Year: 2006

Jellyfish couture

Jellyfish Many months ago, I borrowed a video about jellyfish from the library. Lucky me, it was one of those upper echelon nature documentaries produced by a specialized research centre with a high budget and a celebrity narrator, in this case Leonard Nemoy.

Dr. Spock narrated in a mesmerizing hypno-voice throughout, and at the exact point in the film where the photography jumped from average jellyfish to mind-bending footage of rare aliens of the deep, our hypnotist narrator compared one especially ruffly, colour-changing, pulsating specimen to an elegant woman, trailing her veils and skirts across the room.

Since then I’ve been percolating on how, exactly, I am going to dress like an elegant jellyfish. Many-layered underskirts? Ruffly legwarmers? Tutus trailing ribbons? Could I knit something? Around Christmas I settled on a ball-shaped skirt, such as you’d see made out of feathers and sequins in the 1920s. Skirts that puff out, then cinch back in. Dresses made from piles of ruffles.

Imagine, then, my delight at finding these diverse, jelly-like creations in the recent catwalk photos at Style.com. (Imagine my delight at finding catwalk photo galleries in general: endless, silly desktop wallpaper.)

Balenciaga

Jellyfish jacket by Balenciaga

Jean Paul Gaultier

Jellyfish dress by Jean Paul Gaultier

Kenzo

Jellyfish dress by Kenzo

Martin Grant

Jellyfish dress by Martin Grant

Alexander McQueen

Jellyfish dress by Alexander McQueen
Jellyfish dress by Alexander McQueen
Jellyfish dress by Alexander McQueen
Jellyfish dress by Alexander McQueen

Pearl of Civilization, private collection

I’ve just finished sewing my own jellyfish dress— out of materials from the Closet of Stash no less. The dress is my surprise contribution to Rock Club tonight (the theme is complicated this time, and involves bringing some kind of art to go with our song). Once it has been officially unveiled I’ll post photos here.

I am very excited. Jellyfish dress!

I am such a lightweight radical

Yesterday was a steady stream of culture-clash encounters with, I don’t know, The Patriarchy. The Lookist, Erotophobic Mainstream. It embarrasses me to feel like a radical, because I’m not a proper, educated, active radical. I’m not in the habit of thinking about politics or explaining my point of view; I stay home and work on projects of my own devising so much that it is easy to think I am average and mainstream. But apparently life gets a lot more mainstream than me.

  • First email of the day was a band newsletter that referred to a fictional “big dude in a pseudo-latex french maid outfit” as “Ewww.” All the dudes I’ve seen in french maid outfits have been pretty hot.
  • Later email from a friend declared “there is nothing more horrifying than the image of thousands of miniature Lily Tomllins running amok.” I think Lily Tomlin is awesome. I shouldn’t refer to Quinn as The Patriarchy, but I don’t see why else Lily Tomlin could be so horrifying.
  • Vicar’s boss wouldn’t let him play Deerhoof in the retail store. Not even The Runner’s Four, which I consider a mainstream rock album. Except, oh right, Deerhoof.
  • As a perfect bookend, I spent half of Chet’s set at Logan’s sitting on a couch comparing worldviews with JR. This involved lengthy shouted statements about the possibility of excellent pornography, my eagerness to find new and scarier boundaries, and a whole lot of talk about the beauty of polyamory done well and the genius of The Ethical Slut. (And lots of shouts from JR about oppression breeding art, freedom from animal instincts, and his disappearing sex drive. It was fun! We did agree on the freeing power of intentional celibacy, but I don’t know if I made that clear.)

This was a lot of clashes in one day, for me. I wonder if I just had more contact with the world outside my multipurpose room, or if I was primed to dismantle Unjust Privilege after spending Thursday reading radical and activist blogs. It is not possible to know.

Affordance

Instantly I am excited to write here in the mornings. I’m not finished the template design yet, but I think the two stripes are the key players. Having my new favourite colour scheme in the house makes me want to represent.

Annie Sprinkle on death


David: What are your feelings and thoughts about why there’s such a connection between sex and death, in music and art?

Annie: I think it has to do with surrendering and letting go – losing control. I think of death in a positive way, because to me death is almost like another sexual thrill. I’m actually looking forward to it. Another part of it is because sex is about the body and death is about the body, it’s not something you can control. We’re supposed to be sophisticated, intellectual, in control people, and sex is about losing control, it’s about surrender, it’s about dying in a way so….I’m all for it. (laughter)

from interview on Mavericks of the Mind

Today

I started my weekend on Friday, and spent all of today goofing around with Rock Club, and Zoe is coming to visit tomorrow so I know that will be a write-off. I can’t separate my slacking from my fever-induced laziness. I want to be so productive, and not get stuck on predictable tasks, like whenever I have to do the part of design that involves making something pretty, or presentable. I rock the functional part, but the decorating is really hard. Yes I know they work together. I’m stuck on visual stuff on two different projects right now. Three, really. It’s painful. I’m so full of ideas, honest. I can work so hard. Honest. I don’t know how to make the pretty things come out of my head.

