that canadian kiss

Somehow, the riots in Canada last week slipped under my radar--I emphasise "somehow" because I pretty much read the news every day (and it's both a good and bad thing, that).

But as I found out about them properly today, I, too, found out about that kiss.

And as I found out about that kiss, I, too, found out about this pseudo book cover.

The truth is, I think I like it more than I like any of the originals!

And whatever the circumstances are surrounding that kiss (and I hope, just hope, it was nothing more than romance), it just might become as famous as this one.

milk milk!*

I just popped in to share a video--a video that made my heart melt.

A Love Story… In Milk from Catsnake on Vimeo.

As cute as it is powerful, in my opinion. And I'm not even that fond of milk...

*Nobody will fully understand the title of this post unless they've seen this, the Cravendale advert.

music for your monday

There are many, many things that I like about this video. (And yes, maybe the fact that it's set in Paris sways my interest by a fair few miles).

And (also set in Paris, it has to be said) is this beauty.

Oh, and this! (Which isn't Parisian in any way).

I thought I'd share a little music for your Monday evening.

I think they're quite, quite worth your time. (And feel free to share---I am always welcoming of new---to me---music).

friday finds (and a little opening up)

This week was the penultimate teaching week of my second year---and I have really, really felt it. I will spend the next two days with another essay---on art and romance in Madame Bovary---and then I am pretty much done. (There are essays over the spring break and exams to prepare for, but teaching ultimately ceases). And I probably should be savouring it all---all the really bright academics I rub shoulders with, all the time I can devote to books and to words and to composition. But I guess I am a little bit tired---a little bit tired of jumping through the hoops I didn't expect there to be and the moments of uncertainty---of not really knowing what to do and not seeing the passion---real and heart-felt---in others.* And I don't mean to sound pessimistic or ungrateful (for this chance, this really, really wonderful chance of education), but I have just been feeling down this week as the questions of future and of next year have loomed.

As a result, I haven't spent that much time scouring the internet for very many things, but here are a few links that I have lately favourite-d.

Really, really beautiful things people do with books (other than write them)...

...and I cannot get over just how astonishing these tapestry book-covers are!

Sesame Street does Mad Men---I got quite a giggle out of "Don".

Ten possible meanings to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

I love some of this art.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend---I will probably be posting a little more regularly next week. (In the hope that I have things to say).

*And maybe this little bit of a rant comes off as passionless in itself---because feeling this way, this apathy and fatigue of university, sometimes makes me wonder whether or not I'm in the right place; whether or not I am one of those very students I frustrate over. But then I open up a book or I start writing about the things that excite me---or write in a way that I am proud of---and it comes back, that feeling of being where I need to be. And then it's a little bit of a vicious circle---a revolution of questioning the self and simply not having the answers.

friday finds...

...on Saturday.

Because of For Japan With Love yesterday, I didn't get a chance to post a couple of things from around the web this week.

Daily Routines.

The Top 30 Literary Chat-up Lines.

I can't quite make up my mind if I like these or not: Real-Life Disney Portraits.

The saddest story I have read.

Favourite Lego Writers.

I am spending this weekend reading Hamlet and writing an essay---an essay which needs to be handed in a week earlier than I thought. I am such a clumsy organiser, sometimes.

What are you up to this weekend?

friday finds...

This week has ended with compassion and with thought for a fallen country. I have heard many people remark on the almost lacklustre effect prayer or thought can have when financial or medicinal aid is so desperately sought. Yet I am not of that belief. I believe that as much as that is needed---and it truly is---thought and prayer is almost just as necessary: it seals the Earth's cracks and settles its souls. I am not of an organised religion---and I hope that isn't too contentious a remark to write so publicly---but I will be spending much of tonight praying---on my own terms, in my own way---for those affected by the Japanese earthquake/tsunami.

Here are a few---incomparably trivial things---from around this week.

I have been listening to this song and this song a lot.

A thought-provoking article on the way the media portrays a sensitive subject.

Nickelodeon appeals to my nature as a '90s child (who spent a lot of time watching American television---and often references such too often in everyday life).

A clever little thing on publishing and its future.

A collection of musical theatre stamps!

