weddings, don't we?

hello february, you cruel bitch

2010-01-31T16:09:00.000-08:00

February has always been that shitty little month, just sort of stuck into the year, like some form of placeholder text. Something just to fill the void between January and March. I mean, can we even consider it a real month? It only has 28 days. Except for Leap Years - which seem like a cheap gimmick, like cheesy Christmas episodes of a generic sitcom. It's like February 29th is not a real day. I can't seem to consider it canon. It's like "Extended Universe"; a bad fanfic; or an unnecessary director's cut.

Anyway, this isn't a leap year, so no concerns about that now. February sucks anyway. The weather's always bad, at least here in Vancouver. Not winter, not spring. Just extra rain and cold. And grey, grey, grey. There's nothing appealing about it. Most people commit suicide in the spring - probably because they've been contemplating it since February.

True, February is Black History Month, which rather than make me feel better about February, makes me feel worse for Black History. If you're going to dedicate a month to something important, giving it the shortest, shittiest month is a bit of a slap in the face. It's like badly executed appeasement. Like handing a candy bar to a child, but taking a huge, slobbery bite out of it first.

And Valentine's Day. Don't get me started. And Groundhog Day.. what a joke.

Oh, February, please don't suck this year, too. The only thing you've got going for you is more Lost. That's sad.

2010-01-27T20:01:00.000-08:00

starved in metropolis
hooked on necropolis / addict of metropolis / do the worm on acropolis / slamdance cosmopolis / enlighten the populace / hooked in necropolis / addict of metropolis

girlfriends / shot in eternity / methodone kitty / iron serenity / strung out committee / the guards are itchy / broken bottles / grafted in a jiffy / strung out committee / not sitting pretty / left not in a jiffy

jean arthur rimbaud / 1873 / paris commune / died in marseille / buried in charleville / shut up in eternity

guatemala / honduras / poland / the hundred years war / tv rerun invasion / death squad salvadore / afghanistan / meditation / old chinese flu / kick junk / what else can a poor worker do?

- Allen Ginsberg's contribution to The Clash's "Ghetto Defendant" (Combat Rock, 1982)

(Because I'm in a processing input mode, rather than creative output... sorry. But, oh to be in the room when this picture was taken... *sigh*)

the first week of a new year in a total blur

2010-01-07T22:43:00.000-08:00

It's been 2010 for a week now and I'm still writing "09" on everything. I don't know if I will ever be able to accept that fact that it is a new millenium and has been for ten years now. "2010" doesn't sound like the name of a year, it sounds like a science fiction comic book from the 1953. "1953" - now that sounds like a date in time. "2010" has become so synonymous with the impending Olympics that it has lost all meaning now, how like when you repeat a word over and over in your head it loses all meaning. (Try it with "fork," that's the best.)

I'm almost a week into the Film Arts program at Langara and I have mixed emotions. Clearly, I am excited and optimistic and I know this is going to be great. But, on the other hand, I'm still adjusting to my new routine, and feeling a little stressed about the lack of a life that looms over the next eight months. The first week has been the usual ego-clashing pissing contest, with everyone layering a pseudo-modesty over the sweeping epic they've constructed of their lives. Hopefully, but this time next week, all that will be over with. It's a little tough to try to find your confidence in such a position, especially when your confidence is a keystone in your success and you know it.

merry christmas from three wise bloggers

2009-12-24T10:46:00.001-08:00

(stolen from twitter.com/postsecret)

the effing trifle

2009-12-21T16:27:00.000-08:00

My family is English. Mostly. I was reading an article on the Guardian on the loveliest of English desserts (subjective description, I know), The Trifle. There was even a poll: Is trifle supposed to have jelly? Yes or No? This made me think of the torturous experience that the trifle is every year with my family.

We have no such thing as trifle in my family, but we do have "The F***ing Trifle" - the Christmas tradition that causes more fights and familial conflicts than religion and politics combined. Whether it's fights over someone scraping out all the custard, or someone else picking the crumbled Flake bar off the whipped cream, or whatever the feud... there's always bloodshed.

In an attempt to bring peace on earth at Christmas, I suggested that I can make individual trifles, suited to everyone's personal tastes - or that I can alter the ingredients to be generally more edible, or that we should even scrap the trifle altogether, as no one really eats it, they just fight over it, but I was nearly dragged out and shot.

There's no accounting for taste, or tradition.

PS - I've just realized that all my posts I have written somehow related to Christmas have (censored) expletives in the titles. *Sigh*

bing crosby tap-danced with danny - effing - kaye

2009-12-09T16:12:00.000-08:00

So tomorrow, I'm taking the day off work. Huzzah. It was originally intended to be a day to get through all those pesky starting-at-a-new-school things out of the way, like getting a student card, and all that, but once that was taken care of, it's degenerated into a shopping trip downtown with my sister.

I'm looking forward to it. This December has thus far been an exercise in stress management - but not the working-under-a-deadline kind of stress, but the more vague, less tolerable kind. Christmas Eve is my last day at the City, and it marks a stressful day in and of itself. At least I'll get a good week an a half off from then until January 4. That day is standing out like a sore thumb waiting to happen. It's going to be exciting, exhilarating, but terrifying (like bungee jumping) starting back at school. Unlike bungee jumping, which is simply closing your eyes and leaping, I have to keep at this. It's not just one day, it's eight frakking months.

And I need to find time to drive up to Whistler this weekend.

Argh.

I finally understand how Christmas can be migraine-inducing for so many people. I've always found this time of year stressful enough, but still joyous, with happy moments spent retreading old traditions with my family, shopping (which I don't mind as long as it's for someone else), and watching cheesy movies guilt-free. I'm living for those moments. Watching White Christmas last night with my parents and sister was great - not to mention watching Christmas Vacation last week - and the roommates and I are trying to find a night to watch Love Actually. I'm praying for a miracle for the VCR to start working again so I can crack open my old VHS copy of It's a Wonderful Life. (Maybe now that Blueray is well and truly here, I will finally buy it on DVD and then only be one technological advancement behind.)

I told a friend today, that when there's this much being juggled, something's gotta fall. Unfortunately, so far, it's been my writing and my blogging. Which sucks, as those are the things I actually like to do. Maybe I'll get a chance to catch up after Christmas Eve. Let's hope my neuroses don't kill me before them.

(In a totally unrelated note, is it just me, or do you really think that Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye's characters (Bob Wallace and Phil Davis) were totally a couple before Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen split them up? I'm just saying, it's the fifties, and they're in show business, and maybe they need to keep up appearances by marrying off...? They are surrounded by tons of young, beautiful women all the time, they're in their forties (Danny) and fifties (Bing)... If a lot of their dialogue were given to a man and a woman (this IS 1954), you would totally get the impression they were a couple. Phil keeps using the I-saved-your-life-in-the-war guilt-trip, but I think Bob does whatever he wants because he wuvs him. Hm..... It's totally just me, isn't it?)

how i wasted my day

2009-12-08T15:15:00.001-08:00

I had these new images saved to my desktop, though, which seem to shed some insight onto what I may or may not have accomplished during this average Tuesday:

From a Wikipedia article on "Teetoller." Wtf?

Browsed Think Geek quite a bit. Now I want this cool Starbuck BSG action figure. Want.

The distance between the hostel I stayed at in Bayswater('A') when I was in London and the location used for Withnail and "I"'s flat ('B') in Withnail & I. Wish I knew that when I was in London. It's like two blocks away. I would have haunted that place.

Answer: The Maltese Falcon.

God, I'm wasting my life.

the nut-busting creative process

2009-12-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

This is currently how I feel at the moment. About writing. It's an uphill battle, with few chances for reward even in the event of success. Objectively speaking, there's little to recommend it. It can be therapeutic - sometimes - but other times, it can make you feel like an unproductive failure who would be bashing their head against a brick wall if they weren't a few bricks short to begin with.

I've spent the last few weeks (months, really) plotting out the details of what was originally intended to be a feature-length script. As I continued to flesh it out, I realized that it would be much better as a novel. Once I started writing, I immediately felt the need to reign some sort of destructive vengeance down upon the gods of exposition. I've rambled at length on this blog before about my writing habits and my writing styles, and differing voices and all that jazz, but this is the first omniscient third-person fictional prose narrative I've written in actually quite a while. (That's a lot of qualifiers, I'd be suprised if it weren't "ever".) I'm experiencing a problem that's altogether new to me in terms of writing. I can't find the right voice.

This is an overarching problem for my creative side in film work, but it's never applied to my writing style. I'm frustrated. Have I spent too much time writing in the first person, writing with (an attempt at) humour? Have I been blogging too much? Or not enough? Oh dear god.

if a picture says a thousand words, this should more than suffice for this week's blog entry:

2009-11-19T14:59:00.001-08:00

excerpts from an interview with myself

2009-11-19T13:59:00.000-08:00

Okay, exciting, I know. Transcript/rip-off of my interview with Whohub.com (from sometime last spring). I was discussing my writing process with someone today, and it made me want to blog about it (naturally). Then I remembered this interview, so I thought I would share this instead. I wrote all the answers, so I feel no guilt in repeating them here.

What did you first read? How did you begin to write? Who were the first to read what you wrote?
I first read the back of milk cartons. But I mostly just looked at the pictures. It made the story easier to understand. Even at such a young age, I got it. The cows like eating daisies, they smile, while blinking their pop art eyelashes. They are happy to have their teats violated for me. I think from here I moved on to picture books, but those memories are all a little hazy. Must have been all the Children's Tylenol I was jacked up on.

I began to write in kindergarten. I had just learned a new skillset: the proper etiquette for eating paste. I was a sick kid (all the paste, of course) and spent about three weeks in hospital, during which I completed my opus. It was magnificent; something about a dinosaur. It glittered. I made a cover out of cardboard, which my mother had to sew together as the doctors had banned all paste.

What is your creative process like? What happens before sitting down to write?
I spend days, weeks, months, even years letting something fester in my mind. I have premises, plot point, characters, and cliches in my head that have been there for so long, they are now more a memory of a dream I had once. Some I will likely never actually get around to writing, and these characters will live on in my head like old imaginary friends. I think it borders on psychosis. I call this phase the Dreaming Phase (I just named it that right now).

I usually make random pages of notes, outlines, or even whole passages. Sometimes I draw crappy pictures of the characters. It makes me feel like a fangirl of my own unwritten work. I'm a scatterbrain stereotype. I have tons of stuff half-finished in draft form, random pieces of paper or napkins shoved in folders, scribbles, index cards. One day, I tell myself, I will organize all this. I call this the Literary Vomit Phase (not as idealistic as the Dreamer Phase, I know, but accurate).

After awhile, when there is one project that I am particularly persuaded by, I will take all this Literary Vomit and attempt to organize it into something recognizable to humans. Usually this involves more scribbly notes and diagrams, but I've since developed a fancy system of index cards. I learned this trick when writing term papers in university. I write each plot point or imagined scene so far on a separate index card, put them in a sensible order, then simply fill in the holes until I've fleshed out the story. (I call this the Way-To-Get-My-S**t-Together Phase.)

After that, I write. (The Hallelujah Phase)

After that, I edit. Obsessively. Sometimes for years. (The Purgatory Phase)

When satisfied, I will publish. Either online or in print. (The Rolaids Phase... very relieving)

What type of reading inspires you to write?
Usually something that makes me shoot whatever I happen to be eating/drinking out my nose. Kidding. I have friends who are inspired by plot and subject matter, which I love, but I must admit, it's just a well-wrought sentence that gets me.

For a story of any kind, structure and organization is incredibly important. This, you can teach. A good editor can help you with this. With strict guidance and good self-awareness, any writer can create a well-plotted piece. Yet, when you break writing down to the base elements, like sentences and word choice, you just can't teach that. Some are born great... and the rest haven't a hope in hell. You can try to be Douglas Coupland, but you likely won't succeed. My entire life is living up to this unattainable goal.

What do you think are the basic ingredients of a story?
Sugar.
Salt.
Baking Soda and/or Powder (depending on the genre).

What voice do you find most to your liking: first person or third person?
For fiction, I like reading third person, but I like writing first person. I find that when I write, I have a third-person voice and tone that is distinctly different from my first-person voice and tone. More serious. More godlike, perhaps? My first person is lighter. Self-deprecating.

For non-fiction, I like reading first person, but write (unless blogging) third person. I think this is an academic hangover from university where you got the strap for using the subjective "I". This always bothered me, as all writing, non-fiction or not, is subjective. I like journalists that acknowledge their perspective. It contains a self-reflexivity that is lacking in a lot of media.

Are you equally good at telling stories orally?
No. I'm terrible. I applaud the written word because I am much more charming in print.

What is required for a character to be believable? How do you create yours?
They must have some frame of reference within the reader's existing knowledge, whether through realism or intertextuality. This is best achieved through solid character development and a strong character arc, but I like to cheat and that means cheap cultural references and/or ripping off famous characters.

In my defence, one can argue that in our postmodern condition, there is no such thing as original characters or "real" characters, only the tangled intertextual references that make up our knowledge of the world and literature, so I'm not really cheating, I'm living up to the standards to which our society has degraded.

Deep down inside, who do you write for?
I think myself... and my imagined public. I've been writing since before I can remember even writing. I think I just assumed that, since books existed, everyone wrote them. To be honest, I don't even question why I write, I just do it. To stop now would be worse than quitting heroin or losing a limb. It would be the same as ceasing to eat real food and just getting all your nutrients from Soylent Green. Yes. It would be exactly the same as that. Well, no. It would be as if my eyes suddenly stopped being blue.

Is writing a form of personal therapy? Are internal conflicts a creative force?
I don't write with the goal to solve a personal crisis, but it works out that way anyway. You can't help but pour yourself into each and every character. They are a fragment of your psyche, good or ill. So many things I've written, finished, unleashed unto the world, then read awhile later only to think, "wow, I remember exactly what I was going through then." I can see in the characters. The conflicts they overcome, the story archs they go through, whether literal or allegorical, they are some conflict you see within your own life. It's really escapism for the author, not the reader. This never really clicked with me until I read Aristotle's Poetics, and I completely connected with his notion of Catharsis. It completely bridged the 3000-year gap. I think Ari and I would be good drinking buddies.

Does reader feed-back help you?
Screw the bastards. No one really understands me. Kidding. I do listen. I just don't usually act on the constructive criticism until after I've burned all their photographs.

Do you share rough drafts of your writings with someone whose opinion you trust?
No. I think I should, but I've yet to find someone I really trust to give me an honest answer. Perhaps, also, I'm afraid they WILL give me an honest answer and I don't want to hear it.

Do you believe you have already found "your voice" or is that something one is always searching for?
Your voice changes as you do. I'm only twenty-six. I'm still growing into myself. I look back on work I've written when I was an angsty teenager, and I definitely see a different voice there. It is still me, but just like the paste-eating kindergartener was still me.

What discipline do you impose on yourself regarding schedules, goals, etc.?
Ha ha, "discipline," that's a good one. I am reminded of a Douglas Adams quote: "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

The only schedules I've had to adhere to are ones imposed on me by others I'm working with. When I do create a schedule or deadline or goal, that immediately causes me to work against it. Call me a self-saboteur, but it's the rebellious streak I just can't break. I will even miss appointments I've made for myself, then giggle with a revolutionary fever as I look at my watch knowing I've skipped it. I then feel a slight thrill as I stub out a cigarette, straighten my black beret and untuck my Che t-shirt.

What do you surround yourself with in your work area in order to help your concentrate?
The Chicago Manual of Style, so I can spot errors like "help your concentrate".

out of 25,000 readers, only 71 will leave comments, and 2/3 of them will be jerks

2009-11-12T15:46:00.000-08:00

IMDb, the Internet Movie Database, does a list (a "Hit List") every day of several different articles appearing around the Interwebs. I usually submit my different articles (the more interesting ones) that I write at Celluloid Heroes, mostly because the odd person reads through the thread of suggested links. However, today (which I, as a blogger, will always remember as The Day), IMDb chose to put MY ARTICLE up on their Hit List! I squeeeeeed louder than the world's collective fangirls would if Stephanie Meyer herself finally slash-fic'ed Edward and Jacob.

