make believe, not war

I guess if i'm already dreaming,

2009-03-18T16:34:00.004-04:00

I may as well dream of a tree house made of clouds. Right?

Cloud Playhouse by Dietrich Wegner (via bsqv)

now & then

2009-03-18T03:56:00.012-04:00

I've always wanted a tree house. Now that it's actually sunny and warm, of course i'm cooped up in the library with an essay mountain and 0.00 motivation and my feet itching for my birks and the feeling of pedals underneath them. I just want to lie on a blanket by the water, passing a bottle of wine back and forth. I want to put my hair in a french braid, walk around in shorts, and occasionally step into stores only for the air conditioning. I want to sip on a cold fountain soda, gingerly place it onto a flat part of an upper branch, and climb up the wooden planks to my tree house. I want my bracelets (friendship, hemp, boondoggle, bead) shaking with each inch upward.

2009-03-06T10:30:00.004-05:00

"Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'"

- Kurt Vonnegut

BIRKS and BIKES!

2009-03-04T20:12:00.011-05:00

WHAT I WANT TO DO RIGHT NOW:

1. Read Sylvia Plath's journals.

2. See this pink dolphin for myself.

3. Put on my birks, get back on my bike.

4. Fall asleep in a bear sleeping bag (more photos on creator Eiko Ishizawa's website).

5. Lie on my back and look at the sky through tree branches.

6. Learn to play the ukulele.

7. Write long letters (and send them!).

8. Write like James Franco. Or Randa Jarrar. Or Sean Michaels.

9. Apply bug spray, drink Rickard's Pale, listen to crickets, smoosh a golden-brown marshmallow in between two digestive cookies, call it a night, crawl into a tent.

10. Make galaxies with a photocopier and sugar.

TEXT MESSAGES I WOULD EMBROIDER:

1. That's why i dont carry a purse.

2. Come home to me please

3. Do You Know How Much I Love You?

4. You're hot. PS are you at players? Lets party after i am drunk and naked and in need of some Vla.

5. Look, I'm texting you! La la la i am a cute little house hippo, I like eating dust yum yum yum.

6. Vlada, by the light of moon i can only try to put words to paper how i love you so. I shall send you my loveletter tied to the modest leg of a songbird..

7. I cant help it: i miss u

8. if that joke was on the referendum i would vote no to it

9. God doesnt like chili stains

10. There is a dinosaur museum here!

image credit: YOUNG AND LOST CLUB record label

I could start my life all anew...

2008-12-28T20:55:00.000-05:00

(credit: Bryan Dalton)
Girls, Boys, and Everyone in Between:

1. My New Year's Wishlist
- this hand-painted wooden comb (made by Irana Douer)
- the pug (didn't get one for Hanukkah, so we'll rollover)
- hand-painted/drawn shoes (also Irana)
- Capucine's delightful Amélie Jr. story to actually be made into a movie
- my very own encyclopedia
- oh! and a vintage leather satchel, please! (with backpack straps)

2. I will not rest until everyone has seen the following video.

3. Two and a Half Men was sued, you guys. Anything that brings us any number of steps closer to that show being taken off the air. I'll take the smallest of victories, please (for 500). There are obstacles and setbacks, of course (1, 2, 3). There always are. But i we can't give up. And I cannot spearhead this campaign myself, guys.

(Oh, and that reminds me: Deb, Dirty Sexy Money was canceled. My condolences.)

4. This is how my life usually is:
But maybe if i try, 2009 can be a bit like this:
(both pictures via 1001 rules for my unborn son)

The New Year is like this sweet, completely arbitrary, new beginning. And it can get overwhelming thinking about the coming year's potential. Anything could happen, right? All i want for you guys is a year of the best stuff. You know that.

good Hanukkah gift: a pug

2008-11-30T19:05:00.007-05:00

Oh man, if there was a live pug puppy feed, i think i'd drop out of school. Conflicting interests. Not that the original puppy feed isn't good enough. It's just that you can't beat pugs. Pugs are like the moonstones of the gem world. Okay, what i'm trying to say is: pug, please! For Hanukkah! Then i can spend the rest of the winter break knitting it cute sweaters to wear! Please go look at some photos of this "chien depressif" for a template of which pug to buy me.

