...My grandmother is a terrible driver....

As she gets older its because she can't see past her windshield... but she has always been a bad driver. It's a running joke in my family that she has a magic force field around her car. I think its because she has always driven a lexus. No one wants to hit a Lexus.

But she's always been a bad driver. And as much as it scares me I love her for it, because my Grammy is most herself when she's cruising.

It's hard to imagine. But driving is one of the only times I think she feels a real independence. She becomes full of purpose, destination, activity. She offers me candy, water, new books, a challah. She caters to your every need. All the while singing along to am radio.

And when I am not clutching the dash or wincing at the sight of crossing pedestrians, I sing with her.

My favourite distraction is when she talks about the neighbourhood she grew up in - My great-grandfather bought a little house on Rusholme. She was born there, raised there. She got dressed in her wedding dress in that house. Its such a part of her. I live on the third floor of a house up the street from it. Its so pretty. With these tall bushes out in front.

There is this one great photo I've seen, of my Grammy standing outside that house, with her sister Toby.

But even more than that picture I feel like I know it because of the way she talks about it. And sometimes when I walk down the street to the streetcar I think about how its so much the same as it must have been then. The houses are all old. The trees are so old they must have been tall even in the 40s.

Its so great to hear about the Boyd gang who stuck up the bank that is now the Starbucks at the corner of dovercourt and college with bandanas tied over there faces. It really happened, although probably not in the black an white silent film way it does when I picture it.

I hear a lot of little tidbits that from Grammy.

Like here's a great one. Right next to where the Royal Theatre on college, where the OMNI radio office is. That used to be a chicken yard. Where burds would run around. And you would point to the one you wanted. And they would kill it for you. I have always wondered whether it cost extra to have it plucked.

I wish I could see it. Sometimes I try to imagine it. Its a good way to calm oneself when hurtling through a red light.

I can't see it though. Her world. Not really. Because the trees are older. 50 years older. And there's a starbucks and a multicultural radio station. And the internet and feminism, and facebook and Arab Spring and pop psychology. And I just have all that in my development. It must be so strange to see something over the course of 80 years. What is everything to me is just such a small part of her experience. she sees things as what they were, they way they aren't anymore, but were, to her.

She comes from a world where what was right was to come second, to put my needs behind others. To see it as a badge of honour, a matter of pride, to make sure I could put myself second and never let anyone want for anything, or underappreciate what I had.

I do love her for it. I continue have to shake of the feeling its my duty to "free" her from it. Show her what its like to indulge your indulgences, fill your cravings and say exactly what the fuck you are feeling whenever the fuck you are feeling it. Its really not - my job - that is.

Anyone who knows me will tell you I have a little to learn in the self-restraint department. I don't disagree with them.

I just wish we could meet in the middle somewhere's. There is something to be said for modesty, but sometimes you can't beat following your gut, and just givin'er. But I guess she does have her moments of that to. Like I said.... she's never more free than when she is in the car. So I guess I will just shut up and ride. Even if I have to bite my tongue.

I will shut my eyes, hope that she gets a conservative tester at the DMV next time, let ol Blue eyes soothe me and try to imagine how much you would have to pay me to pluck chickens as an after school job.

... manifest....

I had the opportunity to take part in a Wiccan Full Moon Ritual tonite. Totally outside my box. After having participated I can say that, like any organized system of belief, it may not be entirely for me. But I am also happy to say that many aspects and rituals from the ceremony spoke to me. I can see the natural way that life presents itself to me as it unfolds each day in the practices of the wonderful women I met tonite.

As a part of the ritual i had to pull a Goddess card. And I am not embarrassed to say, I owned a pack of these. I fully believe in one's ability to subconsciously direct ones world, and to connect with a larger energy. It the best decription i can give of fate, or better yet, propinquity.

I also fully believe that interpretation is key when it comes to these things. And it is built into the Wiccan belief system. Everything is tied to the way in which you interpret the symbols and to the world around you. It is your energy that affects the world around you. It may sound very "new age", but could anything be more true?

You receive back what you put into the world.

Thus I will not be able to fully explain why drawing Eireen from the deck meant so much to me. Not without admitting much more than I am comfortable sharing with the Internet (or more specifically the random person who is bored enough to have read this random blog this far down). But suffice it to say that it was perfect for me today.... and most days.

Meet Eireen, who represents Peace and Calm:

Goddess Eireen – Peace- There is no need to worry, as everything is working out beautifully. Even though appearances may seem chaotic, I assure you that a higher plan is in action. This all loving power carrying you and supporting you completely.Your gratitude attracts even more blessing into your life.

