all i want for christmas

Shameless. But, in case any of you are wondering:



1) "The Rainbow Goblins" by Ul De Rico



2) "The Blue Fairy Book" edited by Arthur Lang



3) A bookcase.

4) A pony.


My Little Scenester Pony

5) Anything with wings on it (birds, angels, faeries, winged unicorns, or just plain wing things)

e) BODY MASSAGE!!!



7) Peace love and happiness.

8) And, Mariah Carey said it best...

capital mag is back

hey kids

my friends at Capital Media are back up and running their online edition.

The newest issue, Collisions, features an article by yours truly:

MySpace and the challenge to individual conciousness.

word up, homies.

Naughty and Nice

Santa: Hello, what is your name?
You: My name is Mika.
Santa: Hello Mika, I always like to make new friends.
You: I would like a pony.
Santa: You want only one?
You: I would also like a boyfriend.
Santa: You want only one?
You: yes it would make things easier.
Santa: They might be cheaper in quantity. Tell me more about it.
You: Um...well, maybe at least six feet tall?
Santa: Yikes! Well that's okay. Perhaps. Try being more or less specific.
You: He has to be nice.
Santa: A lot of people say that about him.
You: I don't know him yet, though.
Santa: Oh. Do you mean, "Him"?
You: Yeah, the lord Jesus.
Santa: Praise God. I hear you.
You: Let's get back to the pony.
Santa: OK let's do get back to the pony.
You: Maybe it could have wings?
Santa: Perhaps. Under what circumstances?
You: Well, i might want to use it to fly away.
Santa: Well that's okay. Perhaps. Congratulations.
You: Santa, are you messing with me?
Santa: Yeah, Do I look like MESSING WITH him or her?
You: What?
Santa: Didn't you understand it?
You: This conversation is becoming way too rhetorical.
Santa: What does "this" refer to?

www.santabot.com

PUFFY FACE!

So in a slightly dazed bout of accounting procrastination/break-before-I-go-mental, I stumbled across My Heritage, a site that allows you to track your family history through photographs.

More importantly though, it allows me to do this:


MY CELEBRITY LOOK-ALIKES!!!

Surprised I didn't know that I look more like Renee "Puffyface" Zelwegger than Tyra "Tranny" Banks...

I did a few more and the four common denominators (all of whom showed up twice) were Tyra, Halle Berry, Beyonce Knowles, and...wait for it...

ALYSSA MILANO.

I also variably looked like Scarlett Johannson, Kristin Kreuk, Cameron Diaz (WHAT?!?!), Rachel Leigh Cook, Naomi Campbell, Kates Winslet AND Beckinsale, and Aishwariya Rai.

Weird. Told you I wasn't black.

lights in dark times...

first off, let me quote from the SANTA LIBERATION FRONT!!!:

"The North Pole is not a nudist colony. Mr. and Mrs. Claus must don their traditional red faux fur suits. With temperatures on the rise, clothes have been shed, distracting and upsetting workers."

Did you know? Al Gore didn't tell you?



and now a little aesthetic break.



when in dark times
I walk along these decembered streets
and come upon such childish delight
in glowing things moving slightly here and there:
so I think there may be a place
for good wishes and hopeful wonder.
warmth in truth,
despite all the cold and smallness
this errant faerie finds in solitary meanderings.

I'll kill your dog just for fun, so don't push me

Just tell me another thing that makes Monday better than hearing:

when i was in harvard, i smoked weed every day
i cheated every test and snorted all the yay
i got a def posse, you got a bunch of dudes...*

Can't think of anything? Yeah, neither can Natalie Portman...








*Did you know this line is from a Sir Mix-a-track? SIDKT...

thursday thoughts

First of all, something to make you laugh:


SCREW YOU, KIDS!!!

and something to make you cry, or yell, or something:


Cat Power - I Don't Blame You (Live on Jools Holland)

I just was blessed to see this lady in concert. Having been a Cat Power fan for well over four years now, I was both surprised and spellbound by the pure unmitigated humanity in Chan Marshall's voice. This was all the more impressive as the diminutive lady was feverish and nauseous, as was much of her band...I can only imagine what she would be like operating at 100%. At some point someone gave her a bandanna to wear to ward of the chills she was experiencing on stage. Later it turned out the bandanna came from everyone's favorite flanneur Blond Dan. Gotta love indie rock crushes...

