Christmas was nice and quiet this year. Hung out with Papa all day, got some good books, DVDs, and clothes. Brookie and Kevin made HAM for dinner. Sounds wonderfully traditional for Christmas, but I can't eat ham (or most meat for that matter) so cold pizza for me! =D

So lately I've been considering costumes for Comic-Con, and I have no idea what to do this year. I don't know if I'll continue my traditional Alice cosplay with Sam, or do any other repeats this year. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to try a Tim Burton Alice and Mad Hatter. I mean, it would be fun to do since the movie comes out this spring, and Comic-Con will be a great time to do the cosplay. I even know a great seamstress could could make Alice for me. However a few downsides are giving me second thoughts.

For one, it's Comic-Con and I'm certain every other man will be dressed as Burton's Hatter. It'll be exactly like 2008 where EVERYONE was dressed like the Joker after The Dark Knight came out. So it wouldn't exactly be the most original costume. The other problem is that if I dressed as Alice, I don't really know who I could get to cosplay as Hatter with me. There aren't many guys I would trust to look good in the costume (maybe Sam, but I haven't asked him if he's interested), and also I would want to make sure the costume was done RIGHT. Which would mean getting it made and paying for it myself. And that's another problem - it's going to be expensive.

So I'm not sure. I mean, I already know I'm going to love the movie, and I really want to do this cosplay, but is it worth it?

Already I've been looking up sites and tutorials. I found a pretty good tutorial here, but I'm not the greatest crafts person so I would have to get someone to make it for me. I glanced through Ebay and found some sellers offering their own costumes like the coat and the hat. But HOLY CRAP $500??? Yah it looks nice, but not for that much money. GAH. I mean the best offer I could make would be $160, maybe $200 if I have a lot to spend.

This guy has a pretty good costume going but it looks like he actually got the $500 coat. O_x And like a protective cosplayer he isn't saying where he got the other materials.

Siiiigh. Well, I know a couple seamstresses and prop makers. I guess I'll ask around. Merry Christmas y'all!

Enjoy yourselves, whatever it is you're doing!

I have to admit that this December wasn't looking very good. Bad luck was piling on bad luck, until I felt like I had somehow started an invisible count-down to an early grave. It seems, however, that everything was just clearing out of the way, leaving space to celebrate new, better foundations. There has been a bright side to every disaster. Because I was let go, I'm able to spend the holidays with Tony, who's been saving up his use-it-or-lose-it Microserf vacation, and go with him to San Diego to see our friends, Mutaytor, perform with Rabbit In The Moon on New Years Eve at Evolve. Because my life crashed down all at once, I have been surrounded by love and care and support beyond my wildest dreams. I'm currently wearing a little silver frog ring and a pair of swooningly soft groverskin socks from Karen, for example, who sent me such a beautiful treasure package that I came down with a mild case of the weeps as I was carefully opening all the enchanting layers of ravishing colour and glee.

Thank you, my loves, my friends, my acquaintances, and you strangers. Thank you for everything!

There has been scheming afoot. Mad, mad, undeniably wonderful scheming. Ray, mostly, though with some other people, like James and Nicole and Tony. Scheming, I might add, to replace the sadly lost camera. (If you wish to be part of this crusade, I can put you in contact with him.)

To this end, Ray has been doing some rather serious research, and has presented me with a rather serious question, which I have seriously researched, but have been too overwhelmed to immediately answer in reply. (How could I, considering? Wow. Just, wow.)

So I turn to you, dear internet, to help sway me off the fence of panicked indecision before the nondenominational shopping glory of boxing day passes. In your so humble opinion....


Poll #1503187 Operation Keep The Photos Coming
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 11

Which is best?

Why?

Finally updated my website. Will have to add a portraiture section at some point, but not without first having some sort of cohesive reasoning behind it. Added lightbox in order to have an option to read an introduction to each series. Also removed some filler - it's time I concentrate on what it's all about. Of course, since I'm coding these on my own, it's still strictly amateur hour when it comes to the design:

http://lungliu.com

Rare Exports Inc.


Rare Exports Safety Instructions


More information on Rare Exports at woodpecker films.


EDIT: Though this is pretty darned awesome too. Heeeellooooo disturbia...

Enter Thursday, December 10th, the day I officially come down with death flu, when Tony leaves his backpack on the bus and loses his laptop, which contains all of his writing, pictures and video of the last four months, our Montreal trip, etcetera, and his camera. We are, understandably, not feeling terrific.

Enter Friday, which spits on Thursday, calling it names and degrading its mother, declaring itself far more bad ass. I go into work and am promptly fired, as the bosses wife, who believes she is the reincarnation of an Atlantis princess and has a giant painted portrait of her idealized past self as Crystal Princess Barbie hanging in the office to prove it, has taken over my job. My bank account has been at zero since the 1st, because they've been with-holding my pay so they could get it all over with at once, but even with that plan they failed to have my cheque ready, so they fired me with nothing and gave me nothing. I'm contract, too, which means no severance. As part of cleaning out my desk, I go to unplug my various electronics and get such a nasty shock from the power bar that my hand spasms shut on the cord, and I lose the tip of a fingernail to scorch. Let the day's twitching commence.