In the - I would guess - eight to ten hours the link has been up on the IMDb homepage, I've had over 18,000 hits on my blog. Most, obviously are directed towards My Top Ten: Antiheroes, the article in question. I did have one guy who read my rant on breaking the fourth wall (adapted from an earlier tirade posted at this blog), and said:

I have no idea how you managed to write an entire article on such a tiny thing, but you did and I was thoroughly entertained, enlightened and, er, endangered. No, that’s not right…

This was delightful in the face of the forty+ comments on the Antiheroes post that ranged from everything from mere further suggestions of antiheroes ("Cool Hand Luke not being mentioned makes this list not worth looking at.") to a grad student writing a master's thesis on a similiar topic and wanting to bounce ideas off each other to "None of you seem to know what an antihero is, even the guy who says what an antihero is – doesn’t know what an antihero is…" Oh, dear. I can only think he's referring to me. I can assure you, dear lad (name listed as 'jake' but I prefer to call him 'troll'.), without any pretension or arrogance, that I do indeed know what I'm talking about. I'm a little confused by this, though. It seems that in light of gender ambiguity on behalf of the author of this piece, most have assumed I was male. Hrm. This gives me an ambivalent feeling. On one hand, I'm really unnerved by the fact that people automatically assume male. Is it because it's about film and most people working in or writing about film are male? Or is it just a generalization based on a patriarchal throw-back? On the other hand, I feel kinda flattered that the style and tone of my writing is gender neutral. I'm only saying neutral because obviously my writing didn't scream "woman" like a few guys'-I-know handwriting does. Maybe my writing voice comes across masculine? I don't really know.

I do feel when I write that I do have two competing voices inside me. Very yin and yang, I know. There's always been my "serious" writing voice, and my "slightly more sarcastic, and actually quite glib" voice. Perhaps this former voice comes across female, while the latter male. It's an assumption based on preconceived gender constructs, but there it is, nonetheless. Depending on the project, the story and the tone, one voice usually wins out. I'm finding, however, that the older I get, the more they blur together. I think, within themselves, they're maturing as well. It's interesting, and I don't really know what else to say about it.

it's so dreamy... oh fantasy free me...

2009-11-02T19:34:00.000-08:00

On Halloween, I managed to avoid the usual cliche of a dreary, drunken party and handed out candy with my family, and took my little cousin, Noah, out for his first trick-or-treat. Cute, mildly entertaining, not wild.

Then, however, Roommate Shannon and I went out to a Midnight Movie: The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I hadn't seen the film in over ten years (and I thought it was whacked-out then), but I've always wanted to go to a midnight screening. For some reason, this deeply hidden urge has managed to stay off my to-do-before-I-die lists, just like the underrated classic Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure manages to stay off the best films of all time lists. (Although it did make it onto this one.) Perhaps - like Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted "Theodore" Logan, RHPS is one of those perverse personal goals that one is almost ashamed to own up to. Well, not ashamed, but in putting it on any sort of list of allegedly important personal achievements said list is somewhat cheapened?

Maybe I just forgot?

Anyway, it was an absolute blast. Something I recommend to anyone and everyone, and something I will definitely do again next year, except next year I'm putting a lot more effort into my costume!

a mental health year

2009-10-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

It seems to happen every four or five years, doesn’t it? That cycle of personal growth. Quarter-Life Productions started in 2005 – a mere four years ago. Perhaps that’s a testament to my advancing age (advancing, not advanced), that four years seems a small speck, a blip in the otherwise murky waters of my sea of emotional instability. Four years. That’s nothing. Four years from now I’ll be a thirty-year-old. A thirty-year-old I’m slowly getting acquainted with. Four years ago I was twenty-two. A small baby. I don’t know that kid anymore. But in tracking the chronological path of Four Years, it’s within the scope of cognitive recognition. Like when you were a kid on a camping trip, and you’d shine the flashlight at the stars, just to see how high up that beam of light could go. It didn't reach the sky, just like now, at twenty-six, I have no possible way of casting any light on who I will be or even what I will be when I’m old and grey (if, indeed, I ever get there). Yet now, thirty is the trees on the edge of the campsite; close enough for the flashlight to reach. I’m not entirely sure who, or what, or where I will be, but the closer I get, the possibilities narrow.

Four years ago, when Jason and I started QLP, had we any clue this is where we’d end up, at the end of 2009? I think our plans were far grander then. We didn’t have the proper understanding of time depth that it takes your mid-twenties to figure out. We were only having our quarter-life crisis, where one suddenly realizes that adulthood is not all it was advertised to be. I guess we now qualify for the post-quarter-life crisis: slowly figuring out what your adulthood actually is. Naturally, this means 2009 was unprecedented in the number of old friends from grade school who got married and/or became parents and/or homeowners. 2009 seems like a blip for me. The fact that it has passed so quickly quite frankly scares the shit out of me. I feel like I’ve barely done anything, but in the objective sense, I have. It has been a big year for wading in new waters, rather than plunging deeper in existing ones. A big year for growing up. Not only in the material sense (yes, I’ve moved out; yes, I’m going back to school, and so on), but I’ve come to appreciate that life happens slowly and widely, even if time seems to be running out. And if you really want life to happen, it takes hard work.

In the months since I’ve returned from my trip (almost all twelve of them), I’ve come to the conclusion that, yes, I want to work in film. I want to work in the arts. Yes, it will be difficult. Yes, I will be poor. Yes, I will need a day job. It’s going to be a long road, but a rewarding one. It’s what I want, and I’m willing to work for it. Coming to the conclusion is one thing, deciding how to proceed from there is more difficult. It’s not about setting a goal and then outlining a firm series of steps with which to achieve said goal. It’s not a video game, is it? It’s not a series of increasingly more difficult tasks that, if you execute them correctly, will spring you up to the next level. End goals are funny things. They need to be vague. If they are firmly black and white, the impeding fear of failure hangs over you until Accomplishment. It’s difficult not to be engulfed in anticipatory guilt, anxiety, stress.

Far more than failure, however, I would fear success. With such a narrow-minded ambition, you’re always left with the burning question: “What now?” What does Mario do after he rescues the Princess? It's never really explained, is it? Do they get married and live Happily Ever After, only to have their marital dischord revisited ten years down the road in a film by Sam Mendes? Does Mario bog off back to Italy and his lacklustre plumbing business? It reminds me of a great quote of Carrie “Princess Leia” Fisher’s: “There is no point at which you can say, ‘Well, I’m successful now. I might as well take a nap.’” Success, to me, lies in fulfillment, which is not some single moment but rather in a state of being. Sure, if I won an Oscar, I’d feel successful, but I would rather consider success to be making a career out of something I loved, of being well-read, writing aplenty, working with great people making great films, and having a loving support network of family and friends. Cliched, right? Yet somehow more emotionally sustaining than winning an Oscar.

My point, as deeply embedded as it might be, is that in the four years we’ve been with QLP, we’ve transitioned from this single goal-driven mentality, to the more generalist happiness-first mentality. I wish I could say that our ambition has taken on a more Zen-like stance, but really, we’ve just been frustrated. We’re still going through the growing pains of this post-quarter-life crisis; we’re still connecting the dots. Between Jason and I, we’ve realized that this year needs to be one of personal growth. When we look at it objectively, QLP has achieved quite a lot in four years – especially considering our complete lack of funds. We’ve been so busy working in the moment that we’ve burnt ourselves out. I’m going back to school. Jason wants to travel a bit. I also want to travel some more. We’re taking a personal year to get our shit together.

It comes from a stance of motivation. As Jason put it, when we started we had the motivation, we had the things we wanted to say, but we lacked the know-how, we lacked the ability, we lacked the voice with which to say it. Now, four years later, we have the ability, we have the know-how, our voice is coming along, but we’re struggling for motivation. What is it we really want to say as artists? How can we bring our own voice to that statement? Jason has called this personal crisis a lack of motivation, and while I never thought of it that way before, I realize that this lack of motivation comes because I’ve been struggling for something to say. I have many ideas, many gripes, many perspectives, but I’ve felt a little lost. There’s nothing more vexing than writer’s block. Style issues I can overcome. I can write putrid drafts with terrible sentences and terrible word choices – words like ‘putrid’ – and it can be fixed in revision. I don’t mind that. I like revising. I just hate not feeling like I don't have anything interesting or original to contribute to the world. The last great thing I felt I wrote was the Two Lava Lamps and Thirty-Nine Staples script (not my title, my title was Five Years Later). That was 2006. I need this year. I need to find my voice. It won’t come overnight, but it's there. It's spent this last year incubating. I think - pardon the ridiculous metaphor - it's finally ready to be born. Give 2010 a fair shake, and hopefully I’ll end the year on a high – skilled, connected and ready to create. And QLP - and myself - can finally live up to our potential.

introducing... celluloid heroes

2009-10-20T16:19:00.001-07:00

I've been wrestling with the idea of starting a film zine for - literally - ever. Okay, not literally, but a long while. I wanted an outlet for my crazy ideas about films and the film industry, since that is pretty much most of what occupies my daily thought. Few have made their ways on to this lovely blog, but I just wanted something more. I gave up on the zine when I realized that it wasn't really the right medium for what I wanted to write. So if the paper zine is not right, what about ungrateful offspring of Paper Zine, Internet Blog? Yes. That'll do, pig, that'll do.

I got the name, Celluloid Heroes, from The Kinks' song because oh how I love it so. I'm planning on keeping it a fragrantly pungent mix of reviews, rants, photo essays, deconstructive dissertations, geek-outs, and whatever else I happen to write. I don't like thinking in terms of Categories, as that only tends to limit my thinking. If I wanted to do that, I would just keep writing for other websites, right? I even snuck a recipe on there, however, you might want to label it "Geek-Out" because it's Star Wars-themed.

let the wild rumpus begin

2009-10-16T10:52:00.001-07:00

My excitement to see this movie borders on cliche: like a kid watching the clock tick down the last seconds until summer vacation, or trying to fall asleep on Christmas Eve, or approaching the gates of Disneyland. All readily accurate cliches. Due to a weekend of various birthday celebrations, I won't get to see it until Sunday at the earliest. I think I might catch a matinee alone. That sounds kind of sad, eh? I like to see movies alone, especially movies where I really want to lose myself in the experience. This seems like just that kind of flick. It's being hailed as Spike Jonze's masterpiece, which can only be a good thing.

Also, this is probably the cutest behind-the-scenes picture I have ever seen (director, Spike Jonze, and star, Max Records):

on to the next project that will encompass my entire waking life for the next several weeks

2009-10-12T13:39:00.000-07:00

Filmtoberfest was this past Saturday, so that explains my: a) lack of blog posts, b) lack of sleep, c) lack of a balanced diet, d) lack of a social life, e) any other number of reason why I've been general weird(er).

The night went off with minimal hitches, and they were all technical, so - as the Artistic Director - they were officially Not My Problem. We screened nine films in total: Naked and Pigmalion, two shorts by QLP-alum Juan Riedinger, Jack of Hearts directed by Robert Tunold, Bored Game from 4 Cooks and directed by Daniel Zwiercan, the animated The Other Side, directed by another QLP-alum, Jennifer Guglielmucci, 3.8 Litres Per Flush directed by Christopher Westendorf, The Little Girl directed by Dae-Youn Hwang, Boxed In directed by Kial Natale, and, of course, QLP's latest, Red Hood directed by Joe Verde and starring Becca Strom and David Quast. So many people came up to me to tell me how impressed they were by the films and by the evening in general, so hopefully this is the start of something special (and a great confirmation that we, QLP, should continue to do what it is we do). I would love to keep something like this going annually, so keep tabs on QLP!

Q: what has two thumbs and is the leading candidate for first victim of the zombie apocalypse? A: this chick

2009-09-18T16:06:00.000-07:00

Shannon and I have decided that we're sick of being fat bastards and have implemented a fitness regime into our already pretty groggy lives. Shannon's going to be a doctor one day, so I understand her desire for general health. Me, however, sometimes I feel like I'm a write-off, but sometimes I fantasize about being able to run for a minute straight without keeling over. (This fantasy is of similar only-in-a-parallel-universe status as my fantasy about singing with my imaginary band in some seedy club and doing it well enough to impress John Cusack - who just happens to be in the audience - so much that he invites me over for a drink and a marriage proposal. Yup. File it under "Not Only Never Going to Happen, But Also Probably a Sign of Mental Health Issues." [Further subnote: Peter Gabriel's 'In Your Eyes' just starting playing on the radio as I write this. Oooh, chills.]) So, Shannon and I started running a couple of weeks ago. We're doing the Vancouver Sun Run training schedule, where you start running for thirty seconds, walking for four and a half minutes, then slowly work it up, so that in thirteen weeks, you're running straight for almost an hour. We are currently on running for a minute, walking four minutes. Personal best. Go us. Roommate powers activate.

We also run through a graveyard. Exciting, I know. Mountainview Cemetary is only a few blocks from our place, and runs for several city blocks. It's fantastic. I love it. Is that creepy? It is, I know. We spend our runs going through the cemetary, zig-zagging around the small roads that section off the graveyard. It's quiet. Peaceful. Lacking in other (living) people and creepy drivers who leer at you as they drive past you jogging. I know they leer. Every one of them. I know when I'm driving past a jogger, I always look at them. I find that far creepier than a cemetary, thank you. I mean, it's not like we're running over top of the graves.... right? On Wednesday, we were finishing off some work, so we ended up going for our run at about eight o'clock at night. The sun was just setting as we came over the crest of the hill into the cemetary, which goes on for several blocks - far past your line of sight. A lovely endless field, full of... I don't know how to end that sentence without feeling I'm disrespecting the dead. And it was dark. From a distance it looked as if the sprinklers might be on. I asked this question aloud, to which Shannon so aptly replied: "If they put a sprinkler system in here, wouldn't that mean they would have to, er, dig things up?" As we got closer we realized that we were running through a fog-cloaked graveyard. In the dark. We were two giggly twenty-something females, with our iPods plugged into our ears in what would be a perfect commentary on the ironic juxtaposition between literal zombie attackers and figurative zombie victims.

Since I am so precariously located on the precipice of disaster when the Zombie Apocalypse engulfs humanity, I promise I will post a Twitter update from my mobile as the first horde of zombies closes in. My last action before joining the Legion of the Undead will be to warn you all:

ashleighrajala OMFG! #zombieapocalypse RT @kanyedouchebag i'm gonna let you get right back to eating my brains but i just wanted to let you know, beyonce is way better at jogging through graveyards
2:06 AM Sep 18th from mobile

Okay, why did I reference that stupid Kanye West thing? I'm getting so sick of reading ridiculous parodies of that crap. Get over it, people. I guess it was just too easy. Also, it's quarter-to-four on a Friday afternoon and I'm tired, damn it. Too tired to think of anything original.

the good, the bad, and daniel day-lewis: my latest cinematic exploits

2009-09-18T16:04:00.000-07:00

In my never-ending quest to work for free, I caught two press screenings for Press+1: Whiteout and The Informant! One was fantastic and the other was terrible. I'll leave you to guess which is which. It's been nice. Seeing films. I haven't seen anything else since, rented, theatrical or library-loan or anything. Actually - I lie. I borrowed St. Trinian's from my parents last night. Decent. You have female anarchistic rebellion for the women in the audience; Emily Strange's School Days for all the kids and goths; and sexy schoolgirls for the guys. My roommate, Shannon, made me watch Scorsese's Gangs of New York with her. My review in a few short thoughts: lose Cameron Diaz, as I can't think of any film that was actually improved by her presence; Daniel Day-Lewis was fantastic, but what I really saw was a character ripe with the mind-blowing awesomeness that would become Daniel Plainview; and, just like I said with Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, somewhere in there - somewhere over that muddy, top-hatted rainbow - was a good film.

too busy to overthink trivial things so i thus must underthink the extremely important

2009-09-18T14:58:00.001-07:00

So I've been hectically planning for Filmtoberfest, which lands in approximately three weeks. I'm on schedule, but I can't help but be stressed to the hilt. Even as I write this, with full intention not to recapitulate the minutia of details about what exactly I need to do, I can't help but feel as though I need to list everything. But I won't. There. I've stopped myself. Good.

The QLP area of my life has generally been pretty rewarding lately. The Year Without Hockey has been accepted into the Hell's Half Mile Film & Music Festival in Bay City, Michigan. It's running October 1 - 4, 2009, so if you're in the Bay City area around that time, be sure to check it out. I contemplated going myself, but have a myriad of forces working against me. Among their ranks: lack of funds, lack of ability to take more time off work, Filmtoberfest being the very next weekend. Argh. Next time. Next time.

Since this is really exciting news, and since the partner of one of YWH's lead actors (Dennis Thomas) is a media personality for DCTV (Deneka Michaud), Jason and I are being interviewed a la maison de mes parents ce soir. (I don't know if that French is correct, but we're being interviewed at my parent's house tonight.) Should be exciting! I have no idea when it's airing, but it should be sometime in the next few weeks. There's a little, inflated-ego part of me that thinks, "Oh, another interview, how cute," but that's really not true. I'm so excited that I almost typed "super excited," as though I were a fourteen-year-old with freckles and a lisp.