  

Even when we feel bogged down by life we have to remember a few things. 

One we are all human so we will all experience the human qualities of over thinking, worrying, and analyzing things over and over again. This process is really not helpful, over thinking just leads us to be depressed and then leads us to feel negative and then we bring more of that into our lives. 

The second thing to remember is “guess what we are all here to learn, grow, and perfect our souls!” So part of the reason that we go through hardships is to do just that mission that we have all come here to do. I mean how could you perfect your soul if everything always was perfect all the time?? How would you know great joy if you never felt any pain?  How would you appreciate and love laughter if you had never shed a tear in sorrow? 

Third - yes it is hard to be away from the Source/Goddess/God. When we are away from home that loving bond is very missed. What we have to remember is that, that love is truly all around us, in us and with us, everyday.

Spend some time to day in Gratitude. Look at the positive things you have in your life and let the rest go!

... my hero...

I may have mentioned one or two times before that William Gibson is the closest thing to a god that this agnostic little jew has known.... Seriously, the way that man sees the world, and foresees it, it blows my mind....

And I think I may have just locked into the secret of the whole thing in this interview he did with Amazon.com:

"Amazon.com : We have your original proposal for the book up on our site, and the thing that struck me immediately was that none of the characters you discuss ended up, at least with the specifics that you give them at the time, in the final book. I'm just curious how you progress from one group of characters to another as you're planning the book or writing it.
Gibson: Well, I think the key thing there is that I never really believe in the proposal. 

Loves it....

No one ends up what they start out to be... The key is to not tie yourself too much to what you claimed in the beginning...

By the way, you can read the whole interview here on Gibson's website.... which you should check out anyway, cuz he just kicks all kinds of ass


***** i am adding to this post again... I did it twice already, and now it feels like cheating not to admit i jkeep coming back and adding more stuff... But I forgot how much I love this man... so many things out of his mouth are the ones i wished i had said first (if I had ever done anything worth asking me my opinion on these matters, anyway). This little gem is from his blog

"It’s unlikely that meeting a writer of fiction will get me any closer to the writer’s work, in my experience. The opposite effect is sometimes noted. Writers of fiction, as I understand them, are writers because they can get closer to you *as marks on paper* than they can any other way. They cannot sit and tell you. If they could tell you, then why would they write? They cannot explain. They do not know, that way. They know transiently, at best, in the act of marking paper."

... for the love of beards...

I have been following this blog ever since i first got a reader... in fact, it was the very first blog i ever added to my reader....

I love that she's been writing about, collecting images and even making beard crafts for almost 2 years...

loves it!

ps. if you want to secure my undying love or one whopper of a good mood, get me one of her yarn beards... i so want one

... the hunt....

I first read this article for a first year class. Actually it was this article that led me to consider cultural theory as a degree.

Someone reminded me about it today. I was talking about 'coohunting'. Not the website (no matter how much i love it), but the profession, marketing practice that was popular pre-internet. Searching through streets and stores and skate parks and dark bars for the people whoknew what was 'up' and then ripping it from their hands (or off their feet, their backs, their bookshelves and cd racks) and selling it to the public... forcing the alterna-kids to find the 'next big thing'.

It got me to thinking about whether that is possible, or even worthwhile in the exponentially faster trend cycle of the internet age... and so I went to search for it online. To remind myself what exactly that article said that made me so curious about spotting meaning in social symbol, and the process by which things become "things"... the journey of a real-world meme. and whether that process which so enchanted me a decade ago could be applied to the world i live in now...

.... and after some googling to avoid paying for a New Yorker Subscription to access their online archives i realized it was written by Malcolm Gladwell... The Canadian-raised author and theorist who had his 15 minutes when his books Blink, and the Tipping Point became the hottest things to pick up in the airport before a transatlantic flight, or a long weekend at the cottage. I always resisted, even refused, to read these books... for the same reason I hate Michael Moore movies. They have all the right ideas, but men like Gladwell and Moore make it so easy to fire off empty catch phrases without any content, research or thought... It propagandizes ideas which I actually believe to be true, worthwhile and useful. But they are never implemented or even studied because people would rather have the cliche than the lesson. It pisses me off that no matter how much I hate the Tipping Point for its Celestine-Prophecy-freakonomics-michael-moore-fly-by-night-nyt-bestseller list popularity Gladwell has a point...

I just think he pretty much summed it up in this article.... in 1997.

What does Gladwell think about trending in the internet age? I should probably read his book.