The bright side of being let go is that I am free to leave early, and so, with absolutely no time to spare, I run for the two:thirty Grayhound while Tony scurries to buy me a ticket long distance. The Grayhound, which I catch, then catches fire on the side of the highway just on the other side of the border. A shock had come loose and had been dragging under the bus, sending sparks up into the machine. Someone driving behind us, noting this and the subsequent tiny flames which started, called Grayhound, who then called the bus driver, who then pulled us over and put it out with an extinguisher. During the hours of waiting for the repair people, a fever develops, and I begin to see tiny hallucinations around the edges of my vision. To cheer myself up, I text back and forth with Tony, telling him that I'm not even sad about being laid off, as it means I finally have time to devote to photography. The repair people, coming from Canada, take so long to arrive that by the time we're all patched up and on the road again, the next Grayhound bus was arriving at the stations the same time we were.

Enter Seattle, a city I am always glad to see. The bus pulls in and I am a rocket, clattering off the bus and through the station with unmatched speed, flagging down the first cab I see. Get me out of here! Get me home! I am silent for the ride, too spaced out for conversation, barely able to concentrate on the texts Tony is sending me, though I note the driver, a dark thin man, smells of sweet incense and has pretty hands. Finally I am home! Another text comes in as I exit the cab, and in my haste to reach my destination, I skip my usual taxi double check, I do not even look up from the phone until I am at the front door, and do not realize that my camera bag is behind me, driving away, fallen to the floor of the car.

Everything that could be done to get it back has been done, and failed. The taxi people do not have it, Craigslist does not have it, nor do any of the pawn shops. To make it worse, it seems that not only did the bag contain the camera and memory cards, (containing all my pictures since leaving Montreal), my arm warmers, and a roll of film I had shot as a gift, it also contained my credit card, which today, after more than a week of searching, I finally have to cave in and cancel.

On the up, I am with Tony for two weeks, and out of Canada until 2010, which is maybe the best gift I ever could have. He is a beautiful, wonderful creature, and he makes my life better absolutely every day.

New Alice in Wonderland trailer!!

Ah-HA! I knew it! I KNEW it was about Alice returning to Wonderland! So many people have been complaining that Alice is too old, that it looks too different from the original story. They never mentioned it specifically until now, but I had a feeling that it was meant to be sort of a sequel, a continuation of the story.

The whole 'Red Queen has taken over Wonderland' and dark and brooding scenery seems very much a mix of American McGee's Alice and The Looking Glass Wars (which makes me think about how Frank Beddor is gonna take this movie...Oooh, there goes any chance of his book making it to the cinemas any time soon).

I also gotta say I'm starting to really like Johnny Depp's Hatter, and I'm hoping there IS a romance between him and Alice. You know me, I would probably ship them either way. XD And I noticed Hatter's bowtie IS like a moodring. At 0:22 see how it brightens up when he sees Alice. I also like the first glance of the March Hare, just his one line had me giggling. Hell there's a lotta gags in the trailer that had me laughing. Especially the pig. And I really love the image of Alice in her armor. Oh and Hatter vs the Knave of Hearts? Yaaaah I can already tell fangirls are gonna go crazy over Hatter. Even I have to admit he looks pretty dashing. And OMG was that the Jabberwock at the end?

I just kinda wished they focused a bit more on Alice herself, considering that, you know, she's the CENTRAL CHARACTER! Give her a bit more dialogue or something! I know they're using Johnny to sell this movie but give Mia a chance, man.

Freaking excited for this movie now. o_o

There is within me a space which perfectly defines your absence, as if the edges of where I am hollow exactly outlines the velvet surface of your skin.

last night:

Sitting in Kino Cafe on Cambie Street, a place I am far too familiar with from when I was a teenager, out to support an old friend in the latest band she’s in with her brother. I am uncomfortable here, isolated, oddly part and yet not of the lives of the people involved with this evening. We used to come here all the time. The bartender would flirt and pour us drinks, even though we were underage. Fifteen years later, the bartender is gone, off to open his own place on Main St, but the place is little changed. As, too, are the people I am here with again.

Oddly, like the venue space, she looks almost exactly the same. The clothing has changed, but excepting that, the only thing missing are her braces.

Her brother, by contrast, I cannot see him as the person he is past the ruin of who he used to be. It’s as if someone has clumsily globbed handfuls of plasticine over the familiar corners of his body, rounding him out into the oddly bulky costume of a stranger. Underneath his new shape, however, it’s likely he is still a liar.

She is my conduit to these people, to this place. Her I named far more, in certain ways, than her parents ever did, a solid fingerprint the world does not know to see. “I don’t like my name,” she said when we met, and so by the time she was eleven, I had changed it, twisting the syllables until it described her face, until it fit her as well as her own skin. Little Mouse, she is, and for so long now that people commonly ask if she’s Russian. If it weren’t for her, I never would have come. Out of the twenty socially incestuous names I know in this crowd, she is the only one I would call my friend. For the rest of them, it was more that I was sometimes around, though we were all almost constant companions, present for almost every adventure, for years.

It makes me wonder if I should feel sorry, if there is something I missed, though I would not change our distance. Even through my disasters, I prefer who I am to who they would have me be.