more like space

here's a little plug directed to those of you in the montreal area. after a period of some hibernation, i'll be dj'ing at two upcoming events:

what :: kill me now (a night old old-school goth, industrial and related goodies)
when :: 5 february 10-3 (i'm on early for this one, so don't dawdle!)
where :: cabaret playhouse, 5656 ave. du parc (between st. viateur & bernard)

what :: queer post-punk night (pretty much what it says)
when :: 17 february 10-3
where :: cabaret playhouse, 5656 ave. du parc (between st. viateur & bernard)

if you're not sure what to expect, you can see a smattering of my old playlists here.

hope to see you at one or both of these!

here's a little something that i've decided to start in the hopes of bringing some organisation to the lovable chaos that is this blog. i've never tried doing a regular feature before, but i figure an easy place to start is just with a recap of some of the things that i've been appreciating over the last week, or at least things that have captured my interest.

ricky gervais :: depending on what you believe, gervais either thumbed his nose at the entire assembled hollywood elite or pulled off the greatest publicity stunt in the history of entertainment. the man himself has pointed out that he wasn't exactly revealing any great secrets (robert downey jr. has had drug problems? seriously? i never knew.) and anyone who's seen gervais do stand up knows that he has a reputation for offending just about everyone, but the evening was still a welcome respite from a lifetime of awards shows that are to entertainment what ambien is to energy. it obliterated the fact that …

ooh, i can barely contain my giggles. i have finally settled (somewhat) my year and a half long battle with bell canada over the fact that they left my previous phone line connected for three months after i moved, tried to strong-arm me into paying for their mistake, accused me of breaching a contract when i left for another provider and insisted that the onus had been on me to request a copy of said contract, although they had never informed me of its existence. i can't get back the hours of my life i wasted on the phone being subject to verbal abuse while i tried to get this cleared up. it is some minor comfort to know that at least i am not alone. witness this tale of horror from someone who merely tried to contact bell with a billing question.

of course, if you've followed news in canada lately, you'll be aware that i'm not alone at all. in fact, it looks like this sort of behaviour is actually part of bell's customer service strategy, at least if you take the …

i remember when it started. i had to pick up a bottle of wine for dinner, i was standing in the nova scotia liquor commission and i realised that the only thing that i knew about wine was that there was the distinct possibility that someone who had no idea what they were doing could end up with something really awful.

it was fortunate that i ran into a friend of mine who imparted to me two key pieces of information:

with french or italian wines, you generally get what you pay for

chilean and australian wines are good deals for the price you pay

this was a long time ago- wines from previously unheralded regions of france now offer a less expensive option to those from bordeaux or burgundy and it's been years since anyone uttered the words "australian wine" and "good deal" in the same sentence without also including the phrase "used to". but what those two little pieces of advice did was spark my curiosity. it was at that moment that i realised that you d…

i'll start off this post with a bit of an apology. when i ordered all the men from the room in my last post, i was being unfair to my own sweetie, who's very patient going shopping with me and, in fact, has an uncanny eye for spotting colours that work on me (better than my own sometimes). i guess there are some guys who figure that, if they're going to be looking at your lips a lot, there are certain things they'd like to see when they're looking. so if there are gentlemen who are interested in the subject, you are welcome here. but this is another lipstick post, so consider yourself warned.

in my post about some of my favourite (when i can afford them) lip treats, i did say that i'd left out the one brand that i have sworn by for years. everyone who knows me well knows that for me, mac is to makeup what fluevog is to shoes. i've been a loyal customer for years and, in that time, i've amassed a fair amount of knowledge about their admittedly complicated…

important note: all boys are to leave now. this is a girly post. you have nothing to gain from reading this.

ok ladies... we're going to talk lipstick. why? because i happen to be a huge cosmetics fan. does that make me less of a feminist, less of a contemporary woman? well, during a time when i was working at a community radio station, i was called a bad feminist. i was called a bad feminist by someone who subsequently moved to another place, with no job and no immediate job prospects, because her boyfriend had gotten a job in that required him to move. she called me a bad feminist because i wore dresses and make-up. i've supported myself independently since i was 19 years old, through two university degrees, a number of jobs and three inter-city moves. i'll just let you decide who the stronger feminist is.

for those who've stuck with me, there is a certain magic in finding the perfect lipstick. that particular formula and shade is a really great feeling. myself, ther…

i struggle along with my fiction writing, with scribbling out poetry when i can and occasionally with writing screenplays. strangely, something i've never "tried" to write, considering the format in which you're reading this, is nonfiction. it's seriously never occurred to me to try to write something that read just like this blog, me being me, giving my thoughts on some subject i like to think i knew about.

what strikes me as particularly strange is that it seems, with a few exceptions, that it's much easier to attain financial success writing nonfiction than writing fiction. seriously, for every j.k. rowling or dan whatshisname who wrote the thing about davinci (i can't remember and i can't be bothered to look it up), there are a dozen people who make a healthy amount of money publishing a how-to book about what you need to have in your pantry because people want to trust the words of experts. even if the claim to expertise is that they did somethin…

for those of you who haven't heard me yapping about it already, i've been publishing a shooting diary from the time spent filming conversion in 2009. as we're finally nearing the stage where we can call the film "complete", i thought it might be fun/ therapeutic to remember everything that happened as we gradually got the scenes captured.

the first three entries are up and updates are coming frequently. see how we got it done with no professional guidance and no funding. benefit from our experience and learn from our fails.

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