i had a dream last night and you were in it

well certainly many people were.



Picture is from the train in the Adirondacks, double exposed with the view from the fire escape at Orchard Street. Thanks to Kris's Holga for the help.

this picture reminds me of said dream i had last night.
i first dreamt i was on some sort of trans-european train journey, (possibly aboard the trans europe express, hard to say) only it was a very odd train with plastic accordion dividers (not unlike those in an RV) that separated blocks of seats. It looked more like a bus on the inside, but i assure it was a train. i was on it with several of my friends and some local teens stole lottery tickets from my backpack while i slept on the train at one point too. It's possible i knew others aboard but never saw them.
Night time train ride. Pleasant but for the brief theft incident, a verbal confrontation with one of the better known dream guests, and a near miss in almost falling out the back of the train and having to be saved.
Ugh.
According to many of the very reliable and fulsome dream-interpretation databases available on the world-wide-interweb, dreaming you are on a train symbolises life's journey and indicates being on track.
i believe this to be a lie. Doesn't really account for the almost falling out, does it?
But shit gets crazier.
Later on in the trans europe train journey however, at one of the stops, we travelled to a zoo (it was still night time and i think it was supposed to be spain) wherein a sketchy man escorted us (at this point a mixed group of friends and strangers)to a bladerunner looking compound. It was a bat cage. This part is hard to describe, so i drew it.


Now i've been dreaming about bats since i was teen, but i think this is my subconscious's first foray into vampire bats. Dream interpretation guides indicate across the board that vampire bats are not a good thing to dream about....quel surprise. The best assessment i encountered was: "to see a vampire bat in your dream represents that a person in your life may be draining your of self-confidence and/or your resources." Now that is promising shit, right? It's especially funny because vampire bats don't even suck your blood, they just give you the wound and then lap up the blood around it, which is somehow even more sinister than sucking.

At any rate, despite the claims of 'on-trackness' once at this bat-cage it became apparent that in the subterranean basement "moat" below it lived a diverse selection of gypsy-type waifs who were forced to sacrifice themselves to feed the vampire bats on a rotating basis, and we were not there to see the bats at all, but to be incorporated into this terrible network of suckers living below it and being shoved in every now and again, roman-cage fight style, to be sucked upon by jerk vampire bats.
and escape ensued, a couple people ended up getting bitten by the bats, and the next thing i knew we were all in a small euro-auto, possibly a peugot, cruising towards the sea. I nearly fell out of the car and scraped my back quite badly.
We reached a beach and then i sat on the dark beach by the water for a while and felt better. I was not bitten by a bat, so that's good.
Eventually i made it back to the train station and got back on, but this leg of the trip it was just me.
just me on a train, bein' on track.

obviously.

i just remembered phil hartman is dead.

i was watching a commercial with deep husky movie voice guy (name?) doing his thang and thinking about how different trailer world will be without him.

i think he's dead, but i could be wrong. i also don't know his name (see above), so that makes researching this kind of problematic. regardless, i was thinking about maybe-dead movie-trailer-voice-guy...

then i remembered phil hartman and how much voice-land changed without him. what a voice. what a hair-do. big fan!
please see fan-art below. please.

my phil hartman looks a little like stephen harper. perhaps i can re-use this tribute when he kicks the bucket; ideally this will be sooner rather than later.

it is now lent, people.
40 days of cruddery. i don't even believe in god. i only give up chocolate though, so it's very non-committal. shocking. plus on tuesday (fat tuesday, of course) i ate a cadbury creme egg, some mini eggs, and a drink involving kaluha. i am stocked up on chocolate for a while.
i am considering incorporating a hair shirt into my lenten sacrifices (ah comfort, the greatest of sacrifices to be sure!) i think the whole exercise is just a feeble attempt to re-direct my guilt about regular things. it works surprisingly well if you just let it. just let it happen.