Its ironic that the only reason i dont want to read it is because everyone else loved it so much....

... a lesson in radio...

in my last semester of university i took an independent study course in radio editing. i did it with a friend, and we had a professor, Brian Morel. brian was a tenured professor without a track. the university had slowly cut off his courses as they transitioned from a hands-on to a theoretical approach to Cultural Studies, an already quirky and tiny faculty in a school putting its dollars into Scientific Research.

Brian was the crazy uncle left to quietly amuse himself. officially, he was responsible for the summer arts programme and tiny symposiums hosted by the department. but mostly he just hung around the cultural studies building, acting as unofficial caretaker, affable host and occasional mentor to the wackiest of grad students. The buiilding itself was a saggy townhome that teetered precariously on the steepest part of Peel Street. There was a screening room on the first floor (the only part of the building still used for any form of actual teaching), a few offices on the second floor for associate proffesors not valued enough for a space on the campus proper, and on the third was Brians lair. his office, playground and kingdom.

this is where i took perhaps the most applicable and useless course of my post-secondary education.

For the sake of clarity i would like to say upfront that i have never used the fine skill of splicing tape i learned on that third floor... and the lessons on delivery certainly didnt help me out during my audition as an audio book narrator for the CNIB. but Brian taught me how to enjoy yourself in a professional situation that is... shall we say, less than a balls-out marathon of tasks and deadlines.

Brian knew that two young graduates of a cultural theory degree in the new millenium had little need for the skills he excelled in. the antiquated processes of the CBC in the 70s, the reel to reel editing and radio documentary. but those lessons were a background to our true education. Above all else Brian stressed finding fun and lightheartedness in your daily work, curiousity and passionate engagement with whatever the task at hand.

one day my friend and i found ourselves literally pawing through a box of dress up clothes, making fun on the third floor, to fill time and engage in the play of radio drama. i learned the number one rule of interviews - to ask the next question, always ask - during long afternoon talks with him in his office, learning about his crazy life, seeing his photographs, listening to gossip about other professors.

i use those skills all the time, every day. ask any graduate with an arts degree. no one cares what you know or think about McLuhan. and the ability to reason your way through the most difficult of subjective hypotheses in 50 pages apperently does not prove that you can run the department. things become cliche because they are so often thecase, you simply must pay your dues. as a result you will spend a lot of years with tasks too simple and a lot of time on your hands. This is a simple fact, but not necessarily to your detriment, as brian was to teach us. reaching the other end of the spectrum, he was in his twilight years, constantly beating back his retirement in perhaps the one job that cant make him go away. he loved working, no matter how ridiculous he looked to the rest of us. and he taught me how to love my work, no matter what it happens to be.

he taught me that the best thing you can do is be curious.... about your job, your company, the processes and people involved in what you do. you need to make a life for yourself in your job. not make a job your life mind you, but the exact opposite.

Learn, whatever you can.... and care about what that means. make sure you have a few laughs, enjoy what you are doing every day. even if it wastes a little time and indulges the most childish of impulses. as long as you are engaged and aware of your function - your responsibilities, the fun can come in the spaces where there is room for it.

you probably don't think this was a skill that could be applied, or at least, not a learned skill. but Brian taught me about finding your niche in the world, a world that doesnt always make room for you to shine in all your capable glory. He was waiting for his moment, and finding value in the time he had and the space it afforded him to indulge his curiousity, his need to learn about and experience life. the opportunity it afforded him to stretch himself, to enjoy himself while remaining responsible and finding worth in the work he did do, the few places where he retained his value to the bureaucratic machine that ran the University.

he was dead serious about his work, but he also loved his life.

mmmm...... bacon......

I love bacon... apparently so does the rest of the world... as it has prevailed despite its health risks and supine beginning...

As a jew, I am not really supposed to like bacon, or even know whether i dislike it or not, as its cloven hooves makes it forbidden. But I love all things bacon...

However, even the most kosher of jews could enjoy this:

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=43285042

... yup... thats just about exactly it...

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz:

"'Let's do it," Bruno said, and immediately my stomach tightened. Why? A strange physical reaction was going on inside me. As soon as my idea was embraced, I no longer liked it. It now seemed to be a stupid idea, really awful. I liked it much better when it was in my head all alone. Now that it was going out in the world, I would be responsible for something that I no longer had any control of.

This was my first of a lifetime of battles with ideas: the battle of which ones to air and which to bury, burn, destroy"

I so totally get that... I have been losing that battle for years now.