This has to be the year that I learn to draw. Studying colours and type and alignment helped, but if I’m aspiring to something other than boxes, I need to have less clumsy hands.

Party in my head

Robin wants to make a porn magazine for straight women. I could get on board with that, mostly because Robin is awesome and has interesting hobbies and ideas. She volunteers with an anti-violence project and a sexual assault centre, and a sexual health clinic. That is all the shit that I should be doing, since I’ve styled myself a purveyor of sex education info. I spend more time thinking about sex as a head trip, and arty possibilities and altered states brought on by orgasms. Porn show’n‘tell discussions with Robin would be reasonable and worthwhile, I imagine, and also fun and out-of-bounds a bit.

I’m really interested in private publishing right now, and I think it would be extra interesting to make this porn magazine for personal consumption only, instead of mass production. Fame and attention is the background of practically everything on the internet; purposely private media is something I haven’t explored a lot. I’m compelled by the idea of publishing and working and producing for my friends only. That’s a very human scale with different social consequences, completely different from international online communities. I’ve been finding Rock Club a lot more intense than other websites that I make, and also more casual. Just like everyday friends. I like it.

When I imagine this porn magazine, it would involve pals bringing some item that they were hot for this week (or this month), to put in the magazine, and then we could talk about the contents while we craft the magazine. That is a real snapshot of my daydreams; Galen would laugh. EVERYTHING IS ALLOWED: THE CRAFT PROJECT AND MEDIA THEORY EXPERIMENT.

Eventually maybe we’d get the magazine figured out enough that it would be fun to publish it for real. Right now I want to call it Perv Unit. Today and yesterday I am an unstoppable daydreamer, coming up with names for porn projects and planning the tiny urban estate of my future family. (I’d like to keep peacocks in the front yard, because they are regal and completely ridiculous, and know how to kill snakes.)

Life Jam

Feeling a bit weird about giving a PowerPoint presentation to my friends last night, because I was mostly sincere about it. I made a PowerPoint presentation?? About entrepreneurship??

While I was hunting for pictures to use, I ran across a rich vein of future desktops. So there’s that. There’s this, I mean:

My new optical capabilities

On the way home from Idaho this summer, Galen and I stopped in Vancouver and got ramen at Kintaro, at Denman and Robson. I remember taking a photo of the business sign across the street, but the Lomo ate that picture and I had forgotten what was so great about the sign.

We had ramen at Kintaro again this weekend, and holy shit that sign across the street was something. Laund’rays laundry and tanning, for your pleasure:

Laund'rays sign in Vancouver.

At first I only twigged to the awesome name, so the note about tanning is kind of behind a tree. Still good.

This was the first time I’ve taken my new Christmas camera out of the house. I like the way I bonded with it right away, developed that sensory possessiveness where something feels wrong if it isn’t in my pocket. I’m not usually a gadget person (I actually don’t have any other portable electronics). Usually I’m bonded to some giant hunk of paper or textile when I’m out and about, but adding this camera to my body was eeeeasy. So tiny, and quick. Thanks, Mum and Dad.

power jam

costumes. costumes are a productivity tool.

this morning, on my way between breakfast and the bank, i saw a business man running full tilt down the street. a business man like from a children’s book: in a conservative, navy blue suit and tie, with dress shoes, holding an open umbrella upright above his head. running fast, with long steps making his trousers flap. his tie might have been over his shoulder, but that seems like an embellishment that i would add.

i used to want to organize some kind of annual soccer game where everyone would wear power suits. navy vs. brown (i.e., bankers vs. car salesmen), or white shirts vs. blue shirts. (i also like camping in skirts and mary janes, or just generally taking control of my office wear.)

but the connection that made me realize what an excellent, if obtuse, productivity tool was available to me in costumes was remembering, when i saw the business man running, how much better i like doing housework if i’m wearing a tiara and carrying a wine glass. the glass could be full of water or hot tea for all i care, but carrying it around makes dusting or scrubbing a fun time. an event.

