more like space

why should our bi-bi-annual celebration of psychical human achievement be limited to those tests that require strength, commitment and training? surely those of us who go through our lives patting ourselves on the back every time we take the stairs instead of the elevator deserve something to mark our accomplishments. after all, we do these things without trainers, meaning that we have only ourselves to rely on.

here are a few sports i think i'd be a medal contender for:

napping. i kick ass at napping. for someone who has so many problems with insomnia, when i want to sleep, it is really, really difficult to keep me awake. i often annoy dom with my ability to sleep on a dime, including at times when he's trying to talk to me, but i secretly think that he really just envies my ability to nap because he gets all screwed up and either can't relax enough to sleep or sleeps too long.

feline support. i don't mean supporting them by buying them food and litter and that sort …

i've mentioned before on the blog that i've always loved cemeteries and that i grew up playing in one, which for a lot of people probably explains some things about me. i love photographing them, but one thing i regret is that i moved away from halifax before the advent of widely available digital photography, which made amateur professionals out of all of us.

halifax actually has a lot of centrally located cemeteries with fascinating histories. many of the victims of the titanic are buried there, including the one whose name james cameron borrowed for leonardo dicaprio's character in some movie. apparently, there were teenaged girls making pilgrimages to the site of his grave, the strains of celine dion still plucking at their heartstrings when the film came out.

there are the usual assortment of local historical characters interred there. a friend of mine from high school snapped a picture of me raising a bottle of keith's while sitting on the grave of alexander keit…

a word to the wise: never dis "the wizard of oz" in my presence. it was the first film i ever saw in a theatre. [in rerelease, not when it originally came out. although i'd bet you'd all want to know my anti-aging secrets...] i grew up with a record of the film [basically key points of dialogue and all the musical numbers] that i listened to almost every day for years. the only thing that got me through elementary school was the idea that i might be sucked up into a tornado and launched into a technicolour dimension full of talking animals and fabulous shoes. i'll be honest- i never could figure out what dorothy found so damned appealing about going back to dust-bowl era kansas to live in poverty, when she could have just stayed on in oz with all her friends, safe from the witch who wanted to euthanise her dog. especially since the emerald city was in need of an overseer. but the movie has played a pivotal role in my life and do not take kindly to its detractors.
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are we all still tingly from watching the olympic opening ceremonies? you know what was even better than watching the opening ceremonies? reading the bbc live text feed. all of it typed out in perfectly prim, objective bbc style, bit by bit. it was probably the most addictive, surreal thing that i've ever read. also, i left work during the letter "b" and arrived home for "s". that choice of letters is 100% honest and completely accidental and i happen to think that the whole "blooming flower of flames" thing was pretty breathtaking, so for once i'm not being cynical. seriously. i'm not being cynical. also, hats off to the queen, who showed that one of the world's most public figures can still surprise the people from time to time and it doesn't need to involve a sex tape.

i have to admit that i'm not a summer olympics fan. i do always fall in love with the winter olympics, because the competition does seem to be more broad and bec…

corinth is currently a smallish greek town, about 80km from athens, the second largest population centre of the peloponnesus [the large peninsula in the southern part of greece] after kalamata. but in ancient times, corinth was a powerful city state, supposedly founded by a descendant of the god helios, probably not a factual statement, but typical of the era, which freely combined history and myth in a proud tradition carried on today by fox news.

today, the corinthians are all but forgotten- an ancient ruin replaced by an industrial-era town far after greece had ceded its position of power in the world. today, it's a city best known for its contribution to architecture, particularly a design of column. it's probably not what the god helios envisioned for his family. 
but le metier de beaute understands the mythical, romantic legacy of ancient corinth, i'm sure. that's why they named their most prized and elusive eye shadow for it. a shade that is as classic and icon…

i can't count the number of times that i've been told by american friends that i just don't get the importance of their second amendment. they're right. i'm canadian and my perspective on gun control is shaped by my cultural background. i don't have a problem with certain items being restricted because the potential for them to cause harm far outweighs their potential to do good. my country was not founded in the wake of a violent revolution, but through a protracted process of increasing distance from our colonial parent. there have been a lot of problems in that process, but no one ever felt that it was crucially important that the populace be ready to defend their existence against the british or anyone else. so yes, i agree, i don't get the importance of the second amendment.

i do get the importance of keeping the government out of your personal decisions. they're there to manage things that need to be done as a group and for the group as a whole an…

this is the final chapter in our trilogy about the glandular system and how it can make you crazy... literally. we've already looked at the adrenal glands and the thyroid glands, both of which are thought to have an effect on our moods, our overall mentality and our access to crucial neurotransmitters. but the adrenals and the thyroid are really just the puppets of something far more powerful. ladies and gentlemen, i give you... your pituitary gland.


ok, the pituitary gland doesn't really look like much [except a very tiny pair of testicles attached to your brain -ed.] but oh, the things it can do. its function is actually to serve as the field general for the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that controls the entire glandular system, among other things. the pituitary takes its orders and then broadcasts them, arming the rest of the endocrine system with the weapons it needs to get the job done. one of the tricky parts about treating glandular problems is that the root caus…

it's not autumn. it's hot and sunny and mostly dry, except for when we get wild thunder storms, so i don't even have a sense that fall is ever coming. but it's around this time that i start to get a little sense that the days will become shorter, the weather will be come cooler and i will once again be able to go outside without fear of sunstroke, because now is the time when the fashion world turns its attention to fall.

