Lookin'

                                     After that neat talk by trever anderson and his truly neato film about the high level bridge, and looking at Journal Edmonton's blog with her map pages , i feel inclined to....  post this picture , but first i'll explain it.
my friend, after graduating with a poli sci degree and being on unemployment, got a job doing research for the conservative party. and commissioned me to paint a peice for his office. and i thought uuhmmm conservative... yuppie.... legislature...... and came up with this. I never thought to think about the attachment we all have with this bridge, as an icon, as something that links and seperates, as a suicide launcher.   i had a strange relationship with the hiogh level while painting it because it was hard to make all the bars look accurate, which is what i was trying to do. but anyway.. and now that feeling is gone, as with the money i got paid, and it is just a thing i walk on to get home when its not too cold outside. as are all good things in life .. (sneakers).
.

 36" x 30". acrylic
the little guy at the bottom is pretty cheesy, i know, but the guy who i did it for is a folk singer so, the hobo-esque figure, has a soft spot in his folky heart. also excuse the plastic wrap on wall behind.  i should have cropped the photo. i should have done a lot of things ..  (sneakers).

also I really liked it when trever said, today, that having limitations is healthy for art making.
my biggest limitation in life is money, specifically, the lack there of. i dont think its very healthy.

(sneakers?@?@?!!?)
.

The high level's lil bro!!!!!!!!!!!! ahahah :(
i took this for my map assignment.
good thing we have reading week..
so we can all read hustler
and not be subject matter for the sequel to that film we watched today abotu jumping off bridges

not bad

so far english three eighty is not bad. not bad at allll......    i am surprised with having the authors of course texts come in to talk with us, that is a treat.

it's hard to come up with anythings.

we are trying to concentrate on our relationship with the city. but what about teh relationship edmonton's rabbits have with the city? or, the squirrels. did you know that underneath that poorly crafted and completely annoying "temporary" sidewalk that is ominously permanent, that runs around that newly constructed and incoherently located daycare playground, runs a glorified rodent super highway. it makes complete sense! we should all salute the ever-resourceful squirrel and his urban compatriates.   but, actually not the rabbits. they hop into my backyard adn get confused and the next morning i see the frantic prints of an animal going into dead ends of paths and trying to leap into the snowbanks but leaping out again. but i never actually see them. so they are probably ... i think problems can arise when people try to over intellectualize lived experiences.
(of animals in edmonton or humans)
have you ever been in the handicap stall and then someone in a wheelchair coems in and they actually need that stall, and you dont...   ahhh that's a bad feeling. its like someone catching you trying to take a nap in their bedroom. or something.
everyone i tell about the edmonton queen is really excited. what is it abotu drag queens that people find so delightful? maybe everyone has seen Priscilla queen of the desert, becuase, hooo doggy, that movie is delightful! its probably a lot of things. that people think  equals fun

ahh yes friday. the day of fries. i identify with hamza and yehat's love of the weekend. i feel like i could have a good time with those soul brothassssssss even though. i would be a nerd and embarass them if i tried to order ethiopian food probably. then redeem myself by playing a gucci mane remixes album. ????

here is a great suggestion to those who do not know, padmapper.com   if you are moving, this site is the "bomb". its a google map that compiles all kijiji craigslist amazon whatever and you click around and look at ads the easy way. its how i found my place now.   and it is fun to chose a different city and imagine where and how else you could live.  oops! ah retract. statement.   just  love for ed

elevator hopper

                                tuesday night i went to a friend's house for a dinner party style hang out because our pregnant friend was in town, it really was like a triple date. its funny, because us three girls have been buddies since kindergarten and all that, and our bf's are so different but they are forcibly meshed together because they have to becuase their girlfriends/wife...yeah. so in conversation i mentioned i have to write a blog for school and then 10 minutes later my blog starting blasting through the speakers. metalhead dan (striker) found my blog on the net, copy pasted it into text to speak and then hooked the laptop up to giant speakers, so my blogs just blasted out in a computerized man's voice with a german accent. you can choose the accent. hahahhhhh......... boy, was my face red!

i don't know why i think i can go out on week nights and then do school the next day. because i cant god dammit! last night, what with the freezing rain and all, i pretty much skated home down jasper from last night at 2 am.  buffalo underground, it just opened where that gay bar play used to be (q-history). minorities in edmonton are celebrated, i saw this last night. that place is huge i suggest checking it out, there are lots of dark corners and it smells like subway because there is one next door. aaawww yeah

i loath doing housework
there is a squirrel that lives in between the roof and ceiling of the house i live in. someday i will take a picture of the house i live in right now because it's pretty weird. i might even use the word....  zany.

