dendritejungle

Whee, holiday! *runs around high-fiving everyone*

You know, a year ago this weekend I was fresh off my first fortnight of Bugpocalypse. Everything I owned was either in storage or in plastic bags, my place was practically unlivable in part thanks to the ten tons of Raid I had sprayed everywhere so my cat and i had retreated ("strategically relocated") to my parents' place, and I was staring down the barrel of an infestation with no end in sight. Now, a year later, I'm sitting on my new couch in front of my wonderful, beloved television in my freshly so-close-to-done-I-can-feel-it renovated condo, slowly moving things back in and looking forward to a fall of courses to learn ALL THE THINGS (sewing! woodworking! printmaking! BOO-YEAH!) and continue to whittle down my belongings to a more manageable number.

I can't remember if I've announced this yet here, though I know I've been talking about it in person: my plan is to have my solarium completely emptied by Christmas so I can try and get a roommate. Then, by saving the extra cash, I'll have enough to afford to take a year off in two years time. My plan is to ask for a year off six months out, and if I can't return to my job so be it: I'll quit. *deep breath* So that's the PLAN; we'll have to see how it actually plays out over time. Life does have this pesky habit of changing.

So, what's been up with me lately?

• I've been continuing to love the hell out of the BBC Sherlock, and spend spare moments happily rolling around in all the fantastically well-written fic which its fandom is constantly producing. The awesome caffienekitty has initiated a series of "reccing Sundays" henceforth going on weekly at sherlockbbc for anyone just wanting to get straight to the best of the best.
• Had a lovely if INSANELY busy week when eboniorchid was in town - among other things because I had, like, three different birthday dinners with different folks. <3 (Torontonian note: Dhaba is as drool-worthy a restaurant as ever and remains by favourite Indian food in town, but I also highly recommend Enoteca Sociale for fans of Italian. Crazy rich, but sooooo good!) And that weekend - last weekend - was FanExpo: more about that later!
• I've mainlined the first season of Merlin, and will concede I can see why people like it. (Though I more want to pinch the boys' cheeks/noogie their heads than slash them. They're just so earnest and adorable! *g*)
• This past week I've finally taken the first of a few sewing classes at The Workroom to make better use of the sewing machine themoderatrix so kindly gifted me with many years ago. I'm quite excited, actually: I don't like wanting to do things but not knowing HOW, so I'm really looking forward to tackling a few in-house projects. *rubs hands gleefully*

In other news, I realized I'd carefully uploaded all these pictures a few weeks ago of my June and July and never posted them. So, with no further ado, have ( a general picspam of June/July )

Heh. As I write this, there are many honking and cheering revelers out on the streets below. Most people I know haven't been following the Olympics if they can possibly avoid it - which, for my fellow Canucks at least, has been pretty darn tough the last couple of weeks - so out of deference to them I will ( cut my blather about it. )

Also? The war of the pants will never not be funny. Oh, Norwegians. Never change.

Anyway. As I just said on Facebook, while enjoying the partying revelers outside, on a serious note I'm astonished and relieved at how minimal the loss and damage from the Chile quake was - even with all the deaths and displacements. Most people don't realize the Richter scale is exponential, and just how much MORE horrific the consequences of an 8.8 quake could have been. (For comparison, the one that hit Haiti was 7.0, so this was over TEN TIMES stronger.) Thank heavens for strict building codes!

Finally, I had promised various people a few different links. Firstly, we have the sheer awesomeness of Pavlov's Dogs Handbell ensemble, a collection of local women - most of whom used to be members of the youth group I helped out with, making any performances they make IN the burlesque shows that they frequently perform at A LITTLE AWKWARD FOR ME AAAUGH - who play covers of music with handbells. Yes, handbells. Several octaves of handbells, in fact, and these gals are darn good at playing them. Here they are with the opening strains of Queen's "Somebody to Love" (I love they way people start singing along as they recognize it) and OMG MY FAVOURITE the Imperial March from Star Wars.

SO. AWESOME. I HAVE NO WORDS.

And on a vaguely-related (music?) note, I thought y'all might be as delighted/amused as I to learn that I have stumbled across BAD PORN MUSIC GEEKERY. I can't even remember what I was surfing anymore when I stumbled across this *shifty eyes* but this is a fascinating look at 70s vs 80s porn music, complete with audio clips and such quotable gems as this:

80's porn music reeks of repetition, stupidity, loneliness, unoriginality, and unrelenting sadness -- and that's a great thing. 80's soundtracks actually speak to the visceral experience of masturbation itself: it's like the dull, throbbing death-beat of your heart in your head as you forsake real life and real partners for yet another unhealthy, scared wank.

The guy clearly has some issues, but it doesn't make me any less delighted that I live in a world where some people can get all enthusiastic talking about TERRIBLE PORN MUSIC. Sometimes my glee about the internet in particular and the world in general just has no bounds.

