We came home last night with bags full of treasure – groceries, favourite films, promising books, and a round black pot, some soil, and two miniature rose bushes tucked under my right arm, one red, one moonlight white, like the flowers assigned by Hans Anderson to Gerda and Kai. I planted the flowers before I even took off my boots, sitting at the kitchen table, fingers smeared with beautifully scented dirt, palms pricked scarlet from the thorns, smiling as if I was giving a home to a child. I potted them so close their roots will mingle as they grow, tying their lives into a thriving, inseparable mass, his and hers, with the simple breathing act of survival.
Month: September 2009
there is always room in life for this
All that is solid melts into the air. from Sooz on Vimeo.
ARTIFICIAL PARADISE,INC. from Jp Frenay on Vimeo.
Help Coilhouse Win a Small Business Grant!
mostly via Nadya:
Guys, Coilhouse Magazine needs your help! Basically, here’s the deal: we’ve entered the magazine into a competition for a $100K business grant that we feel we have a real shot at winning. My knee-jerk reaction to all contests, sweepstakes and competitions is that they’re all scams. But this one actually sounds promising, and if we won, it would change everything for us. As a small business, it’s hard for us to keep going in this economy, but this could give us the boost we need to really take Coilhouse to the next level.
It literally takes 60 seconds to help out here. You just have to register (they won’t spam you.. unlike me) and vote (it takes 1 click).
STEP ONE: Go here to register. I know, registering is super-annoying. This one’s relatively painless. Don’t worry about spam – they explicitly say “we will not solicit your email for special offers, product news or other communications.”
STEP TWO: Go to our entry. Click on “Support This Story, ENDORSE NOW.”
STEP THREE (BONUS ROUND!): If you really, REALLY want to support us and take one extra step, get the word out! Let people know we need support. Post this link on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, or whatever.
Please, please take a minute to vote for us. We’re really serious about winning this thing, and every vote counts. Thank you!
Amanda Palmer continues with the awesome
Amanda Palmer’s hosting a live streaming video web auction in Imogyn Heap’s living room while Neil Gaiman is
“hiding in the bedroom, wondering if it’s safe to creep out & make tea”.
I’d go tonight, but I promised Tony I’d go with him
And you know what that means! Today 9 comes out, the full length stitchpunk feature produced by Tim Burton and Timur “freaking” Bekmambetov, the guy responsible for Nightwatch and Daywatch, (and distributed by my favourite company, Focus Features), based off Shane Acker‘s amazing Oscar nominated 2005 short film of the same name:
Also, whimsical trend blog Urlesque have christened 09/09/09 as The Day Without Cats on the Internet. Please abide.
for those in PAX recovery
via Van Sise:
“the factory work behind the most iconic games of the past few decades:
the smelting of Sonic‘s rings, the chiseling of the 1-Up mushroom, and the rubber-pressed rebounding blocks of Arkanoid.”
thank you, Colin, for living the dream
via moosl:
Upcoming World Record Attempt at Self-Immolation
VANCOUVER — Some of us dream about scoring the Game 7 overtime goal of the Stanley Cup final. Some of us fantasize about winning the Canadian Idol finale. Some of us dream of capturing a Nobel Prize.
Colin Decker’s ambition is to set himself on fire and burn for two minutes and 39 seconds. On Sunday, he’ll have a chance to live the dream.
collaborate
The letter arrives as an unexpected gift, the writing inside looping with the earnest sincerity of reaching out with not much to say. Concern, care, an anecdote misremembered, a stamp very carefully picked. My reply is more dense, close packed words scribbled under pressure, hurried with the knowledge that people-are-going-to-want-my-time-any-minute-now, difficult truth compressed into just under one small page. I barely find space to sign my name. It’s a haunted torrent of words, something released under pressure, as if I’d been holding my breath, waiting for someone to say my name.
The only thing, we’ve never been at the same place at the same time.
Our friendship might be an odd one, growing as it did out of a completely chance on-line encounter, but it feels like home, spilling quarrelsome affection across the planet to someone I’ve never met, flirting, arguing about our friends, fording the unavoidable textual misunderstandings, allowing complexity to flourish long distance. (If it felt strange, I would be someone else.) He seems so familiar, I speak to locals as if he was only just here, though sometimes I wonder details, the gestures of his hands, or the way he might smile, human ingredients only available face to face, how they carry their weight through space.
(I never, for example, would have guessed at the incredible presence commanded by Steen’s hair, no matter how many pictures we might have shared.)
It occurred to me, writing my letter, this might seem strange, almost unfathomable, and yet, here I am, holding closest people who exist father away from me than the end of the sky. Among my papers are other written letters, unsent rough drafts meant for South America as well as New York, aborted confessions, cafe conversation arias scripted as short stories, she said, he said, fictional encounters, scraps of meaning as solid as mercury, certain only in that they prove I care, that I wish we were closer, that I wish I knew a better way for us to meet, as if we are kissing cousins, family unrelated, hiding, seditious accomplices rebelling against our current distant state.
