À quoi ça sert l'amour?

I can't answer the question (What's love for?), but this song put a little skip in my step this morning. And here's a recorded version with a little more Edith oomph.

More Pretty for My Pretties

simply incroyable.

Jarrett Murphy via a photography blog

Seafoam

Missing the sea today. And seeing these (for the 2nd time in 2 days on 2 different sites) hasn't eased the missing. Click on it to seeeee the foam (get it? yeah, you got it) in all its glory.

This weekend's my mum's 60th bday bash, and though I love meeting the family in the mountains of NC, I must say that I really wish we'd decided to relocate the festivities this year to the NC coast. Alas.

by Syoin Kajii via a photography blog

There's Something In My Jello

Funny and kitschy cute posters available through Mrsloaf on my beloved Etsy. This reminds me of The Office episode when what's his face put what's his name's stapler in the Jello. That's something one of my coworkers would do if he had all the time in the world. Instead he takes the ball out of my mouse (so I went wireless), puts my cell phone in the ceiling tile and then calls me (so I hide it in my bag), and slams the knob on my door on his way in to scare the living shit out of me (so I hate him). Did I mention he's a partner?

"Our Love Goes Under the Knife"

"...the heart was rejected by the host."

Sorry to spoil the ending.

Another earworm for good measure. Yesterday, as Foo and I sat on the front stoop eagerly awaiting gg's arrival, iPod shuffle reminded me of both this song and the Pete Yorn one down yonder. Like the purdy harmonizing on that one. And though I prefer Charlotte Gainsbourg as an actress (see "Prete Moi Ta Main," "My Wife is an Actress," and "Lemming" if you haven't already), I do fancy what Jarvis Cocker did with some of her songs on 5:55, this one being one of 'em.

"Try and You'll Remember What You Used to Be"

(as usual, pardon the cheeeeeezy (with extra e's) homemade vid)

"She Spits on Summers and Smiles to the Night"

Today being only 1 of a handful of genuinely hot and sticky days Chicago has seen this summer... I'm reminded why maybe a surprisingly mild summer isn't such a bad thing after all.

M83 played at Pitchfork, and this was one of the songs I remember enjoying. This one too.

Cute On A Stick

oh my lord, make it stop. that is just ridiculously adorable.

One More Thing

And then, yes then, I'll put full focus on the mound of work floating about in front of me... terrorizing me. So tonight I see the one, the only, The Veils for the second time in the flesh. The first time resulted in a very shy version of myself meeting a couple members of the band and leaving very very pleased (as punch, even) with the show...

It also resulted in the venue where they played stalking me in the months to follow. I made the mistake of filling out one of those "win something!" forms at the door. And admittedly criticized D and his bandmate for NOT filling one out too... why wouldn't they??? Well, I'll tell you why. Because about 2 times per month the Lakeshore Theatre calls to offer me TEN FREE TICKETS! to a no-name comedy show I don't want to see. And they won't let me off the hook 'til I've admitted I don't know 10 people, let alone 10 people I could convince to join me at a shite comedy show. Once I've been made to feel a bit of a loser and a bit of a bitch for rushing to get off the phone, the trauma's over but not without its ripple effect. By the time they call me again, I've forgotten the number, don't recognize it, think b/c it's "312" I might should answer... and am proven wrong, friendless, and thankless. Once again. It's a lovely cycle.

Tonight, however, the show's at the Empty Bottle (cheers), one of my favorites, which happens to be just a couple doors down from the cat I'm sitting this week... and so it's going to be a lovely night of biking to cat, then hoofing to venue where I'll meet my fellow concert goer, getting my veils on, and biking back home... whilst praying I don't get hit by a car.... so i don't damage gg's lovely wheels (nor myself).

photo via thinking about stickers, soph the bassist's blog that gives you a v entertaining glimpse into a young band's life on the road.