Throughout the concert, Chan Marshall moved about the stage like some sort of modern-day Janis Joplin, but more quaintly deranged fairy than total drugged-out lost soul. Prior to performing "Naked if I want to" (my favorite track from The Covers Record) she took a break and summoned her energy by performing some sort of dance crossed between flamenco and tai chi. It was if she was drawing energy and light out of the air to channel into herself so she could keep herself going for the crowd.

It's the kind of thing I'll be doing for the next little while in order to process my thoughts and warm my nights.

"We've lived in bars
And danced on tables
Hotel trains and ships that sail
We swim with sharks
And fly with aeroplanes out of here"

painting with m. dunnet

pretty images on an ugly day

did you miss RESFEST?
I did, even though I meant to go. Like usual I was too busy being coldependent...

Resfest combines innovative film, music, art, design, culture and technology in a festival that takes place in more than 40 cities around the world.

Here are some of my favorite animations and music videos from this year's tour.

An interesting, catchy Korean entry commenting on identity, urbanism, and, presumbably, bitches and hos:



Hipsters vs. jackass vs. artnoize:


(Don't try this at home)

"For '200 Nanowebbers', Semiconductor Films have created a molecular web that is generated by Double Adaptor's live soundtrack. Using custom-made scripting, the melodies and rhythms spawn a nano scale environment that shifts and contorts to the audio resonance. Layers of energetic hand drawn animations, play over the simplest of vector shapes that form atomic scale associations. As the landscape flickers into existence by the light of trapped electron particles, substructures begin to take shape and resemble crystalline substances."


basically, just really cool.

my favorite director, Michel Gondry, doing Beck's "Cellphone's Dead":



Jamie Lidell's "New Me":



this is one of my favorite songs from last year:



A beautiful and strange animation from the artists at LEFTCHANNEL:



and finally, a crazy, Tim Burtonesque animated short from the Black Heart Gang:


Wait for the rat.

hearts and robots

the perfect woman: "I provide for you but don't feel"

Robot for hire!

A japanese company is hiring out a number of 113cm-tall robots that can do a number of tasks, from giving directions or handing out balloons.

"Just give it electricity, and a robot can work for long hours, even doing repetitive work, and you don't have to worry about labour laws."

In other news, scientists (there they go again) have isolated a master heart stem cell in mice that give rise to cardiac muscle cells, smooth muscle lining the aorta, and endothelial cells that form coronary blood vessels.

Now all I need is for someone to develop a robot heart that won't get tired, never complain, keep me at optimum performance levels and never, ever break.

where?

i don't understand where you are
i don't know, and it is so so scary.
i don't comprehend where you have gone. i just want to know cos it is so so frustrating that you left.
and there is so much love in the world. so much love. i don't even know
i want to find you and tell you
it's gonna be okay.
it's not that bad, it's not that bad.
you can get through it
and it's too late.
i never told you
cos i didn't know
cos i was there
and i was lucky
i figured it out...
oh god. you always reminded me of me. but i was lucky, and i figured it out.
if i could take every small moment of every beautiful thing in the world
and if i wove it together
in any part, of any diamond,
it would make but a small understanding of why it is still worth it
but it's too late,
and you shone,
and you shone so bright for me.
and everyone
and i am so, so brutalized, by what was never
and it doesn't matter how many sunsets i see and lovers i have
and babies that wake and see the new dawn.
cos you didn't
and i can't even breathe through the darkness
cos you gave up on us.

but you were so bright.
i wish you knew.
and i sit here, and i feel
and i feel so much.
i feel like my sister is gone
and there is nothing
nothing i can do.
but you shone
on and on
forever in me
and everyone
forever.
and i promise it will not be in vain, babe.
i promise you
i promise.

good night

so once you came in this place
with grey eyes masking the gentle filigrées
of your blue robin's egg soul
and I too had a hiding spot for my gaunt smile
quietly how i meant to say
but misty are my words that come
from such kindred and lonely spaces.


rest well, little sister

painting and drawring

looking for some inspiration?