Also,
some amazing vinyl album cover photos here.

hopeless

2008-11-22T02:52:00.004-05:00

Oklahoma University, 1959

photo by A. Y. Owen

the f word (not feminism)

2008-11-20T21:24:00.005-05:00

Dear Professor:
I'm submitting this references list, APA-style. I hope that by reading through all these works, you can come to a relatively accurate conclusion of what my essay would have been about, had i written it. I've left out works which i read but ultimately deemed irrelevant to my hypothetical thesis.
See you in class for the exam!

I dare you not to fall in love with this story about Mayo Thompson. And i dare you not to fall in love with Sean Michaels by extension.

photo credit: George Krause, whose work was in Designing for Human Behavior: Architecture and the Behavioral Sciences (1974) -- cool beans!

simpler times

2008-11-19T01:19:00.003-05:00

thanks, Kat.

crossed fingers

2008-11-04T19:50:00.004-05:00

This is Towelbama, made by more than milk and some friends. It makes me think about some interesting things, like "the personal is political" and politics within domesticity. Whoops, essay mode. But that aside, what a funny idea for a towel! It's sold out on Etsy, so i hope that's some kind of good sign. One hour, guys.

Oh, and check it out on a stove.

the sweepstakes prize

2008-11-02T19:48:00.004-05:00

hey, what are you doing?/do you want to come up for a cup of tea?/come visit with me; we'll play guitars/and then i'll give you my number

[mp3] Sweepstakes Prize by Mirah

photo credit: fieryeyed

life dream #1 and a few other things

2008-10-22T13:52:00.012-04:00

We (some friends) move to Europe for a year. Where? I don't know, maybe someplace in Spain, by the water. The sun sets. The sun rises. Mostly, though, the sun sets because we're asleep when the sun rises. In the morning, as the sun is rising and we sleep, the mesh curtain over the bedroom window (or door to a balcony!) billows because there is a breeze from the water and of course the window is always open because of the fresh sea air. Everything is labeled in Spanish. In the evening, after bongo drums and campfires, we walk back home along the shore, sandels in hand and hair in messy ponytails or unevenly flattened. Hair that we'll find is full of sand and fire ashes and clumsy singing when we finally take a shower the next morning. When we first move there, we're some kind of tripod; we are fluent in the same language and we giggle about things in ways that tripods do. That second week, our rooms still bare and luggage spitting out clothes, we go skinny-dipping at night. We scream about our rum-tinged liberation. But after a couple months (of writing in coffeeshops and painting with easels set up by the water and picking wildflowers for hair accessories), we start to become more independent of one another. We're not drifting apart, we just keep some things to ourselves. Everything changes just a little bit and then nothing is really the same. Not in a bad way, but in a quiet way. Because the writing is so organic and the art is sensual and the wildflowers turn into crowns. We're best friends but we're bodies, too. Sometimes we still walk back home along the shore together, but now we're more boisterous. 'We belong here, this is ours,' we think. So we throw a half-empty bottle into the sea to prove it. We stumble over our feet and lean on each other for balance. The sun rises and sets and rises and the curtain billows and the tub fills up with sand every shower. We never make our beds.

I recommend watching this video starring Emile Hirsch. It's perfectly pretty ('cause he's perfectly pretty?).

Currently,
1. I'd like to learn how to skateboard.
2. I want to figure out how to dress like this or like this. Preferably both. And also, peruse HEL LOOKS because it is amazing and inspiring when you get dressed every morning by peeling something off the carpet and checking to make sure it's not smelly.
3. I'm drinking at least one cup/travel mug of tea a day. With honey.

My Redemption? Please?

2008-10-08T23:50:00.006-04:00

Okay, so some people weren't pleased with my last post. And by 'some people' i mean my housemate Debra, of course. I stand by both videos, by the way. But i would like to redeem myself in her eyes because without her, i'd probably be left with three people reading this blog. Maybe two.

Nathan Fielder is very funny. There is evidence of this on his youtube channel. Also, he's friends with Levi MacDougall, who is the most funny, so you know Nathan is going to be great even before watching his stuff. Sometimes, Levi and Nathan combine their talents and create magic.