I am crossing my fingers for many things this weekend---and am especially hoping for the health of the world.

x

friday finds...

Today ended with me bumping into someone I have not seen for a very long time and with a few too many garbled sentences. And yet it was comfortable and it was refreshing (refreshing to see he has grown up well) and it made a boring afternoon a little bit better.

Here are some things I think worth sharing. (Although it's been quite a week of that...)

Some alternative movie posters which I think are very, very clever.

I have been thinking a lot about him lately, and I think this is an interesting way for him to be re-invented.

Was Nabokov right about butterflies?

What a lovely idea!

I am so sad that I only just uncovered this. I wish I could have taken part.

What are you doing this weekend?

I am writing an essay---although "trying" is probably a better verb to describe my attempts.* Staying in will also give me a chance to spend time with family---with my brother (and girlfriend, and puppy) who I did not get to see last weekend and my dad who is slowly recovering---it is wonderful to have him home!

Whatever you are doing, I hope it's lovely.

*My inability to turn off my wireless will probably result in a few more posts over Saturday and Sunday---I hope you don't mind.

friday finds

I cannot work out the pace of weeks; I cannot work out if in removing certain things from my days, they are getting longer or shorter...

...does anyone else have this weird, tilting feeling, during the week? As though you are racing yourself to a finish line, or a goal, that doesn't really exist? Two day rest-breaks in a marathon of life.

I like to read Stephen Fry's Twitter feed, especially when he posts pictures like this. What a cool alumni of people!

Few things have stunned me more than these photographs of Iceland.

What a good idea!

Interesting article about what deems a book a classic/the idea of personal classics.

A necklace that I have more than fallen in love with.

I hope you have a lovely weekend.

I will be reading A Comedy Of Errors - before seeing it, live, next week - and then trying to make sense of it. If Shakespeare has taught me anything, it is how wide the chasm between reading and understanding dilates...

And on Monday it will hopefully, hopefully be time for a little Valentine's Day date! (Even though I don't really believe in it - a statement which seems to be such a cliché in itself nowadays - I don't think I will ever, ever give up the opportunity to spend time with my love).

friday finds...

I have a headache and a cold and an almost-cough (you know, the type of cough that you can feel brimming in your throat---the type of cough that may never actualise but still threatens, every now and again?)

But I have, otherwise, had a good day---with friends and a book I never finished.

And it is Friday, which is even better.

The Guardian argues the importance of humanities degrees---and the problems with cutting them.

Making pictures out of nouns with The Noun Project.

Orwell vs. Huxley, a cartoon.

37 Literary New Year's Resolutions.

These are beautiful, beautiful cupcakes.

What are you up to this weekend? I hope it's lovely.

friday finds...

This was a week which sped by---too fast.

Nevertheless, here are a few of my internet finds.

I am a little bit in love with this beautiful bed.

What a wonderful, innovative idea!

This is my kind of holiday map.

Censored Huckleberry Finn.

What happens when auto-correct goes wrong.

I hope you have had a lovely week.

Next week, my love and I are going on a little pre-birthday holiday---first to Bath, then to London. I am, predictably, quite nervous (I always get nervous before - and even during - holidays. I think of all the things that could possibly, possibly go wrong. Sometimes I think I might even forget that it's a holiday). I will be taking my vintage suitcase with me and a few too many rolls of camera film...

Have a lovely weekend!

friday finds...

...on Thursday.

I like to collect internet links (you may have noticed) and here are five I feel like sharing this week.

Two cities I would love to visit (one of them again).

Vonnegut's Tips For Writing Fiction.

I think this bookshelf is designed so beautifully.

I thought this idea was interesting (and some of the pictures are quite outstanding).

Sometimes I just like listening to this.

I hope you are well!

friday finds...

...a couple of minutes early.

I seem to have lost track of my days this week.

Here are a few things I have been gazing at on the web lately!

I love the idea of this quilt.

A realistic (and funny) explanation of certain keyboard keys.

101 Photographs taken with the lense detached. What a brilliant little experiment.

What Punctuation Mark Are You? quiz.*

I like today's Name It and Win It competition from Modcloth.