Kenichi Hoshine and James Jean's illustrative/conversation project
A P O L I T E W I N T E R is just the kind of artistic/lyrical marriage I totally covet in my own creative endeavours. It's beautiful, melancholy, amusing, disturbing, erotic, and provocative all at once.



a polite winter...is just the way it is turning out, incidentally.

the department of codependency department

I have so oversaturated myself with these people that I almost don't want to see any of them for, say, at least 72 hours:









too bad they are all such great cooks, hanger-overs, dancers, sleeping partners, and, AND -- they don't talk shit about me behind my back like all my other friends. Especially You, Beckstar!*












* becks you know I kid. plus if it wasn't for my competitive nature and your rad blog I wouldn't be on here at all. Just sayin'.

(no title)

fast what?!

I just discovered that one of my favorite albums of all time was released on my tenth birthday. No wonder I am so obsessed.

You get a prize if you
a) know which album it was and
b) when my 10th birthday was.

I guess those are totally inclusive facts, but whatever. I never said I wasn't still affiliated with the D. of R. D. (again, another prize if you know what that stands for...)

hello, long weekend.

Friday Afternoon Dance Competition

Watch and learn...



P.S. this is one of my best friends in the whole wide world...Yeah, you're jealous.

a new dawn

This was Stephen Colbert's "dejected" rant after last night's Comedy Central's Midterm Midtacular Madness:

"...You know what really gets me? Democrats didn't even win this thing, the Republicans lost it. They ran away from the President. "Hey, the ship's in trouble quick, let's drown the captain!" We were this close to Jesus coming back. And you Republicans who abandoned the President are going to wander in the desert for the next two years. Literally. Someone's gonna have to replace those troops in Iraq. And don't think you're off the hook, voters – you're the ones who made this bed. Now you're the ones who will have to move over so a gay couple can sleep in it!

Tomorrow, you're all gonna wake up in a brave new world. A world where the Constitution gets trampled by an army of terrorist clones, created in a stem-cell research lab run by homosexual doctors, who sterilize their instruments over burning American flags! Where Tax-and-Spend Democrats take all your hard-earned money and use it to buy electric cars for National Public Radio, and teach evolution to illegal immigrants! Oh, and everybody’s high!"

And here is his "Surrender" cake...


"Mmm...tastes like surrender."

God bless America. Well, Stephen Colbert at least.

See the whole Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Midterm Midtacular Madness

YouTube vs. Puppies

Cute genetically modified Golden Retrievers...or Pumpking Attack? You make the call

Check out this headline from today's CBC news online:

Time names YouTube 'Invention of the Year'

Ahh, where to begin? First of all, YouTube beat out a vaccine that prevents a cancer-causing sexually transmitted disease and a t-shirt that simulates a hug.

Buh? Okay, great, I understand the hugging t-shirt (what's next, panties that simulate a penis?), but seriously, people. Is our need for instant entertainment, rife legal, content, and selective exposure issues, greater than health? Is it? I don't really have an answer. Yes, YouTube is a great idea. But my whole problem with this whole internet networking, DIY cyber media thing is that maybe we are rolling along with it so quickly that we don't realize the impact it is having on actual social interaction.

By the way, last year's winner was a cloned puppy.

rainy day real estate

ten ways to love a rainy day

1. appreciate water: carry an umbrella. wear boots. splash across streets. listen to raindrops. observe greenery. squish leaves.

2. soggy sounds: nick drake, bjork, the beatles, chopin, coco rosie, the walkmen...find something that matches your mood and revel in it.

3. pretend at summer indoors: wear flip flops. make fanciful fruit drinks. i personally recommend pomegranate and watermelon. N.B. pomegranate is harder to muddle than watermelon.

4. eat sweets.

5. read books: jeanette winterson, milan kundera, jose saramago, madeline l'engle and ernest hemingway are all good to snuggle with.

6. drink good wine and eat generous foods: olives, pizza, tortilla soup, macaroni and cheese (cheese of course is always implied.)

7. dance around your house in your underpants.

8. take yourself out for a walk: visit a used bookstore. sit alone in a cafe and read the paper. eavesdrop. become acquainted with puddles.

9. write a letter.

10. hug a friend.

From the Codependency Department of Codependency

a.k.a. the best Halloween ever.