Despite all this pseudo-celebrity activity, I've actually felt that utter gaping hole in the middle of my soul that comes with a realization that, despite everything, I haven't really written anything for a couple of weeks. Those XKCD comics? Brilliant, but an easy way to dodge original content or creativity. Kinda like when the teacher used to call on you in class and you'd respond by asking another question. I have also found this delightful website, overthinkingit.com, which does exactly what every other blog on the internet does, BUT WITH STYLE. I spent the better part of a Sunday catching up on Overthinking Lost. I miss my random insights into things that are absolutely not profound whatsoever. It helps me organize the thoughts I think. My thoughts are always so obscure and chaotic; so Abstract and Random, that by forcing myself to write about them literally forces me to put them in a sequential order, with concrete meaning (I'm not even going to go off on a tangent about Semiotics or Derrida, even though I could, and the randomness of my brain just connected this with a million other Structural vs Post-Structural thoughts). Writing - about anything - is how I organize my thoughts, how I make sense of the world and all its complexities. I think that's an easy thing to say about all art... and science even. Is the opposite of science faith or art? Or all they just different bubbles on a brainstorming chart, none with priority over the others, just different ideas - with one precarious figure at the centre...

XLII

PS I've started rereading Hitchhiker's...

i'm obsessed with xkcd

2009-09-09T15:09:00.001-07:00

we want the airwaves, baby

2009-09-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

What comes first, the writing or the apathy? Last Sunday I was interviewd on the Storytelling Show on Vancouver Co-Op Radio (CFRO 102.7 FM) by Taryn Hubbard, my partner in crime for the epically infamous artlit zine, Hacksaw. I managed to escape the hour-long interview without sounding like anything you'd buy at Home Hardware (read: "a tool"). Taryn asked some pretty hefty questions, to which I even suprised myself on the answers. Without restating the obvious, The Storytelling Show is about telling stories - Oops, that was a bit obvious, eh? - only the women who usually go on the show are dealing with the written word. Taryn wanted to explore the medium of film as an avenue for telling a story, and thus, there I was. In fact, here's a picture of me there to prove it. It's not a very flattering picture, is it? I look pudgy, but in a waxen way: like if it was a hot day and you touched me, you'd leave fingerprints on my skin; if you poked me harder, your finger would leave a little concave impression, like when you poke a cake in the oven that's not quite ready.

Anyway, Taryn asked me an interesting question, one that I never fully considered before: When I'm writing, what comes first, the images in my head or the words on the page? I had to think about this. In a knee-jerk reaction I almost said the images, but I guess that's what happens when I write for film. The medium is visual so that is how I think about it. (Perhaps that is part of what draws to me to film and theatre?) However, in blogs and things like this, I'm obsessed with words. I harbour secret ambitions to be able to string together a sentence with the superhuman abilities of Douglas Coupland or Charlie Brooker. I told Taryn - and it rings true - that when the images come first, whatever I'm writing ends up a script; when it's the words, it ends up prose. I'm currently working on one epic story, and my writing process for this labour of like has been the rarest of rare. It breaks my previous patterns. You see, there were no images, no witty aphorisms that sparked my creative purge. It was a premise. A simple concept slowly expanded into the creation of an entire fictional world and fully formed characters. The plot came next. While it's leaning towards script, I still don't feel that instinctive grab in the gut telling me it's a movie. I thus feel this ambivalence that it might just end up a novel? Sometimes I appreciate the lack of method in my madness, other times I just get mad.

You can hear the radio interview here, just find Aug. 30 at 21:15ish to 22:10ish.

because it's been far too long since i've watched red dwarf

2009-08-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

For some reason Red Dwarf crossed my mind. I think it must have been referred to in something I read, then simply forgot about. I haven't watched the most brilliant sci-fi (sy-fy?) satire ever - barring only Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which nothing will ever, ever top - in quite a while. This is likely due to to several reasons, the most predominant of which being my consistently alluded-to rewatch of Lost. I'm halfway through season five, so that's almost done. This has kept the compulsion to scratch at my skin to see the newest "Back to Earth" Red Dwarf at bay for the time being. The DVD is released on Region 1 in October sometime, so, until them, Lost it is, and this will keep me going:

(The Best) Space Corps Directives (as pilfered from wikipedia)

* By joining Star Corps each individual tacitly consents to give up his inalienable rights to life, liberty and adequate toilet facilities.
* Crew members are expressly forbidden from leaving their vessel except on permission of a permit. Permits can only be issued by the Chief Navigation Officer, who is expressly forbidden from issuing them except on production of a permit.
* Any officer found to have been slaughtered and replaced by a shape-changing chameleonic life form shall forfeit all pension rights.
* In an emergency situation involving two or more officers of equal rank, seniority will be given to whichever officer can programme a VCR.
* Terraformers are expressly forbidden from recreating Swindon (or Cleveland).
* Work done by an officer's doppleganger in a parallel universe cannot be claimed as overtime.
* During temporal disturbances, no questions shall be raised about any crew member whose timesheet shows him or her clocking off 187 years before he clocked on.
* No member of the Corps should ever report for active duty in a ginger toupee.
* No officer above the rank of mess sergeant is permitted to go into combat with pierced nipples.
* To preserve morale during long-haul missions, all male officers above the rank of First Technician must, during panto season, be ready to put on a dress and a pair of false breasts.
* The log must be kept up to date at all times with current service records, complete mission data and a comprehensive and accurate list of all crew birthdays so that senior officers may avoid bitter and embarrassing silences when meeting in the corridor with subordinates who have not received a card.
* No officer with false teeth should attempt oral sex in zero gravity.
* Suntans will be worn during off-duty hours only.
* No officer should be left behind on an inhabited planet unless he is missing two or more limbs.
* Any officer caught sniffing the saddle of the exercise bicycle in the women's gym will be discharged without trial.
* A mechanoid may issue orders to human crew members if the lives of said crew members are directly or indirectly under threat from a hitherto unperceived source and there is inadequate time to explain the precise nature of the enormous and most imminent death threat.
* Space Corp super chimps performing acts of indecency in zero-gravity will lose all banana privileges.
* Never tangle with anything that's got more teeth than the entire Osmond family. (Rimmer Directive)

uber-epic-osity: john hughes-style plans for a comedy-rich hypothetical wedding

2009-08-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

This month has been quite the maelstrom of epicness. Well, not in regards to my life, but in regards to those around me. Of the people I know, more have come out of this month married than divorced, so that's always nice. In addition to the newly crowned Darcie Adkins, nee Vaillant, Caitlyn LePard, one of my dearest friends for these last twenty-odd years, is now Caitlyn Atkinson. Frankly, I'm a little annoyed that there's been all this alphabetical order queue jumping. Don't we have to wait behind enough 'A' names as it is? I'm extremely happy for Caitlyn and Jim - in fact so happy that a hyperbolic statement is virtually impossible in attempting to describe my elation - and it was honestly the first wedding I ever cried at. I had the honour/stress of driving up to Manning Park, the lovely wedding venue, with Caitlyn a few days before the wedding to meet up with Steve, the groomsman/wedding planner, to start setting everything up. Despite the stress and workload, everything went swimmingly. Which was fantastic for Caitlyn and Jim, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't secretly hoping for it to play out like a late-eighties comedy; something to fill the void John Hughes left. There was the usual cavalcade of mishaps and stock characters continually teetering on the edge of emotional breakdown, but everything ended well and happy, with only minor injuries. Personally, my funny bone could have used a few more footballs to the groin, but at the least the bride and groom were happy. I'm sure they didn't think slapstick would have suited their wedding anyway.

Which brings me to the oft-heard post-wedding ramble of "if I get married...." I know most people say "when," but I'm really an "if." If I get married I want humour. I want something that I can turn into box office gold. And here is where it can't be funny:

(1) THE PREPARATION My Big Fat Greek Wedding already perfectly summed up what my family would be like helping me plan a wedding, only they're British, not Greek, and thus a little less funny. We could try something Father of the Bride style, but there are two problems, (a) My dad isn't really that funny, and (b) He doesn't really get bothered by anything. Can't top it.

(2) THE STAGETTE Let's face it, my sister Bri will be my maid of honour, and she will throw me the Most Amazing Stagette Ever. If you know my sister, you know that it will be a Gong Show par excellance. Once, when we were drunk, I did force her to pinkie swear that I would at least be able to remember my stagette. So, no The Hangover on this one, even if it did make a mint. Also, let's face it, people are far more willing to go to a film where men make drunken asses of themselves rather than women. Sad truth of the film world: women are only acceptable as bland love interests, evil witches, domineering mothers, or hookers with a heart of gold.

(3) THE HONEYMOON Have you ever seen a movie about a couple on their honeymoon that is actually funny? (B-movie horror flicks don't count.) Yeah, didn't think so.

(4) MEETING THE IN-LAWS If my future spouse has a Monster-in-Law, I'm not marrying them. Straight up. I'd rather die alone than deal your bitchy mother my whole life, thank you. My family is pretty important to me, and they like pretty much anyone, so we don't have to worry about that. Unless they have an event to react to, things would be remarkably banal. My mom might get drunk and crack a few jokes, Bri will come up with a few comebacks, but that's about it. If it's just them meeting another family, it would be boring. There's nothing that could really go wrong to provide the opportunity for comedy. Sure, my dad might break out the bocce set and someone might crack the cat in the face with a ball and the baby might cry (it's happened), but simple conversation would suck as a movie.

Thus, my family in and of themselves are not funny, but if you put them in a high stress, high maintenance weekend where they undergo a series of wedding-related events (set-up, rehearsal, the ceremony, dinner, dancing, and let's even throw in a barbeque for good measure) with a deadly cocktail of people they barely know, and you have the most amazing situational comedy the world has ever seen. So why haven't I tried to write this yet? Because no matter what insane shit my comedic imagination could come up with, the real deal would be so much better. It would be the perfect comedy: Ridiculous, but Real.

Thus, if I ever get married, I will have a wedding somewhere rather rustic and small. Thus creating a boiling kettle-like situation in which all my family and my funniest friends and my future in-laws (whom no one will be introduced to ahead of time, to encourage a proper comedy of errors) are stuck together with tensions running high. I will not hire any outside help, but rather delegate duties to my nearest and dearest for set-up and execution of my extremely detailed plans. Really, I'm sure I won't give a shit what anything looks like, but it will be funny as hell watching them all stress to make everything just so for fear that I will cry if it is not. And I will randomly toss wrenches here and there. I will randomly go missing for an hour just before the rehearsal. I will unleash a live squirrel in the reception hall just after everything is set up. I will slip my mom a few extra Vicodin just before the ceremony. I will blast all kinds of eighties post-punk the whole time. It will be glorious.

instructions for burial (short fiction)

2009-08-05T15:06:00.000-07:00

for Shannon and Athos, who inspired/lived this

He had outlived one cat, one Pope, a few relatives, and countless house plants. And he was determined to outlive them all, if only to ensure that when he gobbled the last remnants of his last meal, his remains would be disposed of with dignity. With glamour. Like anyone proper and respectable. He could not be in any simple plot. No simple granite memorial would suffice. At least six-feet under ground, where cats can't dig at him. In some sort of worm-proof receptacle. Perhaps he was thinking too small. Perhaps his six years' incarcertion was forcing him to think beneath himself. Perhaps he should be cremated and have his ashes scattered over a cliff or in the ocean. Or launched into space, orbiting the earth for eternity. Or shot from a rocket while "Spirit in the Sky" plays on.

He stalked back and forth in his cell, pondering his future state of death. He could no longer remember life before these four walls, and his memory kept getting shorter. As if every time he passed the front wall, his mind erased it. Here he spent his days. Continually gliding back and forth. He thought back to the increasingly foggy haze, remembering distantly the tiny runt brought into captivity, either saved from a larger, hungrier beast or condemned to live outside everything that is natural. Six years, gliding back... and forth. Gliding. Plotting.

There were two things left to plot for. Their deaths, or his. Until he perfected his plans for the former, he would have to work on his plans for the latter. What instructions will he leave for his burial? So many details to work out. One thing was for sure, he would not suffer the indignity of a good flushing. His life was larger than these four walls, and it was larger than any porcelain ones too. But how to get there? Nothing had worked in the past. He bore his old wounds well. A scale missing from the jab from the toddler with the stick, a few more missing from that time he got stuck in his painted plaster castle. One of these days he would figure it out. Until then, he would swim back and forth. Gliding. Plotting.

Filmtoberfest - seeking your (preferably non-porn) short films

2009-08-05T12:38:00.001-07:00

(Shameless plug alert)

We, the lil' indie folks at QLP, are getting ready for Vancouver's inaugural Filmtoberfest and we need your films! Yes, your short films. Or films about shorts. Either is good. However, anything over fifteen minutes is probably too long. So are capris.

Anyway, Quarter-Life Productions, in association with 591 Productions, are currently seeking local independent filmmakers with short films for the inaugural event! An evening of film, frivolity (and possibly leiderhosen), this event will kick off in October 2009 and will be an excellent opportunity to get together with other local filmmakers and industry professionals and enjoy the cinematic delights October has to offer! Since, really, I don't know about you, but that's why I got into this business. October rocks, and so does film. Why not put them together and see what happens? There will also likely be drinking after.

But enough about the event, right now we are looking for independent short films of any genre so there is an evening of fun to begin with. Sure we could just get together and drink, but then it's not Filmtoberfest, it's just Oktoberfest, and I'm pretty sure that's already been done. Not only does this night need to be awesome, but it's needs to be unforgetable. So unforgetable that even the after-party binges won't blitzkrieg those precious memories. Dude, we need these films like zombies need brains. So send us your films! Now. Because I told you to.

The gritty details:

CRITERIA:
Films can be up to and including 15 minutes long.

They must be fiction or creative non-fiction.

The more imaginative and quirky the better!

If you are interested in having your miniature masterpiece screen with us, we need a screener DVD and some submission information. You email us the information (see below) and then mail us the screener DVD.

Filmtoberfest will take place at 7 pm on October 10, 2009, at the Laura C. Muir Theatre for the Performing Arts at Douglas College at 700 Royal Ave in New Westminster.

For more information on Quarter-Life Productions and the details of Filmtoberfest, please visit our website: www.qlp.ca

Filmtoberfest Submission Information
email to ashleigh@qlp.ca

(In the SUBJECT line: “QLP FILM SUBMISSION – [NAME OF FILM]”)

Please include the following information in your email:

Name of Film:
Year:
Running Time:
City/Country of Origin:
Synopsis (50-100 words):
Director:
Writer:
Producer:
Lead Actor(s):
Contact Name:
Contact Email:
Contact Phone:

Would you be interested in attending the event?

Any questions or concerns?

Please label the screener DVD with the TITLE, RUNNING TIME, CONTACT NAME.

Mail to:

Quarter-Life Productions
c/o Ashleigh Rajala
645 E 46 Ave
Vancouver, BC
V5W 2A2

Screeners will not be returned. If you must have it back, please include a SASE.

peaks and troughs and tweaks and prods

2009-07-30T12:15:00.000-07:00

There is a theory of evolution that argues that, rather than evolutionary change happening at a constant rate over a long time, changes happen quickly - remoulding the population at a relatively quick pace - then followed by a long period of stasis. Visualize the path from single-cell organism to human being as a set of stairs rather than a long, sloping ramp. I've always thought of the development of one's self, one's personality, as analogous to evolution. Certain traits are selected for and developed - education, love, humour - while other traits simply still exist because there was no strong enough force selecting against - neuroses, bitterness, etc. Just like evolution, there is no divinely prescribed endgame. You're not working towards anything. You die out when you die out. You don't always get more complex, although that's the pattern these things tend to follow. But you're not the same person at the end of your life as at the beginning. And these things just happen fairly randomly. You can't really control who you are, can you?

I thought of this today, as I thought about my current social attitude. The stepped model of evolution fits me because I seem to go through phases where I am constantly pushing myself out, testing new boundaries, picking up new habits, making new friends, trying new experiences, learning new information. Who parts of who I am, while still part of the same fundamental organism, rapidly mutate. My worldview altered slightly, my perspective newly rooted. After this I fall into a period of stasis, such as the one I am in right now. While, much like the economy, I usually am happier in my growth periods, these personal recessions do give me a chance to hole up and reflect. Like a mental hibernation. I spend a lot of time at home. I read books that are intellectually numbing (Twilight, anyone?) or books that I've read a million times (Hitchhiker's, naturally). I watch films and television that I know and love. I spend time with family, roommates and close friends only. Meet new people? Nah, not today. I'm not in the right frame of mind to try to make someone like me. I'll just go with the tried and true. The people who beyond all comprehensibility already like me (or at least pretend to). I spend lots of time with my cat.

