Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Bran Inevitability

It's true that I love muffins, especially the top
I love them when they're firm, yeah I love them when they flop
I love them when they're made of bran
They're healthy for you too
But I loved one earlier today so 'scuse me while I poo!

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Running Out of Time

We currently have a tie between velociraptor and crocodile. Somebody break the tie!

May I say I find it notable that Bill O'Reilly's threat level remains unchanged since kitten paws do absolutely nothing to shut him up. At least he won't be able to match his pointed finger to that acrid, mouldy visage.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Danger Diminished!

While you're here you might consider the following situation:


You must diminish the threat level of one scary creature!
You only have one weapon: switching the hands/feet of your foe with kitten paws, GO!

Whose power is reduced the most by no longer having feet/hands/claws/whatever spider feet are called?

A Velociraptor?
A Crocodile?
A Spider?
Bill O'Reilly? (Hands disappear, kitten paws appear- you can't explain that!)


Vote in the poll to the right (see it?>>>) and I will draw a picture of the winner! Sorry its hard to read the options but the order is the same as above, I have to work out that bug, its not available in the template designer.

I'll start the drawing as soon as the poll closes, or I get bored of waiting for it to close; ten days is a long time.
Let's kitten-ify those scary creatures!

Friday, March 18, 2011

Edited for Rednecks

Alright, the truth is I've been caught in the sticky interwebs. But, as I sit here clicking and dreaming about building a time machine so that I might marry Carl Sagan, I come across this and have to share it. NOW I'll go write my essay. Or something.



<>

I must say, that's a pretty good impression of my future late husband's voice. Ok NOW to the essay.

I Bank with Banksy

Just the other day in performance class we watched a Banksy film called "Exit Through the Gift Shop" which was incredibly interesting, but I'll write more on it later. I just Stumble'dupon this and wanted to pass it on. As an artist and consumer myself it struck me:


Thursday, March 17, 2011

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Twisted Paper and Globular Glass

I recently made a trip to the far away land of Guelph, Ontario, where I spent two days and two nights in languid conversation and non-conversation with Russell. Sometimes it was boisterous and silly (well, I was boisterous and silly), sometimes quiet and considered, sometimes as revealing as it was silent. 

In one of these moments of silent pleasure I was idly perusing the contents of his large, L-shaped desk. Three houseplants, their chloroplasts aglow with deep green health, greeted me mutely. A large laptop, all corners and matte finish spoke to its electronic cousins through black snakes- skinny and docile. Elegant configurations of tiny spherical earth magnets perched unassumingly amongst office supplies, next to a small stack of notepaper, the sides of which were patterned with pictograms of DNA, gears, a leaf, a power symbol, a water droplet- white on blue. On the one narrow shelf of the desk, above a row of CDs, a glass paperweight the size of my fist seemed to sink into the pale laminate. Its surface had been partially frosted in the shape of Earth's oceans, and much of our dear Antarctica unceremoniously sliced off to prevent the world from rolling heavily towards the centre of Earth Proper, likely obliterating any pencils or keyboards that may stand in its path.

Russell was stretched out on his twin bed, beneath the window in the alcove created between the desk and the far wall.  I sat perched on the edge of the bed, peering at the backsides of the inhabitants of L-desk, if inanimate objects can be said to have backsides. They didn't seem to mind. I was looking at a small unglazed white sculpture of a hand with fingers crossed, the fingers supporting a thin white cotton rope Russell had fashioned into a tiny noose. Leaning against the bone-white hand was a bleached white strip of paper with one turn in it- a three-dimensional representation of a two-dimensional object, known as a Möbius Strip. The brilliant thing is that with a piece of tape and strip of paper, in two movements you have an object with just one side. The simplicity and elegance of it are among my favourite things in this universe or the next. 

Here is a nifty video featuring fabulous kitchen tiles and a dramatic ending. It's a real live Möbius Strip, folks!




And this is a Klein Bottle, which is an even freakier, even MORE 3D version of a Möbius Strip! You can see at the end of the animation as it is peeled back, that it becomes a simple Möbius Strip. Pure poetry.

 


I like to touch things, especially those with seductive textures, and there was no way that I wasn't going to handle that paperweight once I laid eyes on it. So I was hefting it in my hand, and peering closely at it, touching the finest sandpaper texture of the frosted oceans, and the cold liquid perfection of the continents. I looked closer, into the globe at the undersides of the continents- and the pure transparent inside seemed impossibly larger than the outside. Ah, refraction! I adjusted my grip and there, in finest magnified clarity was my fingernail, appearing giant and in horrifying detail. You see, I have Wilde skin, which is not known for being either alabaster or naturally moist- rather, it is more akin to fine sand in colour and humidity. So I have perpetual hangnails which range from ordinary to utterly extraordinary (to remain polite about it). At least I was only exposed to my right forefinger, and my fascination was thus able to override my horror and I played with it a little longer before being forced to put down the globe and pick up my hand cream. Russell smiled from his position on the pillow, propped up with his chin in his right hand, and said, "I wondered when you'd figure that  part out."

And so, while drifting rather "aimlessly" (for our choices are always informed by our interests, even half-unconscious hyperlink-clicking) through the interwebs, I found this video had a particular resonance with my discoveries while exploring L-desk. You'll see what I mean, I think.



A worthwhile travel through a miniature landscape- a fortunate stumbling upon more technologically skilled individuals' explorations of the phenomena of our world...

    ...it's funny how things line up sometimes. It makes me smile inside and out.





Thursday, March 3, 2011

Counting to Ten

How does doing Russian homework always so rapidly decline into searching Youtube for tutorials on how to count to ten in other languages?

Confession: I'm falling in love with Hungarian. (This is why)
Observation: 1-10 in Polish sounds a lot like 1-10 in Russian- if it were spoken by an old man with a lisp, which I must admit is oddly attractive. Is Polish to Russian as Sean Connery is to English?