Randy as Waldo, Mika as Randy, Joni as Clinton, and Clinton as Magnum PI...which is himself, kind of

This costume brilliance came to Jay-O and I after the longest day of "hurtin' for sure"...I somewhat shellshocked as a result of less than four hours of sleep and a familial explosion (not mine), while Jay-O suffered from a torrential case of hanging over as well as a disarming lack of cell phone (which she later found...under her bed).


Is this (somewhat freudian) picture hot, or creepy? Probably...just creepy


So much Mikandy love.

My attention to detail is frightening: an airbrush of Randy's tattoo

Saturday evening found us rocking out in fine fashion as Tina Turner, Slash and Axl Rose tore Shaughnessy a new one:


I ripped a big hole in her fishnets...Sorry


You know where you are? You're in the Jungle, Baby!

On Friday we rocked out at the Emily Carr Cabaret, where Patty C cruised around knocking people over in rollerblades as...himself, kind of:


This was posed 3.4 seconds after wiping out on his sick blades, dude!

Sara was fierce (Yeah, I said it...) as a sexy Viking:
(I will point out that this beautiful costume took us exactly 36 minutes to execute...Anyone want to hire me as a wardrobe assistant? I'm available after January...)




Sometimes Beefeater Lime Gin can really get to you...

Other Halloween highlights included the hottest Hot Cops I have ever seen:

T-dot, as a banana:


"I'm a banana!"

Jablonsky, as the cutest Little Red Riding Hood on record:

Jono, dressed up as (what else?) a Boy:


I think he is adjusting his moon boots.

Travis, as some sort of wasted rocker skid: (I know, what costume?)


Someone on my Flickr account commented "More of this guy!"

Natsicle, looking super ballin':


I heard she has a mean 3-pointer

Greg, flying in from NYC to be this awesome:

His name is Devil Kneival.

The lovely Kara stopped by to be a Kara-Kat:

She's fast. Like a cat.



Where's Waldo, Magnum? Oh, there he is


Joni adjusts her 'stache as the Dreamer rocks out


Every good Halloween party has a Hunter S. Thompson...and a room full of drugs. True Story.


So. Much. Awesome.


All in all, a good effort was made by all. I can't wait til next year...or can I? Thanks to all the party throwers and revelers who kept it real for our fine posse.

Some mazing

Is it just me, or are some advertisers smoking (really good) crack?
The Portuguese text below reads, "You never know when you will need it."



This one is for a men's magazine called Ché. The copy reads,
"Let us keep on dreaming of a better world."



These were all shamelessly stolen from Coloribus, a really mazing marketing and advertising blog out of somewhere in Europe.

P.S. If you are wondering about "mazing"...it comes from one of the many ESL immigrant mistakes my coworker Dmitry made when first arriving in Canada from Russia as a teenager. He thought when people said that something was amazing, they were saying "a mazing...". Similarly, he would hear "nincompoop" as "an incompoop".

Some mazing.

if only it was this relaxing to actually do it

I love doing laundry. Really, I do. Except for that it always takes way longer than you think it will and I always have 2.5 loads that I try to fit into one or else abandon a bunch of wayward not-so-favorite clothing...

sleepy

Ever find a filmmaker that presents the world in a bizarre way that strangely enough mirrors the odd manner in which you view the world? Or maybe you are not bizarre. I'm sorry, if you aren't.

Michel Gondry is that filmmaker for me. The subconcious memory erasing in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where things aren't lit properly and fall away? That dim/bright juxtaposition that seems so awkward and frightening? Yes.

The flying sequences in The Science of Sleep that illustrate Stephane's troubled attempts to contact his neighbour? That's how I fly in my dreams.

When Stephane gets confused between French, Spanish and English? Welcome to my mind when all three languages (and sometimes Portuguese, too) get jumbled up in my brain. "Hola, ma cherie, Cómo estás? Yo pensé à toi ayer...I'm sorry, je suis um pouco confundido..."

The creative process of this movie inspired me to move away from click-easy communication and get back to basics.



