When my parents used to tell me to hurry up and get ready for school/dance class, I would sing them the chorus to Unconditional Love. Ten years later I can still sing this album start to finish, and I can still remember how it sounded blasting from my shitty boom box speakers.
Archive | April, 2011
Alex Stoddard’s 365 Project
27 Apr
I have a current obsession with Alex Stoddard’s photo stream, which features his nearly finished 365 project; his imagination and talent blow me away. He’s only seventeen!
Lykke Li Prepares Me For Battle
17 AprI’m in London, preparing to write the first of several final exams. I’m stressed out, but this song pumps me up big time. It’s part of my pump-me-up playlist, which I will share with you now.
Shit Harper Did
15 Apr
Oh how I do hate the smear campaign extravaganza that precedes every federal election. Recently, while trying to get a video to load on a news website, I had to watch the painfully indirect Christy Crunch commercial seven times in a row. Seven times in a row I was expected to care about Premier Christy Clark ‘tasting mean‘. Really, New Democratic Party of B.C.? Really? Well I think I might just puke. That artificially sweetened bitch.
A certain Kids in the Hall episode comes to mind.
If a political party would like to inform me of an opponent’s previous wrong-doings, I want them to use specific, intelligent language, and I do not want to be subjected to insinuations that don’t actually matter in the big scheme of things. It’s insulting, and it wastes my time. I recently came across a website that appears to at least try to provide me with an up-front message. It’s called shitharperdid.com, and unlike the attack ad tragedy that is Christy Crunch, it actually made me laugh. It features the above photo of Stephen Harper holding an indignant kitten, all expertly (and creepily) rendered in graphite. Beside the photo is a brief statement that describes ‘shit’ Harper has done, accompanied by a link to a news report with more details. You can click a button that says “Seriously? Tell me some other shit!” to load up a new statement. A few of the accusations certainly leave me skeptical, such as the flimsy suggestion that Harper is ‘un-Christ like’ (?), but I like being able to follow sources and decide for myself. I also like to engage in thoughtful analysis of something a politician does, rather than something that they proportedly are. It definitely beats having to listen to some woman complain about her cereal, which by the way, contains an awesome toy train prize at the bottom of every box.
Edit: It seems shitharperdid.com was created by hipsters, or is at least represented by hipsters as evidenced by this video. But they’re funny hipsters, so…
Going Bare and Shorpy’s Pretty Girls
13 Apr
About two months ago I tossed away all of my beauty products and went green, or as I like to say, I became a dirty hippie. Which is ironic, because I’ve never felt so deliciously clean, and yes, being clean can be delicious if you replace your chemical laden skin-goop with this organic coconut cake-frosting of a body butter. I can’t promise you I didn’t try to taste it within five seconds of opening the lid, and I can’t promise you that it didn’t taste kind of yummy.
My transformation is still in progress. I stopped wearing makeup, save a single tube of Rimmel lipstick that I’m trying to replace with something I don’t mind ingesting/smearing on my mouth (I’ll stop talking about eating beauty products now). I’ve had to change my diet to keep my skin clear. While forgoing that daily mask of flesh-coloured gunk does feel good, my skin is also confused and splotchy; It seems my face isn’t used to breathing, so to remedy this my diet now consists of walnuts, cranberry juice, spinach, flax seeds, pomegranate seeds, dark chocolate and gallons of water and green tea*. As a result of this diet switch, my skin grows happier with each passing day.
Much to my surprise, leaving the house bare-faced didn’t cause me much grief. It was my wild hair that troubled me. When I discarded my lotions and my powders and pencils, I also discarded cans of hairspray and bottles of perfumed conditioning oils. Pomade was abandoned. Left with only an organic shampoo and a vinegar rinse, (a better description of the new hair regime can be found here), I slowly began to realize that I would have to accept the natural texture of my hair. Or I’d at least have to work with it instead of against it.
I didn’t take this realization very well at first; I did this for a while. I got a hair cut, hoping that it would ‘change things’ (it didn’t). For a time I tried to take a straightening or curling iron to my hair every morning (only to decide that I like eating breakfast more than I like looking good). About a week ago I finally rolled over and gave up, the oddly-proportioned puffs of hair on my head flopping about in triumph.
Then I found Shorpy. Shorpy.com is a vintage photo blog that features images from the 1850′s through to the 1950′s. Their ‘Pretty Girls’ series has become a bit of an inspiration to me as I try to make friends with my hair. In fact, these images of beauty from a pre-photoshop era might be helpful to anyone who thinks they need to ‘make friends’ with a physical feature. Really we should just stop being such assholes to ourselves and have fun with what what we have. These are women with curls and goofy crooked smiles, big hips and laugh lines. These are women who eat sandwiches and smile with their teeth. They all look happy and lovely.
I like to look at the photographs taken during the 1900′s to the 1920′s, which feature a whole lot of glamorous bird’s-nest hair. This was a time before women were coating their hair in synthetic proteins and plasticizers, so I suppose a wild-haired brand of beauty kind of made sense. Needless to say, my straightening iron will now be gathering dust in the closet while I play around with some of these vintage looks. The less time I spend wrestling with my hair, the more time I have to do important things, (like eating beauty products).
Let's add a little Marilyn for good measure.
Bring on the frizz.
*I should mention that I eat other things too, like veggie burgers and fish. The other night I had steak and a tall can of beer. However, I’m trying to make sugar, processed foods and drinking a once-a-week thing, rather than an every day thing. I’m doin’ it for the skin cells.
A Broken Band Concert
10 Apr
I recently drifted back to Orangeville for a few days. Haunted as I was by research papers, it still felt good to be home. I stayed with mom and dad. For the first time it felt like the house was truly theirs alone. In the past they seemed static in that house, waiting for the intermittent appearance and disappearance of grown-up kids, me and my brother and sister. We were the only ones that filled the house with sound. It wasn’t a home until we came home. Now the house is full to the brim with the conversation of my parents. It sounds like something has been excavated. It sounds really good.
I went to Aardvark to see a show, which also sounded really good. The stage was crowded with tree branches and friends and Devin’s red Korg, which I crept up to once the stage had emptied, to get a better look at the workings and the wonders. My mother was added to the list of people who are obsessed with the coffee that brews in the Aardvark kitchen, and Gord pulled down the American Anthology of Folk Music for me to turn over and over in my hands. New developments.
Devin showed me a video phone tour of the new house he’d be settling into the next morning, and I looked at the kitchen and the beams and Jess perched near the fireplace, working on something I couldn’t quite make out. I had my little flask of whiskey with me, to calm the cough that had recently settled to live in my chest. At the end of the night we walked to where my brother and Lyndsay live and danced in the disco lights. And by dance I mean sat on our butts eating pizza and listening to Nilsson Schmilsson.
You’d be on Dog The Bounty Hunter. You’d be Young Blood.
7 Apr
Britt and I are currently obsessed with the show 1 Girl 5 Gays, which always plays out like a hilarious and enlightening game of Truth. Inspired by a question from one of the most recent episodes, Britt and I were trying to decide which Reality TV show the other would most likely appear on. Within moments it turned into a flame war regarding which disparaging Reality TV show the other would most likely appear on. Like so:
Me: Hmm. I think you’d be on Intervention.
Britt: Yeah, I’d help council people.
Me: No, you’d be one of the drug addicts.
Britt: Well you’d be on Teen Mom.
Me: Damn! You’d be on Dog The Bounty Hunter.
Britt: You’d be on Flavor of Love…2.
Me: You’d be on Cheaters.
If you don’t know what Cheaters is, you haven’t lived. If you don’t know what Cheaters is, you’re probably on it right now.
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