I retreat into myself. I venture into my own headspace; thinking, reflecting, imagining. Living within my head rather than in the world. Perhaps this is a psychological need to fully sort out everything I've absorbed in the last while. Consequently, I get a lot of writing done. All this information, all these emotions, expressions and eccentricities merge together and form new symbolic and allegorical patterns in my mind. I'm an abstract-random thinker, so there's nothing concrete or systematic about this. I think that's part of why I write. Reiterating information and feeling as artwork is my way of processing the world. It's how I deal. I'm in one of those periods now. I don't know if it is healthy or if I am just trying to rationalize things. Objectively, I know that the better way to live is to grow, to expand, to test new waters. I know that I need balance, though. Mental downtime. I can accept this knowing that this too shall pass. The pure creative output has made this not only worth it, but desired. I've been wanting to write this obsessively for months, even years. It's worth anything. Don't expect me to be a laugh a minute, but I will come out of this with something to show for it.

all day i dream about... tea

2009-07-24T14:54:00.000-07:00

I think my tea has arrived. I got home yesterday at approximately seven-thirty-eight post meridian, to find a "sorry, asshole, you weren't home" slip from the postie. "My tea!" I exclaimed, the blood rushing to parts of my body it has previously ignored. I ran up to the post office, only to find it closed. The slip said "available after 5.00 pm," while the post office closes at six. That's a rather narrow little window of time, isn't it? Freakishly narrow. Perhaps just enough time to get a DeLorean up to 88 mph. I will speed home, dodging traffic like a friggin' X-Wing, abandon my car at the side of the road when traffic gets too bad and proceed on foot. I will get there. I will get my tea. At least I'm assuming it's my tea. It could be any number of things I've ordered. Westway to the World? Screener DVDs? Zines? I'm banking on tea, because that little bit of hope is all I have as I sit here, alone in the office on a Friday watching the clock tick down.

2009-07-22T10:06:00.000-07:00

So we visited my grandma yesterday, as I said we would. It was not as bad as I thought. From our last visit (my first since she was in the new place), I was worried she wouldn't remember moving in there and that this explaining things to her would be a permanment loop; Groundhog Day as a Greek tragedy. Yet, she remembered. She recognized Bri and I, and she knows us as her grandchildren, even if not by name. She seemed a bit more contented. Less confused. She laughed a little, too. My previous worries still stand, but perhaps now, rather than sit anxiety-ridden and fretting for her well-being, I can enjoy her company again - at least for a little while.

2009-07-21T15:34:00.001-07:00

This is a rather sombre post on my part. I think it's something that I desperately wish I could write about, but I'm just not there yet. All that I really think I can manage is those brief little snippets that somehow cut to the heart of the issue. Bri and I are going to visit my grandmother (paternal) after work today. She has just been moved into a home. Well, she was in a home before, but that was more of an assisted living facility, one where she had a bit of her own dignity. Her cat was with her, she had some privacy. Now, the place she is in is heartbreaking. I realize that she needs to be there because she can't take care of herself alone anymore. I know this, I do. I just wish it weren't so. She shares a room now with someone else, and this new place is just so much like a... hospital. No one feels comfortable in a hospital. The entire essence of a hospital is unfeeling. Residents are patients, not people. Patients are commodities, work stations. At least that's the feeling you can't help but have. It's hard to feel optimistic. Without being able to resist the urge to use a geeky analogy, it feels as if the place is haunted by Dementors - sucking all the happiness out of everyone and everything.

I hate seeing my grandmother in such a place. Perhaps I'm not entirely ready to deal with accepting her disease, so I've projected my frustrations onto the environment. It's even more difficult when she doesn't remember moving into this place and keeps thinking she's going home at some point. What's even more difficult than that is trying to explain this all to her every five or ten minutes, explaining that this is her home now. I can't comprehend the confusion and sadness on her face. It's like watching a baby or a pet, and seeing their eyes as they process a thought - and being completely incapable of communicating what's going on in their head. I feel guilty for saying this, for infantilizing her or dehumanizing her... but I guess that's exactly what Alzheimer's does. It robs you of your dignity and your adulthood. And I sincerely hope not your humanity. Nothing can take that from her... right?

*DISTURBING IMAGE WARNING* Don't scroll down if you're worried, it's a little disturbing.

I find it rather fitting (but earth-shatteringly heart-breaking) to compare images of an Alzheimer's brain (left) and a healthy brain (right). It seems the perfect, terrifying visualization of what you feel is happening. I think this is why I very nearly broke down in tears when I saw one at the Body Worlds exhibit at Science World a few years ago. Anyway, I know I will have to deal with this at some point, but I just can't yet.

obsessive compulsive sunburns and other hazards of writing outdoors in july

2009-07-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

FADE INTO:

EXT. RAJALA FAMILY HOME - TEN AM, SATURDAY.

ASHLEIGH has woken up at her sister's place. BRIANNE having already left for work, she is sleeping off a late night spent watching random Michael Cera movies. That theme was accidental, not planned, total coincidence (but Nick and Norah is still ASHLEIGH'S favourite, even though he will always be George Michael Bluth to her). She tells herself she will have a cup of coffee outside in the sunshine, feed the cats, then be on her way. She has some errands to run, chores to do, a barbeque to be at later - this should a normal midsummer's afternoon. While she sits with her coffee, she starts zoning out, thinking about a film premise that Jason and her had tossed into discussion a few years ago and relegated to the One-Day-We-Will-Expand-On-This Pile. So she grabs a single sheet of folscap paper and thinks she will jot down her one or two silly ideas.

CUT TO:

INT. RAJALA FAMILY LIVING ROOM - THREE AM, SUNDAY

BRIANNE has returned home for the last time that day, having gone to the barbeque-turned-Balderdash tournament without her sister. ASHLEIGH is sitting on the couch, using a Physics textbook for a lapdesk, piles of papers and drawings and notes stacked on the coffee table in front of her. Wired on coffee, sunburned across one half of her body from sitting at the patio table in the bright sun all day, right hand aching but powering through the cramps, (Fanboys on for the second time as background noise), literally and utterly unable to stop writing. She is possessed by some sort of demonic muse, surely. When she wakes the next morning the outside of her right pinkie's knuckles will be swollen from being pressed against the table all day. Hands covered in smudged ink....

It was glorious. If only I can keep this up.

tea with my sister: fangirls over fanboys, twilight, and something about a half-assed prince?

2009-07-14T13:06:00.000-07:00

So I just spent twenty minutes talking on the phone with my sister. I love having a sister, and having Bri as my sister is especially nice. We can talk about any, any, ANY sort of shit. My mind is very 'in the moment' right now, which is to say the closest I come to having ADD - Oh, I just realized the internet radio station is playing "Celluloid Heroes" by the Kinks - Celluloid Heroes is also the name of a new zine I am half-way through starting, and the Kinks is where I got the name - yeah, see? Random and irrelevant.

Anyway, back to the random narrative at hand: the phone call was premeditated by the fact that I was about to log into facebook to message her some Very Important Information, and she happened to call me. I actually can't remember why, but it worked out in the end. When we were in Seattle a few weeks ago for Father's Day (we took our dad to a Mariner's game), we found this AMAZING TEA at Pike Place Market. Neither of us are what you might refer to tea coinnosseurs, but we are definitely appreciative of tea's ability to either caffeinate or calm. This tea is unlike anything I have ever consumed. To paraphrase Edward Cullen (more about that later), it's like my own personal brand of heroin. I am growing desperate as I have realized that I only have one tea bag left and no prospect of a trip to Seattle anytime soon (even though I actually considered it, by looking at my calendar to see when I had a free Saturday).

I feel like Charlie in the first season of Lost when he only has that one small baggie of heroin left. I've been increasingly reusing the tea bags, trying to squeeze as many cups as possible out of each one. It doesn't work. That first strong cup is magical. So magical I actually fear it turning me into some sort of small amphibious creature. So magical that its pet white tiger is about to maul it to within an inch of its life. Oh Market Spice tea, what will I do without you?

So I googled it. Yes, the answer for any 21st Century predicament. I am glad I did. I'm sure this little Pike Place store had complaints from tourists all over the world, raving and scratching at their own skin to get more, that the company now sells it through Amazon. I just ordered package of 50 bags for $12.95 USD, plus $6 shipping. So worth it. Even if more expensive than the street stuff. But you just never know what that's laced with.

I realize that this post is rather ridiculous, but that's the beauty of the internet. Blogs are just shit. The ravings of lunatics given the guise of validity. If you've had that tea, you would understand. Still not sure if it's caffeinated, but starting to think "yes." That magical, magical tea. Just go to Seattle, find the store, and sample the tea. They have free samples, you know! That's how they getcha. It's like what my mom said when warning me about drugs in junior high, "The first one's always free. Then they jack up the price." I'm sure she speaks from experience.

I was initially worried that this post would become an exercise in randomness through the ADD-mangled, brain patterns that I'm currently experiencing due to the fact that I've had three cups of this miracle tea and it's only one o'clock. It is definitely caffeinated. Despite this previous concerns, it seems that this post has become very, very obsessive. I originally intended it to be a tribute to my sister and the wonderful closeness we occasionally share over the strangest of things, but she somehow hit the cutting room floor.

Bri and I have been hanging out a lot lately, due to several reasons: 1. I've moved out and I miss her, like I knew that I would, 2. Our parents are on holiday, so she's alone in the house and quite bored and lonely, 3. The crazy pace of my life has slowed for a couple of weeks, which is nice, but also boring, and 4. We both just discovered Twilight.

Oh, Twilight. It's so, so, SO terrible. Utter, utter shite. Really, it is. Bella is probably the worst female role model I could imagine this side of Warren Jeffs' favourite wife. We both even hated Titanic. So why the hell are we obsessing like 14-year-old fangirls? Ugh. I don't know. I really can't explain it. People have dodged murder raps with clearer-headed temporary insanity. Perhaps Robert Pattinson has something to do with it. Or a lot to do with it. We were both in denial for I don't know how long. Desperate not to admit we each thought him extremely gorgeous, we feared being labelled one of THOSE girls. But, fuck, we are. Stamp it on our foreheads. I feel the years slipping back. It was good while it lasted, these last few years. I realized how much I was growing up. In the good way. I've matured a lot. Felt like an 'old soul.' Fuck. Now I'm thirteen again. My age has spontaneously halved.

Twilight is the most perfect example of cognitive dissonance to which I can relate. Cognitive Dissonance: the uncomfortable - or otherwise brain-splitting - feeling caused by holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. I know that Twilight is bad. I know that there is so much wrong with it. It contains so many things that I just utterly dislike. Yet I like it. I can't reconcile this dichotomy. How can something this discontinuous exist within my own head? I don't understand. I think it comes down to a battle between emotion and education; between those forces of A) all the things you were indoctrinated with during your formative years, such as traditional gender roles, acceptance of authority, and so on - housed in the inner layers of your mind and are now referred to interchangeably as "common sense," "emotional response," "implicit ideology," or any number of things; and B) all the things you've learned since your malleable childlike brain hardened, things like the mechanics of psychology, the historical context of contemporary society, and critical thinking - the stuff that lingers as explicit knowledge, analytical judgement, an intellectual response rather than emotional, reason and logic, science over faith, questioning over acceptance. Far too complicated a train of thought for something as trivial as Twilight, one reckons. Oh well, it is Bri that has the "I *heart* Boys Who Sparkle" button, not me.

We did rent Fanboys on Saturday, too. We both like Star Wars. I really like Star Wars. Like an endearing roommate that you desperately can't stand living with, despite the fact that you care about them deeply. I love Star Wars... but I'm not in love with it. And I know far, far too much about it. In fact, I was able to answer a good 75% of the questions the titular fanboys were asked in the film regarding The Trilogy. I have seen the films a lot, but I attribute all of this knowledge to having many, many fanboy friends, dating fanboys, living with a fanboy for almost three years, and thus being subjected to Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, RPGs, and other wookiee-filled discussions. (I even knew that wookiee is spelt with two E's. Isn't that ridiculous?) For those three years, my flat was also home to Star Wars cookbooks, trading cards, collectable miniatures, and everything but the Darth Vader voice-changing mask (I shouldn't even know that exists).

I got so into the Extended Universe through discussion and exposition (and being made to read the Thrawn Trilogy - again, shouldn't know) that just knowing all this information, and talking about it, was better than actually watching the films. Because let's face it, it's the Star Wars Universe that makes them interesting. The films (with exception of The Empire Strikes Back) are really just slightly better-than-average action films. Don't get me started on George Lucas's writing/directing skills. Okay, I'll start a little: Give the job to a fifteen-year-old with some Super 8 skills and she'll probably do better. At least she would have realized that rolling around in the grass is simply the most unacceptable love story cliché of all time.

So, thus, Fanboys really got me. Especially Kristen Bell's character. Yes, the token girl. Volumes of issues relating to feminism aside, the only aspect in which she differed from my 19-year-old self was the fact that I have neither broke into the Lucas Ranch nor flashed my boobs in a comic book store (... I think...). Everything else is frighteningly accurate. Yes, the film was flawed. But it was exactly what it intended to be: a love letter to the Star Wars Universe. Bri and I watched it twice, and all the special features. It is now two days overdue from Blockbuster. Our twenty-minute tea conversation ended with an "Oh, crap. I still need to return that. If I see Fanboys for sale, I'm totally buying it. Did you want me to grab you a copy?" Yes please. We can watch it again before we go see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at midnight tonight.

What's the deal with fandoms? I've been toeing the edges of a million all week. I've neglected to mention until now that I've been rewatching Lost with my roommates. We'll save that for later. It is something to do with finding instant common ground with other people in a lonely world? Is it relishing in the idea that you're not alone in this escapist fantasy? I don't normally participate in fandoms. If anything, they find me. I read up, engage in the odd geek-out, but I'm not a convention-goer, or a fanfic writer, or a fandom webmaster or anything. I draw the line at buying posters, too. The geekiest poster I own is a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy one that I got for free working at a bookstore. Somehow I deem this geeky, but my Casablanca poster is not. My Clash posters are quite extensive, but they're punk rock, so it's not geeky, it's just obsessive (I put them all up in one room and realized exactly how much Joe Strummer that was). I think the feeling of being part of something pulls us towards fandoms. It is the feeling of belonging to something, somewhere, which means a lot in this aforementioned lonely world. I'm still not sure what there is beyond escapism for the solitary geek like me. I hypothesize that it is like any appreciation for art, but with a lot more of that adolescent emotional side and a little less of the intellectual adult. Same source but the balance is slightly skewed. Perhaps I will need either a Phd or pre-school to sort this all out.

I have no idea how I will cope tomorrow morning at work with no sleep and with no Market Spice tea.

Aw, fuck.

Caffeine Update - 1.46pm. Our weekend also included a longer-than-sane discussion of Lord of the Rings. That wins the argument for being "The Trilogy" in our family. Ten bucks if you can guess how many times Bri and I saw Fellowship in theatre.

Caffeine Update - 2.15pm. Have realized that I am indeed highly, highly, HIGHLY caffeinated.

Caffeine Update - 3.04pm. Caffeine levels approaching normal. Have reviewed the post with level of near-sobriety. Revised with reasonable commentary. Also took out the phrase "tea bag" a few times. Six times was too much to mention "tea bag" without being a porn site.

Caffeine Update - 3.50pm. Crashing... burning... losing will to....

'dirty king'? yeah, it's kinda like that

2009-07-06T15:41:00.000-07:00

I spent about a week procrastinating and finding a million others things to do than write this review. (When I finally did it just now, it only took ten minutes.) I was supposed to have it done awhile ago. The album was out June 23. God damn it. Why do I say 'yes' to things so quickly? It always ends with me pissing someone off and feeling guilty and as full of shame like a doughnut is full of jelly. Horrible analogy, I know, but let me indulge: The shame, like that jelly, is so bad for it almost gives you cancer at first bite, yet so, so, so good. But no, it's not good, is it? It's quite sickly and very untrustworthy. YET WHY DO YOU GIVE INTO IT? Why do I do these things to myself?

I think the answer is I am far too spontaneous. Sometimes this is fun, most of the time this is fun. In fact, the pros would whip the cons in a Celebrity Death Match, but still, I get myself in trouble a lot. Spontaneity is what caused me to suddenly plan a four-month trip to Europe, and spontaneity is what got me through most of it.Yet Spontaneity is what made me realize the NIGHT BEFORE I flew to Paris that I hadn't got my line of credit signed off. Spontaneity got me wandering drunk through a Bavarian forest at midnight (true story). Spontaneity even got me laid a few times. Okay, several times. I do regret about 78% of those, however. Kidding. Kidding.... sort of.