*I am a comma, apparently.

friday finds

This week it doesn't feel like my body loves me. I ache in too many places and too few things have been achieved. Yet what has felt like a sombre mood throughout seems to be brightening; feeling, but not blocking out. Essays are becoming an expectation again and the books are getting longer, thicker, more dense. I have photographs I am patiently waiting to scan in (of the summer, of the autumn, of more Diana excursions) and cakes I am expectantly waiting to bake. And something spectacular has started to happen. Somewhere, beneath all the worry and the stress and five-hundred-and-one-things that need doing, I have found myself writing again. So maybe, just maybe, what I think of as non-productive and of as procrastination is being usurped by a more personal victory.

How has your week been?

Because it's Friday and I like to share on Fridays, I highly, highly recommend giving this your attention for the six or so minutes that it runs.

Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography - Language from Matthew Rogers on Vimeo.

Neat, eh?

friday finds...

I haven't done one of these in a while!

These are a few of my recent internet finds.

This is the kind of celebrity gossip I favour.*

As soon as I heard about it, I was curious to see how this art installation would function. Not so well, apparently.

A clever photography project from last month!

Maybe a tool to make alphabetising books a little easier?

The 'best' optical illusions. Do you agree?

Please tell me your thoughts!

This weekend I will be spending time with my love and eventually getting caught up on some reading. This week my attention is angled towards Woolf's "To The Lighthouse". I know I ask this a lot, but have any of you read it? I am finding it beautiful but nervously so; a statement probably fuelled by my anxiety over an impending presentation...

Have a lovely weekend!

*And maybe it strengthens my stance on keeping the oceans tidy.

friday's finds

I am pleasantly surprised at how cold it has suddenly become.

I love autumn/winter/spring.

[This is me last Spring. I (almost) rock the panda hat]

I am having a slow web week so here are just a few finds on Friday.

I love this book clock!

This photography experiment is such a wonderful idea and some of its results are amazing.

These baby blankets are beautiful!

Sadly, that is all.

I am part-way through planning an essay on Moll Flanders* and feminism. Slow, slow progress.

I hope everyone is having a lovely day.

*By far one of the better books on my Eighteenth Century reading list. And possibly one of the very few I confess I will actually finish.

in the middle of studying

Today my mind feels fragmented with the ideas of modernist literature (trying to define and analyse it is beginning to feel awkward and my understanding of Gertrude Stein is further slipping from my grasp). But I also feel quite inspired. This week I have brainstormed, written poetry and created entirely new characters in my Creative Writing class (a module I am minoring in this semester). It feels good to be writing again, despite becoming increasingly aware of my tendency to walk and talk like an overgrown cliché. It negates any natural, quirky traits of a personality and lends a sort of vulnerable, emaciated persona; they are borrowed from every other person in the world. Perhaps this is something I will learn to tease out of my unconscious.

In the meantime it is Friday and here are a few new finds.

A delightful interview with Regina Spektor.

Which universities writers went to.

This week I bought a very similar necklace to this.

What every gadget needs, a Moleskine.

And the new Nobel Prize winner has been announced.

This weekend I am heading out to a book-signing, relaxing, baking biscuits and hopefully, just hopefully, squeezing in some attempts at my sketchbook. Hopefully this will involve some writing and a few more trips around the village with Diana. I haven't taken her out in a while and, quite frankly, I miss her. Hopefully learning to operate a dark room next week will unite us again and, more than likely, give room to some experiments (and catastrophes) with colour.

friday's finds...

...on Monday.

On Friday I meant to do a little round up of all the interesting things I had found on the internet during the week. Somewhere I got distracted and fast-forwarding two (wonderful)* days is appropriate. Here are my finds for Friday.

This little book mobile is beautiful.

What a brilliant idea!

I found the comments on this article the most revealing when it comes to gay rights in the US forces. And here is the Lady Gaga video that is illuminating it.

The top ten books challenged by parents.

I want one of these.

And now I must return to reading John Locke.

*Two days inside, out of the rain, basking in the comfort of Autumn. Decorating pumpkin gingerbread, icing cupcakes, watching The Labyrinth, cuddling.