The Brevity- and Levity-rich diet

• Need more outdoors time. Winter is pretty much here but I'm not going to be deprived of Vitamin D or get SAD this year, dammit!
• I'm enjoying the Suede bio, Love and Poison. About to get into how heroin ruined Brett Anderson. If I wasn't already anti-drug this book would make a good case for it... it does a great job of illustrating the decidedly un-glamorous side of stardom.
• Parappa The Rapper. That is all.
• Company parties are great because you don't have to go to them, and the next day you can eat leftover hors d'oeuvres for breakfast.
• The best part of the holiday season, for me, is watching The Muppet Christmas Carol with someone you love. Homemade baked treats optional, but recommended.
• Concentrating your efforts and putting your soul into something you're passionate about and then enjoying the result is the best gift you can give yourself...
• But on a smaller scale, I definitely subscribe to the Agent Cooper school of thought: Each day you should give yourself a present. Don't wait for it, or overthink it, just do it when it feels right.
  
• This blog is awesome and inspiring. The illustration below is my favourite so far.

For my nails are as strong as yours, and my outlook as great!

Winter... YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER ME!

So last winter I was, among other undesirable things, a mess of dry-weather-related afflictions. I was basically like one of the characters from Stephen King's Thinner; I was turning into some sort of scaly, alienating, alligator-like creature (that's from the book version - not sure if alligator boy is in the movie).

Things have changed a lot since that time, but one thing that remains the same is my system's sensitivity to dry, cold, pollution-rich Toronto winter air. Being more self-aware, and learning to take care of myself a bit better has led me to take some precautions and learn about alternatives (an alternative to suffering and discomfort for about 6 months of the year? Sign me up please and thank you!) And thus I present one of my newfound saviors:



Flax oil is brilliant and I can't say enough good things about it. It doesn't taste awful, you can put in in pretty much any cold dish, it's actually affordable, and goddamn, it saved my skin. I had never realized how important internal juiciness is to people's overall well-being.

WONDERFUL SIDE BONUS TIME! My fingernails used to be the dry, brittle kind that ads in the back of magazines would claim could be fixed by using their expensive, tiny-bottled potions and tonics. I never cared enough about this problem to pay money for some ridiculous product, so I just kept them short. But since discovering my flaxy, oily new friend, my digits are more along the lines of this guy:


But thankfully I now have much, MUCH better skin.

It's Tuesday, fucking eh!

Reasons why Tuesday is great:

- it's the farthest possible point in time until the next Monday
- it's completely underrated, which makes it a great time to go out and live it up. Restaurant and bar staff will be so surprised to see a patron actually enter their establishment on a Tuesday, that they will lavish you with attention and treat you like royalty. There are also great bargains to be had at all sort of places, as companies try to entice business on the slowest day of the week with stuff like cheap movie tickets, drink deals and 10 cent chicken wings*. Go on, you brave pioneer of the Tuesday evening activity, and reap the bountiful rewards!!
- all of the good Indian food places in my neighbourhood are closed on Monday (a fact I was unfortunately made privy to last night, in the midst of a rather serious Fish Tikka craving), therefore Tuesday is a cause for celebration. It's like delicious, savoury Indian food is born anew each and every week!
- I really have no idea if the above photo was taken on a Tuesday, but let's pretend it was. On Tuesdays your cat will tolerate you taking a photo of her next to a toy you've dubbed "Fashion Cat", who is in turn wearing a scarf that seems to be made out of cat, or at least designed to look like one. It's like my own personal version of Three Wolf Moon. Thanks, triple-kitty Tuesday!
- some people might argue that now I'm really reaching to come up with reasons why Tuesday is so great. But on Tuesday, I don't have to listen to the nay-sayers! Hahaha, all you Tuesday haters, fuck you and the Segway you rode in on.

*Even though it's Tuesday, the day of fun and activity and amazing deals and life and adventure!.... maybe skip the discount wings. Just because it's a good deal doesn't necessarily mean you should ingest appendages that may or may not have been severed from a fowl genetically engineered to have 8 of them. ALLEGEDLY.

I believe in deeply ordered chaos

I could only get through the first few parts of this before I was massively inspired to turn everything off and create something. In other words, it's really really great and I'll finish watching it soon.

I hope I actually get to sleep tonight.

Sorry to hear that

I just got home and my phone rang. It was Dottie, a nice, matronly-sounding Rogers customer service agent. She started off by thanking me for being a Rogers customer, and then excitedly began to tell me that they are now offering three free months when you sign up for their VIP cable package.

