An absolute sweetheart gave me an Amazon gift certificate recently and I joyfully spent it on a bunch of books that I’ve wanted forever. They arrived by Canada Post on Sunday (! I didn’t know they delivered on Sundays… this is Canada! I’m thinking it may just be an Amazon thing) and I was so excited to tear open the box and smell the pristine book smell and start leafing through them.

I got:
Godspeed by Lynn Breedlove
Valencia by Michelle Tea
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt - required reading for anyone interested in a polyamorous and/or nonmonogamous lifestyle
The Whole Lesbian Sex Book by Felice Newman - the definitive guide to doing it with women

Is anyone noticing a theme? I am… I also tried to order Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World but it was postponed until July (out of stock I guess?) so I canceled it. Now I’m trying to decide whether I want Middlesex or Stone Butch Blues instead.

I’ve put up some of the photos from last week’s bike photoshoot with Keri. I really, really, really need a zoom lens, and things like this just reinforce it. I can’t take the pictures I want to take. I can’t afford a new lens right now and it’s extremely frustrating for me.

Dog Solitude poses at China Creek skate park in East Vancouver

NAU, a Portland-based sustainable clothing company, is closing its doors due to lack of funding. The US economy is shit right now but it’s tragic that companies like this can’t get the funding they need to move forward. Fortunately for us, everything in their online store is 50% off!

I found the NAU website through a link Dario posted to WorldChanging - a neat concept, WC brings together and reviews sustainable businesses, products and ideas.

Hack Save the planet!1!1!!!!!1111!!!!!!

Neat interstuff: Check out twistori, a hybrid of twitter and wefeelfine.
Does anyone else remember (and miss) grouphug.us?
If you haven’t already, it may be time to send your first sardonically relevant e-greeting from someecards.com.
Though you’d be late jumping on the bandwagon, you’ll have a good time catching up with the archives of garfield minus garfield - the existentialist, schizo-depressive adventures of a lonely Jon Arbuckle.

I added a new recipe to mal/recipes - it’s super simple but you might get some use out of my all-purpose salad dressing and marinade. I’ve got a few more recipes to add over the next few days but we’ll see if I actually get around to that.

In bike news, I’ve got a new 44t chainring (riding 44:16 now), and thanks to my absolutely lovely housemate Keri I’ve got a new front wheel and (finally!) a new (to me) saddle that’s not rotting out from underneath me (and simultaneously tearing holes in my jeans). Shot some photos of my bicycle yesterday at the skate park so expect to see those relatively soon… you know, when I remember to bring my camera to work because my computer’s hard drive is too full for me to even attempt to upload photos. Win!

Coming up…
Some friends of mine will be showing their work at The Cheaper Show in Vancouver on June 21, 2008. Buy amazing art for the low, low, low price of $200 per piece. The whole concept is pretty cool.
If you are in Vancouver, there’s a show at the classy Croatian Cultural Centre on June 1, 2008 featuring Fake Shark - Real Zombie!, The Birthday Massacre, and - oh yeah - Mindles Self Indulgence.

Thanks to an alert reader, it has come to our attention that the induced miscarriage project we reported on a few days ago was a hoax. Aliza Shvarts, the artist responsible for the induced miscarriage project, was apparently shitting us; personally I think it’s just as effective, while at the same time being way less gross. (Blood and vaseline? Yick…) The ‘project’ still sparked a lot of debate for a lot of people on a myriad of topics. I’m thrilled.

In other news, this is my favourite old ratty sweater (beware, photo is three years old; sweater is older). Spring is springing in Vancouver. I went for a great fast-paced bike ride yesterday with a friend - and was left craving more. So many of my pals like slow, leisurely rides, but I like to go super fast. I also really enjoy turning left at roundabouts. The precise control of skirting them in a three-quarter circle on my track bike is quite delightful.

When I went to see Why? at the Media Club in Vancouver on April 16th I was totally blown away by the opening band, Brasstronaut. I didn’t have the money on me for an EP at the show so I contacted Brasstronaut’s vocalist and keyboardist, Edo Van Breemen, who hooked me up this week. I highly recommend checking this band out if you like jazz, or indie, or indie jazz, or good music in general. I think it’s quite lovely.