Hi flist hi! I have no idea why my body decided that 5AM was just the perfect time to wake up, but I've decided to take advantage of its poor judgement and finally post to LJ again. \o/ I R SO ORGANIZED. *beams*

I've been rather daunted at the prospect of summarizing my trip to New York and Philly at the beginning of the month, but here goes nothing:

( My trip highlights )

Other news since I got back:

I have started watching Lost, since I'd like to watch the final season live with the rest of the world. The discovery that this actress was on the show BLEW ME AWAY, because this character of hers is my favourite character of all time, anywhere but I've never seen the actress in anything else! I may have squealed. A LOT.

I've discovered this wonderful acoustic guitar internet radio station which I'm loving, and kind of has me wanting to learn guitar. So I've borrowed one. We'll have to see how this goes... :P

This past weekend I was helping a friend who is working on a claymation Flash game. SO. MUCH. FUN. And he's just released the intro on YouTube. Sadly the bits I worked on are in different cut scenes, but it's still funny and awesome and you should totally check it out:

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Okay, so that term "snowmageddon" that's being bandied about for the current spate of local snowstorms amuses me a great deal. So far I'm not sure anything I've seen (even taken together) merits the title: sure, we've had a good dump of snow, and certainly "snow storms" would apply, but "snowmageddon"? Please. Can we save that for something that constitutes something beyond an average set of Toronto winter storms?

Still, it is just fun to say. SNOWMAGEDDON. Although "snowpocalypse" cracks me up too. XD

I saw the movie Australia on Friday. I love Baz Luhrmann, and I love the country, so I really really wanted to love it...yeah. How about we move right on to a movie I actually enjoyed? Bolt? Is AWESOME. It's a Disney movie in 3-D (that's mercifully well done, which is a first) told from an animal POV. It's basically a dog-loses-beloved-person, dog-must-find-beloved-person-though-many-adventures story with a few delightful twists: firstly, the dog thinks he has superpowers but doesn't, and secondly one of his Wacky Sidekicks(TM) is an awesome, AWESOME hamster. He is to this movie what Hammy was to Over The Hedge, in my opinion: he makes the movie. Aside from being generally hilarious, he exhibits the same sense balance of wonder and go-get-em-I-can-do-anything-though-not-really cocky dorkitude (that's totally a word) of Po in Kung-Fu Panda. Anyway, here's the full trailer which pretty accurately sums up the hamster's fabulousness, or here's just the hampster-relevant bits.

I also have two amusing photos to share with y'all. First is an absolutely terrifying testament to 80s design sense, unearthed from the depths of our kitchen cupboards at work during a recent cleaning, and the other is one of my poor spider-plants suffering the ill-effects of its recent relocation at my hands.

( brace yourself! )

Finally, if I may be all schmoopy for a moment, much as I love my biological relations, I feel incredibly lucky to have such wonderful chosen family and friends as well. *smishes you all*

Heeey, I found my missing pictures! YAY! So I can now present to you the picspam I was working on earlier this week. Below is the original entry I wrote - now with the photos! \o/


Well. It's 5:20 AM and I wish I were sleeping, and since I'm not I SHOULD be doing my taxes or cleaning or catching up on emails. But no. What I WANT to do is hang out with all of you, so I am going to indulge myself shamelessly and finally do a picspam I've been wanting to do for ages. To this end I am co-opting the meme for which morphing_lanes tagged me and rather than the eight random things meme (which I did here, for the curious), I am declaring it the "eight unexpected places I've been that I thought you might find interesting to hear about/see pictures of" picspam.

So, with no further ado, a picspam of eight unexpected places I've been that I thought you might find interesting to hear about/see pictures of. I've just put a few thumbnails above the cut; under the cut is seriously non-dialup-friendly. *g* I haven't done my link-to-larger pics this time, though, since they take forever and I'm not really sure if it's worthwhile (if anyone really misses them just let me know in the comments).

(And for the record, it's KILLED ME to get these down to a few photos of each: I have literally hundreds on just these eight locations - six hundred from Yakushima alone. :P)

A preview:


( WINCHESTER STREET!!! )

( Burning Man )

( Biosphere 2 - artificial 'closed' ecological system )

( Yakushima - world heritage site and the forest that inspired Princess Mononoke )

( Sleeping in a tree )

( World Treehouse Convention )

( Toronto islands at dawn )

( The Royal Ontario Museum at dawn )

Greetings, all! I am trying to combine my social life with staying in touch with all of YOU, so while eboniorchid takes a nap works I thought I'd provide y'all with a long-overdue update. And since I haven't done a real-life picspam in a while, I figured I would kill two birds with one stone and subject you to show you some of the stuff I've been up to recently.

Firstly, here are a couple of pics from Halloween in Toronto's gay village, in particular the OHMIGODSOAWESOME Thundercats costumes and a Lego guy I thought was pretty darn great. (And as an aside, let me just say that for those of you who are on audreyovisual's flist and saw her cop costume, her pictures do not even begin to cover the perfection of her casual, perfect "yep, I'm a cop" lounging, complete with gum-chewing.)