Spontaneity is also what made me apply for film school, and get in. Spontaneity got me my job right now. Spontaneity made me start a zine distro. Spontaneity made me jump of a bridge. Spontaneity made me say 'yes' to starting a film company, to starting a magazine, to end up living where I am. I make decisions at the drop of a hat. On the turn of a screw. On the flip of a coin. Usually, however, they are something that has been flitting through my mind for awhile, the way we consider all life's possiblities in that near-dreamlike state, until something triggers them, giving me the opportunity. I usually pounce at it before I realize exactly the magnitude of what I've done.

Sure, I regret some things I've done. But they are all frivolous regrets. Nothing worth turning back the clock on. The only few serious regrets I have are all of inaction. Isn't it better to regret things you've done rather than regret things you haven't done? Especially, of course, if the thing you haven't done is write that review on time.

THE CLIKS – DIRTY KING (2009) (Warner Music Canada)

I feel lucky enough to say that I picked up The Cliks’ Dirty King back in May when they opened for the New York Dolls at Richard’s on Richards in Vancouver. The third album by the Canadian band, Dirty King is a deeper, richer, more diverse effort, that shows the band, and especially songwriter Lucas Silveira’s true coming-of-age. While the band has received plenty of attention due to Silveira’s status as a transman, this might appear unjust, as it truly is the music that deserves to be heard.

It is far to easy to listen to the album with the theme of sexual identity running through one’s mind, but that would be selling it short. Musically, Silveira’s work treads emo water, especially on tracks like Career Suicide and We Are the Wolverines; treads, yet transcends. Other tracks, like the eponymous Dirty King and Henry are simply great rock songs. These ones pull you in. Slower, deeper efforts like Not Your Boy and Henry keep you there. The only song I found myself skipping when I had the CD on repeat was Love Gun, which isn’t really that bad, but I just couldn’t get over the inherent cheesiness of the title. Alas, nothing’s perfect.

Despite this, I found Dirty King to be one of those elusive, yet wonderful things. One of those albums where (almost) each track stands on its own, but the album as a whole is a powerful combination. Having to live up to the reputation of being compared to everyone from the likes of David Bowie to the White Stripes to Chrissy Hynde, The Cliks have a style that is at once unique and familiar. They fit well into the fabric of contemporary rock, not too “indie” sounding, not too bland, and thus should be able to find a wide audience with this decent release.

TRACK LISTING
1. "Haunted"
2. "Dirty King"
3. "Not Your Boy"
4. "Red and Blue"
5. "Henry"
6. "Emily"
7. "Career Suicide"
8. "Love Gun"
9. "We Are the Wolverines"
10. "Falling Overboard"
11. "Animal Farm"

tweeting true democracy

2009-06-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

In light of the people of Iran discontented with the results of their country's election, you can create a green avatar for your Twitter page to show solidarity. (Whether this actually shows your support for free democracy in Iran or for the main opposition candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, is not quite clear. It's advertised as the former, but green is Mousavi's campaign colour!)

Social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook, as forums for protest, social unrest, and free and open communication is generally regarded as a lofty ideal propagated by the only most optimistic patrons of the Internet Age. Usually we just get random crap like continuous feeds of people-we-haven't-talked-to-since-that-college-job-at-the-Quick-Stop's wedding photos and the latest update on Miley Cyrus's personal life. When you genuinely see people utilizing the Internet for social change, it hits that revoluntary wrinkle of my brain in all the right ways. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government has realized this and has tried every trick in the Fascist (let's call it that) book, from blocking mobile phone communications on the day of the election, to blocking Facebook to prevent the use of it by opposition's candidates, to jamming electronic signals to major television stations and mobile phone signals in the wake of public unrest following the allegedly rigged election.

As anyone knows, any form of public political action requires organization, which requires communication. By severing the most readily available forms of communication, Ahmadinejad, along with the "supreme leader" the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (who supported Ahmadinejad's victory as a "divine assessment"), has made strident efforts to stablize his shifty grasp on power. The Obama Administration even made a plea to the people at Twitter to keep the site operational (they were scheduled for a temporary shut down for site maintenance) and help expand their service into Iran so the people of Iran could tweet themselves into organization.

Now, I won't pretend to know the entire ins and outs of the politics of Iran, each candidate's platforms, policies and promises, or understand the Islamic worldview. I can see when there is something wrong with human rights, and I see it here. I am not entirely sure, however, that Mousavi, would be an ideal alternative. While my knowledge is limited, I can see why all the the first-world, capitalist governments are so much in favour of putting Mousavi in power and sniffing out fraud in order to do so.

A Reformist, Mousavi was noted as being most popular with middle and upper class voters, mostly in urban centres like Tehran, as well as supporting the further privatization of the economy towards a free market. Many people in Iran see this as bad news for the poor who comprise the majority of the populace. All other issues aside (and there are a lot of them), Ahmadinejad did have the support of these poor, rural citizens (and there are a lot of them too). Mousavi, with his platforms of privatizing television networks (greater freedom of the press?), reviewing laws limiting the rights of women (abolishing discrimination?), greater negotiation with foreign powers, such as the US and Israel, and condemning Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial (world peace?), seems like an ideal middle eastern president. To the west, at least.

As several have suggested, that despite whatever suspiscious activities have gone on, perhaps the re-election of Ahmadinejad is indeed the will of the Iranian people. Perhaps, shady as it appears, Ahmadinejad did genuinely win. Even if his win is not the will of the western world, isn't that still democracy? Is the west truly concerned with establishing democracy or with ensuring that the Will of the West (not the Will of the Middle East) is realized? Inquiry into election rigging? Yes. Manipulative excuse for self-interest/cultural imperialism? No.

Like I said, I am not well-versed enough on the ins and outs of this issue, but I do know that the United Nations, the European Union, and many more (non-Islamic) governments around the world have expressed their concerns about whether the true will of the Iranian people is being done. I know that this concern is justified. I do know that students, journalists, and members of the opposition have been arrested (why?), that armed Basij forces fired on crowds of protestors, that the pro-Ahmadinejad protesters chanted "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!", that Jimmy Carter doesn't really seems to give a shit, and that:

Iranian intelligence and security forces are using the public protests to engage in what appears to be a major purge of reform-oriented individuals whose situations in detention could be life-threatening.[Aaron Rhodes, a spokesman for the internation campaign for human rights in Iran, in The Guardian, June 17, 2009]

And the censorship is beyond mention. If the medium is the message, then the censorship alone speaks volumes.

stalinist purges of personal possessions and facebook friends

2009-06-10T13:58:00.001-07:00

So I got this facebook message from a friend who purged their facebook friends list of all people they no longer wished to have any contact with. Those douchebags from high school, random people you talked to one night but never again, and other such useless acquaintances who clog up your friends feed with their stupid comments and pictures of their equally stupid offspring. It sounded like a brilliant idea, but one I've found that I've had difficulty following through with myself.

Like the narcissistic personality disorder sufferer that I, as a natural blogger, am, I've been forced to connect it to a larger issue in my life. In recent conversations I've had with this friend, I expressed my desires to move away for a year, or two, or three, or more. Probably London, or anywhere else in the UK, since I am a citizen and I already know how to navigate the Tube. This friend expressed similar desires, and explained that they would want to sell everything, leaving no ties, no baggage. It is like purging one's digital friends. I love this idea, but perhaps it's an extra dose of idealism and a dose short of reality.

As someone who collects books like wrinkles, I can never, ever part with them. I'll save an essay on my unconditional love for my library for another time (see Walter Benjamin's "Unpacking my Library," so amazing). Each book is such a part of me that getting rid of a book is tantamount to throwing away family photographs. But maybe it is time to Botox those books. I've come to force myself to rationalize that they are just possessions. As my friend suggested, if I really want to embrace all that life offers, I need to really, really let myself go. I need to be able to let go of my possessions. I understand this. When I'm travelling, everything is so fleeting, that I easily pick up a book from a used shop, read it, fall in love with it, but discard it out of necessity. Love 'em and leave 'em. No baggage. Just the memory. It will all be in my head and photo albums. If I do forget, then any physical semblance of that lost memory is simply pastiche junk.

I feel so free travelling. When I got home from my last adventure, I remember seeing all my stuff, and while I did have an initial reaction of "Oh, home," that feeling also dragged me back into the reality of who I was before the trip. As if all my wonderful experiences and all the glorious changes I felt ready for were null and void. The thing I love about travelling really centres on not having any baggage; on not knowing anyone. No one has any preconceived notions of who you are, so you are infinitely free to be whomever you wish to be. Whether that is a fantasy or your "real" self is up to you. I remember getting home, seeing my family and my possessions and instantly being grounded again. It was wonderful at first, but then a bitter taste hit my mouth. I was right back to the grudge of reality, of everything tying me down. Everything I owned, even my beloved books, felt like shackles.

I certainly can't live without any possessions while I'm ~~at home~~ not travelling. I've decided to come to a fair and even compromise. Firstly, I own somewhere in the neighbourhood of three to four hundred books. This is what comes of working at two bookstores and spending six years in university. I know many people who have tons and tons more books than that, but those are usually acquired over more than my own meagre twenty-five years. Keep in mind, all my childhood books were taken from me and passed onto younger cousins (except Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, that one survived my mother's purge of the mid-nineties). So this is really more a collection of only ten years.

The other night, I started going through each shelf. I was ruthless. My stipulation was that a book would be purged if: a) I've read it and have no emotional attachment to it, or b) I bought it and in all honesty have to admit I'm never ever going to read it unless I go to prison and have all the time in the world. I will admit that this forced-confinement scenario is one I find myself occassionally fantasizing about due to a tremendous amount of repressed guilt at never reading all the books I buy. Of course, a book that met these two requirements stands a chance to be saved if it is valuable or makes me feel smarter simply by being on my shelf. I've rounded up about a hundred books that will be sent to a Gulag of yet-to-be-determined fate. I feel relieved. Lighter. However, they haven't left my house yet, so I will let you know when I finally make the clean break.

this photo brings tears to my eyes (high rant warning, sorry!)

2009-06-04T13:57:00.000-07:00

Today is the 20th anniversary of this photo. The day the students and citizens of Beijing stood up for themselves in the face of martial law and an unjust totalitarian rule, only to be massacred. Despite the fact that Olympic supporters from all over the world gathered here less than a year ago, many people are still wrongly imprisoned for the events of June 4, 1989. It makes me quite frustrated to think that so many people in North America see this photograph and cannot tell you what it means. They have no idea what the Unknown Rebel was doing. The amount of courage he expressed, the overwhelmingly huge sacrifice he was making, and the symbol he would become.

I am so frustrated by people I know whose entire life revolves around themself; who have their heads so far up their ass that they think the most ridiculous things important. The world is large and full of wonder. I know people who don't want to know these things; who don't care. Who get irritated if you mention a word like "Darfur," because it "depresses" them. I know I'm getting ranty, but if there are people in the world who have to live in these conditions, who have to live with this injustice, who suffer all that they do, for fuck's sake, we should at least be willing to listen to it, so see photographs of it. To honour and respect their lives.

About ten years ago I got to talk to Saul Cohen, a Holocaust survivor. He said that after Liberation, when he found his living relatives in New York, all he wanted was to tell his story, but they didn't want to hear a damn thing. He said, with tears in his eyes over fifty years later, that this was the single most painful thing about the Holocaust. While the experience did change my then-fifteen-year-old life, the fundamental error there lies in thinking "how can this affect me?" This was not about me at all, this was about Saul Cohen and his family, and the millions who suffered in the Holocaust, and about their relatives who continue to suffer. People, it IS possible to connect yourself to the world. But you are NOT its centre. You are one of six billion alive today. One of many billions more who were once alive like you. There are things of interest and concern in the world without thinking about it in relation to yourself. If we can set down our Starbucks for a moment, maybe turn down the pop music, things like Tiananmen Square won't happen so easily.

(This video actually doesn't show how he climbs up onto the tank afterwards.)

liberation of the individual or death of the individual?

2009-06-03T13:28:00.000-07:00

Early manuscripts of Oscar Wilde's, available to read on British Literary Manuscripts Online.

Being natural is simply a pose, and one of the most irritating poses I know.

There is a fatality about good resolutions. They are invariably made too soon.

One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. That is why English family life is so pleasant.

There is only one thing worse than being talked about. That is not being talked about.

The capacity of finding temptations is the test of the culture of our nature. The capacity of yielding to temptations is the test of the strength of one's character.

My first reaction was, "wow, this is neat." (Yes, "neat." I'm an square.) However, after a moment's thought, I realized that these are people's personal handwritten drafts. Is it okay because these people are dead and their work lives on, or is this really just the equivalent of scanning your little sister's journal and uploading it onto your blog? (Not that I've done this.) As a writer, I would be devasted if someone posted my first drafts and personal letters online. However, if I were dead, I would be dead and thus wouldn't care. Also, even if these works weren't in the public domain, the very concept of electronic copyright didn't exist (if the idea of copyright even did, depending on how old the writer). Welcome to the Internet Age: ridiculously free information-sharing, but a little bit of someone dies.

scary monsters lurk in jungles like the amazon.com

2009-05-27T10:45:00.000-07:00

So I got a message today from Lulu, the self-publishing megaliths that currently have my book, The Savannah Stories. Normally, to put your book on Amazon.com it costs money. Either you sign your life over to Lulu, who act as your agent, and thus lose some of your property rights (which I wasn't that stoked about doing), OR you simply pay a nice little fee to Amazon (which I also wasn't that stoked about doing). Well, it seems that they have selected my book, for whatever godforsaken/godblessed reason to put up on Amazon for free! No strings attached! No skin off my back. Book is the same price, I get the same percentage, they've taken the cut. Hm. And I still have copyright control. Simply too good to be true? Have I missed some fine print? I didn't have to do anything? It's available there as we speak. In the immortal words of Keanu Reeves: "Whoa."

tv on the radio in the park

2009-05-26T13:45:00.000-07:00

With their latest album, Dear Science, having been hailed as the best album of 2008 by a plethora of music giants (Rolling Stone, Spin, and MTV among them), the Brooklyn-based TV on the Radio brought their genre-defying act to Vancouver on Monday night. The eclectic, high-energy performance proved perfectly set within the Malkin Bowl at Stanley Park, complete with sea planes flying overhead, eagles circling, hippies, hipsters, and even small toddlers on their parents’ shoulders.

While a few songs from previous albums lent some depth to the show, the majority of the set was comprised of their latest offerings, including the two singles, “Golden Age” and “Dancing Choose” (the latter of which signalled a brilliant change in lighting from bright red to monochrome, which theme-obsessed nerds like me love). Even when lingering beautifully through one of their slower songs (“soul-grabbing mood music,” as my friend called it), TVotR exploded with an intense energy that instantly propelled them into a place in my top ten live acts list. TVotR can best be described as “experimental rock,” because there really isn’t any nice, round hole in which you can fit this polygonal peg. They combine all forms of rock, roll, rhythm, blues, with a nice veneer of funk. And what else do you expect from a band such as this, with wind chimes hanging off the end of guitar, and the last number played with cymbals, bells, and a Blue Man Group-style hammers and drum? It was quite simply fantastic.

As eclectically wonderful as TVotR are, they have perhaps been rivalled in Unique Snowflake Status by opening band, The Dirty Projectors, also from Brooklyn. With three—nay, four—outstanding vocalists, The Dirty Projectors quickly shed their first impression of emo, hippie types who used to hang around the back steps of the high school playing their experimental music and generally being weird. Alas, no, they were quite impressive, showing a musical range and an energetic command of their songs that made everyone restlessly lying on the grass sit up and listen.

TVotR: certainly one of the loudest shows I’ve ever been to. However, I might just be getting old. Or I was standing right next to the speaker. It was worth a week’s hard-hearing.

hacksaw in all its issue two glory

2009-05-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

So, without even pretending to mask this blatant display of self-promotion, the second issue of Hacksaw is available! This issue is, dare I say, better than the first. This is good news, as people generally prefer the quality of something to increase. At least, this is what our rigorous marketing studies have shown. Just kidding. We don't have a marketing budget. In fact we hardly have a budget. For this issue we argued the guy at Kinko's down almost 50%, then spent a bit of what we saved on beer. This is how we kick it indie style.

I'm not entirely sure how a running commentary on the latest issue ended with a reference to a night at the pub, but that is usually how most things end around here. Anyway, I'm proud of this issue. Not only did we get submissions from all across the Lower Mainland and across Canada, but also from the UK and from Israel. It's quite the globetrotting micro-adventure. I even worked wonders with a stamp carved out of a potato. Call me cheap/creative, but that was a fun night. This also means that each and every copy has a unique touch, which is part of what Taryn and I wanted when we originally discussed our unofficial mission statement in an evening of insobriety.

