I guess if i'm already dreaming,

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

Cloud Playhouse by Dietrich Wegner (via bsqv)

now & then

(source)

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.

BIRKS and BIKES!

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...

(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.

oh man

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.

Something That Is Weird

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,

(Andreas Banderas)

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.

the Israeli sun soaked my skin

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.

Friendship bracelets this summer

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 :)

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.