I came home and drew, paint and wrote until 2 in the morning...I started to think about how no one writes letters or hardly even postcards any more. I thought about how my mother would send me little letters from her travels across Canada, carefully written and decorated with little collages and stickers and images from the places she visited. Naturally I didn't appreciate it at the time...However now it really seems as though people just right-click, slap something up on Photobucket and a comment or a bulletin later, real heartfelt human communication turns into just a temporary fingerprint on Myspace.

Several disjointed dreams and interrupted sleep cycles later, I awoke. Getting out of the shower, I thought about how my own mother will only communicate with me via email. I realized i don't even have her mailing address (she lives on my street several blocks up) and I screamed quietly.

So. Send me your real, physical, address. I might send you a thought, or a poem, or a small piece of tangible reality you can hold in your hand and know that we exist.

More inspiration lies at postsecret, a public/private art project that encourages strangers to make postcards detailing their secrets and send them into this blog.

Tony and Angela: Part One

So before I begin, I just need to say that certain members of my dojo have been watching me and my friends closely and alluding facetiously to Tony and Angela from everyone's favorite lukewarm 80s sitcom, Who's the Boss?.

I started googling Who's the Boss when I came across this discussion site:

Who's the Boss jumped the shark when...

I particularly enjoy this thought:

"I loved the show up unto the point where Samantha chopped off her hair. After that, everything she wore was just dark and goth. I liked the more cutesy dressed, curly brown-haired Sam. Her dark, straight hair ruined it for me. I use to watch the show to check out her hair and clothes. I couldn't depend on her anymore for fashion tips."

Fashion tips?!?! Really? From this girl?!

(By the way...jonathan looks really earnest in this still, dontcha think? Awww...and now you're gay.)

Who did you turn to next for fashion tips? Punky Brewster? Blossom?



Come on, though...Blossom and her crazy hats aside, who didn't love Joey? Whoa!

...come to think of it, Joey Lawrence played Joey, and Tony Danza played Tony...

"Has anyone noticed that Tony Danza is always cast as Tony? Is this because he is SO stupid that if you called him "Jim" or "Bob" it would take months to film a show because he would always forget they were talking to him just like when Homer Simpson was in the witness protection program and he couldn't remember his code name?"

Anyway, I digress. Now, back to Tony and Angela. Right.

Ohh they're so happy. Except for the fact that Tony looks either like he is going to squeeze one out or possibly faint from Angela's vice-like hug of death-love.

I really don't know where I was going with this.

were-pyres

maybe it is the recent controversial photo shoots from this season's ANTM, or the fact that I just watched Underworld last night...or maybe it is halloween, but Melanie Pullen's High Fashion Crime Scenes photo series is pretty scary/mazing:



Remember, creepy is the new hot.

Notbleeding

On Saturday night I was once again prone to the attack of the vodka dinner. Unfortunately I also turned into Cinderella sometime after midnight but without having secured a pumpkin coach alternative for myself.

As a result my cries of S.O.S. were intercepted by my own erroneous texting of "notbleeding" to my best friend.



Oh well, you win some, you lose some...It's a pretty bitchin' photo if i do say so myself.

a repost from my "other" blog

a monday poem:



maple dawn

here is a small, unassuming morning
when the leaves turn
they sigh and welcome us gently
to a new and damp autumn day.

Oulipo!

As the weather turns damp and drizzly I often find myself turning indoors for comfort, namely from friends, hot toddies, and books. That being said, I have been trying my hand at writing a few things here and there to get myself back into the wintery literary mindset.

After reading about the finalists for the Governor General's Literay awards, I became curious about the literary style used by one of the finalists, Paul Glennon.

Apparently, Oulipo is a form of writing created in 1960 as part of the Collège de ‘Pataphysique. Among other constraints, it limits the way poems, stories and novels are written using syntax patterning.

This is my favorite: "The prisoner's constraint (a.k.a the "macao" constraint) is a type of lipogram that omits letters with "legs" (b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, p, q, t, and y)."

Sounds like a great hyperintellectual game of balderdash to me...

Remember this guy?

I do. Did you know he has a blog? Yes, it's true, and here is a hilarious audio exerpt:

Wil Wheaton Sees a Red Light

I don't know who reads it, but there you go.

new and better than myspace

well, it's finally happened...i now exist in not one, not two, but THREE separate public accessible web entities.

true story.