If you were interested, they're going for $4 each, and you can get them from me (email me at ashleigh@qlp.ca), or online here. Also, and this is not entirely confirmed (as we haven't actually dropped them off yet), it will also be available at The People's Co-op Bookstore on Commercial Drive.

wildly appropriate cookie fortunes are better than chocolate (which makes them twice as good as sex)

2009-05-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

It's Rodeo Week at work (can I get a tepid "woo hoo"?), so I get to wear jeans all week. I actually dug out a pair of blue jeans that I haven't worn in maybe a year. On Tuesday, I stuck my hand in the pocket and found an old fortune cookie fortune. The baked good had a remarkable talent for pithy wordplay: "Don't lose sight of what you want."

This came at an interesting time for me. Now, I don't believe in fate anymore than I believe in "signs." I do believe that your mind makes connections to things or deems certain things significant in a way that can highlight what it is you truly want. I have spent the last few weeks, while happy, pondering my existence. I feel fulfilled with my life right now, but I don't think I can maintain this long-term. More or less, the job with the City is great right now, but if I was still here in twenty, nay ten, nay five years, I would have to seriously get in a good cry. It's a great day job, yet, like Taryn said once, to settle into this would simply be not living up to my potential. I know that this is not what I always dreamed of doing, and in my younger days, I dreamed pretty damn big. I still occassionally write my first-female-Best-Director Oscar speech in my head.

I've come down to earth a bit, and realized that if I can simply eke out a living working in the arts, I will be blissfully thrilled. The only way I can do this, I realized, was to lose the day job. The day job is pretty comfortable, but if I'm not stressing about how I'm going to pay my rent, I'm not going to care. I'm not going to push myself. It's a Catch-22. I like being comfortable, knowing what my annual income will be, but I'm restless with that kind of security. It's a horrible dichotomy that I can't compromise.

Then, Tuesday afternoon, I got a call from Alyson Drysdale, the co-ordinator of the Film Arts program at Langara. Not only did I get into the program for January, but she said (and I paraphrase), "we normally like to wait awhile before we make a decision on an applicant, but when an application comes in as good as yours, we like to make a decision right away." My head swelled immensely. She kept going! There were several other lovely things she said, and I was skipping around the room ridiculously, in a state of disbelief, like I has just wandered into the waterfall room at Wonka's factory. I spent my undergrad years in a perpetual state of "omigod-what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here-everyone-else-is-so-much-smarter-than-me." It's nice to feel... confident.

This also made the work situation fall spectacularly into perspective. Fuck this job, man, I'm outta here in January! It feels good, like my future is far from secure, but at least I FINALLY (and I emphasize FINALLY) feel like I'm on the path I've been always wanted to be on. I don't know how far this path goes, but I'm going to enjoy the journey, which is really the point after all, isn't it?

"vivos larga gatos negros" - chat guevara

2009-05-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about what I would name publishing company if I had one. "Black Cat Books" has always stuck in my mind. (I know that there is, or was, a Black Cat Distro that sold zines and such, so that might be out.) I've had this name in my head ever since the last time I was by the SPCA. There I saw a flyer that said black cats make up something like 60 or 70% of the cats in the shelter because hardly anyone wants to adopt a black cat. This struck me as particularly cruel and unusual (but sadly not necessarily surprising), and as I looked through the tiny cages with all these poor forgotton black cats, I thought they are the feline equivalent of any indie (or really just any) subculture. Misunderstood by the rest, castaway in ignorance, yet tinging with mystique and rebellion... and ultimately loveable. Black cats are the perfect symbol for the outsider.

My fluffy black cat, Arthur, is perfectly misunderstood. Well, I don't know how misunderstood he really is, as he actually is an asshole. He does still frighten the neighbourhood children though, especially at Halloween, when they run away thinking him some witch's demon familiar. Evil aside, I fully believe that if he had opposable thumbs, he would lead the revolution.

Long live black cats.
Vive les chats noirs!

the great beyond of postmodernity

2009-05-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

I was reading an interesting article at broken pencil, called Zines Are Dead: the Six Deadly Sins That Killed Zinery, by Chris Yorke. While the article summarized and divided the great cultural change of the late-nineties into six easy-to-read words, each a harbinger of death for zine culture, I think the death of zines can either be summarized in one simple word ("Internet"), or it is so emblematic of an entire social landscape that it is impossible to define.

Whether works of art or frenzied outlets, zines came to encapsulate the look and feel of the postmodern age. They are full of contradictions: intensely individual, yet photocopied into oblivion; falling on any subject or in any setting, but always immediately identified as subcultural; each one new, original, unique, but always appearing as if composed of varying bits of pop culture dissected unapologetically with a hacksaw (hey, wait, that's the name of MY zine!). They are timeless and timely, meaningless pastiche and meaningful art.

As personal and handmade as they are, zines have always relied on technology, namely the magic of the photocopier. Was their decline and death in the (as Yorke puts it) late nineties, really a death or simply an attachment to another technology? From Xerox to the Interwebs. Is it that the creative/fanboy/activist/artistic/fangirl/political/underground outlets zines provided has simply been replaced by online outlets, such as this blog? If so, is the ordinary zinester satisfied? To me, there's still a feeling that something's missing.

I didn't really understand until I made What I Did On Saturday Afternoon, as I cut and glued and drew and wrote and compiled. Not only did I feel like I was tapping into an unmined source of creative potential, but I felt a thrill in the creation I don't think I've felt since sometime in high school. I felt connected to my work. I don't know if this will make sense to anyone else, but the feeling of alienation was lessened. There was something in each square centimetre of that photocopied paper that I recognized as my own, that I connected with, that made it feel not only just something I'd written or created, but something that was a part of me. I created that thing in an afternoon, and it felt more like me than the book I spent years writing and months laying out and weeks waiting to arrive in the mail from the publisher.

I'm not sure how coherant the whole thing is, but it makes me think of photographs. This transition to digital imagery, while convenient as hell, still doesn't make the photographs seem real. Even when they're printed off the computer, they still seem fake. I need a hand-developed old-fashioned photograph to make it seem like a valid memory. Everything else feels false somehow. Perhaps I am overstating that, but I think there is some truth to it.

what i did on saturday afternoon: the zine

2009-05-04T13:22:00.001-07:00

So by Saturday I was feeling marginally better. I was able to do something other than watch all of season four of Battlestar Galactica, and since that was all I had done the previous two days, I was also feeling undeniably creative. I don't know. The impulse to create overtook me. I wanted to write, I wanted to draw; but I also wanted something more frenetic and crazy, with lots of scissors and glue.

I ended up taking a random assortment of things I had written in the last several years (going back to 2001 at the earliest) but never really did anything with, and compiled them into a quarter-page zine, fittingly titled: What I Did on Saturday Afternoon. I had most of it together beautifully, but realized that there was something poignant missing. I searched back through the darker recesses of my iBook and found some random passages of reflection that I compiled in the years after my grandmother's death.

That miniature memoir, coupled with poetry, microfictions, a monologue, drawings, photographs, and photocopies of random things I found in the cupboard under the stairs (where I keep the photocopier), when assembled into a whole, went from what I intended to be an exercise in randomness to an interesting study of self. When placed together, these orphaned artworks of the last ten years of my life presented a fantastic collage of all the people I've been in that time. It was such a remarkable side effect of self-reflexivity and past/present/future that I feel somehow changed. Like this acknowledgement (or release even) of my past work will allow me to reconcile this different facets, let me put them behind me and move on artistically. When I first started, I had an idea what my back cover would be: a photocopy of a Joe Strummer quote that I had hanging over my desk for the last three years, that says: "The Future is Unwritten." By the time I finished the zine, I handwrote under that: "only the past is written. and not very well."

I recommend to any writer or artist with those little scribblings, half-started projects, and unacknowledged musings to do the same. You will feel exposed, vindicated, rewarded, and infinitely free.

my next hangover will be called the 'wine flu'

2009-04-29T22:16:00.000-07:00

First of all, I don't have swine flu. At least, I don't think. This isn't really the subject of this ramble, but as far as titles go, it never hurts to go with something topical.

I actually forced myself into work this morning. As I was driving, I knew it was a bad idea. My body was in the vehicle, but my head was still stuck in the sweaty-yet-chilled, between-paranoid-dreams void that was most of my night. I came home around eleven. Collapsed on the couch. Passed out for twenty minutes. Woke up to Bri cranking Aerosmith. She hadn't realized I'd come home. Anyway, I idled away an hour with the newspaper, reading all about the Canucks matchup with the Hawks, did the crossword (half-completed), did the Scrabble (fail), and the Junior Jumble (win). Bri and I then watched Identity, a John Cusack film I hadn't seen, but was happy to watch. It gave me hope for the world. Well, that is, John himself did. Not the film. That was pretty bleak.

Anyway, I'm really just rambling now, happy I'm still alive and feeling somewhat better. Just glad I didn't get sick off a pig. I also think that a potential threat to people getting checked out for swine flu is all in the name. I mean, that's bad marketing, right there. Who wants to potentially be told that they have something so ridiculously named as "swine flu"? It's just embarrassing.

i keep popping dayquil but nothing is happening

2009-04-28T12:46:00.000-07:00

I should really be at home and in bed right now, but I simply can't afford to take off sick time. (Also, I had nearly a week off sick like two months ago, and I still feel guilty, like maybe I wasn't sick enough. I also feel like a playground weakling for getting sick twice in as many months.) Yesterday, after work, I went straight home, collapsed into bed, watched Wall-E then read Persuasion and passed out by nine o'clock. I think I will probably end up doing the same again tonight. It's unclear to me at this point whether or not I actually do want to continue living, but I will try to see this adversity through. If the darkness encloses, I will survive by propping up my laptop and googling random pictures of John Cusack. *sniffle, sniffle, swoon*

2009-04-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

Toothpaste for Dinner (my new favourite website)

my life according to the latest facebook meme

2009-04-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I guess I'm narcissistic enough to fall for the latest Facebook meme, the "My Life According to [insert favourite band here]." I am convinced that Narcissistic Personality Disorder is the only reason at least 75% of internet content exists (this blog included, no matter how I try to rationalize it). Needless to say, I decided to use the Clash. (No other option really crossed my mind, although I bet it would be fun to do with Smiths songs. Maybe I will.) It only took me about five minutes:

ARTIST: The Clash

1. Are you a male or female: Janie Jones
2. Describe yourself: Lost in the Supermarket
3. How do you feel about yourself: Should I Stay or Should I Go
4. Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend: Ivan Meets G.I. Joe (pretty damn accurate, actually)
5. Describe your current boy/girl situation: Armagideon Times
6. Describe your current location: Safe European Home
7. Describe where you want to be: London Calling
8. Your best friend(s) is: Julie's Been Working for the Drug Squad
9. Your favorite color is: White Riot
10. You know that: I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)
11. If your life was a television show what would it be called: Straight to Hell
12. What is life to you: Rock the Casbah
13. What is the best advice you have to give: Stay Free (or, Know Your Rights)

ARTIST: The Smiths

1. Are you a male or female: Girl Afraid
2. Describe yourself: These Things Take Time
3. How do you feel about yourself: I Started Something that I Couldn't Finish
4. Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend: That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
5. Describe your current boy/girl situation: Girlfriend in a Coma
6. Describe your current location: Back to the Old House
7. Describe where you want to be: London
8. Your best friend(s) is: Sweet and Tender Hooligan
9. Your favorite color is: Golden Lights
10. You know that: There is a Light that Never Goes Out
11. If your life was a television show what would it be called: Bigmouth Strikes Again
12. What is life to you: You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby
13. What is the best advice you have to give: Accept Yourself

Yeah, The Smiths was better. Oh, Morrissey, you silly bitch.

paris 1

2009-04-23T11:18:00.000-07:00

the anarchy angel
the world
thrown across an spirograph
delicate deliberate careful chaos
dripping and tripping into bliss
fearfully

notre dame dwarfed by discounts
kids stay free / two nights and the third is on us
theme park passes included
mickey mouse modernism

read all about wwii on your l'ordinateur
catacombs cartouches
wallpapered with glass
right and left meet in the middle

(April 2009)
(Photo: August 2008)

amsterdam

2009-04-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

high heels slipping on the cracks
of paving stones wet with beer and spit
that hellish glow a comic book fantasy
the protagonist a prostitute in a dystopian future

all the locals avoid this place

an old brick wall leaning over the canal
remarks inwardly on its history
recollecting each wardrobe each desk each chair
each ship each bicycle each sailor each saint

an old brick wall pasted over with cheap flyers and paint

(April 2009)
(Photo: September 2008)

sweep it like a curling rock

2009-04-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

So, that Vancouver Canucks have swept their first series in recent memory. Four games to zero over the St. Louis Blues. Alex Burrows scored two goals, one being the overtime winner (none for Kesler). As a widely advertised Burrows fan, I feel vindicated. Without degenerating to mere fangirlishness or boring statistics, when I talk about the Canucks (namely, the playoff Canucks), I instantly turn into a ten-year-old watching the 1994 dream team in their epic playoff run.

That year, I started a Pavel Bure fan club with a bunch of other girls in my grade four class, filled my room with Bure posters, bet a grade six kid on the playground that he wouldn't actually get the Canucks logo shaved into his head if they won the Cup (in permanence, the elementary school equivalent of a tattoo; and this was the old mouldy skate logo, too), and ripped up a Mark Messier hockey card and threw it in the cat litter box at the end of game seven. I will never accept the fact that he was ever a Canuck. Ever.

For the last month or two, I've been getting together to watch the games with "the guys." I only put that in quotes to distinguish the fact that I am not one of these said "guys," but rather a girl who blends in so well with their gender that my femaleness is really only noted by my high-pitched voice and the fact that I say "that's what he said," when the commentator says something like "and he's going in deep, and now the Blues are double-teaming him...."

I do love playoff time, though. There's always a fever in the air in Vancouver. First round was the car flags, second round will be feeling no shame in wearing your jersey over your suit to work. Without getting ahead of ourselves, third round should be ... hm... kids standing on street corners with "HONK FOR THE CANUCKS" signs. Just like I did back in '94.

there's a special circle of hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk in the theatre

2009-04-16T13:17:00.001-07:00

Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan are currently starring in Waiting for Godot in London right now. When I found this out back in January, Jason and I actually looked up plane tickets to London. However, Stewart has found himself in a bit of controversy:

Actor Patrick Stewart apparently lost his rag with an autograph hunter outside the stage door of the King's theatre in Edinburgh, after a performance of Waiting for Godot. "Are you the arsehole who was sitting in the front tonight?" was his introductory comment, before bellowing "You know, what I really want to know is how you can sleep at night? I really hope you're pleased with yourself."

Apparently, the importunate individual had been spied earlier by Stewart trying to take a sneaky photograph of him and his co-star, Ian McKellen, during the curtain call – in clear contravention of explicit warnings that photography was not permitted. While most punters will have gone to see Vladimir and Estragon, others are clearly there to gawp at Picard and Gandalf. (Michael Simkins, The Guardian, April 16, 2009)

While people's opinions of whether or not his reaction was justified naturally differ, I'm inclined to agree that he had a beef that needed dealing with, but maybe he could have gone about it in a better way. The ensuing commentary dialogue on the Guardian website went off on a tangent about how rudely people behave in theatres. It did venture somewhat onto a nearly technophobish rant, with which I do empathize. This was my contribution:

It's an interesting notion of "instant memories." So much so that people seem to be viewing the world through their cameras rather than with their own eyes.

I've been to museums to see people moving from painting to painting and just taking pictures without even looking at the actual artwork -- just the pixellated version. Strange! I was at a Glasvegas concert in Vancouver on Sunday and when I couldn't see the stage, I could just watch it in one of the many screens those around me were using to record the show. I just don't get it. Can you record memories of something you never *really* experienced?

sophie's choice: burrows or kesler?

2009-04-15T20:43:00.001-07:00

So it's hockey's lightning round: the middle of the first playoff game between the Canucks and the Blues (to which my mom just asked, "is it only the second inning?"). Here I feel compelled to mention something that has dominated most of my social discourse as of late. And that is the inevitable question asked by any Vancouverite in this incredible second half of the hockey season:

Q: Burrows or Kesler?

A: BURROWS

But Bri and Jason will argue forever Kesler. They are wrong. Kesler is awesome, yes. MVP, I know, but he's not the "Most Exciting" Burrows. Exciting is what sells tickets and isn't that the point of professional sports, really? Also, his story is inspiring for those children who haven't yet been jaded by professional sports.

glasvegas at the commodore ballroom

2009-04-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

Sunday night’s Glasvegas show at the Commodore Ballroom is best likened to a first date with that person you’ve noticed several times on the bus and finally got the courage up to talk to. They were polite and sincere; just as grateful to be in your presence as you in theirs. My only disappointment was quickly their set seemed to end. They played their wee hearts out, sounding just like the album, lyrics as audible as ever (which is only marginally so, depending on your comprehension of Glaswegian). They jumped from song to song. One encore. No social commentary, no "hello, Vancouver," no queries to the audience, just an incredibly paced show that was over before I knew it. Maybe they just know their strengths or maybe they just wanted to get it over with. Awkward nerves, perhaps?

