how you couldn't really hold down the chords

Miss Emily Brown | World Traveler

She sounds a little like Kate Bush here. And I like this song. But I’m not sure if it’s simply because I’ve watched this so many times - the way one’s investment of time and effort on preparing a class presentation is bound to make one like whatever it is on.

***

I took a geography course in first year. I didn’t know anyone in the class, and always sat alone on the left side of the lecture hall, near the front. Out of the four people I still remember from that class (other than the professors), only one of them I ever interacted with. It was a girl named Julia who also went to my tutorial; but either she was somehow eliminated from that part of my memory, or maybe she was always walking in late, I don’t remember sitting with her during the lectures at all. I do remember, however, the couple who would often sit in front of me (the girl had a pink UBC nalgene bottle that she put under the seat and the guy worked at Honour Roll) and a girl with long blond hair - usually tied up high in a ponytail - who sat behind me. She was pretty without makeup, wore outdoorsy clothes (and wellington boots - proper ones - before everyone started wearing them), and was always catching up with some guys she sat with before the lecture began. From eavesdropping on these conversations, I would find out that she played violin in a band, that they traveled to Victoria to perform, that somebody who saw them play recognized her at a supermarket because of her long ponytail, that her brother designed their CD packaging which she showed to the guys and most importantly, that she was the epitome of cool. I wanted to be her, or, at the very least, her friend.

In retrospect, maybe I can say now that the stalkerish worship probably would have ended if I just turned around and ask what kind of music her band played or something lame like that. But, knowing my tendency to turn conversations into a bagful of awkwardness very quickly by either saying too much or saying nothing at all (maybe both), it was probably for the best that I didn’t.

She plays the violin in this video.

yacht:

Tin Tin: an Amazing tiny vegan take away counter in New Territories, Hong Kong. As always, thank you HappyCow.

(Note to self: TO TRY.)

Be a Sexy Nurse for Halloween!

But only if you’re a guy. And don’t do the “I’m cross-dressing ironically” thing. Be subversive. Be a sexy, male nurse. Wear eye-makeup and tight scrubs. Objectify yourself!

The catch? Make sure you’re not accidentally mistaken for a doctor. Can you overcome cultural assumptions about the nature of medicine and masculinity?

Be a Bourgeois Institution for Halloween

Maybe start with a Statue of Liberty Costume. Put some particularly pretentious books under your arm, and probably some sheet music. And a Bible. Switch the torch for an Olympic torch. And maybe make the headband resemble a wedding band.

Now toss on some combat boots and dye the bottom of your robes crimson with the Blood of the Workers.

— from squashed

Another birthday spent at the print hut, another shirt ruined.

jillsies:

The Capuchin crypt, in the chapels below the Church of Santa Maria Della Concezione Dei Cappuccini is decorated floor to ceiling with the bones of 4,000 Capuchin friars. (via Grey)

benjaminhilts:

there is a plaque here that says:

“What you are now, we were. What we are now, you will be”

Joanna Newsom - En Gallop

And I go where the trees go
And I walk from a higher education
For now and for hire

And it beats me, but I do not know
It beats me but I do not know
I do not know

…

And you laws of property
Oh, you free economy
And you unending afterthoughts
You could’ve told me before

Instant Hutong: Urban Carpet

Carpets are representing different maps of Hutong areas in downtown Beijing with a size of approximately one square kilometre and a population of 30000. Each of them has been isolated and presented as autonomous town within the big city. They are embroidered by hand with the same technique of the propaganda slogans on large fabrics used by the communist party during the seventies. The carpets have been filled with white wire wool insertions.

(via whyvonne:ministry of type)

Whoa, these look pretty great.

THE COVER FOR
TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA

The cover for Trout Fishing in America is a photograph taken late in the afternoon, a photograph of the Benjamin Franklin statue in San Francisco’s Washington Square.

Born 1706—Died 1790, Benjamin Franklin stands on a pedestal that looks like a house containing stone furniture. He holds some papers in one hand and his hat in the other.

Then the statue speaks, saying in marble:

PRESENTED BY
H. D. COGSWELL
TO OUR
BOYS AND GIRLS
WHO WILL SOON
TAKE OUR PLACES
AND PASS ON.

Around the base of the statue are four words facing the directions of this world, to the east WELCOME, to the west WELCOME, to the north WELCOME, to the south WELCOME. Just behind the statue are three poplar trees, almost leafless except for the top branches. The statue stands in front of the middle tree. All around the grass is wet from the rains of early February.

In the background is a tall cypress tree, almost dark like a room. Adlai Stevenson spoke under the tree in 1956, before a crowd of 40, 000 people.

There is a tall church across the street from the statue with crosses, steeples, bells and a vast door that looks like a huge mousehole, perhaps from a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and written above the door is “Per L’Universo.”

Around five o’clock in the afternoon of my cover for Trout Fishing in America, people gather in the park across the street from the church and they are hungry.

It’s sandwich time for the poor.

But they cannot cross the street until the signal is given. Then they all run across the street to the church and get their sandwiches that are wrapped in newspaper. They go back to the park and unwrap the newspaper and see what their sandwiches are all about.

A friend of mine unwrapped his sandwich one afternoon and looked inside to find just a leaf of spinach. That was all.

Was it Kafka who learned about America by reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin…

Kafka who said, “I like the Americans because they are healthy and optimistic.”

(from here)

“ I don’t think I was trying to make a children’s film. I was trying to make a film about childhood.

—

Spike Jonze, interviewed by M. Young

Well, I guess that’s alright.

mootpoint:

This movie made me feel a lot of feelings, mostly sad ones. It’s a really dark movie for a thing about children, you know, about how hard life is and how it’s really hard to make everyone OK.

As a film, it’s very well-made, the effects are amazing (the combination of CGI and puppetry creates a great sense of reality, and Jonze is never really showing off his effects, and this is coming from someone who still misses when they did everything with models), and the cinematography is gorgeous. It’s all this sunlight shining in and handheld shots that show you all these little telling details. But it’s really brown. And dark. I think the power of the visuals and the emotional commitment shown are responsible for its overall success, but those things didn’t really beat out the monsters’ over-earnest mopeyness and lack of general wildness.

[Spoiler/Talks About Feelings Alert]

I went to an advance screening of this movie (scored tickets via Scout!), and this is pretty much exactly how I feel about it. It was beautiful and great and and it did make me feel things - the kind of strange gut feeling you get as a child that mixes deliriousness with fear/anticipation of disappointment, is the best way I can put it - that stuck with me for a long time. But I can’t really bring myself to like the movie or anyone/-thing in it. Maybe it was the over-earnest mopeyness, maybe it was the familiar ending, maybe it was the people laughing really loudly at the twig-arm (I know it was supposed to be funny-sad), maybe it was because I didn’t grow up reading the book thus did not bond emotionally with Max(?), or maybe it’s because everything contributed to that feeling and I just didn’t like that.

Other things that are kind of related to the movie according to how my brain organizes these things:

- The Squid and the Whale

- Charlie Kaufman talking about Synecdoche, New York being sad (in the way like life is sad and people can connect via sadness, etc.) but not depressing

- “[…] but it is not comforting to look closely at one’s future when bleakness is its main characteristic.”

0809, st kilda, melbourne

Taken last week, Coney Island, NYC —mcgrory

(via suitep)

Alexey Titarenko - Untitled, (Car/Feet), 1998

Alexey Titarenko - Untitled, (Crowd 3), 1992