Urban Adventurist: Freight Train, Each CAr Looks the Same

I was so so close to not walking at all today. But I really wanted to test out the new app I downloaded on my Android... Plus I have a coat so warm it would make a Yeti jealous... and I needed to do something today, it was gorgeous and sunny out.

The route was a little bit of a mash up of the

high park and junction routes I have been doing recently. Perfect test for MyTracks. Below is the result of

my wanderings, and the testament to the marker setting on the GPS tracking system. It may have started military, but like every other technology worth its stars and stripes, its now suited to rambling and pointless thoughts and observations. Long live web 2.0

View Freight Train... Each Car Look The Same in a larger map

If you are that bored, you can click through on the markers to see the inanities noted in each spot along the journey...

I remember in the comic books I read as a kid, a million double digests filled with archie and jugheads hijinx, there was this one thing they would used to do. Its such a faint memorie i almost feel like I am making it up. But I remember they would have these pages that would be just one panel - an aerial view of a room or neighbourhood - and there would be a dotted line following the path of mischief and destruction that L'il Jinx or the family circus kids or whoever would beat through the world. I feel like MyTracks is the modern version of that....

I love it for the same reason I love the stitched digital photographic works of Alain Paiement, like this one below:

Parages (pane mundial)
Lambada C-Print Mounted on Diabond
48"x83"
2004

Just makes me wish for the ten millionth time that I was artistic, and not just creative.

Creative - Artistic = eccentric

(by the way, theres a marker titled "Rods of steel" that referred to a picture that for some reason didnt show up.... its below... imagine the gams a girl would have living in any of those houses!)

Urban Adventurist: The Junction

The Junction is the Bermuda triangle of Toronto. Everyone has heard of it, not many have been there. The truth is, most people have no idea exactly where it is. And once you go there, there is no coming back. People disappear into the Junction, never to be seen from again. It was armed with only this knowledge that I left for my adventure.

(Ed Note*** This is in no way meant to be any sort of a travel guide. It chronicles the journey from my house to this place, and includes anything of interest I see along the way. If you were planning to use this to plan your day trip.... well... don't do that. Not unless you were planning on leaving from and returning to my house)View Urban Adventurist: The Junction in a larger mapI got off to a little bit of a rough start, heading straight north from my house and ending up in a little bit of a sketchy neighbourhood just north and east of Bloor and Dufferin. Urban Adventures need to happen in a place you feel safe getting lost and wandering around in. When you have your phone out and 9-1 dialed (finger hovering over the last 1), you know you have to find a new street to walk on.

But I quickly got my groove back by hopping onto Wallace heading west. 2 minutes later I stumbled upon the

watertower at the corner of Ward and Wallace. It doesn't look like much. But any local tech geek worth his facebook status knows that this abandoned building is the home to the new office of Ubisoft. Its pretty cool that they found a space this big in a building that has some history behind it. No

t sure what it was in its heyday, but it brings a very industrial age to mind. Which is funny, because I guess animators and game designers are just the factory workers of the new millenium. You need a TONNE of them to get out any mass of product, performing repetitive and highly specialized craft skills.

These guys just get more than minimum wage, and have drum sets and pool tables in the break room.

This office is going to go a loooong way to bringing more peeps into this hood, and lending some cache and importance to the drive to name this area. You can check out the issue and discussion thus far at fuzzyboundaries.ca

After Ubisoft I really feel into the swing. Its fun to come to a corner and make a last minute decision on your direction. If you sort of blank out and follow your nose you stumble on some great stuff. Next on my list was Yasi's Place. I had been there once before with a friend I love and havent seen in FOREVER, but never quite new where i was. Now I know, its the corner of Wallace and Campbel. And its just about the cutest thing ever. The menu is stellar (and vegetarian friendly, for those of you who tend to the herbivoric) and it just s

eems like a great place to cuddle up with a book on a bleak day.

That was not, however, on my agenda, so I trundled on along Wallace, reaching the end and the greatest pedestrian bridge i have discovered in Toronto in all my 28-some-odd years. Apparently it has been there s

ince at least 1932, as this picture shows. Which is very cool. I really dig that about these walks, and Toronto in general. I am always able to unearth some history. Don't get me wrong, I know I am no archaeological excavator. But stuff like this, and the water tower at Ward reminds me that there was a time BEFORE, stories and people that are all but forgotten in the new world of neighbourhoods we think we are discovering for the first time. I mean, we all talk about how we are "discovering" or "introducing" Leslieville, or The Junction or whatever. But its been around forever.

Anyway, up and over I went, and saw a bit of the Junctions greenery from overhead right before I plunged back into it.