i was taking an extended vacation in asia last year and a man said "oh canadian, vancouver or toronto? ha har har har" and i said no. its edmonton like this, and i drew a map of canada on the back of his receipt book and then marked the famed t dot and van city then starred e town. then a boy came up to the bar and he loved the map and drew a star on saskatoon where he was from. and the night whithered away into day light as we all drew maps of canada.....!   sort of. i believe, that night, that i was walking up a hill to my bungalo and a man in a security suit jumped out of the bushes and was like "mam! there are snakes!" and walked me through a clearing with a flashlight and a big stick to bash snakes. then i got an ear infection. as is life!

weak, too

                                  in the minister faust book we have to read for class like two weeks from now i think it is, the narrator described edmonton at night as a lite brite. this photo taken from the 17th floor of the legacy building, 105th and 103rd ave looking north. looks just like a lite brite. thought it was perhaps a little relevant.

   i think everyone agrees that as we change the city changes with us or, how we see it changes. smoking cigarettes makes edmonton a different place. it makes outside seem purposeful. and it makes for times of just landscape appreciation, whether that landscape is from a blacony, oh yea my fav, or the back alley behind that grocery storre you work at. orrrrrrrrrrr walkin down a street. once a lady said to me that she quit smoking and was depressed and didnt want to leave the house becuase, when she smoked, she knew that she alwasy had 20 friends with her and they were all skinny and white. ha ha! what a laugh. sometimes i think cigarettes are like friends, too. sometimes i think about eating them. haha no way! thats sick.

i used to only smoke parliments, the ones with the recessed filter tip, i don't know. but i started keeping the empty packs in a box, and was all aw man i can make a really cool installation with these. it was more of a ... i... uhh  i guess really what i was thinking about was money. trying to quantify how much money i spent by being able to look at this box of boxes. then i thought.. what can i do with them?

i walked around the areas between 104th and 101 ave and 111 st and somewhere west and tired to memorized the streets by walk walka walka walking and then i will build a model city with the boxes!

that never happened though like so many brainstorms that die out as sleep storms or beer storms that rain into hangover showers and .

on thursday when we discussed maps, how maps have single purposes subjective. but what about on the simpsons when bart becomes a boyscout and they get lost in the ocean becuase homer lost the map or something then he uses the krusty burger map that he was wearing as a hat to save him bart ned and rod (or todd?) by smelling out a krusty burger that was on an off shore oil rig! hahah priceless! see, maps and cross over all sorts of barriers. and cut them up and make neat paper mache volcanos or bird cages. and party dresses.  here's another taken from the same balcony:

haha! dogs cant be mechanics! and this:

rip

weak one

                   Like so many of my schooly comrades, i stay downtown and sometimes venture around whyte ave. now that it's so cold i dont really do anything. anyway
i thought it was pretty cool when a fatburger opened up in city centre mall because ive always been a fan of ice cube's hit "it was a good day", but anyway...  i think that edmonton would be a great place to shoot a postmodern western film. especially in the area between 109th street and 105th street on 103rd ave. and then maybe cut down to centre high to get some of that wood plank sidewalk action. that 103rd stretch is always so empty and in the summer it's really dusty, and old buildings, and dreary colors, and sometimes behind a building there will be a pile of old computers, and once,  i sware a tumbleweed was kickin around the future shop parking lot.
you know, thats what i like about edmonton, even though i know it's not centralized or unique. but just balcony livin'. ah yes. balcony living at its finest. watch people, give them names, get the ol zoom lens on the ol canon rebel.
theres always something going on in edmonton in terms of concerts, shows, whatever, my main complaint is that the city shuts down so early, except for a few sporadic places in china town or i dont even know where, but im usually couch locked watching spike lee movies anyway so i dont feel very strongly about this complaint. i need to get away from edmonton so that i can like it better.
ok ok ok edmonton... basically i inhabit edmonton like harriet the spy. i dont have a car or bike so i just sleuth around and take the long ways home. it's hard for me to talk about things i do because, heck, right now i dont do anything or see anyone. but! i'm going to see bob saget on saturday night, maybe i'll be more interesting after i get some dirt on the olsen twins. also,  i dont know whats up with all my tv and movie references i think it's a refelction of how i spend my free time.
assoupi means drowsy and oh man am i sleepy