i had a dream i was in the sun the sun the yellow hot hot sun and i was squinting. it was sweet. i could see the freckles on my nose in the corners of my eyes.
i am ready for summer. temperature wise anyhow. everything else? maybe, not-maybe.

i assume that dreaming about the hills being white and sky being black with northern lights can only indicate that winter's unsexy devil grasp is coming to get me.
it can be so hard and cold like ice.
on the plus side of wintertime, people leave. usually these people are relatively unpleasant hippies who begin to freeze "like gorillas" as soon as the temperature drops below zero.
Is this too real for you?
Obviously.
The northern lights are also pretty note-worthy, and they are already starting to rock the night scene (not just in my dreams, but in the actual sky).
I am a massive fan of this aurora borealis forecast site from the University of Alaska Fairbanks:
http://www.gedds.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast/
I don't know how helpful it is if you're not in "the north", but at least you can get an idea of how sweet the lights might be for me. Next saturday the 6th is predicted to be quite the night.
I predict nuch smoking and staring.

Until then, more making a syllabus in dim grey afternoon light. Not nearly as whimsical.

Trying to write my own bio in the third person is making me feel insane.
I am now accepting tenders for My Academic Bio.
Please send submissions to: jennifer.laliberte@gmail.com
The chosen bio will be featured on my werk's website.
And i'll buy you a beer sometime.
(but i'd do that anyway)

Geddy and Wilbur playing together is one of my favourite spectacles.
I mean, who's the owner, right?

i spared no expense

it is really difficult to find info about having moose in your dreams.
i had a two moose dream last night. two moose in the water. and me in the water, in a canoe, behind the moose. they were swimming. i was paddlin'.
i choose to believe that instead of indicating that i am both strong and gentle, this moose dream i had instead represents my subconscious link to the moose plight of Newfoundland (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2008/07/23/moose-mystery.html)
I read about it this morning after waking from my moose dream:

Parsons Pond resident Earl Keough, an avid woodsman, said formerly healthy moose have wasted away by an illness that appears to hit their digestive tracts.

"[A] few months ago, there was a very large bull that [got sick] up there by the side of the pond and died with this disease — whatever the disease is," said Keough.

"The moose got the diarrhea, and they just eat and eat, and they starve to death. They literally die on their hoofs. They become skeletons."

They literally die on their hoofs. They become skeletons.
Lovely imagery. Maybe i get to dream that part next.

But enough about my pseudo-psychic connections to the animals via dreams. Let's get down to brass tacks- Dawson City Music Festival. Just finished. Well still it lingers to be honest, but it's officially done. More rain than ever before. Perhaps more consecutive rain in dawson than i've ever seen even. And it too still lingers. But despite the bullgang related challenges offered by the rain, the festival was one hell of a time.

I don't really take rock band photos, much the same way i don't "schmooze" with bands; i am just plain too good for it. Do i look like my name is cam? no, thankfully i don't.
at any rate due to my misguided self pereception and subsequent stubborn resistance, i cannot regail you with pictures of the actual musicians from said dawson city music festival. i can tell you that Black Mountain were super and i really "felt" it. The Sadies and The Good Family [who i refer to collectively because the boundaries were very blurred and there was an excellent deal of interchange] knocked socks off. All socks. They were so passionately energetic and all such skilled musicians, and then you get to meet them and they're just so delightful. Ya. They have it all. Did more Palace Grand watching than usual, and i remain indifferent. The workshops and smaller performances i attended were definitely amazing as well.
Does this sound too civilized? Like all i did was watch and appreciate music?
Not so.
I don't entirely know how to explain the levels to which i extra-curricularily enjoyed myself at the festival, but i will provide you with a few key images from the weekend.
Pictures and louder and words or something like that...