The next twenty or thirty minutes was really just pointless wandering and real estate lusting. I have finally reached a point in my life where people are actually acquiring property. Its weird, to have friends that OWN houses... I am so so so far away from it. but still, it makes me look, and lust, at houses. H

ouses with big windows, houses with too many stairs to the front door, houses with driveways, houses with porches, and balconies, and turrets and additions.... By the time the bank will trust me enough with a mortgage (and it will be awhiiiiiiiiile) I will be ready to go.

I think I need to live near a park. I grew up a block away from one, and I loved it. And I want my (future and entirely hypothetical) kids to have one. The one in this neighbourhood is pretty cool. Baird Park is your typical, mid-city space, open with a playground and a wading pool. But it also happens to be the home to the West Toronto Lawn Bowling League, which is pretty fucking awesome. There was one in the park near my house as a kid. I never played. But always associate the sport with childhood. Maybe I will try it out this ummer. I think its like bocci ball.... but I have to get together some whites.

From there I was pretty much officially in The Junction proper, signified by the development of any historic space into lofts. I counted 5 churches in a 2 block radius around Anette and High Park Rd, 3 were being condo-fied.

And when I reached the main drag at Dundas I found many many businesses accomodating the furnishing of these new lofts by young hipsters in the style to which they have become accustomed (and will demand, cheap)

Mjolk (there is an umlaut supposed to be in there somewhere) is a kickin' design shop at 2959 Dundas St W. It is way out of price range (signifying its quality) but has stuff I would trade my left arm for (signifying my taste). Its only been open since December, but the kids are discovering it fast. The place was packed. I went in thinking i found the hot Junction bar... turns out, it was just shopping day on Dundas.

Smash has been around a little longer, I am told. But its definitely not tired or 'done' yet. Smash is a store and gallery that specializes in salvage and restoration of kooky and kitsch. They were clsoing up when I was walking by. But if you get there soon, you will be able to see the nose print i left from smooshing my face up against the glass to peer inside at themounds of treasures stacked to the ceiling. A quick run across the street will show you a twin set of smudgy nose prints as the stores "warehouse" is a glass front across the way. Its like eye candy treasure for a design freak like yours truly, and definitely worth the trip to the Junction even to stare through the windows at.

The last place on the journey, before officially heading for home was for a much needed caffeine jolt. And if I was judging a neighbourhood by its coffee shops alone. The Junction would be worth its weight in fair trade Colombian. My cuppa came from Cool Hand of A Girl, a cute shop that is bare cept for the things it needs to deliver sweet sweet caffeine rushes to my bloodstream.

So thats it, my day in the Junction. Well, if you take a look at the map you will see I doubled back and around a bit before heading for home. This was completely unintentional... Its just I had absolutely no idea what direction I was headed in, until I happened upon the West Toronto Lawn Bowling clubhouse, from the exact same direction I had encountered it the first time.

I have a theory on this, because I am generally REALLY REALLY REALLY good with direction.... like I NEVER get lost. But when Dundas curves up the entire grid pattern that Toronto is built on swivels around. Everything going south is now west, everything east is north... its discombobulating.

But maybe thats why, when people go into The Junction, they so rarely come out again....

... there may be something to be said....

"His anger made him suddenly sober. His whole life had been a fight to attain the impossible. Son of a mother who deserted him when he was three. Father, an Irish prizefighter who dies from a lucky punch from a third-rate kid. A life growing up on his own in [1930's] South Philadelphia. Enlisting in the Air Force at seventeen because anything seemed better than the world he knew. Then the war... being in the midst of it... seeing guys you lived with and slept with catch a bullet at your side... wondering why they got it and not you. They had families who were waiting for them at home. Families and sweethearts who wrote long letters and sent food packages. And gradually the idea hits you that maybe they got your bullet because there was something back there, waiting to be done... by you. and it's your job to go back and do it. He fele he had been given luck - luck to accomplish the impossible. And he had to make good so that the the guy who got his bullet would undestand. he wasn't religious, but he believed in paying his dues. That had always been his philosophy, and it still was"
- "Once is Not Enough" by Jacqueline Sussann

... now don't get me wrong. I am against the continued presence of the military in the middle east. I would like to find a peaceful two-state solution in Israel... and I think George W Bush is a bumbling imbecile with the luckiest swing in American politics... but there may be something to armed service if men were taught to think liek this....

