why i'm addicted to the internet - part quatre

so many 'collection' websites are cropping up. here are some of my favourites for a good dose of daily giggles:

• latfh = look at this f*cking hipster
  
• clients from hell - design clients that is
  
• texts from last night
  

and then just some other sites that keep me hooked to the 'net:

artsy

• daily drop cap - jessica hische creates drop cap art and shares it with the world. she publishes daily!javascript:void(0)
  
• what i wore in drawings and the corresponding flickr group
  
• mori yutaka - the cutest illos evar

photos

• daikichi amano - a photographer with a great sense of humour
  
• canelle et vanille - the most beautiful photos of food that she makes!
• nico - photoblog of a girl who uses dslrs and lomos. plus she has three doxies

house project update - kitchen part III

i keep on forgetting to post these photos. aside from a backsplash our kitchen has been completed for several months now and our hardwood floors are down as well. to think that just a year ago our kitchen looked like this and this.

this past weekend andre and i went to factory tile depot to pick out tiles for the bathroom. it is dry walled and painted!

our renovations are moving much faster than anticipated but there is still lots to do.... we're right on track to having a reno free house in 2012.

some books that i've really loved reading the past several months. ...and just so you don't think i love everything, one that i absolutely detested:

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

rating: 5 out of 5

A modern story written in the 'gothic' tradition, I loved The Thirteenth Tale because of the main character's love and adoration of books, the dark mystery and the lush descriptions. The story line plot twist is amazingly smart.

Apparently the 'properness' and reserved nature of Margaret, the main character, didn't sit well with British readers and this book finally did well over the pond becoming a NY Times best seller in 2006.

This is Diane Setterfield's debut novel and I look forward to her sophomore
story.

---

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

rating: 4 out of 5

Hosseini's second novel is by far, grittier and more heart wrenching than his first, which in my opinion had a story arch of a hollywood movie. This book made me rethink my position in Canada's involvement in Afghanistan.

What shines through, much like the Kite Runner, is his utter love of the Afghanistan people and what the country used to be before the many wars ravaged the landscape and cultures.

---

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

rating: 5 out of 5

I bawled while turning the last few pages. BAWLED!! And I know that the movie, despite starring Viggo Mortenson will not even come close to how good this book is.

Like James Frey, this book is written without quotation marks, but unlike Frey, McCarthy writes in a way that makes quotation marks seem unnecessary.

---

The Shack by William P. Young

rating: -200 out of 5

Awful, awful. The author tries to explain how a loving and fair God can allow bad things to happen to good people. Apparently this book, published independently, has a huge following because of the way it helps people understand this point. I didn't like this book at all and found the author's reliance on race generalizations to be extremely offensive. And in the end the book doesn't offer an answer to the question, instead asks people to just 'trust' God because everything that happens to you happens for a reason. So basically, if you trust and love God you don't have to take any responsibilities for things that happen to you because it all happens for a reason. Trust God and you don't have to be accountable for anything! yay!

The writing becomes really bland and repetitive near the end as well. I hate this book and pushes me towards becoming an atheist.

---

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

rating: 5 out of 5

The amazing tale of Aminata Diallo, a young girl abducted from Africa during the slave trade and well, I don't want to give anything away. It is beautifully written and is hard to imagine with all the details that it was written in the 20th century.

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i need some book recommendations for the winter season. do you have any?

endicott, ny

over the weekend duke, petey, andre and i drove down to a small village in upstate new york: endicott. the reason? it was andre's first workshop for his course with the karen pryor academy.

while petey and andre attended the all day classroom session, duke and i wandered around the small city and visited parks. we stumbled upon a cute farmer's market and were stopped many times by old retirees telling me how they used beagles to hunt.

a big coup for us this weekend was when duke would stay howl free in the car waiting for us while we would dash into a super market.

the photos are from my excursions with duke.

black dice cafe

our little neighbourhood is gentrifying at an alarming rate.

since we moved in last august, 2 hip cafés, a weekend brunch/weekday bar, a custom cake shop, a cheese shop and a cute clothing store selling only works by toronto designers have opened up along dundas west. not to mention my favourite health food store where i get my good food box and several galleries including a queen west transplant - things are changing fast in little portugal.

my favourite addition to our burgeoning neighbourhood, however, just opened up a month ago. it's the black dice cafe!

run by japanese ex-pat hidé, black dice cafe is a 50s themed bar with a jukebox that plays 45s. they even have an original beatles 45 in there.

the best thing about black dice, well aside from the fact that i can walk there in 30 seconds, is their extensive sake martinis and plum wine. mmmm umeshu how i love you!

but it's not all japanese drinks there, they have lots of beers on tap (if that's your thing. personally i don't know how people drink pee water...) and a full bar of the hard stuff.

if you decide to check it out, call me and i'll have a plum wine soda with you.

photo notes: the cafe is decked out in halloween decorations!

we are a sad lot

duke broke a paw nail (again! argh) that had to be removed and i've come down with another stye (the 2nd in two years).

if misery loves company, i'm right where i belong!

i'm not sure how common styes are, but if you ever get one, apparently the best remedy is a hot compress applied several times a day since ointments and medicine don't work as well! for me, while working onsite, bringing a face cloth to the studio just didn't seem hygienic, so instead i just cupped my hands and repeatedly applied warm/hot water to the affected area.

please go away, please, please. i hate you, stye.

the little boots report

i forgot my camera for the little boots concert, so i decided to draw a little report instead.

sadly her très cool tenori-on instrument malfunctioned and we couldn't see her use it live, but none the less the show was super fun.

what totally bugged me, though, is the number of people who insist on taking sh*tty photos with their iphones or use their flash with their point and shoot cameras. do they think that if they keep on trying to take photos without changing the setting of their camera, they'll magically get a different result the next time? excuse me, but you are totally obscuring the view for the vertically challenged!

i tried taking one photo with my cellphone and realized the futility of it:



anyway, i consider little boots an electronica genius of sorts. here is she is covering hot chip's 'ready for the floor' and recreating every element of the song except the vocals on her tenori-on:



and then!! check her out on jools holland, where she manages to play the baseline and other song elements all the while singing the melody of her song 'meddle' and play the piano. it's pretty amazing: