theoretically.

1. Richard Laviolette. Do yourself a favour and go to the Zunior page for his solo album, and click on “Silhouettes” to hear a snippet. I can’t find this song on the internet, so this is the best I can give you, friends. I could lock myself in a small room and listen to that song all day on repeat and come out of it alive and not needing professional help. That’s saying a lot for someone with a touch of the ADD. Richard, play more shows in Toronto. Please.

His voice gives me goosebumps everywhere.

Holy. Shit.

And then on the…. crustier side of things:

(more…)

Hitch-hiking. To visit friends, see awesome bands, or do karaoke in strange bars with people I hadn’t met.

the posi signage strategy

This photo was taken before a four hour long wait on the side of the road in Borden. In retrospect, that might have been a lot of work to go yell a Billy Joel song at a room full of strangers.

Continuing my recent internet renaissance, there are three new posts on the wine blog today. I consider this a great success, even if I am still awake at 11:30 on a week night while considering all the various ways I can describe how a wine tastes like toast.

(part 1, part 2)

Where we left off last time, I had a messy mop that was developed in equal parts by sheer laziness, my need to hide from the world, and a desire to look like a fictional Russian spy.  2005: the beginning of a descent into complete shitty ineptitude, poor health, and tremendously bad decisions. I stopped caring about a lot of things and the theory I’m running with here is that it’s highly visible in how terrible I looked, including my hair.  We’re going to call these the Dark Years and there’s little photographic evidence that I’d feel comfortable sharing. I will instead draw you a picture:

you need a nap

Rough.

presentable

That’s  the one passable photo from 2006 currently on my hard drive. I don’t know what magical not-falling-apart pill I took that morning, but it did the trick. It even looks like I combed my hair. So smart! Tangentially, Aimee has a killer pose here. Lookin’ sharp.

How about we just skip right ahead to… 2009. Okay.

oh my god are you serious

This is like anime character hair.  I don’t even know how I managed to get it this long without it catching on fire or something.  It can be attributed to grad school consuming my life so completely that I didn’t even know what I looked like anymore.  One day I woke up from a zombie-like daze of cultural theory and photocopies of exhibit catalogues only to notice I looked like a feral creature from the woods.  It was suddenly imperative that I do something to make myself look more like me, to make my outside match my inside.  This is still something I don’t really know how to describe or explain, but everyone probably has an ideal vision of themselves–not necessarily something static and concrete, but shifting dependent on what you want to project. Maybe feeling comfortable with how you look has something to do with reconciling your internalized self with your physical self, whether by altering one or the other. Maybe I just have issues.

Continuing with the timeline, I got a few desperate hair chops in Toronto that ended up being terrible because of my complete inability to communicate what I want.  I actually said to one stylist, “Uh… make it look… tough.”

“What does that mean to you?”
“Um… make my bangs shorter?”
“What does shorter mean to you?”

What a traumatizing therapy session.  Anyway, I’ll refrain from posting some of those brutal results. Finally in the summer of 2011 I went to a salon next to my office on lunch break and finally struck gold. My stylist was a total hardcore kid and we bonded over growing out our previously stretched ears. So heartwarming.  That’s all it took, apparently. Common backgrounds!

awkward webcam photo

I spent so much time searching for the perfect hair cut so I could get back to my roots, so the reflection in the mirror would remind me of who I “really” was. When I finally succeeded, obviously nothing changed. Duh. I didn’t really believe that anyway; it was just an exercise I put myself through for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. It has to do with being a complete and utter idiot in my mid-20s and forgetting a lot of the things I had previously been passionate about. I needed a reminder.

After cutting my hair short again, I didn’t recognize myself at all. Apparently my internalized self-image wasn’t even what I thought it was, or thought it should be.  This is okay.  We don’t need to hang onto the way we wanted to look in our early 20s forever, and this is something that I’m finally coming to terms with. I think I did, wrote, and thought a lot of fantastic stuff in my early 20s, but with some dedication and engagement I can continue to be awesome. I’m wiser now, anyway. I’m a much more thoughtful critic of the world around me. Younger me might have been more easily inspired, but she was also quicker-tempered, more unforgiving, and less nuanced. She also wore some pretty terrible shirts and tacky jewelry. Yikes.

October 2011:

not Sun-In, just sun

Growing out my hair again because I think it’ll be fun. It’s on.

(part 1)

At the end of part 1,  it was 2003 and I had started to become more self-conscious and discerning about the image I projected to the world.  Apparently this meant dying my hair to match my clothes. Way to go.