Yes, war is always a nightmare, reaching back to however far there has been a record of how man can brutalize his neighbour and probably further. But somewhere on a larger scale there was always a sense of boundary. created by technology, religion or morals, probably a mix of all three, it kept civility in the pursuit for power... somewhere in the 20th century that was obliviated... and now there is only fear, and dirty plays, and sucker punches...

not sure why this popped out at me today when i was reading, but it did... anyway... back to our regularily scheduled program of fluff,oddities, narcissim and good tunes... i promise

... the jukebox conundrum...

last friday I was faced witha jukebox... and I froze... it isn't that I don't love music, know music... but in the moment... I couldn't remember a SINGLE song that I liked... not one... so I ended up picking "A Little Less Conversation" by Elvis Presley... the Oceans 11 remix.... Not that that isn't a fun song... I like it...

But if jukebox choices are to truly represent you... as Nick Hornby says... its what you like, not what you ARE like... than it isn't the song I would choose to communicate my self to the world....

And then I threw my back out... So I spent a lot of time on my back with a heating pad, staring at the ceiling with nothing to do but listen to Classic Rock on 181.fm The Eagle on my internet stereo thingamajig...

so I made a list of SONGS THAT ARE AWESOME... there was 1 rule. I had to hear the song played... If I heard it, and it was awesome... I wrote it down. For those who care to judge me by my musical taste but cannot decipher my upside down scrawl - Here's the list:

Don't Think Twice - Bob Dylan

Can I Get a Witness - Marvin Gaye

Do It Again - Steely Dan

Changes - David Bowie

Keep On Rocking Me Baby - Steve Miller Band

Tiny Dancer - Elton John

In The Air Tonight - Phil Collins

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Pat Benatar

Sweet Melissa - Allman Bros

Everyday People - Sly and the family Stone

Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen

Beast Of Burden - Rolling Stones

Any Way You Want it - Journey

Midnight Rambler - Rolling Stones

Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

Saturday Night's Alright - Elton John (nearly disqualified for its recent high frequency repetitious presence in my life currently... but it still kinda kicks)

Copperhead Road - Steve Earle

The Break Up Song (They Don't Write 'Em) - Greg Kihn Band

Teenage Wasteland - The Who (Nearly disqualified for its relationship to CSI Miami and my nemesis David Caruso... but it kinda kicks)

Mother - Pink Floyd

Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen

... Les Collines...

So there's this chick that writes this website... http://www.thecherryblossomgirl.com.. I found it once when I was google image searching for images of cherry blossoms.

But I have since become majorly addicted. Its like the Parisian version of the Hills, except without the annoying plots, annoying characters and, best of all, no Spencer Pratt...

... Just pretty girls in pretty clothes, living a seeming life of leisure, and looking wicked cute doing it...

Plus she's French, which automatically gives her wicked street cred on all things awesome... mais non?

... Number9Dream...

Its funny... whenever i think about what i would do if i ever won the lottery - and chances are slim, i don't buy tickets - I don't think about the usual things first... oh no... no car, or dream vacation or triple a hockey team fill my head... i have always always always started with this fantasy...

From page 210 - Number9Dream by David Mitchell:

"I assume my tour is complete, but notice a slatted cupboard door at the end of the landing. Its knob twizzles uselessly, but it swings open anyway. Its shelves are not shelves, but steep stairs. A knotted rope hangs down to help you haul yourself up. On the third step my head hits the ceiling, which shifts. I push, and a crack of daylight opens as the plyboard trapdoor swings up. I was way wrong. This is better than a hiding place. I emerge into a library/study with the highest book population density i have ever come across. book walls, book towers, book avenues, book side streets. book spillages, book rubble. paperback books, hardback books, atlases, manuals, almanacs. nine lifetimes of books. enough books to build an igloo to hide in. the room is sentient with books. mirrors double and cube the books. A Great Wall of China quantity of books. Enough books to make me wonder if i am a book too. Light comes in through a triangular window. A sort of wickerwork light shade hangs down. Apart from the bookcases and sagging shelves the only item of furniture is an old-fashioned writing bureau with square holes to lose papers and bills in. My grandmother had the same sort. Still does I guess. On the writing bureau are two piles of paper - one white and blank as starched shirts, the other a manuscript laid in a special lacquer tray."

***********

On my FB profile I say that a book becomes one of my favourites when reading it feels like remembering rather than discovering... reading this was exactly what i meant by that... someone else found the words to describe something from my wildest imagination.

good book, worth a read...

You will like this book if you liked: Lost in Translation (sofia coppola); Ransom (jay mcinerney); anything by william gibson; pizzicato five

...hug and roll....

.... if you are of a certain age you have for shizz seen this clip....