But their magic is not what i'm here to write about. I'm here to write about the following video of Nathan's that is so so so great (and hopefully very redeeming).

I award that video an internet crown. For being the best. The crown has 'best' spelled out in gems and valuable stones.

let's just move to Europe, guys

2008-10-05T14:04:00.005-04:00

Or maybe just L.A.

Acting like i haven't dreamed of you and i and marriage in an orange grove

2008-08-23T20:31:00.007-04:00

1. McSweeney's Internet Tendency is sometimes very funny. I first discovered this a few years ago when i read the following by contributor, and "verbal cartoonist," Dan Liebert:

Fun Facts to Know and Tell.
Some so-called superstitions have a solid basis in fact. For instance, if you're leafing through a magazine at a newsstand and a subscription card falls out and touches the floor before you can catch it, you will die before nightfall, because I will follow you home and kill you, I swear I will.

Kind of, a lot, like a Jack Handey. For those that wish there were two Jack Handey's out there in the world.

Anyway, i rediscovered McSweeney's this past week, when i was randomly going through their "Lists" feature, a collection of really funny and unnecessary lists about anything, and i laughed and laughed alone in my cold, cold basement. There are so many lists, so start with these:
- Things My Father Has Said to Me in Crowded Restaurants
- What People Said Tornadoes Sounded Like Before the Invention of the Freight Train (in Reverse Chronological Order)
- Pickup Lines to Use While Moving
- Topics of Conversation at My Cousin's House on Any Given Holiday
- What My Father Said About Thanksgiving, What I Thought, and What He Meant
- Relationship Advice I Might Give, Considering How My Last One Ended
- Text Messages That Would Have Been Helpful

Oh, bahaha!

2. Do you have an interest in photography that does not really exceed oh-wow-four-photos-in-one and i-wish-my-photos-looked-like-dreams? This is the Lomography Diana Dreamer Camera:

To be perfectly frank with you, it makes me want to name my children Diana. Diana Dreamer is a remake of the vintage all-plastic Diana camera, she is beautiful, and doesn't she make you want to wander around a park and lie down on the grass and take photos of clouds that look like animals or food? The camera young Amélie is holding there is probably the Diana Dreamer in black. No, i'm just kidding. But seriously, my heart yearns for this camera the way only a heart unfamiliar with photography can yearn for a camera. Does that make any sense? Sold exclusively at Urban Outfitters (your photography one-stop shop, right?) and look! it has one review that gives it 5 stars out of 5, so you know it's good. If i were to submit a list to McSweeney's it would be

Adjectives Urban Outfitters Uses to Describe the Diana Dreamer Camera That Totally Appeal to Me
cult
dreamy
faithful
loving
classic
dreamy (yes, twice!)
endless
easy
off-the-wall

Also, check out Lomography Diana + Camera. It's also pretty cool but i can't write about cameras on this blog forever.

3. daytime fantasies

4. Do you like sunglasses? Sure you do! But do you like them as much as me? Yeah, why not! But do you like them enough to spend $108 US on one (vintage) pair? Why am i suddenly so materialistic? Oops, that was an aside. Anyway, these two pairs of sunglasses are really cool, but also super expensive. It's a good thing i don't put a lot of effort into being stylish -- i'd be poor. And we all know i'm leaving that economic position for after university.

5. I can't wait for this movie to be released in Canada so i can want to go see it, not go see it, wait for it on DVD, never find it at Blockbuster, and then buy it Previously Viewed for $4.99 six years later. But seriously, it looks so good.

6. There are a lot of things one could say about the following song. Could one, like me, say it better than Sean from Said the Gramophone? Probably not. All i will say is this: "you're the only thing in any room you're ever in"? Oh god. Can real life be better than that?

Elbow - Starlings [mp3]

oh man

2008-08-19T01:16:00.009-04:00

watch this and almost die of awe:

Western Spaghetti by PES

also,

"All good things are wild, and free."

- Henry David Thoreau

art by Chrissie Abbott, who is super-cool you guys.