"Oh, thanks but I don't have a TV." This is a lie, as there are two televisions in my home at present time. One is in my bedroom, and unused, as the playstation that used to be attached to it (for movie-watching purposes only) has been returned to its owner. Right now it is used as surface storage for a few books, canvases, and an egg that I painted to look like Divine. The other is a yellow 1979 Toshiba blackstripe, an awesome vintage piece of technology I purchased from a kindly old man back in Ottawa. It serves as decoration only and is sitting in my hallway, supporting a life-size blow-up version of Edvard Munch's screamer.

The point, and the reason I replied as I did, is that for most normal intents and purposes, I don't have a "TV". I don't watch television, other than a few programs that I think are deserving enough of my attention for me to bother downloading or streaming (shhh!).

The kicker was Dottie's reply.

"Oh!" she said, and I could hear sympathetic tones seeping into her voice. "I'm sorry to hear that."

In my mind there are two possible scenarios here. She could have assumed that I don't have a TV because I can't afford one, and was genuinely, albeit misguidedly, sorry for me; because who in North America in this day and age doesn't want and/or have TV? The other more sinister, capitalistic (and heck, most likely) possibility was that she was simply expressing regret at not being able to sell me an expensive and superflous media package that would do the opposite of enriching my life, while draining my bank account. In which case... way to go Rogers, it's actually kind of refreshing to see that you're teaching your reps the value of transparency in their sales pitches.

When I hung up the phone I got to thinking...am I sorry to hear that I don't have a TV? I thought about the above-mentioned stuff that's currently residing on top of the two TVs I own. If I had said yes to Dottie and invited cable into my life, would those canvases remain forever blank? Would Divine the Drag Egg remain eternally lonely? And really, do I actually think I am missing out on anything by not having Rogers' newest all-you-can-watch buffet beamed into my brain on an ongoing basis?

No, Dottie m'dear, I'm not sorry at all.

The best claymation since Rudolph

I would need a thesaurus to accurately describe how amazing this is.

Popeye the Nightmare Man

Jesus. Look at this thing.



See you tonight, Robin Williams/Popeye... I'll be the one trying to scream and run away from you (but not being able to since that always happens in dreams), while you and your scary strokeface, orange hair and malformed arms come at me brandishing a giant octopus with chainsaws for tentacles.

So! Now that my plans for the night are set... 2 things:

1) I totally actually want to see this movie. I'm masochistic like that.
2) Shelley Duvall IS Olive Oyl. There has never been a better casting decision in the history of film.

Yikes. Just yikes.

Fabulous Fashions

Budgie Hat: good idea/bad idea?

Midnight Snack

Quickly, quickly now! I've just returned home from exactly 13 hours at work, putting things online. And now here I am, at home, where I can relax and do what I want. So I'm... putting things online. I really should get to bed but I wanted to share the lovely, multicolored edibles that were involved in my weekend.

First up: my first attempt at making sushi! My mom was visiting and it was her idea for us to try our hand at homemade maki. And I must say, it was a surprisingly easy to make; not to mention prettay, prettay, prettay fun.

Our recipe was pretty simple and turned out really tasty. We pretty much just improvised the ingredients: carrot, cucumber, red pepper, avocado and curry mayonnaise. The lemon pepper sprinkled on top was both an afterthought and a stroke of genius (courtesy of a brilliant and handsome gourmand who came to visit and help sample the fare).


Now that I know I can make maki and not just a huge mess, next time I'm going to start experimenting with some fish and other ingredients. Oh, and I'll try my best to keep the rice layer as thin as possible - they turn out pretty bloated if you're not careful. But one thing is for sure: I'll never pay for overpriced premade supermarket sushi again!

Now that we've covered the savoury territory, I'll move on to the sweet part of my weekend. Namely, COOOKIES! I used this recipe that I found on the M&M's website. I also got really into photographing M&M's.


The cookies turned out pretty great... but come on, unless you do something stupid like use salt instead of sugar, or cat litter instead of flour, cookies will always taste decent. The worst part about the recipe was that they didn't come out as chewy as I would have liked. One of the best parts was the oatmeal, which somehow helps me delude myself into thinking they are remotely healthy.


And the bestest part about them was something I added myself... I mixed in peanut butter M&M's with the regular ones before adding them to the dough. Because as we all know, peanut butter anything will always be at least 45% greater than the regular version of that thing. Unfortunately I guess the PB candies aren't meant to be baked, so they cracked under pressure. But whatever, I think it just makes the cookies look more interesting.


And thus concludes my weekend of rainbowy culinary delights. OMG, time for sleep now.

PS. The new episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm is the best episode ever, or close to it. That is all.

I'm a spoilsport

This article totally describes how I feel about spoilers: essentially, I just don't care.