It was a not-so-elegant to the age old question "but what about me?" when it comes to sleep and your special someone....

now, I do not have this problem at the moment.... (oh that how to accomodate a guy was my problem... i have enough trouble meeting one I even want to bring home) .... but a twitter exchange with Flashpunk this morning brought the longstanding problem up... and if i am being honest... i have some thoughts on the matter....

Its not that I don't enjoy a good cuddle... I like it as much as the next girl (well, maybe not as much... but i like it just fine, thank you very much). But I reserve it for naps, rainy afternoons or the afterglow (that lasts about 30 minutes tops....)

As far as sleeping goes.... I do it alone... I am the Lone Dreamer.... you can be my Tonto... but you need your own saddle. Maybe its because I move around in my sleep.... Maybe its because on occasion I have been known to unconsciously fart in the night (and no one wants you pressed up against that).... maybe its because on vacations as a kid my sister and I had to share a bed, and that girl is a KICKER!

But whatever the reasons... I don't see why you should go to all that trouble to sleep uncomfortably... because it always is... no matter whether its spooning, the shoulder roll,  the hug'n'roll or the superman... its never as comfortable as whatever position you end up in on your own... known as the pragmatic approach at the end of this video.

I have to say love one you're with... but there is no need to invest in the Love Mattress.... no matter how cool a design idea it may be....

... Stone Fox on the interweb....

So, back in college, when I still entertained the thought that I would one day be a great filmmaker, I used to make stuff....

My friend Zayna and I ran the campus tv station, TVMcGill, which by the way, is awesome to this day (due to my legacy, i'm sure)

Anyway, we use to misappropriate the resources to create our own projects... and this one time, we made a music video for a friends band, by editing it for three straight days during the run up to finals in our last year of school. Holed up in the student union for 72 hours we thought we were creating genius. we were actually creating this:




Now, about five years later, I found it on an afternoon of youtube googling phrases from my personal histopry to see what comes up.... I have absolutely no idea how it got there... as the master miniDV and Beta tapes are somewhere in a box in my apartment collecting dust with my books by Kant and Derrida. But I am happy it did.

Maybe not so my viral internet fame can begin, but definitely because watching it brought back the memories of making it, and those were some of the best days in all the ones I have spent toiling away in the movie industry.

And so I thought I might provide a little how to guide on how to make a horrible music video and guarantee a locked in love for filmmaking and future internet embarassment

DO: Create a dummy production company and change your cell phone answering machine to reflect it, thus giving you a home base to secure corporate sponsorship, thus ensuring you do not run up your parents credit card to make your masterpiece

DO NOT: Answer your cell after you have started drinking at night, or before you aare fully awake the next morning, inspiring your sponsor contact to ask "are you really a professional producer? are you a student?" and causing you to have to do a lot of grovelling and finance most of the video with the credit card your parents don't know about (yet)

DO: Figure out your concept and storyboards early, stick to it and follow through.

DO NOT: come up with a narrative that no one is EVER going to understand like... say... I don't know... a guy who wakes up on the roof in a kiddy pool and can't remember where he was or what he was doing the previous evening, causing him to recall it in flashbacks as he walk the streets of Montreal, only to realize that he had stolen the band's mojo and all the flashbacks were actually the aforementioned band chasing him through the streets, and when he finally puts it altogether he just happens to have mentioned the bands practice space, where they are currently practicing in pajamas, causing yet another chase down the block..... Trust me, you will get it, it won't be clear to anyone else.


DO: Prepare as much of the wardrobe, makeup, props, locations, extras, etc in advance

DO NOT: back down from any last minute challenges or changes. Some that we dealt with here were:
-you aren't actually allowed to shoot in the montreal metro, which we did... so it was my job to distract any and all approaching subway cops while the band shot with the DP. I played stupid lost anglophone about 15 times, french subway cops are mean
-The purple footie pajamas for one of the band members were too bright through the camera, we threw them in a mud puddle, then into a drier at the local laundromat, and they were good to go
-we had NO shots of the dickies clothes or logo when they finally came through with the funds on our last day of shooting... we just went back and reshot some dickie's beauty shots... corporate selling out was ingrained in us early
-we couldn't actually get our hands on a smoke machine to create a "smoke rising from an open bag" to signify the bands mojo... instead we had friends take turns hauling down smokes and breathing out the plumes through a hose we inserted througha hole in the bottom of a knapsack.... we killed a lot of brain cells for our art

DO: Always keep food and snacks on hand to keep everyone happy during the day

DO NOT: Let your main talent get loaded and show up 15 minutes before his call time... The coffee and breakfast burritos you have on hand will sober him up and entice him enough to shoot, but you will end up having to make him look that haggard and hungover for the rest of the shoot

DO: do this... its a once in a lifetime opportunity to be this self-indulgent and have this much fun with almost no consequences....