Slipping Through The Years

2008-08-02T01:44:00.010-04:00

Before i leave for a week of water trampoline, swimming with one of these, roasted marshmallows, some reading, wearing sunglasses, bingo, and maybe mosquitos, i thought i'd leave a post.

When i was in Israel, i went through my uncle's old photographs, which he had inherited from my grandma or grandpa (can't remember which). Like all vintage photographs, they're lovely and were swiftly scanned onto my laptop. The feeling i get when i look at these and have to reconcile who these people are now and who it seems they were then is probably not something you'll get from glancing at these, but they're still pretty cool.

my uncle

rockstarbadass
my mom and grandma visiting my uncle in the army
the whole fam.

my grandpa, brooding before both Ryan Atwood and my brother my grandpa (right) and a friend
my grandmother Sara, looking gorgeous.
(note her dress sleeve caught on the chair)
my uncle and mom (also known as Sailor Moon in Japan)
a little more grown up

(you can see my uncle turning into a rock star here)
(everyone thought my mom was Mongolian when she was younger because of her dark, dark hair and blue eyes)

Something That Is Weird

2008-07-26T00:50:00.003-04:00

Here is something that is weird: faxes. How are they sent? How are they received? How does this all happen? How can someone send and/or receive a fax nonchalantly without sitting down to wonder about this? I have done this myself but I don't remember how. I once worked as a receptionist and in between reading novels and looking at the internet (which is another very weird thing) I would send and receive faxes. And I did it nonchalantly, without wondering how. When I was a kid, I thought the way faxes were sent was like this: the paper would roll itself up very tightly and then fly through the fax machine's cord, right into the electrical outlet. And inside the electrical outlet were a bunch of other cords, linking to other electrical outlets which connected to other fax machines. And in this way, all fax machines were connected. But now I know it is not like this, although I wish it were because a) I wouldn't spend so much time wondering about faxes, and b) I would know that we were all connected and this would make me feel less lonely sometimes.

art credit: Shannon Rankin, whose art freezes up my limbs for a little bit -- you can find her on flickr and etsy.

HEY,

2008-07-21T17:23:00.004-04:00

(Andreas Banderas)

holding the keys to the world

2008-07-13T17:46:00.010-04:00

Check out:

-This cool United States and selected Canadian provinces map with state/province postcards that Urban Outfitters made. Pretty awesome. My faves are South Dakota, Virginia, and Maine. Okay, Georgia's pretty great too. I find U.O. so intimidating that it's better just to admire from afar (like, the internet far).

-The new album by Girl Talk called Feed The Animals. Do you like music? Cool, i think you might like this.

-These !!! animal silhouette bookshelf dividers. How cool are these? Separate your fiction from your non-fiction from your Archie comics from your LSAT prep books. And by "separate," i mean just think about it and dream about it because the website isn't even in English and these cost 1,575 of something that might be yen.

Oh, p.s.

And just in case you ever felt that your future was a mystery; or that you were tired and energized, hungry and full, disappointed with yourself and at the same time productive, all conflict and at the same moment in complete peace, a living breathing dichotomy; or that all the sounds, scents, and tastes connected to your memories had disappeared -- here.

Photo credit: Jean Jullien. Check out his reflet installation for some really great stuff.

the Israeli sun soaked my skin

2008-07-10T20:33:00.000-04:00

Okay, my long, put-off, slightly avoided Israel post. It's not really what you think it'll be. I wanted to show you guys something really cool that caught my attention in Israel: the graffiti/street art. Maybe it's nothing special and you can easily find the same sort of stuff in Toronto, but the fact that some of it is in Hebrew makes it a sort of mystery. Plus, it's foreign. I think it's pretty awesome. Some of this will be my own translation (with help) so perhaps not 100% accurate.

Graffiti/Writing

"Today i understand why i cried when i was born."

fight the power

KNOW HOPE
(BROKEN HEARTS RECOLLECT
THEMSELVES WHILE DISTRACTED)

daughter of Israel, please dress modestly

Street Art

at the playground

a mural for Victory ice cream

A whale in the middle of the street in Tel Aviv!

What sparked this entire post is Israel's electrical box art. All electrical boxes are painted by artists in whatever way they'd like. Some of them are weird, some incredibly cool, and some mediocre. Each street is like a little art gallery. The following are all from Ashkelon.