although the collection doesn't officially hit shelves until the beginning of august in canada [which is really as early as it should], i got a chance to check out the nars' fall offering this week and for my tastes, they set the bar very high. the lovely corinne, head makeup artist at the nars counter in the bay downtown introduced me to the products and also tried a number of them out on me... if i had wanted to save money, this was definitely a mistake, because once you get a sense that something really works well on you, it's hard to …

last night was a blast! a big thank you to dj tyg for letting us guest star on her monthly night, because we had a great time. my set was a little more reminiscent of the sets that i used to do at katacombes [i.e., less prone to strange meanderings than what you normally hear at the caustic lounge]. i actually invited someone to the night with the promise "don't worry, it'll be normal". which also gives you an idea of what to expect at the caustic lounge. behold my marketing genius.

mr. dna started off putting the "punk" into the night [which i think technically means i was responsible for the post, which doesn't sound quite so exciting]. i'd say that he definitely had the edge in the bouncy energy department.

many thanks to those who stopped in throughout the night to share in the tunes, the booze and the remarkably tasty nachos and a special thank you to the ska boss who stuck it out until the end of the night and gave our weary bones a ride home…

i was almost going to skip it this week. not out of any disinterest, but i always feel weird posting something flip and cheeky on days when the news is choked with stories of some location filled with people going about their lives suddenly getting shot up by a lone maniac with some sort of personal gripe or agenda.

awful things happen every single day. people who lead otherwise normal lives are suddenly transformed through violence every single day. by the harsh standards of the world, what happened last night in aurora, colorado isn't even close to the worst. i'm sure families in syria would consider a day where ten people died to be better than average. but there is something about these completely random mass shootings in otherwise fairly peaceful places that haunts us all here in the western world. it happened today with aurora. it happened a year ago sunday in norway. it happened in another colorado town, now synonymous with the terror of such a massacre in 1999.

what h…

a few years ago, i was working for a company and a woman from my department went on maternity leave. shortly after she left, the "big boss", under the guise of making casual conversation, sauntered through the offices of all the female employees in their late twenties to mid-thirties and chatted about how incredibly disruptive it was to a company when a woman went on maternity leave- how she was really making it difficult for the whole company to keep working.

those who know me know that i made a choice to be a non-breeder long ago and have never wavered. however, that doesn't mean it wasn't incredibly insulting to have someone talking to me about all the problems i'd cause if i were to have a child. to say nothing of the fact that i knew other women at that company who wanted to have children. it was a tricky situation.

on the one hand, i know that what he was saying was true. in canada, parents are entitled to a year off in maternity/ paternity leave. [that is,…

thyroid is the new heart! thyroid is the endocrine system's "tangerine tango"! [hopefully not a literal statement, for your sake.] what i mean is that thyroid is the new "it" thing, the possible source of all your problems and ailments, head to toe [including how much of a distance there is between your head and your toes]. whatever is wrong with you, chances are that your doctor will want to do some blood tests to determine if your thyroid is to blame. because what medical science has discovered is that your thyroid gland hates you and wants you to suffer.

this really should have been obvious for much longer, just on an intuitive level. a key clue is the placement of the thyroid gland: it's often whimsically described as being a butterfly shaped structure at the base of the throat, surrounded by its very own cartilage, which is what gives you the protuberance known as the "adam's apple" [or, in women, that bump in the centre of your neck]. w…

it can't be interesting for you, the reader to go through all theses blog posts where i rave about armani's eyes to kill shadows and how much i love them and how everyone should have at least one in their house at all times. after all, there are only so many ways i can say that they adhere well enough to last through a nuclear blast, that the use of multiple pigments in the powders means that you get a very nuanced shade on the lid, that you shouldn't be afraid of the sparkle in them, because they're surprisingly forgiving even on *ahem* aging lids. but i have to say that every time that i write one of these reviews because these are very consistent little pots of awesome sauce as well, so you can feel pretty safe choosing the colour you like best and assuming that you're going to get all the benefits attributed to its brothers and sisters.

and the fact is that i wouldn't have to keep writing these reviews if armani didn't keep releasing such new and beaut…

so, yes, dom's birthday was yesterday and we celebrated with friends at montreal's casa de mateo. one of the best ceviche i've ever had, wonderful, rich flavours and they sell margaritas by the pitcher. there is nothing bad in there at all.

in fact, the only bad part of the night came when we left the restaurant, which had seemed quite temperate, and were reminded of exactly how hot it's been. it was like stepping into a dryer, which is something you pretty much never want to do. it was hot enough that none of us could actually feel the effect of our margartias [or other cocktails- i think i was the only one visiting margaritaville now that i think of it]. i'm fairly certain the heat actually caused the alcohol to evaporate before it made it to our system.

