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]

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.

Slipping Through The Years

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

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.