Some Disney-themed ones near the playground:

My favourite favourite favourite: a stereo! Beautiful!

A differently-coloured lion sculpture just on the street!

I don't know if this really counts as street art, but even the fire hydrants in Israel look like pieces of art. Little aliens.

Mondays > Sundays

2008-06-16T01:39:00.007-04:00

This is one of the most spectacular things i've ever heard of. (via Said the Gramophone)

&&& on a somewhat unrelated note,
"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."
- Mahatma Gandhi

Overheard at the Wailing Wall

2008-06-07T18:53:00.005-04:00

Daughter: Daddy, why do the boys have so much more room on their side than the girls?

Dad: I don't know.

Daughter: My teacher says it's just a trick, that they actually have the same amount of room.

Dad: No, it's not a trick.

Daughter: Well, it's not fair, daddy. They should have the same amount of room.

Dad: No, it's not fair. It's not fair at all.

June 4th, 2008

Shalom m'Israel, havarim!

2008-06-05T10:41:00.008-04:00

I do have an Israel-related post to make, but i'll save it for a bit later. For now let me tell you of some other exciting things.

There is a band called Sigur Rós and they are Icelandic and also pretty beautiful (because the two are not mutually exclusive). For example (and you tell me if this isn't pretty beautiful), their 2002 album ( ) is sung entirely in Hopelandic, a made-up language that sounds phonetically like Icelandic. All the lyrics are nonsense and you, as a listener, have that difficult task of taking all the nonsense and making your own sense of what is being not said but felt. Am i making any sense? It's hard figuring out how to feel, you know?

Anyway, their new album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (English: "With a Buzz in our Ears We Play Endlessly") will be released soon (June 23rd) and things are looking pretty beautiful. Everything about this next album just seems so youthful and exciting and naked. Here is their pretty beautiful album cover:
They released their first single recently (with an accompanying video) and it's pretty beautiful as well. The song is called "Gobbledigook" (fittingly). Is the video porn? I don't really know... maybe. I will say that it's pretty beautiful, it makes me want to join a nudist hippie colony, and you should watch it and feel alive. However, do not watch it if you're at work, if your parents are in the room, or if you're reading this with friends who have previously accused you of being a skeevy perv (yeah, i'm looking at you, Debbie!) unless of course you are a rebel. Boy, that was a build-up. Okay, now go here and watch it.

If you are liking, please watch their music video for "Untitled #1 (Vaka)" because it's also pretty beautiful (in a different way) and it won Best Video at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 2003.

Secondly, i want to tell you about another band's awesome music video. The band is MGMT and the song is "Time to Pretend," which is an amazing song on its own and then the video comes along and blows it so far out of the water that it's moving around in space near Jupiter and moons. I mean, it's pretty fucked up in the most beautiful way. Warning: do not watch if you are prone to epileptic seizures.

Immukization made a mash-up of MGMT's "Time to Pretend" and Daft Punk's "One More Time" called "One More Time to Pretend." Listen, fall in love, and cross your fingers that Alfie's plays this come September.
Immukization - One More Time to Pretend (Daft Punk vs. MGMT) [mp3]

Credit goes to Stereogum for everything (in this post, not in my life).

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose

2008-05-17T10:12:00.013-04:00

Robin Bowman is a photojournalist who spent four years traveling in the states interviewing and photographing teenagers. Then she compiled all 414 portraits into one book called It's Complicated: The American Teenager. NPR posted a slideshow of 17 of the portraits and they're amazing. People can be so poignant. Okay, I am obsessed with teenage culture, but i think this is something everyone would like. Check it out here.

I'm not going to post about every threadless shirt i might like, but this one has to be brought to everyone's attention. I mean, it's a cat with a WHALE in its mouth. And it's called -- get this -- "I Got Another Whale." Oh!!! Hahaha!!! No, but seriously... this shirt is very funny with zero fancy stuff. And, if you can believe it, it used to be even cooler when it was just an idea. Wrap-around cat? Oh man. This shirt helped me make the important distinction between the idea of cats (i love cat ideas) and actual cats (ugh yuck).