i’m sure you understand right away, what it is like to do housework in a tiara and carrying a wine glass (or a martini glass), because i tried explaining all of this at the sara marreiros show tonight and everybody caught on right away. “you should get some of those slippers with the fluff on the front.” and the thing is, i had some and i ran them into the ground doing housework. we are all on the same page here.

i’ve been thinking about running stairs lately anyway, because it seems like a weird and efficient urban exercise option, and i think if i got a washable power suit i could really get into running. you can wear running shoes with a skirt suit, i think. that’s a classic commuter move. nylons would be best but i have to draw the line somewhere (and they look really weird with my furry legs).

a lot of self-employees and telecommuters make a point of getting properly dressed to work at home, because it gets them into productivity mode. i do that too (my key items are a bra and real pants). i’d like to figure out a home office costume that goes one level further, not just into productivity mode but into like, titan of industry mode. what is the word for one of those pillars of society who wield massive business powers yet are admired for their philanthropy and preferably also some type of artistic skill? genius? character? sarah’s imaginary friend? i want to get into like, gomez addams mode. mon sauvage!

contenders for my new work outfit.

  • a clerical cloak of some type
  • a green bookkeeping visor and crisp shirt
  • power suit
  • my old default: the tiara and the wine glass
  • sassy underwear (possibly combined with the clerical cloak?)
  • dresses with hosiery and jewellery. and footwear.
  • cleanroom spacesuit.
  • specialized garment, like a lab coat or a utility belt
  • monochrome outfit of any kind

i think part of what is holding me back from my ultimate productivity-sauvage costume is that all the glamorous titans of yore were dudes, and the lady workers did not have cool 3-piece suits that suggest timeless power. this is an unforeseen feminist battleground.

One down

Today I bought six low-energy lightbulbs and put them in the fixtures we use the most. Kitchen mostly.

I feel virtuous and green, and also homey. Our place is a real castle lately: tidy and well-stocked, with enough places to sit. Now with environmentally sound lighting.

Soon I’ll go to rock club and see if my secret pal likes what I picked for her. Rock club is making me like my friends more. It barely comes together most times, and runs like a case study of social groups, but I like that about it. It helps me accept my friends for being human, even when they flake out or pry for attention or forget to leave room for me. We seem to be gradually adjusting the rock club setup to get the best side of most of us.

My new bookmark

I’ve tried to do this several times. Hopefully this time it will take.

If you use an index card as a bookmark, you can note down any mystery words to look up later. Most words are not mysterious enough to warrant a dictionary interruption (for me at least), but by now I really should know for certain what lugubrious means.

I bet if I make a chart, I’ll remember to use it. I’ll just trust my friends not to tease me when I leave that lying around.

Goodbye, 2005. It’s been swell.

All that goal-setting required some stock-taking. I keep such close tabs on my business development and my personal growth that all I really want to tally up is my reading list for 2005. I barely read at all this past spring, but really got down to business in the fall. I wish I’d actually kept a list, so that I could name the quantity of books I’d like to read in 2006. Why is a numerical goal so appealing? Je ne comprends pas.

Read in 2005

These go approximately reverse-chronological, from memory only. Emphasis shows stuff I especially enjoyed.

  1. The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood
  2. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
  3. Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell
  4. The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell
  5. Loop-d-loop, by Teva Durham
  6. Knitting without tears, by Elizabeth Zimmermann
  7. Freakonomics, by Stephen Levitt
  8. The Confusion, by Neal Stephenson
  9. Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson
  10. Post Captain, by Patrick O’Brien
  11. Master and Commander, by Patrick O’Brien
  12. The Search, by John Battelle
  13. Designing with Web Standards, by Jeffrey Zeldman
  14. The Zen of CSS Design, by Dave Shea and Molly Holzscholg
  15. I Will Fear No Evil, by Robert Heinlein
  16. A New View of a Woman’s Body, by The Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Centres
  17. Petals, by Nick Karras
  18. Bazaar Bizarre, by Greg Der Ananian
  19. Not Wanted on the Voyage, by Timothy Findley

So that’s 19 books, plus a lot of comics. Considering how familiar I got with the library this year, I’m sure I’m missing several no-name typography books and the like. But maybe 30 is a reasonable goal for 2006. 30 then, to be reassessed in June!

To read in 2006, in case I forget…

  • Infinite Jest
  • Confederacy of Dunces
  • Sound and the Fury
  • The System of the World
  • What the Body Remembers
  • Guide to Getting it On (for myvag)
  • The Erotic Mind (ditto)
  • Godel, Escher, Bach (finally kill it!)
  • The Nature of Order #2
  • Laws of Media
  • Emergence (finish skimming it… I’ve read a lot of the books in its bibliography, but it would be good to put it to bed)