i'm thankful that at least the last few days haven't been disgustingly humid, but it is vaguely worrying to look around at nature and realise that i'm living in a fairly large pile of kindling popula…

sure it's friday and i'll have favourites for you, but more importantly

IT'S DOM DAY!

how important is that? it's important enough that i spelled it all in capitals. WHICH I NEVER DO.

dom day is, of course, the day that my unbelievably patient other half, was born. and yes, it falls on friday the 13th. in fact, he was born on a friday the 13th. and he ended up with me, so that probably answers the question about luck one way or the other.

so here are a few things you might not know about dom...

he has more cool, obscure film t-shirts than any person ever. also probably more than any movie studio. several of them were custom made for him.


his head is perfectly shaped. seriously. the first time he shaved his head, i was all like "you should be a skull model or something!" i'm still working on that whole finding a gig for a skull model thing.


he's really fond of taking baths. he finds it super-relaxing and soothing when he's had a rough day, or whe…

i have to admit it, my hair is dry. summer seems to be just as hard on it as winter, but let's not forget that i've been torturing it with bleach for several months. that last bit is probably making it worse, despite my efforts to douse it with rich treatments that will make it forgive me. i'm kind of an abusive hair owner and i'm sure that when it comes to its senses, it'll leave me.

but the fact is that my hair feels like this every summer, mostly because it's very, very thick despite my cruelty. it was a very hot summer day last year that made me decide that i needed to get rid of a lot of hair immediately, which was what prompted me to ask dom to help me cut my own hair. in fact, i've now gone close to two years without visiting a hair dresser for any reason.

this week, however, with the 30c degree temperatures and dry breezes, have really tested my resolve. i wasn't particularly jonesing to have my hair short again [although that always remains a p…

most parents wouldn't allow this. most parents would be concerned for his tiny little liver. but i'm not most parents and my inclination is to grab the big camera and see how many shots i can get before he pukes. [fyi, he didn't puke, which doesn't mean i'm not a horrible person, it just means that i'm a horrible person whose arms got tired holding the big camera.]
and dom is horrible too! he's the one holding the beer! 
so yes, we're raising a feline alcoholic delinquent. now stop asking me why i haven't had fleshbabies. [you can click on these pictures to make them really big for when you contact the authorities on us.]

have you ever stopped to ponder the miracle and curse that is computer technology? your home computer, your phone, your laptop, most recently your tablet. if you're reading this, you're making use of something in this realm. every day, you use a computer more powerful than the one that launched the apollo rockets to play angry birds. but just as remarkable as the power of the technology we have out our literal fingertips every day is how immensely fragile it is. last week, an errant cat hair fluttered into my computer's insides, which prevented the motherboard from recognising the ram on start-up. a couple of blasts of compressed air later and everything was fine, but it is a little disconcerting to know that so much of my life relies on something that can be thrown into chaotic disarray by a cat hair.

what scares me more is that the thing that i rely on for absolutely everything in my life- my brain- isn't a whole lot more resilient. i guess it's obvious that cat…

i posted a little while ago about a little detour snafu near my office involving some temporarily relocated bus stops. i was happy when, a day or so after my post, someone from the transit authority did put some notices up on the permanent stops so that commuters would know they'd moved and not just assume they'd been abandoned.

unfortunately, as the saying goes, you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. but in this case, the horses are bus drivers.

for some reason best known to the drivers themselves, the detour appears to be strictly optional. some drivers follow it and turn the corner a block west of my office. others plow right on through and follow the regular route.

the "fun" part of this is positioning yourself so that you can see any oncoming bus and then guessing where it's going to stop. since there's an easy 300m between the stops, your reactions need to be very quick. there is also a busy intersection and if you haven…

we've all had the experience: you're standing in a group of people, excitedly talking about the same general subject, but the somehow you're the only person who seems able to see something really important. like you're being stalked by a crazed killer and you need to get help and people start saying "we should all split up so that we can go and look for help in as many different places as  possible" and you're all like "hey, has anyone here ever seen a movie? just me?" the point is that the larger group is missing out. this is kind of like that. except no one kills you in the end.

first of all, my apologies for being late with a "summer collection" review, because we all know that, in cosmetic terms, summer starts around the middle of march. i'm not exaggerating. when i first started seeing reviews of chanel's summer collection on line, the forecast high temperatures were still below freezing here. it felt like they were makin…

insert joke about how unbelievably hot i am here. this weather has made me stupid. either that or the bleach has gotten to my brain and i'm living an eternal blonde moment from now on. see? i should have said "i'll be living", but i didn't, because the heat is making me stupid. luckily, i live in a country where i can waste water by filling the bathtub up and using it as a wading pool or putting some in a mister and dousing myself on a regular basis. sweet, irresponsible relief.

i figure i should get to my favourites while my brain is still functional enough that i can remember them...

good news :: stuff i can't make up from around the internet


admit it, you're really curious about the pictures. [thanks to dom for this one!]

from now on, we shall call them ok!-mart.

do you feel lost in the world? perhaps your sense of isolation requires an appropriate sort of gps.

the kfc double down? that health food for these guys.

goings on :: stuff you can [and should]…