Apparently, BBC does an April Fool's joke every year. 2008's is amazing:

Traffic.

Happy Mother's Day!

2008-05-11T15:58:00.003-04:00

Asher Sarlin (of Elephantitis of the Mind, mentioned in a post previously) made some hilarious Mother's Day cards a while back and if you're like me (incredibly last-minute and of the thought that $4.99 cards from Hallmark are a complete and utter waste of money) you will love them and print one out or make your own.

Find them here.

I probably should have posted this earlier in the week.

Work was incredibly boring,

2008-05-03T10:12:00.011-04:00

So i spent almost the entire 9 hours surfing the net.
I bring gifts:

If my wanderlust were as strong as it was earlier this year (or last summer!), looking at Michael Hughes' "Souvenirs" flickr set would most likely make me teary. But right now it just leaves me in awe. He uses little souvenirs (postcards, pencil cases, models, magnets, mugs, etc.) to displace actual buildings or scenery in all these amazing foreign places. Up above is this Eiffel Tower coloured model from which the lowest part fell off -- incredible. One more (and then you should go check out the album for yourself):

the Piazza in Sienna, Italy

Mr. Big - To Be With You [mp3]
Sounds like summer to me. Well, okay... summer of '92. But, more recently (this year!), Andrew Spencer made some "To Be With You" dance mixes that sound pretty awesome, the best of which you can listen to here. Incidentally, i miss Alfie's.

A really cool graffiti find in the UK: I am free.

Pretty productive day at work.

Friendship bracelets this summer

2008-05-01T00:53:00.014-04:00

Some lovely lovely lovely things:

1. Sarah Illenberger

Uh, yeah. Amazing.

2. Stranger photos. Maybe i'll do it one day this summer.

3. Discovery Channel commercial:

4. Pierre the penguin gets a wet suit made for him. Pierre was balding and his lack of feathers made him cold and unable to swim with his penguin friends. He would just shiver on the sidelines.

The other penguins accepted him, in case you were wondering (people were concerned they wouldn't).

"There are no plans to make him a matching surf board."

Oh, ha!

Enjoy, friends :)

Goodbye, second year!

2008-04-29T14:43:00.013-04:00

So, i saw this and knew i had to include it in an entry (and then a billion other blogs did before i decided to sit down and write this):

1,500 undergrad students in Belgium set out to break the world record for Mentos-in-Coke explosions. And they did (while resembling members of a cult). I can't seem to embed the wonderful video, so watch it here.

I wish we had celebrated the end of second year with a sticky Coke fight.

i can see the beautiful weather from the library windows

2008-04-21T17:18:00.012-04:00

Everyone with a sense of humour should check out Elephantitis of the Mind, a webcomic by Asher Sarlin. His comics made studying for exams very hard yesterday. Unfortunately, he hasn't updated in forever (actually, for my academic future's sake that might be a blessing in disguise) but the archives go back all the way to 2004, so there's a lot to look at. Particularly great for anyone with exams coming up, urgent priorities, and/or deadlines. Here are a couple of my favourites (oh man, it's so hard to choose just a couple):
and this one, titled "now here is a story all about how..."

Melodrama is quite nice sometimes. Like someone saying, "think I wanna die if you don't stay" or "will you ever know what you do to me?" It's so pathetic and pleading and vulnerable and such an extreme that it's actually kind of endearing. Imagine someone saying that to you so casually like that's just the way it is and how can i say it more plainly. So you just have to accept it.
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Think I Wanna Die [mp3]

Some things that i shouldn't keep all to myself:

2008-04-02T23:15:00.014-04:00

David Horvitz has a bunch of things for sale that he will mail you. If you click on the link and read on (and you should), you'll get past what initially seems like egotism and find him endearing and creative and someone looking to escape. Also, he's an artist and all of this is art and that puts a smile on my face. Of course, i'm in no financial position to go donating to some of his cooler pursuits, but i certainly wish i were. My favourite:

If you give me $250 I will read the Little Prince in front of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in the middle of a work day. I will send you photograph documentation of this. (or: if you give me $1000 I will buy as many copies of the Little Prince as I can and give them away to people leaving the New York Stock Exchange after a days work)
Andrea Dezsö's subversive embroidery for her "Lessons From My Mother" series is pretty amazing. Each embroidered sheet and canvas is a particular familial superstition, accompanied by an illustration. Some of them are weird, some ridiculous, some sad. Click on all 7 links on the left (after the word 'Embroidery') and check them all out. Unfortunately, some of my favourite ones are the least legible in the photos. But just so know, the one on page 6, bottom middle is my favourite. It says, "My mother claimed that a woman's legs are so strong that no man can separate them if she doesn't let him."