The mood was fantastically set, with incredible lighting, dominated by a pulsating purple that seemed to perfectly capture the essence of all that is Glasvegas. (One of my good friends is a lighting designer and he forces me to appreciate these things.) They played all the hits, which was to be expected with only one full studio album. I had read reviews of other Glasvegas shows where they covered golden oldies, and to be honest, I was a little disappointed they didn't. I would have loved to hear Allan's version of "Rave On”.

While the headliners were exactly what I expected, opening band, Von Iva, having "left their guitars and penises at home," were the delightful surprise of the evening. I want to call Von Iva neo-Riot Grrl, but I don't want to prematurely attach an unwanted label and thus sell them short. Like their tour mates, they're exploding with potential.

I first chanced upon Glasgow band, Glasvegas back in September when I was in London. Reading one of those free dailes shoved into your hands as you exit the tube, I caught a review of their self-titled debut album. The mental note to check them out was made as I noticed a comparison to The Clash (Or perhaps that was just a note on James Allan's looks. I'm sure he is more than sick of hearing just how much he looks like Joe Strummer. It is a little creepy.)

Glasvegas was released to great reviews, and when the Guardian proclaimed it one of the top ten albums of 2008, I finally bought it. I had already fallen for their singles "Geraldine" and "Daddy's Gone," so it was a welcome love affair. Needlesss to say, I was really looking forward to this concert, so much so that I almost expected teen comedy shenanigans to ensue on my journey from the burbs down to the Commodore. Despite the wonderful reviews, Glasvegas has some detractors, those who call them overrated. Where most bands with the kind of success they've had with a debut album usually tank on their sophmore effort, I have a feeling that Glasvegas are still growing into themselves, and I can see Allan's potential. His stage presence was just what I expected given his songs: thoughtful and humble. I’m looking forward to the second date.

defining oneself is the most difficult and useless thing ever

2009-04-09T12:26:00.000-07:00

I had to supply my bio on all voices. This is what I got:

Ashleigh Rajala is a writer/filmmaker/magazine editor/miscreant who uses backslashes far too often to be healthy. She enjoys non sequitors almost as much as spelling inconsistencies and philosophical questions. What colour would "color" be if it were a tangible object?

Suggestions?

nothing to observe nor report here

2009-04-09T11:17:00.000-07:00

Last night I caught a press screening of Observe and Report, the latest in an increasingly unfunny stream of Seth Rogen movies. I cracked a smile here and there, mostly at Anna Faris, who I think is actually ridiculously funny (see Just Friends). I do applaud films where solid, funny roles are created for women, except this isn't one of them. She's a sex object, and a crudely rendered one at that. Why, she's nearly pixellated. Also, the film's pacing is inconsistent, and best likened to myself in junior high gym class trying to get through the timed runs: violent bursts of sloppy, flailing speed followed by exasperated pain followed by casual strolling, over and over and over again.

Now, I like Seth Rogen. I think he's funny, in a natural, relatable way. The problem with this film is he's neither relatable nor hilarious. As Ronnie, he should be a lovable loser, but he's just not lovable. Rogen's almost too good at playing this nutjob. You want him to fail, and you feel a little (SPOILER ALERT) ripped off when he doesn't. I don't think I've as earnestly rooted for an unhappy ending since Titantic. Perhaps that's an overstatement, and the film wasn't terrible, it just wasn't funny, either. In a week, I probably won't even remember it.

will blog for food

2009-04-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

this epic week, part four

I also got a letter from Langara college, saying they've received my application for the Film Arts program, but that they are still waiting for my university transcripts. I called SFU to ask, "Quoi le fuck?" and was politely told that they had been mailed. With any sort of equus attire up my ass, they've already received the transcripts and there's a letter at home as I write telling me I've been accepted.

As for today, I got an unprecedented email from the lovely (I'm assuming) people from all voices saying that they ventured upon my blog, this blog, and that they wanted me to consider writing for them. I'm going to spend this weekend considering their offer (and my boss's), and will thus have a hefty Monday looming. Hopefully it won't pass into nothingness like most other Mondays.

Lastly, this happened far earlier this week, but I wanted to save the best for last. This will go down in history as the week I published The Savannah Stories, Series One: The Frampton Menace. The first few copies I've ordered are in the mail, and once I've checked them over, I will proceed. ("How?" you ask. I don't know yet. I make this up as I go.) It's available to order through Lulu.com, whom I totally and utterly recommend for any self-publishing ventures! You can buy it here: BUY ME. The book is $17.99+S&H. I will love you forever. And ever.

Here's the description:

Printed: 224 pages, 18.91 cm x 24.59 cm, perfect binding, black and white interior ink

Description:
One eventful day, Savannah Hunter gets an unexpected 'I need a favour' phone call from Jason Manning, an old friend who managed to screw up his life fast enough to set a few world records. Naively taking pity on him, Savannah lets him into her home with half-open arms. Suddenly, her apartment has become a stage show full of characters so colourful they might as well dress as a packet of Skittles for Halloween. As the horrors of the male geek world fall down upon her like Overeater's Anonymous at a Las Vegas breakfast buffet, the parade of guys begin to monopolize the apartment through various events like a 48-hour long Survivor game on the sofa, a trip to the VD clinic, the construction of a fully-operational battlebot, and many other surreal events that not only border on insanity, but completely conquer it.

fear and loathing in employment

2009-04-03T13:22:00.000-07:00

this epic week, part three

Thursday was by far the most epic. I love it when life builds to a climax. My bosses found out about the RCMP job that I have been offered, but am currently waiting for the completion of my security clearance before I start. I've since had meetings with three of my bosses, in ever-escalting superiority. They don't want me to leave. I like this. Finally, after two years of picking away as a mere status-less auxiliary temp, I get some recognition. I told them I want the weekend to consider their offers. This will go down in history as the only time in my bureaucratic career where the ball will be in my proverbial court. I'll keep bouncing that ball for as long as I can, savouring every sweet moment.

That evening, I was so excited following work that I skipped to my car, then skipped the movie I was supposed to go to with people from my meetup group, so I could go watch the hockey game with the guys at Jason's. I know, I'm such a dude. I belch. Without recapitulating the whole game, epic barely scratches the surface. Even though we lost in the shoot-out, Alex Burrows scored, which is a personal victory for me. (He will have a 30-goal season. I said this over a month ago and was laughed at. Who's laughing now, f***ers?) Following the hockey game, Lorena and I scored a victory over the guys in Cranium Pop 5. Wonderfully white-picket-fence if it weren't for all the drugs and booze. (Kidding.)

sure i'm a marxist, of the groucho school

2009-04-03T13:04:00.000-07:00

this epic week, part two

By Wednesday, I had already watched my favourite movie of the week twice. No, it's not 8 1/2, but rather A Night at the Opera, the 1935 Marx brothers classic. Groucho has some of the best one-liners I've ever heard in my life. I'd marry him if it weren't for the fact that I'd get sick of wiping the grease paint off my face every time we kissed, not to mention the fact that he's dead.

I was also delighted by something in my inbox that wasn't work or friendly information on how to enlarge my penis. Who Hub said they'd heard about me (I still don't know how) and wanted me to give them an interview for their website. I spent most of the day writing and revising the interview, and you can view it here: My Pretentious Attempt to Sound Like an Expert. I was actually quite arrogantly pleased with my interview. I did spent nearly an entire day on the taxpayer's dime refining it, so it should be pretty damn good. Here's a sample question:

What did you first read? How did you begin to write? Who were the first to read what you wrote?
I first read the back of milk cartons. But I mostly just looked at the pictures. It made the story easier to understand. Even at such a young age, I got it. The cows like eating daisies, they smile, while blinking their pop art eyelashes. They are happy to have their teats violated for me. I think from here I moved on to picture books, but those memories are all a little hazy. Must have been all the Children's Tylenol I was jacked up on.

I began to write in kindergarten. I had just learned a new skillset: the proper etiquette for eating paste. I was a sick kid (all the paste, of course) and spent about three weeks in hospital, during which I completed my opus. It was magnificent; something about a dinosaur. It glittered. I made a cover out of cardboard, which my mother had to sew together as the doctors had banned all paste.

if i were your king, we would ALL have tea

2009-04-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

this epic week, part one

So this week has been quite lively. I started on Monday like the normal drone I tend to be. (If we really are plugged into the Matrix, I suffer from a severe lack of imagination.) In fact, Monday was so boring, so typical, I don't even remember it. I did watch Frederico Fellini's 8 1/2 that night. Excellent.

Tuesday was a day that appealled to that subversive, quasi-evil side of me that loves disasters, no matter how insignificant. The power went out at about one o'clock. Naturally, us civil servants were not allowed to go home, but rather were kept in more or less a darkened cage without food (since we all bring lunches that require either boiling water or nuclear power). I, however, was the chosen one. By some divine blessing, my workstation was hooked up to the backup generator, so I had power at my desk... and the INTERNET. If this was Lord of the Flies, I was king. There was a queue to boil water, request information, update their facebook status, and worship me. I felt the most power any one individual should be allowed to have in a democratic society. Should this have gone on past quittin' time, surely it would have gone to my head.

I'm reminded of a good Joe Strummer quote: "Political people, to get elected you've got to be on a power trip, and you can't trust anybody on a power trip. I can't see a way out of this."

my little pony bastardized into glory

2009-03-26T14:39:00.003-07:00

I found this link on my Twitter feed, which redirected me back to the Guardian (my daily online news fallback). This is the perfect example of why I love Twitter, the Guardian, Finland AND My Little Pony. Granted, yes, it's been nearly twenty years (okay, maybe more like fifteen, but that's peanuts) since I've had a My Little Pony, but I think my parents still have the pink dreamhouse in the attic.

[In a quick, somewhat-related digression, I feel compelled to mention that I made a TV for the dreamhouse (I know, the nineties generation, eh?), and I cut out a picture of Star Wars for the screen. My Little Ponies were forever watching Luke, Han and Obi Wan in the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon ready to rescue Leia. Siiiiiiiigh.]

Anyway, The Guardian ran a pictorial feature on Finnish artist Mari Kasurinen, whose sculptures are My Little Ponies done up as famous movie characters. Brilliant. I love it so much I don't know where to start. Such a brilliant marriage of childhood merchandise with adolescent pop culture. Perfect for my generation. A combination of various shades of nostalgic grey. If anyone is thinking of an early birthday present for me-- I know you are-- the Batman and Robin are still available.

something dirty and nasty like politics

2009-03-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

By Mario Hugo, based on Obama's speech given on 11.05.2006, Washington: the challenge of going into politics with a 'funny name' Accessed from The Guardian.

my name is inigo montoya

2009-03-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

Accessed from Totalfilm.com

coming soon to a nostril near you

2009-03-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

Some cinematic innovations thankfully never survived Darwinian capitalism.
Accessed from Totalfilm.com.

homechild at the stanley

2009-03-19T16:15:00.000-07:00

Taryn had tickets last night for the Arts Club's Homechild, so she selected me to accompany her! All in all, the play was pretty good, with an amazing set. The perfomances, on the whole, were decent enough, slightly verging on sketch comedy personifications at times, with an overdrawn Scottish accent drifting in and out. Duncan Fraser, as aged homechild, Alistair, was a knockout. He was fantastic. If it weren't for his tight, insular performance (only heightened after the character suffers a stroke), the rest of the ensemble would have bordered on farce. As a script, Joan MacLeod's play takes on the familiar trope of the uncomfortable unearthing of past family secrets and shadows and applies it to an aspect of Canadian history usually swept under the rug: home children. I must admit, I felt somewhat ashamed to find myself ignorant of this part of our history. Perhaps most home children found themselves out east, and thus there isn't much history here in BC? I will definitely research it further. While the conventions of the play did not seem overly original at first, I found that the ambition of the play lies in bringing history to light, rather than artistic innovation. With that in mind, the play is entertaining and accesible to any audience. It did not explicitly inform, but notified, urging you to find out more for yourself, much the same way Lorna must seek out Alistair's long lost sister, Katie. Cliched, but worth it.

jack survives by jerry moriarty

2009-03-19T10:37:00.000-07:00

Jack Survives... first appeared in RAW magazine and a short book more than 20 years ago. These pieces, none longer than four pages and most only a single page, are generally tiny anecdotes about the way Jack clings to dignity. He's at the mercy of his environment, but he's armed with the props of his generation—coffee, a businessman's suit and hat, the politesse of universal small talk. In a typical story, Jack is awakened by a ringing phone, finds his arms asleep, knocks the receiver onto the floor and lies down to talk into it, only to hear the person on the other end hanging up. The virtues of Moriarty's work, though, are mostly fine-art virtues: immaculately designed compositions that suggest a psychological state; forms suggested by a minimum of thick, tactile marks; a sense of being thoroughly layered and revised.

dance morrissey, dance

2009-03-17T15:21:00.001-07:00

This has nothing to do with St. Patrick's Day, but it still feels celebratory.

I love how he articulates, and puctuates the lyrics with vibrant actions. AND a tambourine! This reminds me of myself on the dancefloor at my drunken best.

would you see a movie with this person: amendment

2009-03-17T13:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I joined, read a few other people's profiles, and yes, I am a complete dork. I must simplify. Right now, it looks like I am that 'weird' one, you know, there was one in every lecture hall. The one who wears clothes six years out of date (exactly six years), glasses, and takes things a little too seriously. I think that's me. Oh dear.

would you see a movie with this person

2009-03-17T13:06:00.000-07:00

I just joined a Meetups group for movie buffs in my area. This was how I filled out my New Member survey:

Have you ever seen a movie that's changed your life in some way?
Every movie I see changes me somehow, some just more than others! I think the most profound/most recent was The Lives of Others.

Why do you enjoy movies?
I enjoy different movies for different reasons. Mostly, I love to get caught up in the characters and the atmosphere. It makes me feel a little more connected to humanity in the same way a deep conversation with a new friend does.

What, for you, makes a movie outstanding?
I think about it for days, months, years afterwards.

Because I'm a dork, I uploaded this profile picture:

Now, would you see a movie with me or would you run screaming?

2009-03-16T15:34:00.000-07:00

Is it weird that I desire so badly for there to be an em dash for online posting thingys that I honestly lament humanity's existence every time I am forced to used a space-hypen-space (" - ") or a double hyphen ("--") instead?

oh dear, have i really started watching bsg?

2009-03-16T15:20:00.000-07:00

I did. I caved. After however many years of just saying no, I finally started watching Battlestar Galactica. (like with Lost, I also blame Jason for this twelve step-worthy practice.) I am currently still in the middle of the first episode/mini-series, even after two false starts. So far, decent enough. (I am told that it gets better - even better.) However, there have been a few details that have made it hit a little close to home... in a way that I'm not sure endears the show or cheapens it. I've actually (well, sort of) met Tricia Helfer, and she was really nice, so seeing her as a big bad Cylon doesn't quite have the effect I think it should. I think/hope this will change. Also, everytime I see Gaius (James Callis), I think of this and expect him to yell, "Come the fuck on, Bridget!" The scenes of Caprica City are actually filmed at SFU, my alma mater, so watching the world be destroyed in the same place where I used to sit with a cigarette and catch up on my readings is a little weird. Also, when a motley gang of refugees ran across the scene, I am convinced one of them went to high school with me. I guess that's what happens when you live in Hollywood North.

I am one of those people who thinks (realizes) that audiences do not view things in a bubble. Their preconceptions of a location or of an actor wholly inform their interpretation of the current work, whether they realize it or not. Sam Mendes exploited this wonderfully in Revolutionary Road. He was fully aware of the Jack and Rose mythology when he put Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio together. When not blatant stunt casting, it can be used very effectively. The same goes with locations. For each cheesy establishing shots of Big Ben when the setting moves to England, there's a scene in a swanky casino, drumming up references to everything from Casino to Vegas Vacation. Then there's always Sleepless in Seattle and the Empire State building. The final meeting scene holds so much poignancy when remembering the reference to An Affair to Remember. Of course, most contemporary audiences have never see or even heard of that movie, so, naturally, the character must discuss it.