( THUNDERCATS HO! )

By popular nixwilliams request, I have also included a selection of pictures from the Toronto zombie walk. (Didja know Melbourne just had theirs?) I set myself up at Yonge and Bathurst, right in front of Honest Ed's, and then moved across the road so I could get a wider view and see people crossing the intersection.


( ZOMBIE MADNESS! )

In other what-I've-been-up-to news, last weekend I went to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair with Mrs. Mongolia a.k.a. torontoreacher and her lovely children Bright Boy and Bruiser. I love The Royal, partly because I love the animals and the booth-shopping, partly because it's just so much fun to go with kids, and partly for the FOOD. Mmmm, food. I was extemely disappointed that the Ontario Pork booth wasn't there this year, because that little pork-sandwich-thingy they do every year is ASDKGJ$WDF!!1!1! *sniff* However, I mollified myself with rosti, back bacon, ice cream, fudge and this crazy-good apple dumpling thing in a cinnamon and sugar pastry... *droooools*

While there, I did notice this: (click for enlargement)

Between the ice cream and lemonade stand were two signs, one solemnly warning of the effects of alcohol during pregnancy, and the other informing us that "ID IS A MUST. We ID anyone who appears to be under 30. Maximum 2 drinks per person." I'm glad they're being so careful with...uh...the non-alcoholic lemonade?!?!? Yes, I assume there is normally some other stand there. I just amuse easily.

I had to share two other final pictures. Firstly, this rather phallic tomato that was part of my dad's late crop. (Yeah, sorry the tomato looks a little worse for wear; it took me a few days to get around to the picture-taking.) I offer it in homage to Nix's famous potato-penis.


Secondly, I couldn't resist this magazine ad for Club House popcorn seasonings. With the little popcorn kernel people all in different sizes! And the one reaching down from the bowl! So cute! That would be such a fun job: looking for the perfect popcorn kernel people.


And I will close by saying, much as Toronto often annoys the crap out of me, I do kind of love living in a city where, on the way home, I can randomly stumble across Aretha Franklin giving a street performance. *smishes city*

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend, everyone!

P.S. For those of you who opted in to my TMI gutter!filter, I'm actually, finally, at long last going to be posting about the Happenings of the Past Month later tonight. Sorry it's taken me such a long time, but it's finally done! \o/ It's over 3,000 words. :P Those of you who want the dish but aren't on LJ just email me and I'll email you the sordid details.

So the co-workers I browbeat into watching Supernatural (hey, they're all glad NOW!) and I are having a pre-premiere watch-All-Hell-Breaks-Loose viewing this Sunday evening from 7ish to 9ish, and if there are other random Toronto fen who'd like to pop by, you would be more than welcome! Squeeage will have to be saved until the end of each episode (well, insofar as squee can be stored: I'd hate for anyone to explode), because THREE of them haven't seen the episodes yet. *pets them*

I live right downtown so I'm dead easy to get to on the TTC, and I should mention for those allergic that I do have a cat.

Anyway, no pressure, but if you'd like to pop by, just drop me a line at dendritejungle (at) livejournal (dot) com or leave me a comment below, and I'll get back to you with details. I'd love to meetcha!

(Also, anyone interested in catching part of the awesome one-night-all-night-citywide-art-fest of Nuit Blanche this Saturday night? I'm planning to be out catching as much as I can from dusk 'til dawn...)

Apologies to you non-Toronto folk. I'll get around to creating a Toronto filter eventually, I promise...

Will catch up on comments later, really. Now, off for dinner with eboniorchid! \o/

For anyone who loves a chance to see hidden, neat things, the TTC subway construction this weekend means that the Bloor/Danforth line will be detouring through the "lost" Lower Bay subway station.

One of Toronto's few unused and forgotten subway stations, the Lower Bay subway station has been essentially ignored since 1966, six months after it opened. It is still occasionally used as a movie set. The Transit Toronto folk have an excellent article on it here, and you can see more pictures of the station here.

The subway won't be stopping there, but you have a chance to see it as it goes by. And if you miss it this weekend, they will be continuing the work for the next five weekends.

(Cross-posted to torontoexplorer.)

It has been a fun word week here in the Jungle, and I simply must share a few of my favourites. So, with no further ado, two words I'd never heard before but now love:

• Ganked
• Fnord

...and three words where I knew the phenomena they're describing, but never had the proper label for them before:

• Pareidolia
• Apophenia
• Backmasking

I love random surfing at lunch.

It's just past 9 PM, and the sun only set about half an hour ago. It's still light out. It occurred to me earlier today that at this time of year when the days are so long, we are in sunlight from when we wake up in the morning virtually until we go to bed.

I find it comforting to think that for these few weeks, we're all awash in light...