Another band that I somehow just started digging today is Mose Giganticus out of Philly. They deftly combine elements of electronic synth, punk and metal for some truly amazing songs. If they’re coming through your city, be sure to check them out; they’re touring this June.

I’m currently trying to raise funds to get to San Francisco Pride this year. Want to help fund my hot babe habit? Of course you do.

Hey - if you’re in a link clicking mood anyway - I love Andrea Gibson. She makes my heart go thump-thump.

My friend Joseph is a great source of interesting links. Last week he sent me a link to an article about a Yale art major’s final project in which she artificially inseminated herself and induced miscarriage herbally numerous times over a nine-month period. The student, Aliza Shvarts, filmed herself experiencing the miscarriages in a bathtub and is projecting the videos on to the sides of a large cube suspended from the ceiling. The cube itself will be lined with plastic sheeting filled with a mixture of Vaseline and the miscarriage blood.

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”

Almost everyone I’ve talked to about this project has had an extremely strong reaction, usually quite emotional, and occasionally concerned with her motivations. Personally, though I think any discussion of her motivations is irrelevant to the validity of the project, I believe that the artist was truthful when she stated, “I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity.” The project has inspired, I’m sure, countless discussions as to the ethics and ideologies of her actions and how they relate to art - even going so far as to redefine the subjective idea of art itself.

An interesting point, to me, is that while the project is undoubtedly offensive to most or all of the anti-choice faction, I’m sure it’s given a couple of people on the other side of the fence cause to re-evaluate their stance. After all, Shvarts deliberately and repeatedly inseminated herself for the express purpose of forcing miscarriage.

She said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages.

I can’t possibly fit my entire argument into a single blog post, but I’ll close on the final notes of the conversation I had with Joseph about it. The connection a woman feels with an embryo growing inside of her has been documented time and time again; it would have been incredibly difficult for any woman to create life inside of her and then lose it. Although I haven’t seen Shvarts’ videos, I have no doubt that they are extremely emotional, heartwrenching, and difficult to watch. Perhaps Shvarts’ project should not be evaluated so quickly as “a disgusting abuse of a woman’s body” or the negligent destruction of life. Perhaps Shvarts is commenting on the preciousness of life, or on the beautiful complexity of our ability to create it. Maybe she’s saying everything. After all, as she stated, this project was about stimulating political and ideological discourse, and that’s certainly what she’s done.

A castle…

Microblogging service Twitter helped an American protester, a UC Berkeley student, get out of jail in Egypt. James Buck was photographing a factory worker protest when he, along with a bunch of Egyptian blogger-journalists, was arrested and thrown in jail. According to the Mercury News article, Buck texted “ARRESTED” to Twitter - a message that was instantly received by many of his Twitter “followers”. They then proceeded to give him advice on how to deal with the situation.

To Buck’s credit, his main concern is that as a white American he got out of jail with few problems, while the Egyptian journalists and bloggers that he was arrested with, as well as his translator, are still being detained, many without charges.

Behold - the power of intarweb!

In other news, I finally saw Persepolis - it’s been in theatres 14 weeks, so I obviously fail at seeing the associated movies of books I’ve loved - and it was amazing. It’s the beautifully and evocatively animated autobiography of Iranian Marjane Satrapi’s coming of age during the Islamic Revolution… so if you’re at all political, or artistic, or sentimental, or into movies, and you haven’t seen it - do.

Six Masai warriors from Tanzania are running the London marathon to raise money (and awareness) to find a vital water source for their community. Seriously, we are such pussies; these guys are totally badass. Isaya, one of the runners, is quoted as saying “If we have no milk or meat, we cut the cow’s neck and let out the blood to drink. If I drink enough blood — maybe two or three litres — it gives me a lot of energy and I can go for days without food or water.”