Anyway, I think I will definitely enjoy BSG, as soon as I can let go of pre-established realities and unintentional intertexuality.

a trip through postmodernity, final stop alienation

2009-03-06T14:14:00.000-08:00

When I get bored at work, I try to give myself something of a postmodern education (duplicity intended), as in I browse Wikipedia making some notes in my journal. I started on Derrida, in an attempt to understand him (see this) and wound up on marxist critic Fredric Jameson (see: Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism). Postmodernism, in all its postmodernity, has yet to achieve a generally agreed-upon definition. I have my own perspective, and I was SO happy to read Jameson's definition and find that it corresponds with my own, only more eloquently put and academically legitimate. Jameson describes, and I paraphrase: Postmodernity is characterized by pastiche and a crisis of historicity. In a postmodern culture, parody or satire, which requires a moral judgement or comparison with societal norms, is replaced with pastiche , a collage, imitation, or other form of juxtaposition without a normative grounding. With the crisis of historicity, Jameson succinctly states: "there no longer does seem to be any organic relationship between the American history we learn from schoolbooks and the lived experience of the current, multinational, high-rise, stagflated city of the newspapers and of our own everyday life."

What causes this crisis? For Marx, the proletariat worker was alienated through the increased methods of production (they had nothing to do with the output of their work, they just toiled away all day with no clear visualization of purpose). Perhaps the cause of postmodernity is not an alienation of labour, but an alienation of communication. I'm not sure, but I can definitely understand the feeling that we are somehow outside of history, that all the important things have already happened and we are simply the leftover; those few incoherent thoughts remaining after you awake from a dream. I can understand the crisis of pastiche; the feeling that there is nothing new to contribute to the world, other than simply recycling old ideas. And not even recycled with a hint of irony or self-reflexivity. Everything is a trend; a signfier without a signified. Is pastiche just a series of empty signs? I shall have to read more Jameson, and maybe some Derrida and McLuhan.

chocolately nostalgic goodness

2009-03-06T11:20:00.000-08:00

It's just been one of those days so far. Stared at the screen, pushed some paper. Read a few preliminary reviews of The Watchmen. I finally caved around 11 am and got a chocolate bar. On a whim I chose a Crunchie. I have no idea why.

As I sat at my desk, slowly savouring it, I realized why. The 'honeycomb' centre flips a few pages in a mental scrapbook, landing on a candy store in Whitby, North Yorkshire, circa 1998. I bought a bag of cinder toffee there, finding out in a rapid rate that this is the stuff inside a Crunchie bar. Anyway, since I don't really use my brain all that much at work, I ventured forth on a rambling thought path, which led me past the idea that a retreat into something nostalgic usually signifies that I'm not quite happy, while the exploration and experimentation of new, uncharted waters usually signifies that I'm enjoying life and living it to its full potential.

My original thoughts explored this observation as something relating to society; a "big picture" reflection unsubstantiated by any evidence other than my own conjecture. Yet somehow that seems like my own self just finding some way to alienate my own feelings. Denial even? When I started this post, I had no intention of degenerating into emo ramblings, but alas, here it is. Maybe I'm finding far too much time to be alone and self-reflexive now that we've wrapped filming for Red Hood. Maybe I'm just having a bad day. Maybe I will go back to my Google Images of Patrick Wilson to cheer myself up, now that the chocolate is gone.

a pummelling from the thick fist of irony

2009-02-25T14:21:00.001-08:00

So today is the Anti-Bullying Day where everyone is supposed to wear pink. This is a good thing. In theory. I think bullies are a sad lot, and nothing is finer to watch some poor little David triumph gloriously over the schoolyard Goliath. However, I only have one pink shirt and it is covered in skulls. Also, dressing myself in the morning is an underdog feat in and of itself. I'm not a morning person, and distinguishing pants from tops is the best I can manage. Something like remembering to wear a specific colour is of the least importance, the first wave out of the trench. So I wore blue today. (That it is a colour and not black or grey is its own little triumph. I sometimes wonder if I've gone colourblind when I look in my closet.)

Arriving at work, I immediately realized my faux pas when seeing a Barbie convention in the lobby. Oops. I was later berated by a fellow (nameless) employee for not wearing pink. Nor did I participate in the group photo. So I was bullied for not showcasing the fact that I am anti-bullying. 'I forgot' is not an acceptable excuse. As if someone would intentionally not wear pink on moral ground: 'Actually, I do support bullying, and I would like my beliefs to be respected.' What would the Anti-Bully do in such a case?

forty two things

2009-02-24T12:28:00.000-08:00

While I've been concentrating lately on this blog, I'm finding that this one is just getting interesting. First of all, a bucket list of forty-two items is indeed a strange quantity, but all the blogs with nice round numbers were taken. Since I'm an uber-geek, the numerical answer to life, the universe, and everything seems perfect for a list of things I need to do before casting off this mortal coil.

Several items on the list have been there since my first 'draft' of a bucket list back in grade eleven. That was lovingly titled '50 Things to do Before I Die.' These are such classics as go bungee jumping and see the northern lights. A few have been amended from their previous incarnations, either due to achieving the first goal (the goal to get a tattoo became a goal to get my next tattoo), or due to the collisions with reality that come with aging (I will never do a guest voice on The Simpsons, which I now am readily able to admit). I like to think this is a somewhat grown-up list now. This is why I have not added do lewd things to george stroumboulopoulos.

New items appear basely symbolic of a point in my life that I would one day like to reach. For instance, I know that it is virtually impossible for me to have a friend in each and every time zone, but rather that goal represents the idea that I would like to be well-travelled and that I appreciate making and maintaining bonds with people, especially people from other countries and cultures.

I think the hardest thing to achieve on my list so far is either be an integral part of a 'scene' or read ulyssess. The former because a 'scene' is so hard to define and because it involves so many factors and variables beyond my control; or, the latter because it's Ulysses. Damn that's a big book. The only person I've ever witnessed actively reading it was Ben on Lost. So that doesn't count.

playing hooky well into adulthood

2009-02-20T09:30:00.000-08:00

*GOOOOOOONG* has been the proclamation of my week. It has been equal parts crazy and comforting.

Monday was a write-off. No need to recapture that inane ineptitude.

Tuesday saw me leave work early, which was refreshing. To walk past all the toiling employees, with your coat on and empty lunch pack in hand, knowing that you are now free = win. It's amazing realizing that there is still something of a day left. Bri picked me up, with Jason (McDonald - not QLP partner-in-crime Jason Manning) in tow--the reason I was skipping the afternoon. He was in town for a night, leaving for Madrid the next day (which was two nights ago now).

Wednesday I called in sick to hang out with Jason for his last day in Canada for awhile, and then drive him to the airport. Knowing that I am free for a whole day = epic win. A would-be quixotic journey, it actually played out like a lame sequel to Back to the Future, the last six years of Ashleigh's life: Chapters in the morning (for in-flight reading material); SFU midday (meeting with Bri); Metrotown in the afternoon (not sure why, but is there ever a good reason to go there?); home for just long enough to update my facebook status; airport around dinner time (flight delayed until midnight); to the Cineplex at Strawberry Hill to see He's Just Not That Into You (looong story); back to the airport to wave buh-bye; home, start reading Everything is Illuminated (purchased that morning at Chapters), bed.

Thursday was a numbingly normal workday, but I headed straight downtown after work to meet Hayley at the Vancity Theatre for a screening of the Oscar shorts. I was running not late, but exactly on time. I got there for 5.57 when it started at 6.00. Totally my bad, dude. Of course, it was sold out. Poor Hayley was already inside, and luckily not alone. I wandered Granville/Robson for a bit, staggering into both Chapters and HMV, dreaming of purchases I don't need. Walked past the art gallery, stopping for a second to learn an alternative take on the US bombings of Pakistan with the protest literature handed to me by a small child (she stared at me with all-encompassing, confused eyes; I had to ask her for it). And came home. At least I'm almost half way through my book with all the public transit.

The highlight of my week so far is playing hooky. I loved it. Still that rush you felt in high school, knowing you were a shameless miscreant.

bitterly rejected by interior design

2009-02-17T14:28:00.000-08:00

So, as the previous post so wildly declares (as if it were a doe-eyed innocent swinging madly around a streetlamp), I love London. It seems London does not love me. How is this so? No, it did not dump me via txt msg. I was in Jysk the other day looking for junk baskets (long story), when I saw these wall stickers of different city scapes. Hm, I thought, this would be the perfect thing to replace my Harry Potter banner (another long story). So I bought the London one. $6.99. Not bad. That's only about £3. Once I got them up on the walls, even my ten year old cousin remarked, "That looks cool." From the mouths of babes; it must be true. However, my sadsack attempt to embrace London with open yuppie arms was met with stiff upper rejection. Alas, the stickers do not stick for long. After a few minutes, Big Ben was slowly slinking down the wall like an insolent child; Piccadilly Circus was curling inwards; Tower Bridge was on the verge of collapse; and the London Eye was shaped like a post-incident Humpty Dumpty. By the time I woke up in the morning, the entire city had curled into the Thames. London does not *heart* me.

i heart london

2009-02-11T18:36:00.000-08:00

So, I was bored at work today. Nothing else is new. In my ever-widening net of random (G-rated) website to scroll through while trying to maintain consciousness, I decided to browse Craigslist. No idea why. I ended up scrolling through people searching flatmates in London. Then jobs in London. Then rideshares. Someone even wants someone to come along for the ride from London to Newcastle and back. Huh. What fun. I've never thought about this. I never thought that if I can't find a buddy in my immediate group of friends to do something major like a road trip with from London to Greece and back, I could simply find a stranger on craigslist. What a novel idea/idea for a novel.

job prospects: not exactly working down a coal mine

2009-02-10T15:09:00.000-08:00

So I had an interview this morning, for more or less exactly the same job I have now, but with the RCMP. Also, not auxiliary, but permanent. With benefits. If I get this job, it will be my first salaried job ever. At age twenty-five, it's about time I pop that cherry, eh? I don't want to think like I already have the job, but the interview went really well. Like really well. Pat, my would-be supervisor, said, and I quote: "I'm very impressed." Hm, if I am that impressive, perhaps I've been shooting too low on the job search here. The irony of the fact that I will be doing the same job in a slightly different environment (a mere 60 yards from where I am now, same address even) smacks the smugness out of me, not to mention the fact that what most impressed my interviewer was the fact that I once archived a file that was a whole shelf long. Ah, gripping panickedly for a stimulating career one small rung at a time. Some progress is better than none. That's more than most people in this economic state. The fact that I didn't lose my job is still impressing me, let alone the possibility that I could be a furita no more!

christoph niemann

2009-02-10T11:55:00.000-08:00

www.christophniemann.com

i keep on a-comin' back to joe

2009-02-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - "Yalla Yalla" from the album Rock Art and the X-Ray Style

embrace the crazy (blame this rant on a papercut)

2009-02-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

I've come to the conclusion that we are all a little nuts and that mental sanity is just something used to sell self-help books (see previous post). Maybe I'm crazy in saying that, but I've realized that once you embrace the crazy, life becomes a lot easier.

At this point, I'm about to launch into a rant about technology. Be warned. Stop reading now if you aren't mentally prepared.

I like technology, I think, generally speaking, it's made our lives easier. But there are two sides to the coin. I believe the notion of "progress" is entirely subjective. There's overwhelming anthropological evidence (trust me, I have a degree in this) that hunter-gatherer societies were far healthier than us; had a similar life expectancy; had more leisure time; rewarding, cooperation-based social lives; a generally egalitarian social structure; and fulfilling, complex belief systems. It's only with the "progress" towards state societies and the development of agriculture that life expectancy shortens to what we think of 'the past'; that social inequalities emerge; wars happen; people are enslaved; the 'proles' spend all their time labouring for the rich; no leisure time; belief systems are used to enforce social control; and so on.

Of course this is a gross generalization which completely ignores the diversity of the human experience, but there is truth in it. Contemporary society has only pushed this farther. No longer is necessity the mother of invention, but marketing is. Honestly, did anyone ever sit around one day thinking, "you know what I really need, a television that makes me able to see the actual pores on someone's face, because that way I will enjoy this movie more." Come on. It's just consumerist capitalism. But let's remember that not only does technology seem to be redundant and in the business of create false needs, but it has a dark side. The environment would not be in such a shitter otherwise. Look at the "progress" the invention of mass-produced paper has achieved. But, it has also given us the paper cut--the single most cringe-worthy piece of evil ever.

Ah. Sigh. Deep breath. Rant over. Wow, think of the things you could think of too if you welcome the koo-koo with open arms!

i'm just not into this book.... i'm in it.

2009-02-06T11:19:00.000-08:00

So last night I read He's Just Not That Into You. Ugh. I know. I feel like one of those girls: [I was going to launch into some long diatribe describing them in minute detail, right down to the french tips of their nails, but it would mentally injure me]. Anyway, I read it in like two hours. While it was light and fluffy, it did speak the god's honest truth, rather than any snotty idealism. I think this is what had turned me off when it first came out a few years ago. I guess some credit is due, as this is the real world we live in, after all, which is unfortunately not some post-feminist utopia. Apparently, men are not complicated beings, but rather quite simple. If they are into you, they will call, they will care. Occam's razor surely cut me deep; how many books has it been used to sell?

I did, however, learn that there were many men I simply have been not that into, and had I realized this earlier, I would have just broken up with them rather than stopped returning their phone calls, leaving them hanging. Huh. Never thought that. That at least was refreshing.

I can't get this song out of my head.

2009-02-03T18:33:00.001-08:00

"Dancing Choose" - TV on the Radio, from Dear Science, The Guardian's Top Album of 2008

your latest Amazon shipment has arrived!

2009-02-03T10:55:00.000-08:00

I love getting mail. Especially large packages; ones that don't rattle, but shift slightly when shaken: shunk shunk shunk in the cardboard origami mailer. Yesterday, I received the results of my latest moment of online consumerist weakness:

Some new music:
1 - Dear Science - TV on the Radio
1 - Glasvegas - Glasvegas
1 - For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver
1 - The Seldom Seen Kid - Elbow

Some old music:
1 - Raw Power - Iggy and the Stooges
1 - Horses - Patti Smith

One old graphic novel:
1 - Tank Girl 2

Two britcoms:
1 - Spaced
1 - Black Books

I shall get crackin' on my pop culture catch up right now.

Smoke Screen (flash fiction)

2009-02-02T23:27:00.001-08:00

I exhaled out into the wind, flicking the ash onto the snow. I wished silently for arms to wrap around me. Not just any arms, but the arms I want to escape into. As I pull myself back inside, the dog stares up at me from the end of the bed. He won't say anything, he won't tell her. I light some of her incense, anything to disguise the smell.

Tonight when I lie here, her beside me, I think of those arms. I think of seeing them tomorrow. They fall into my thoughts during the day, as I sit at my desk. When they stand up to stretch, they reach over her head; a ballerina in another life, I think. I see them reach over the cubicle wall. Light and graceful, two long slender white branches I daydream of pulling me into an embrace.

As I lie next to a different woman in bed, I dream of them. They cloud my mind, visions of her arms, these magical arms. In my dreams her arms, bare and smooth, twirl in the vacuum of a dance. They twist in the smoke, dancing dancing dancing. With a flick of the wrist, they brush aside the fog, luring me forth.

She thinks the incense is my way of being romantic. She thinks it separates me from other men. She thinks she's lucky, she tell me so. I waft the incense around the room, clearing it of my cigarette smoke, clearing off my evidence of another life. I've hidden the packet of cigarettes. I try to rotate my hiding place. There's nothing she won't find after time. Nothing I can really keep hidden for long.

I waft the incense, my literal smoke screen. Hiding my exhalations, hiding it all.

(2009)

From magazine vendors to muddy boots: my weekend in an adequately-sized organic vessel

2009-02-02T13:28:00.000-08:00

After an intriguing afternoon of gallavanting all over Vancouver, including a far too long walk down East Hastings (FYI, Spartacus Books has moved even further east down Hastings), Taryn and I found a vendor for Hacksaw! *cue rejoicing peasants* You can now get Hacksaw Literary Arts Magazine at People's Co-op Bookstore on Commercial Drive!

Two celebratory beers and some plantain chips later, I was arriving at a sushi restaurant for my godsister, Natasha's engagement party. Despite not knowing anyone when I got there, the evening was well spent; several potty breaks making up for the endless pots of green tea. I can't wait for the actual wedding. Open bar, dude, open bar.

Saturday I recuperated, then walked around the dirt in burlap boots for awhile, before retiring to bed to watch Bones. All and all, a nice little Saturday.

Up at five am the next morning for our first day on location filming "Red Hood." The day can simply be summarized with a few adjectives and nouns: Freezing weather, muddy fields, vehicular accidents (not me!), dusty barns, leaping frogs; and a few verbs: action, cut, that's a wrap.

2009-01-29T13:32:00.000-08:00

October 3, 2008
Maastricht, The Netherlands

(to be published in Hacksaw Literary Arts Magazine (Vol.1, Issue 2, Spring 2009)