Then one night I got drunk on a quart of butterscotch schnapps. I woke up at 8:30 the next morning and frantically made an appointment to get my hair chopped off. Only one of these things was a good idea. Hint: jesus christ don’t drink a whole bottle of butterscotch anything ever in your life, trust me.

pointy

My hair hadn’t been this short since like 1992. Importantly, I had bangs for the first time. A real life-changer. Mostly because the bouncers at Myron’s suddenly didn’t recognize me anymore and quizzed me about my birthday all the time. *cries in shame*

I took this haircut and owned it in lots of different ways. With this haircut I was a tough talking hardcore kid,  a thoughtful academic, a dirty hitch-hiker traveling to see bands, and a beer guzzling crazy person.

MONTAGE

staged photo demonstrating how early it was to be drunk

stretched ears forever

god close your mouth

click on “more” for MORE

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or: An Archival Look at Mistakes

My hair has changed in fairly significant ways over the past ten years.  What remained the same was the deep feeling that my hair was talking to the world, telling them exactly what kind of idiot I was on a daily basis.  Even if I didn’t consciously express it, I understood that maybe a hair style was a code for my interests and in a broader sense, my sub-culture(s). In short, holy shit getting a haircut is stressful.

That’s why I only do it every two years and then go home and sob into the mirror while gently combing my hair with a fork like Ariel.

SO, what follows is a pictorial essay of my hair and it’s underlying significance to my personal history from the ages of 18ish-28. Theoretically (lol) this method could be extrapolated to other people and thus I’m teaching lessons here.

17 yrs old: what the hell

Hey teenagers, here’s a free tip: DON’T USE SUN-IN. Ever. It will not make your hair look sun-kissed, it will make your hair look like you poured weak bleach on it and then ironed it for three days. You’re welcome. So I’m not sure why I was trying to be blond, but I distinctly remember vowing to never dye my hair darker than its natural colour. Hahaha joke’s on you teen-G. I mean, judging from this dress alone I had no idea what I was doing right?

Look, there are other pictures from high school, but you can just trust me when I say that they all look like that. Parted down the middle, dyed poorly, oblivious.

Uh, let’s just skip right over to early university. Let’s say, 2001, 18 years old.

brush your hair or you'll get NESTS

Longer, messier, not as stupidly orange. Progress.  Maybe not so much the cat shirt. But university is where we find ourselves right? Give me some time. I’m still figuring this shit out. I remember thinking my hair was kind of bad-ass and my shirt was funny because my website was… well, it had a cat-related name and man, was my blogging ever deeply ingrained in my sense of self at that point. If you didn’t read my blog you didn’t GET ME.

take off one accessory before you leave the house

Chin up, 18 Year Old Me. You’re more than your internet rants.

(more…)

Specifically and generally, possibly related to politics (small p and big P):

+ Seeing activism like PRRO develop in PEI. The tone and cohesiveness of your action is fantastic. I love you guys and wish I was there to be with you. Stay strong and smart and brave.

+ Lots and lots of great articles on the Toronto budget from both alternative press and the mainstream media*. The awesomeness point I’m making here is that it feels good to know you aren’t alone in your political (and philosophical) beliefs–that at least in a loose sense there’s community support out there. This, I’ve always maintained, is one of the most valuable aspects of participating in protests, demos, advocacy groups, etc. A frequent criticism is “You aren’t changing anything by standing around” (yes I read comments on news articles). My response to that is: even if there is no quantifiable outcome, it makes you strong, keeps you inspired, creates community, and becomes a birthplace of ideas that could lead to policy making/changing, etc. In my ideal world, anyway. As always.

*I decided to edit out links because I’m technically not allowed to comment on this at all. Is this commenting? Probably. Not that anyone is even here.

+ Living in a riding with fantastic representatives at the provincial and federal level. Andrew Cash’s mail outs are the best ones I’ve ever read. Professional but breezy!

+ Getting a seat on the bus in the morning so I can read without looking like I’m on an amusement park ride.

+ Having a pile of zines to read with a cup of hot tea on a gross snowy Toronto evening.

+ Actually I could keep going, but I’ll stop here because I’m boring. Maybe I’ll be back later with something ZANIER.
Just for balance, things that are not awesome:

- I’ve been ignoring federal politics lately, probably because municipal politics have a direct and horrifying effect on my life right now. …Also because the outrage makes for good lunchroom conversation. But seriously, I need someone to give me a good rundown on HoC news.

- Being too scared to buy winter shoes because I might need that money for rent after I possibly lose my job.

- ^ That could be my life forever.

I don’t know, I did advanced math in high school but now I press the calculator button on my keyboard when things get craaaazyyyyy. Even though my brain is mush, I think I can figure out that the posi side is the real hero here. Keepin’ on keepin’ on, etc.