Cute On A Stick

These are my kind of deer.

via ateotl

Perry's Soul Mate

Because I'm a sucker for these animal vids... What is up with this cat?? I love him! I could totally see Perry, the cat I'm sitting this week, doing something like this. Am I wrong, gg? I wouldn't put it past a kitty who mysteriously kneads the air, bites you (hard!) in the middle of a seemingly loving nuzzle, and reacts to noises that aren't even there. Poor little Perry pu.

via allcreatures

Staple City

"cityscape" via as

I Second That

One of many drawings by Gemma Correll that made me smile.

"I've Been Waiting Since Birth"

"...to find a love that would look and sound like a movie...."

Castle in the Sky

Talk about a childhood dream come true. Meet the cloudhouse (by sculpture, Dietrich Wegner).

via as

I loved Slumdog Millionaire and was pretty giddy by the time the end credits rolled around. I've always had a thing for Indian music and dance in combo, so this was the icing on the cake of a damn good movie. I never saw Dev Patel as more than squishy cute, but his dancing here (which kinda puts Freida Pinto's to shame) changes that a little.

"I Looked All Around"

"... it was not written down.... and so I'll tell you now... I will always love you... my friend."

This lovely tune by Bill Callahan played in my ear during today's bus ride from the WP to downtown (why is the Blue Line closed every frikin weekend?). Yes, I have to work this pretty Sunday in Chicago, but only for a few hours... and I have as my light at the end of the office hall day 2 of Pitchfork. Yesterday was lots of fun, with the following highlights: curry fries, corn on the cob, perfect company, and a hands-down favorite performance by The National. Yes, gg and I felt undeniable throat lumps during this one... and B downright cried. It wouldn't be a touching performance without a few tears from the buzz.

Ok, off to work so I can get outta here somethin' snappy. In the meantime... "My Friend" goes out to mine (you know who you are).

Winter Games

...are most fun when it's not winter. I'm just back from eating lunch and yummy chocolate hazelnut gelato under the most perfectly beaming sun (not too hot, just right) with my favorite coworker. It was a very happy spot, and its effects are lingering in a most pleasant way.

Hoagie Say What?

This little guy's expression sums up, quite nicely, my state of mind of late. Perplexed. Bewildered. Befuddled. Confounded. Generally flummoxed. And I think it's going around... I sense it in many a folk (or am I projecting?), but I can't place my finger on why and why now. Are we all just hurtling through time and space, and occasionally the cosmos urges us to take a step back and simply marvel at how odd it all is? And when marveling becomes just a little too heady we hit play and start all over again? Yeah, I'm probably just projecting.

Anyhow, it's going to be a good weekend here in Chicago. Foo's going to get a much-needed bath to wash off Beans' puppy oils that have been on him since our canine visit of *oh* TWO weeks ago.... and then... PITCHFORK. H. E. double-hockey-sticks to the yeah, PITCHFORK! I have gg to thank for hoofin' her wee phalanges all over the internet to find me a ticket. It looks like I'll be getting them from this fellow selling a ticket on Craigslist:


So, my beautiful, talented, charming wife of two years has just informed me that, rather than our original plan of attending Pitchfork this weekend, she'd prefer we break up instead. Not nearly as fun, I'd say, but she calls the shots, so here we are. Somebody knit me a tissue.
What that means is that I'll be going stag and using the proceeds from selling her ticket at the beer tent. $50 gets you into the show and keeps me in suds for most of the day. That, my friends, is making lemonade.

Pickin' up my tick tonight at 9. Dark, black 9 o'clock. Because I am who I am, and Ji is who she is, and together we have watched far too many "Primetime Crimes", we've concocted a safe plan wherein I insist the guy come down to my car to make the trade. I'll open my door just... enough... to make the exchange (window's still broke), whilst my feet are poised in gear and ready to peel off at the first sign of... a chainsaw.

"And You Know When It's All Gone"

"... something carries on. And it's not morbid at all."

