I have spent many days and countless hours painstakingly selecting photographs (scrutinizing images and asking myself things like; which one of these 219 nearly identical shots of Parliament Hill best evokes in the viewer what it is I want interpreted?), creating titles, descriptions, and tags for each picture (sometimes resorting to series' with names like 'Boats' 'More Boats' 'Boats Again'), and all the while marvelling at how many different places I was lucky enough to visit in such a short period of time.
Please enjoy these recently created sets on my Flickr page:
Check out these beasts made of pencils on the Wired site. They are very interesting; one of the posted comments is, "Wow... I am fascinated and repelled by this." And each piece can take the artist, Maestre, up to two months to complete!
While Google searching for something entirely unrelated to what I found, I came across CBC.ca Arts' The Top 100 of 2006 list.
There's a lot of stuff there, but skimming it I saw a few highlights that I thought rocked for one reason or another...they're old, but they're still true!
Check it:
"9. Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. When U.S. President George W. Bush sat down at this annual gathering of Washington reporters, he was no doubt expecting a light ribbing. What he got from Colbert, star of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, was a punch in the gut. This was satire at its ballsiest — ballsier even than Borat, for the simple reason that the leader of the free world was sitting only a few feet away. “I believe that the government that governs best is the government that governs least, and by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq,” Colbert quipped at one point. The room responded with a gasp. Comedy so devastating it took your breath away." <-true dat. I thought Bush was so freaking angry that he wasn't even going to wait for Colbert to leave the stage before having him disappeared.The full 24 min video here.
"11. Watching The Wire on a string. One of us waited until early December to see a single episode of David Simon’s Baltimore crime series — and then plowed through all four seasons in two weeks. Yes, it’s true, Omar (Michael K. Williams) is 21st-century TV’s most excellent antihero. The Wire’s main draw, though, is its unblinking view of the war on drugs, the struggles of the working class, political corruption and the collapse of public education. HBO’s grand gift to devil-in-its-details, dystopian storytelling." -I watched the first episode and immediately decided to wait and watch them all "on a string" too
"13. Robin Sparkles, Let's Go to the Mall. The writers of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother created this genius, faux-1980s music video upon revealing that one of the show’s characters, Robin, is hiding a dirty secret from her past: the Canadian ex-pat was once a bubble-gum popstar. For those who lived through Alanis Morrisette: the Early Years, this hysterically funny video — which boasts the line, “I’m gonna rock your body till Canada Day” — is dead-on in the details: rubber bangles, cheesy white-girl rap, synthesizers, a toy robot, moonwalking and name checks of Brian Mulroney and Wayne Gretzky. It’s awesome, eh." <-um, yeah it is!
"87. Tyra Banks. With her eponymous talk show and evermore me-Me-ME, dammit! appearances on America’s Next Top Model, the poor person’s Oprah has become the ego that ate television. Girlfriend is the guiltiest of pleasures." -"the ego that ate television"!
"94. David Caruso versus acting. It’s not that we enjoy Caruso’s performance as Horatio Caine on CSI: Miami. Rather, we are comforted by its existence. Shatner’s Kirk impregnated fewer pauses; Al Pacino eats less ham; and what — what? — is with the sunglasses? Proof positive that you can be a spectacular failure, and millions of people might love you anyways. So inspiring."
Over the past couple of months I've been slowly taking advantage of the public's ability to Simpsonize themselves. Finally I have a new profile picture! Wookiee thought the ad was for Simpson Size meals - sucka!
A multimedia artist living in New York created an awesome project called lovehateNYC "that chronicles a personal love-hate relationship with New York City".
When you enter the site, you are presented with the artists' map of Manhattan where you can select an area of the island and read changing lines of incohesive text. Next pick a specific location in that area and are you are brought to a beautiful 360 degree view of that spot, which is not unusual I know, but what is cool is that when you stop the rotational view at any point the image begins to cycle through a sort of blended stop motion of activity. Slowly the people and cars fade through their movements.
The Bowery & 2nd one shows you the day before CBGB's closed blend into its final night before becoming a vacant space the next day. The 'key' in the map shows how the colours on the map correspond to the love/hate scale (Times Square lands on the hate end of things, of course) and each scene is introduced with a few words from the artist.
It's like being in a disconnected dream of New York - something I really enjoyed, so I hope you do too.
I incubate screams for esentially luscious storms of languid power and soar thousands of shadowy gardens away in an elaborately bigger trudge. I manipulate you and me and lie & play for I am me & I am gone.
I just uploaded some starter pics to a new photo set on my Flickr site entitled Life In Macro. If you like them, check back from time to time as I continue to add images from this perspective. I also added a link to my Flickr sets on the left panel under the blog title and my e-mail address for ease of linkage.
our screams are gone robbing me of all recall an avoided stare easily knifed time a madly delirious moon essentially trudging above shadow eternity loves a blue car rust does not I felt dreamily at sea producing elaborate symphonies together through you
A note about the Magnetic Poetry posts. These are not all by me. They are any that I come across and remember to write down or photograph.
I realized the other day that I've never taken any pictures of my tattoos, and I've had one of them since 1998! So I tried to take some pictures of them, but they ended up being remarkably difficult to photograph. I think it's mostly because they're on my forearms, so a) I have to hold the camera at a point where I can't look at the screen or viewfinder, b) using my left hand/one hand means it's very hard to hold the camera steady so things get blurry, and c) there is no lighting that I could use that seemed to work without me creating a shadow over myself. Anyway, here are the two best of my attempts (some of which required elaborate use of a tripod!) My first tattoo, done at Tattoo Art in Kitchener, Ontario. This one encircles my right forearm.
This one is on the inside of my left forearm. I got it at a random parlour in New York a few of years ago on the spur of the moment. I'm not even sure what neighbourhood I was in, East Village? Greenwich? something like that.
One day I hope to have my entire location tattooed up my left arm. What does this mean? I'm thinking, the spot below the maple leaf should indicate the province of British Columbia (maybe the shield?), and below that I would have something indicating Vancouver (I don't know what yet). The spot above the leaf would be the earth with the North American side shown (I think I'd want it realistic looking), the spot above that will be the solar system (the planets and their paths of travel), then above that up onto my left shoulder I'd like our galaxy inked in. I figure this way, if I'm ever shot into space and I'm floating around and some other life form finds me, they'll be able to figure out where I came from. Or if I'm preserved pretty well in ice or a bog somewhere, if I'm found long into the future, they'd know where I was from too. I guess I also just like the idea of having my celestial address in pictograms emblazoned on me. Although, I almost got a firedancer tattoo this summer, except there were no appointment times available before I left for Gorge. Now I don't even think I want it anymore. I'm going to hold onto the address idea for a much longer while before I commit. Too many impulse tattoos may be sources of regret in the future, and anyone who knows me, knows that I abhor regret and have managed to avoid it thus far. I presume that's a positive result of over-thinking.
Moncton & Halifax (Nov/08)
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