Starts with a second, ends with a coming.

my sincere hope for next year's end of festival jam: Spirit in the Sky

the sound of spit in france

hhhhaaaaaacccckkkkkkk puuuuuuuwwwww!

the sound of spit in france, approximately.



do you think if i stayed awake during the entire full-length version of An Inconvenient Truth that maybe just maybe i'll never sleep again?

me too.

the place that i end up better have a dentist, a haberdasher, and at least one real thief.
not like those fake thieves/robbers.
something more classically styled.

did you know i saw a bear swimming in the klondike river yesterday?
first time i ever saw a bear swim in person.
nothing short of magic.
lots of things are nothing short of magic, but not all of those things involve bears, you know.

part time faculty indeed

Raining all day.
Tried to take pictures that show how misty-cloudy-middle earth it is, but i can't really do it justice. Rain is hard to photograph. Or not, and i haven't figured it out. Could be either.
Rainy days are an excellent excuse to do nothing.
Most things are an excellent excuse to do nothing, really. Especially when one is as gainfully unemployed as i am.
Despite a very uncharacteristic (but more common this summer) Dawson downpour, i managed to install some blinds in the radio station and check out the new record shelves Jim built and Pat painted. They look so sharp. Front loader style, for much easier and quicker record searching.
It will be a spectacular advantage in djing with vinyl, which i very much dig.

This past 7 day chunk has been a funtimes week. Lots of sunshines and cocktails and even some bbqing and canoeing. I fucking love canoeing.















and cocktails.









In other unemployment related news, i have been trying to better acquaint myself with the sights and services of summertime Dawson.
I got to catch annnnn 'istoric presentation by this feisty northern poet just the other day:



And photograph the real guy's pretty excellently appointed cabin.







I think Robert Service's bed might be nicer than mine.



I dreamt last night that the Microphones song "I Felt Your Shape"was going to be used in a movie that i didn't like the sounds of and was subsequently crushed.
I think it might be the most beautiful song in the world. It's less than two minutes long, and it makes me cry everytime i listen to it. Really. As lame as that might be. As i was saying to Aaron Burnie only yesterday, "feelings are boring, kissing is awesome".
But feelings are bossy and ubiquitous.
Always clogging up the instruments with their crud.
Eating up RAM power.
Smelling up the fridge.
I think i will do like Milli Vanilli [Frank Farian] before me and blame it on the rain.

favouritism

my bike. for the time being. it makes me really happy.
yesterday i downloaded EVERYTHING joy division has ever released.
So susequently i went for one hell of a joy division bke ride today.
I love joy division. It is so morose. Reminds me of myself at 15.
I made a pretty sweet "film" in media studies 20 that featured "Trainsmission" as its soundtrack.
Apparently at 26 not much has changed.
Self-pity and bad dreams.
Lst night i had a pretty elaborate Louis Riel dream. Hard to explain, but pretty involved.
Not nearly as unpleasant as the one about the minks from the mink farm all in my car and dying and killing each other. It was especially creepy because it was set at a real place, an actual abadonded mink farm in Furdale (really what it's called) that i used to drive past to my house outside of Saskatoon. Anyway, there was a big watch tower for spotting foxes and coyotes that were trying to stealz the minks, and the whole property was lined with tall spruce trees, all the same size. Very eerie looking. I wish i had a picture. (Un)fortunately, my brain still has a picture, so i dreamt it was still an active fur farm and i was going there to save the minks. I had an old mustard yellow ford falcon, and i was loading them all in the car but they were going berserk (as they would i'm sure) and clawing and scratching and screaming. It was pretty unpleasant.
Maybe i feel repressed guilt for using mink oil.

Surfin' Bird is a pretty unusual song.

i have no nice things to say. except that i have an adult bed now (aside from the accoutrements) and i am pretty happy wit dat.
I never have things to say. most of my conversations are with myself or arguments.
i bet that's a bad sign.
Good bed though.





And because i couldn't think of anything nice to say, here is something nice to see.

My aforementioned Green-Shanty:



Cucumber


Tomatoes


Lobelia


Nasturtiums (sp?)


Tomatoes


Brussel Sprouts and Cabbages


Zucchini