This ditty and video were circulating a lot last year, but I finally got around to buying "The Midnight Organ Fight" by Frightened Rabbit, and *maybe because I'd heard it before* this tune jumped right out at me. Am I the only one who thinks the lead vocals channel Adam Duritz a bit?

Then I got two songs further into the album and heard this one ("Keep Yourself Warm"). I got into it enough not to realize "it takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself warm" and "you won't find love in a hole" were blaring out of my office and trickling down the hallway. Someone actually peered in quizzically and jarred me from my reverie. But, really, who can't appreciate those line? GTA, not included.

Time

via design is mine

Wooly Mammoth

This little guy was nicknamed Shrek. He was a New Zealand sheep that just wanted to be left unshorn, and he remained so for six years, only to be ensnared when he was 10 years old and shorn on live television (apparently there isn’t much to do in New Zealand… but I totally would have watched it too). When he was shorn, he shedded a 60-pound fleece (enough to make 20 large men’s suits), which was auctioned off for charity.

via allcreatures

I Second That

via design is mine

The Wish List

(minus the candles...though it is a nice look)

I Thought I Loved You

This poster for a hypothetical Wes Anderson film fest is pretty spot-on.

via scoop

Cute On A Stick

that's one flat cat.

via design crush

inspiration folder via coj

"A Heart Of Stone"

"... a smoking gun."

Cute On A Stick

via lolita

Pretty As A Parapluie

via lolita

Visions of Long Lost

Rain sprinkling down while in the pool. (last time: i honestly can't remember)

The desire to live in a room this barren and worn. (last time: every time i see a certain kind of foreign film. first time: Last Tango in Paris)

The desire to dye my hair pink, if only for a few days (last time: after watching a japanese movie i can't remember the name of)

fistfuls of glitter (last time: no idea)

I like my apartment, but i couldn't miss having a bathtub more... (last time: while visiting GTA in the ATL)

all c/o lolita

Bonne Idee

Wanderlust

I'm suddenly feeling it. Again.

But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.

— Bill Bryson


via at

Fruitcake

If it wouldn't sabotage my professional facade here at the workplace, I'd love to put a bowl of these on my office desk and await the reactions.

via kok via t&t

Just 'Cause

... I like it. via sj.

She's Crafty

I love this idea for a headboard (and I haven't had a headboard on my bed in years). The way it combines the vintage look of iron with the comfy (and silent) cushioning is pretty genius. I wouldn't begin to ever try to make this myself (the result would, undoubtedly, be laughable), but I love it all the same.

via design sponge

It's Electric!

Photographic fireworks c/o Robert Buelteman (c/o lenscratch). Gorgeous.

Buelteman begins by painstakingly whittling down flowers, leaves, sprigs, and twigs with a scalpel until they're translucent. He then lays each specimen on color transparency film and, for a more detailed effect, covers it with a diffusion screen. This assemblage is placed on his "easel"—a piece of sheet metal sandwiched between Plexiglas, floating in liquid silicone. Buelteman hits everything with an electric pulse and the electrons do a dance as they leap from the sheet metal, through the silicone and the plant (and hopefully not through him), while heading back out the jumper cables. In that moment, the gas surrounding the subject is ionized, leaving behind ethereal coronas. He then hand-paints the result with white light shining through an optical fiber the width of a human hair, a process so tricky each image can take up to 150 attempts.

Sometimes It Snows In April

And sometimes it's chilly in July. Get it together, Chitown.

by David Foster Nass via AS

I Second That

Today over at Que Sera Sera, Sarah gives us two quotes that are, indeed, worth remembering and worth passing on....


"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

-Plato

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

-Eleanor Roosevelt

Holy Sleeping 'Roo

This is just ridiculously cute. Thanks allcreatures. You warmed my heart after raking it over the coals by showing me a flamingo and a seal being attacked by their respective hunters. This only slightly makes up for that, but thanks all the same.