good Hanukkah gift: a pug

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.

the sweepstakes prize

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

let's just move to Europe, guys

Or maybe just L.A.

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

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]

holding the keys to the world

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.

Shalom m'Israel, havarim!

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).

Work was incredibly boring,

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.

i can see the beautiful weather from the library windows

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:

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.