I have a proclivity for researching the shit out of anything I'm momentarily interested in, and this includes films, books and shows I haven't yet experienced. For the most part, it doesn't bother me to know how something is going to play out. In fact, sometimes I get more enjoyment out of it that way - it's like a little game I can play with myself, looking for clues that this or that is about to happen. Until you've actually seen/read things as the director or author portrayed them, you're not really getting the whole experience. No amount of reading Wikipedia articles can compare to actually living out the scene, within the atmosphere and context of a really amazing story. Besides, as it says in the above-mentioned article, people can continue to enjoy their favourite stories over and over... the fact that they know what's going to happen matters very little, if at all.

But I don't force this philosophy upon others. Some people really enjoy the pure element of surprise, and hate to know anything beforehand. So I would never "spoil" something for someone else, just because of my personal tastes/beliefs.

However! With all that said... I'm still not going to look up what happens in Twin Peaks. And in fact, sometimes I love the idea of sitting down to watch a movie I know nothing at all about. It's not like a vehement policy wherein I must have all the answers before I can experience anything. I can take it or leave it. I guess, when it comes to spoilers, I swing both ways.

Note to self!

Go home, download this whole album, bake some cookies. In that order.



Oh, and post cookie recipe here for future reference :)

Word Bird: Gormless

Don't write that someone special's name on every egg under the Word Bird - fill it up with fun fascinating vocabulary-boosters instead!

gorm·less
Pronunciation: \ˈgȯrm-ləs\

Function: adjective

Etymology: alteration of English dial. gaumless, from gaum attention, understanding (from Middle English gome, from Old Norse gaum, gaumr) + -less

Date: 1883
chiefly British : lacking intelligence : stupid

I woke up this morning with this word in my head. I couldn't wait to look it up, acquaint myself with the meaning, and then use it!

"I was dreading my meeting with the gormless, sweaty new client... undoubtedly he would waste no time asking me to make the logo bigger, whilst leering down my shirt."

Hangin' with Agent Cooper

No, I'm not talking about that show. Although now that I mention it, I do miss TGIF-style TV every once in a while... all that pure, simple, corny family fun. I don't watch TV nowadays but from what I gather it's a mostly glorified cesspool of horrible reality programming, punctuated by about 82 different versions of CSI.

Which is why I'm glad that I can look to the past for my entertainment indulgences, and much more. Have you heard about this thing called the past? It's amazing. A veritable goldmine of ideas and culture and great, great things... many of which have been forgotten, overlooked, or (worst of all) ripped off to such a nauseating degree that it's no longer recognizable in its current mainstream incarnation. So much of today's popular culture is mind-meltingly boring or even downright depressing. I find it a lot more satisfying to simply search backwards in time, instead of attempting to be up on all the hottest new things.

So! In light of the above-mentioned philosphy, I present my first foray into things unknown that were right under my nose the whole time: the genius and overall fucking fascinating series that is David Lynch's Twin Peaks.

Since discovering the show I've been watching it voraciously, at the rate of one or two episodes a night... which is sometimes hard, as I want to give it every iota of my attention, which means I have to get everything else on my plate done first. But damn, is it ever worth it.

I find it so regrettable that my previous knowledge of Kyle MacLachlan was mostly limited to his work in Showgirls, and Sex and The City. In his role as Special Agent Cooper he is a master of subtle humour, and understanding the intricacies that make all the difference between an idiosyncratic yet sympathetic human being, and a total oddball creep.

Do you like my shiny new dress, Kyle? It's Versayce.

And where has Sherilyn Fenn been all my life? She's the greatest. She smolders as Audrey, the estranged daughter of a megalomaniacal rich pervert. I want her and Agent Cooper to hook up something FIERCE. They're the Tim Canterbury and Dawn Tinsley of bizarro psychological thriller-land.

Audrey's the one on the right - just your average teenage girl.

Other awesome folks of note include but are not limited to: Ray Wise as Leland Palmer, whose madness is heartbreaking; Kimmy Robertson as Lucy the receptionist, one of those people who are so damned adorable that you want to smash their face, but you never would because they're too freaking adorable; and the always excellent Piper Laurie. Fun fact: Lara Flynn Boyle's actual human face also stars!

I'm currently just a couple of episodes into the second season - and shit is getting REAL! It's a testament to how much I genuinely enjoy this show, that I haven't spoiled the whole thing for myself by looking up every last detail about it on Wikipedia. In this day and age, there are hardly any surprises left... but if you try hard and practice a bit of restraint, you can truly enjoy things the way the past intended.

In the past, people didn't have those tape-dispensers that fit on the back of your hand. Havoc reigned.