Hey, do people still read personal blogs? Have they entirely been supplanted by twitter/facebook/themed tumblrs? Am I totally behind the times in thinking that online journals are still interesting, even though this isn’t 2001 and the novelty has worn off? Just saying, I read the hell out of online journals, and I love all of you who continue to share details of your personal lives and perspectives. It’s enlightening and enriching; the whole of my 20s was spent reading personal blogs (amongst other things) that helped shape my world view and challenge me to reconsider many of my own ideas.

Basically, I have no idea what to do with this website now.

WARNING: MANY PHOTOS

Sometime last month, d. and I went to Tommy Thompson Park, which is the official name of the park on the spit at the bottom of Leslie Street. The spit itself extends over 5 kilometres into Lake Ontario; at it’s southernmost point it’s actually further out than the Toronto islands. It’s also completely human-made. The whole thing is basically a giant pile of broken concrete and rebar covered in lush vegetation and approximately 3000 cormorants. Cool history of the spit.

I am so into it.

GREEN

hi city

It was a gorgeous hike, probably around 12 or 13 kilometres round trip counting all the side paths. We were also just about the only idiots walking instead of biking. TIP: if you ever want to check this place out, take a bike, seriously. A huge chunk of the trail is wide and paved, and we roasted in the heat. It’s bike heaven. OTHER TIP: BRAKE FOR SNAKES:

i'm so funny

Everything looked like a woodsy stock photo desktop background image:

what are those sticks in the ground, seriously

i think i saw these in the x-files

If you enlarge the following photo, you might be able to see that every speck in the trees is a cormorant and a nest. We stumbled upon this scene after trudging down a weird deserted path through the woods, hearing the sound of a billion birds get louder and louder. SURPRISE.

RUN

Okay seriously, get on with it. Those aren’t even the best parts.  The best parts are BETTER. Finally we reached the end of the trail, at the tip of the spit. I was all like “cool we’re going to see the beach! I want to see a turtle! I hope we see snakes! THE BEACH!” and then there was this:

fallout 3: toronto expansion pack

Holy shit.  I don’t know what I expected from a beach made out of concrete rubble.  SO AWESOME. It was like the end of the world. I just wanted to climb over everything and pretend like I was a hardcore survivor of some sort of world meltdown, on a journey across the country to the mythical beach paradise–only to have my hopes DASHED FOREVER when I finally stumbled out of the woods and onto the shore.  I think I read that book.

seriously.

garbage beach

brick monster

These brick sculptures were all over the place. A nice touch.

And finally, a giant rock:

magical

Someone go there and make a short film, thanks.

We went to Plant World yesterday. It was pouring rain and there were rivers flowing through the greenhouses, but that didn’t stop me from hunting down new buddies to populate the jungle that my apartment will eventually become.

LEAFY FRIENDS:

what the hell

I just read The Orchid Thief for the first time, and I’m now fascinated by the fascination with orchids. Which I guess means I buy some so I can stare deeply and seriously into the flowers from three inches away. But really, they’re so weird. Some of them barely even seem like flowers.  This Phalaenopsis is pretty tame, but other orchids have a really alien vibe, with parts that you can hardly identify as petals or leaves, all rubbery and furry and face-like. In conclusion, I want a million of them and now I’m in trouble.

may cause a burning sensation if eaten

This guy is called a Croton, which is hilariously close to Crouton so that’s probably what I’ll call it forever.  I’m really into how fun and tropical this is; it also kind of looks like an oil painting of a plant. Turns out the leaf sap is slightly irritating/toxic, so here’s hoping that cats don’t get hungry and learn a hard lesson. Crouton.

scratch and sniff

Plans for peppermint: tenderly care for until huge; harvest for tea, mojitos.

oh my god

This horrifyingly interesting little thing isn’t a mushroom or a body part or a rock. It’s really just a succulent called a lithops that apparently evolved to look like the rocks in its natural South African habitat. So really it’s smarter than all of us and will probably revolt, etc. In the meantime we have it captive in a tiny pot in our living room and I stare at it, slightly freaked out. I probably wouldn’t mind having a room full of these.

baby tree

d. bought a bonsai, which he has already groomed and pruned to his own aesthetic ideal, like a pro.  He’s going to photo-document its progress, which will be awesome. Because it’s a baby tree in a pot.

gear

We have a bunch of plants already that we plan on cutting from: a huge philodendron, fairy castle cactus, columnar cactus, and a leggy coleus that just wants to go everywhere. I really want to make like ten thousand clones of our plants and then feel like a scientist gone mad with power. It’s so easy to do! We could have rooms jammed full of cacti, like force fields for our stuff.  No one will ever come over again.