These guys will also run for days and nights on end looking for water. That’s dedication…

Which brings me to my point. People all over the world suffer from a lack of clean drinking water. In Shanghai, the poor drink from a river that stinks so bad you can hardly breathe the air around it. All over Africa, people will drink from polluted wastewater sources - because they have nothing else. Water Aid says that 1.1 billion people worldwide do not have access to safe drinking water; that’s one sixth of the world’s population, more than three times the population of the USA. They quote something like 5,000 deaths per day due to unclean water.

And yet here - in North America - where we have permanent access to clean, safe drinking water (hint: it comes out of your kitchen and bathroom taps, and heck, even your garden tap) - we are the world’s largest consumers of bottled water. In 2007 in the US alone, 8.82 billion gallons of water were consumed. If bottled water is sold for about $1.79 per 750mL, let’s do some math - $83,675,340,000 spent on bottled water. In 2007. In just the US.

There’s a good assortment of water treatment organizations out there, but for an organization like Global Water, it can cost as little as a few thousand dollars to install a long-term safe water solution for a community.

That’s not even taking into account the amount of non-biodegradable plastic waste that results from this overconsumption of what’s basically filtered tap water anyway. Also, I can’t actually find any stats on how much water is used in the bottle recycling process, but it’s a lot.

So hay! You don’t have it so bad. I dare you to drink tap water. If you’re concerned about the levels of fluoride or other minerals in your drinking water, buy a filter, and petition your local government officials to stop fucking around with your water supply. Not everyone has as many options as we do… oh, and maybe donate some of that money you save from not consuming Nestle brand water in a “recyclable” bottle toward safe water projects worldwide.

This has been a public service announcement.

Yesterday I stopped at my local overpriced art supplies store and picked up a Speedball lettering kit - two plastic pens and six pen nibs of varying sizes and uses. I’ve been painting with india ink for the last little while, using it to outline and emphasize some of my watercolour work, but using it with these nibs is a completely different experience.

Last night I was sort of planning on going out but I ended up sitting on the floor drawing in my sketchbook almost all night. I definitely have some issues with working too quickly (and spattering ink all over the place, dipping too heavily, or smudging the ink before it’s dry) which has been a problem for me all my life - I’m impatient, it’s a common trait of the ENFP personality type - but I feel like I’ve finally found the right way to draw.

Laying ink down on paper like this feels so right. There’s none of the clumsiness and frustration of ballpoint or felt-tip pens, none of the imprecision. Why didn’t I do this years ago?

I have so much to learn! And I’m so excited about it…

For today’s dose of NSFW goodness, how about this list of albums with real nudity on their covers.

I’ve probably listened to “Oh Yeah” by The Cliks five times in the last two days.

Got a couple of rolls of film developed from the Dominican Republic. Photos are slowly making their way up onto Flickr, as well as a few portraits I’ve taken lately.

Did you participate in Earth Hour? It was a symbolic gesture, but it shows some solidarity in the face of a problem we have only the smallest ability to solve. Remember, kids, turning off your lights when you leave the house will help save the planet! Apparently Vancouver’s consumption only fell 3.5%, but in Calgary energy consumption spiked up 7% during Earth Hour… thanks for your dedication, Alberta. (There was a hockey game on.)

If you haven’t heard yet, emo kids are being targeted in violent attacks in Mexico.
NYPD officers beat and arrested some non-violent Buddhist Free Tibet demonstrators in front of the UN.
Good nuclear power? Brian Gordon’s article means we should all go mine Thorium OMG.

Painted yesterday afternoon and like every time I take the time to get my art stuff out and actually start working, I realize how much I love it, how much I need to do it. I just wish I had the dedication the rest of the time, or maybe so much inspiration that I couldn’t do anything but work. I like to think that if I had a studio devoted to artwork, with all my stuff out and at the ready, I’d get more work done, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. My laziness knows few bounds.

Go listen: If you ever have a chance to dance to Kasey Riot you will be more than pleased. But I recommend not listening to her mixes while at work, because they will make you wanna dance, which sucks when you are sitting in an office chair. It’s painful, really, how badly I want to “bust a groove”.