Derek Liddington and Stephen Lavigne, Inappropriate Behavior: Red Brick House, 2009

"The vampire is oblivious to linear understandings of history and thus cannot fully adapt to contemporary western culture. As a result vampires confuse and conflate aesthetics derived from modernist and postmodernist visual languages. This process of ‘feeding’ results in continual slips between past and present; slips that leave their aesthetic in a constant state transition. Inappropriate Behavior uncovers the narrative of a Canadian vampire colony, currently migrating along rural Ontario highways. Typical of appropriative – appropriate – behavior, these vampires take part in a series of follies brought on by their need to ‘blend in’ with their rural Canadian surroundings.

Dependant on post-modern aesthetics for survival these rural vampires are drawn to the autonomy of the mobile home and farm; retrofitted aesthetics dependant on utopian ideals. Ranging from Donald Judd’s minimalist sculptures and Dan Graham’s theorizing on glass in urban architecture, historical and theoretical moments are conflated and displaced, re-assembled into glass barns, minimalist coffins, mobile homes, big-rigs, mac-tac, plywood and paint."
- posted by cjb @ 3:27 PM

 

To Dam Mountain's summit, just behind Grouse, with Mad Owl Woman. Crown and Camel visible in their coats of white, Seymour and Runner to the east, and behind them, Judge Howay and the Cheam Range, catching the last light.

Great huge rafts of grey cloud sweeping north from Baker. Dots of light out on the Salish Sea.

Walking in the dark under the full moon, the creak and crunch of my boot spikes biting into the hard-packed styrofoam snow. Cold clear air. Silence. A good end to a stressful but fulfilling year.
- posted by cjb @ 9:11 PM

 

Pulpfiction did not burn down in last night's big fire. At ease people. Thanks for all the nice messages, and Merry Christmas from me, L., Kato, and the Incredible Talking Cats.
- posted by cjb @ 10:31 AM

 

1:15pm. Line-up nine deep at the till.

PHONE: Ring!

CJB: Good afternoon, Pulpfiction.

SOME GUY: Yeah, just wonderin' if you can walk to your self-help section, have a look-see, any titles there on the cougar lifestyle.

CJB: Merry Christmas, thanks for calling, bye!
- posted by cjb @ 2:24 PM

 

Hard-Boiled Mystery Series Character Name FAIL

(via PFB's front desk)
- posted by cjb @ 10:56 AM

 
Brian Eno: "When drama is at a premium, reticence and delicacy communicate best."
- posted by cjb @ 10:38 AM

 

PHONE: Ring!

CJB: Good morning, Pulpfiction Books.

SAD DAD: I'm looking for this book. Sorry.

CJB: No need to be sorry, what's the title?

SD: Magic Kitten: Seaside Mystery

CJB: I'm sorry. Seriously, though, we don't carry any magic animal books here.

SD: I don't blame you.
- posted by cjb @ 10:17 AM

 

If this isn't on Bruce Sterling's blog yet it should be.

"Astroturfing, which involves real money, is not illegal. We can't imagine virtual currency astroturfing would be illegal either. Whether or not it's ethical is a different question."
- posted by cjb @ 9:49 AM

 

Brad Moore, Lakeview Paine, Big Bear, California, 2009
- posted by cjb @ 9:37 AM

 
Robotic great white, manta ray, coelacanth, & etc., via Japanese TV. The Mad Scientists of Mammoth Falls would approve.
- posted by cjb @ 7:39 PM

 

Daniel Traub, Man, North Philadelphia, 2008
- posted by cjb @ 11:28 AM

 
5:13, Tuesday morning, 16MP gold light on the Lions and the Grouse turbine's stopped white blades.

The sneezing cat's big yellow owl-eyes.

Tink and clunk of the radiator, hot water pushing up from the basement like blood through my heart.

Thinking of my friend, former employee and fellow photographer Katie Davis, in Toronto this morning having her spleen removed.

Good wishes east through the cold dry air.
- posted by cjb @ 9:31 AM

 

Some important food for thought, well expressed, by Mr. Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes:

"So: a visual artist has been commissioned to create a work that celebrates their community and the cultural olympiad. But, like many Vancouver artists, he or she lives in East Vancouver. He or she sees the lack of social housing, the lack of addiction counseling. He or she is impacted by their immediate environment, and, like many artists, wants to reflect this environment through his or her work.

The artist cannot afford studio space. Artist grants have been slashed. So he or she accepts the commission, but is unable to draw a causal link, a link between the conditions that make his or her immediate environment so unbearable, and a public agency that has vampirically siphoned billions of dollars from the agencies that could provide a remedy to this situation."

If anyone is unclear as to my own position on the matter, the Olympic Games are a travesty, symbolizing all that is repulsive about western culture. BC taxpayers will be paying for Gordon Campell's expensive party-on-credit for many years to come, at the expense of services we're now told are unaffordable, given the "tough economic climate" -- affordable housing for single parents, the disabled and the mentally ill; education; funding for cultural producers of all stripes; treatment beds for addicts too sick to properly care for themselves.

A society is measured by the respect and dignity it accords its least fortunate members, and Gordon Campbell's British Columbia -- to say nothing of VANOC's Vancouver -- fails miserably on this count.

Some of my friends are participating in the Cultural Olympiad. I make no judgment of them, other than to say that I, personally, would be ashamed to take Olympic money.
- posted by cjb @ 7:11 PM

 

Mr. Unnamed. Becker, Fagen, Buffett & Munger all = NAME FAIL, or so sez. L.

-We could call him "Yo Momma."

-Oh?

-Yeah, 'cause he's pretty hairy and actually a boy.
- posted by cjb @ 7:56 PM

 

Some old friends and a new one.
- posted by cjb @ 9:36 AM

 

Uptown baby, we gets down baby--
- posted by cjb @ 9:51 AM

 

Courtesy Kate Beaton. S'truth!
- posted by cjb @ 9:43 AM