DO NOT: take yourself to seriously.... in the end, the only thing that will happen is a few hundred people seeing it on youtube a half-decade later, just have fun with it.

... how did i miss four-eyed monsters for three whole years?....

This is the best thing....

From now on it will be the only way I date on the internet... These people decided that, rather than send back and forth lame messages, or meet (she was too shy) they would communicate artistically.

Super fun, right?

I have never gone in for the whole online dating thing... Not that I don't think it works. I just don't think it works for me. I used to make fun of it outright... no go... I did an internship after my first year of university at a PR Firm that was working on the rebranding campaign of webpersonals to lavalife.com. Webpersonals was the Worldwide Interweb extension to the company that runs those party chat line dating things.... you know, the ones with the really lame commercials... yeah, they own lavalife... or they did then. So everyone in the office had to sign up... This was back in 2000. Y2K was still fresh in everyone's mind, People still knew what compuserve was, and dating/meeting people through the internet was just not done.

Suffice it to say, I met some real losers.... but it was for work, so it didn't really count.

Since then I have just said i don't like internet dating... and yes, I make fun of it... So much so that my sister called me on it, told me I couldn't really have a say unless I tried it... so I did.

And it wasn't that bad... It wasn't that great either. Look, its not that internet dating is inherently a bad thing. But you are definitely going to find people looking for relationships... thats the point. But here's the thing. I am not looking for a relationship. The relationship should be the by-product of the person I meet, not the other way around... and that's completely a personal preference. Online daters are looking for the person best suited to the relationship they want to be in....

So you end up dating people's profiles. They have slotted themselves into categories... nice, neat, clean, friendly categories... and there is no context. You know what they like, who they are, before you are ever attracted to them... and that seems backwards to me.

Arin & Susan managed to get themselves out of those boxes... have a little context before they met up... they managed to get a sense of eachother through the quirks and preferences without actually saying flat out "these are my quirks and preferences"

I like it....

... so funny, I was just thinking about no name...

... when i was a kid, more often than not my after school snack consisted of no name chicken bologna... i would wrap pickles in it, or cheese soldiers (which, for those of you not awesome like me, is cheese cut into sticks, when lined all up in a row look like soldiers)...

... it was awesome! sounds gross i know, and to be completely honest, it was a little gross. chicken bologna is basically the ground up pieces of the chicken that no one would possibly purchase in their original condition, reconstituted and sliced and sold 15 to a package... And it was constantly in my fridge, i have this vivid memory of my dady, coming home from the office, still in his coat, smelling like winter, standing by the open fridge door and eating it straight from the package.... 

and it looks like it could be again. They discontinued the no name line of products in the early 90s. It was all the rage in the early 80s. introduced in 1978, after a big economic crisis it offered people  simple food, cheap. It died and was replaced by President's Choice in the Reagan happy, label loving late 80's. We were supposed to be happy about it, because a great friend of the family (coincidentally one of my still all-time favourite people on earth) was integral in the development of the new line. But truth is, I missed that thickly sliced chicken bologna in the bright yellow packaging that was a constant in my childhood snacktime. 

And now it looks like it may become a part of my cheap living, squatter diet, because THEY ARE BRINGIING BACK NO NAME!!!! I was just thinking they should, the other day... no odea how it came to mind, but i was thinking that with the economy being what it is, and the brand landscape littered with superfluous luxury, a good, reliable economy brand that is not associated with negative connotations, and as a strong tie to a powerbrand would do so well.

And tonight, on my TV, there is Galen Weston, hocking the no name brand.

The question is, whats the skinny on the chicken bologna?

...what am i, chopped liver?...

there are, at this point, and according to my blog counter, 1538 unique visitors to my blog... I can only conclude that they have all landed here by mistake and immediately left for greener inter-pastures, as I have had two comments in my entire blogging career.... two... only two...

and you know what they say about two?

it can be as bad as one, its the loneliest number since the number one.....

so if you are reading this, even by accident because you were really googling "big breasted cheerleaders bounce in the shower" and got here by accident, leave me a comment, I just need that kind of approval from strangers... a love poem would be even better

.. as much as i love cheese....

the cheese council of canada... or whoever the demi-gods of cheddar are in this country... they may have just made cheese even better with their new website