Bell is a band that consists of Moscow-born Olga Bell and some friends. The music is pretty and sweeping and starts with some whispering before bursting into a bunch of sound and light. "On our way, on our way, on our way to/build a tower so the tallest peak can reach you/it'll take us hours, hours, hours." I am specifically talking about "Chunk," which you should right-click & save-as here:
Bell - Chunk [mp3]

Also: a picture of George Dubya made entirely out of porn magazine cut-outs. Created by Jonathan Yeo.

I would love a lion, thanks

2008-03-23T13:59:00.028-04:00

The two gentlemen pictured above purchased the lion cub sandwiched in between them at a department store in the late 60s. His name was Christian and he lived with them in an apartment attached to a furniture store in London, England. Look at him, sitting on a couch! (Also, look at them: this photo looks like it should be an Oasis album cover, or something.) Christian was incredibly affectionate and incredibly adorable. Should i repeat that he is a lion?

Man, look at Christian being all beautiful! Christian loved to play football, watch television, and rummage through drawers, just like a human being! After a year he grew too big to be kept as a pet and John Rendall and Ace Berg (the two friends who bought Christian) tried to figure out what to do. Through a stroke of luck, they managed to get in touch with George Adamson, who spent his time rehabilitating lions raised in captivity back into the wild, among other lion-related things.

Christian was sent to Kenya with George Adamson to join a pride of lions. Despite an initial struggle (Christian knew nothing about lion etiquette), he adjusted beautifully and had lion cubs of his own and disappeared for a long time. A year later, when John and Ace contacted George Adamson to get an update on how Christian was doing and whether they could visit, Adamson warned John and Ace that visiting would be completely futile; Christian had adjusted to a new way of life and wouldn't remember them at all. John and Ace flew to Kenya anyway.

Here's a video of them in Kenya, a year after releasing Christian into the wild. Watch Christian's jaw drop when he recognizes them:

There is a movie (Christian the Lion at World's End) and a book based on Christian's story. I think it was released on DVD in 2006.

Anyway, i just wanted to post about this because the reunion video is incredible and Christian was a such a beautiful cub and the entire story is really nice to think about. I hope your hearts were sufficiently warmed.

Credit to Deb for introducing me to the video (& story) and this newspaper article for the info & photos. I definitely recommend the article; it's freakin' called "Christian, the lion who lived in my London living room" (!!). Are you sold?

My Romanticization of the Kingston Summer

2008-03-11T02:19:00.010-04:00

Okay, so i have a bike and it has a little basket in the front of it (preferably pink) and i ride this bike in the warm summer sun to Pan Chancho's, where i pick up a French baguette and place it in my bike basket. Then i ride to the lake, the baguette smell wafting through the air as i cruise, a breeze blowing the hair out of my face. When i get to the lake, there are others there and a picnic blanket laid out. I throw my bike down beside the other bikes (metal clashing noise!) on the grass, so green and alive, and sit down with my friends, one of which brought the picnic blanket and a knife, another the butter. And we sit and lie near the lake, eating buttered pieces of baguette with buskers and/or town troubadours playing guitar and harmonica nearby. We laugh at jokes and talk about our weddings and who will be invited and we gossip and make plans to have a seance and squint up at one another because of the sun. Then it starts to get kind of chilly and dark and we decide to call it a day and go home. We're only wearing t-shirts and shorts, after all. So we gather our things and one friend wraps the picnic blanket around his/her shoulders and arms and someone else catches a glimpse of the sky, which is full of stars and so vast, and points it out to the others and we all stand there staring up.

(photo by El Andariego)