Via Dolorosa in the Brown library

Supply teaching in a nice part of town I take my prep in the library, stumbling on “O Jerusalem” by Jane Yollen with John Thompson’s beautiful illustrations. Via Dolorosa pictured. We stayed there June 2010, and heard those singing along the Sorrowful Way, the path to Jesus’ crucifiction.

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Martha Steward stage? Age?

I have to say I'm simply SHOCKED at how many people are sharing "25 Ideas to Make Life Easier." Seriously. Seriously? Yes, of course it's hella clever (I suppose that should be "clevah"?) to rub a walnut on your scuffed furniture but…since when did we care about scuffed furniture? And I'm looking at you here, my brother, who is four years my junior and well-known in the Toronto battle rap community. But not just you–how did this become meme-like in its omnipresence? Are we all going to be travelling with our shoes tucked in a shower cap? I guess I'm incredulous that there seems to be something synchronized in our home-making. We're all making house, nesting, cozying down for winter and the winter years? Nay. These clever domestic tricks to finish, furnish and polish our lives are illustrated with just the right almost-perplexing photos (what's the ipod doing in a bowl? what's special about those purple wet-wipes?) to intrigue us and engage us in what I am sure are the Martha Stewart Years. Bring on the DIY.

Dogs on the couch?! How ever will we train it out of them

Undo! The love? Never.

accessible choreo

I am home sick but watching "Weeds" (obsessively re-watching the entire series, because I started in the middle so it makes more sense the second time around).

Season 5 Episode 1 ("Wonderful Wonderful") ends with a flash mob in a strip mall. I'm intrigued by popular choregraphy, stuff that looks so easy (like most one-shot charlie memes) or something more polished and conceptual like 1234 (choreo: Noemie LaFrance's, dir: Patrick Daughters for Feist).

Then there's flash mob choreography made public by dance groups, even the National Ballet School: Lenny Len or Courtnae Bowman how-tos, and Courtnae's finished product.

Have you participated in a flash mob? What made it easy/difficult to jump into? I'm especially interested in stuff that doesn't require dance training.

Big organ

On Tuesday I graduated from Queen’s for the third time. That’s my ma
and pa being all proud (and having a day off work and retirement,
respectively) near the massive organ. I could see Dad’s face getting
red as it began to play. That and the peeps (that’s his fake Scottish
accent, for bagpipes), which he is a huge sucker for. The highlight
(besides seeing Daphna and her Rivka!!) was the honorary doctoral
recipient Janina Fialkowska’s heartfelt emphasis on kindness as being
of utmost import. Waaaaaay better than my BA hon. doct. speech from
Isabel Bader who, despite an amazing career and life story (love
affair ongoing with Alfred Bader, who donated a castle in England,
where I did my first year of uni, to Queen’s), decided to talk about
the importance of getting the oil out of the oil sands. Ugh. Isabel,
blatant stock-holder much? Saddest flattening of morale ever. Plus
Janina’s story also came with a very funny story about a surgeon
coming to her show and thanking her profusely for the service of her
music–he hadn’t slept in 3 months and konked out right through her
show.

See? A hole. Cut in a flag on the lakeshore. Someone explain?

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This flag has a perfect hole cut in it

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Some amazing cross-stitching

cow dance

whoa. whoa. i mean. effing whoa. this is insane. "intoxicating"? sometimes i think that if the wonder of things like this were presented right, at a critical age, no one would be seduced by toxic substances that simulate the state engendered by watching this in.san.it.y!!!

Dear Mr. Cyriak–would you like to present at a conference on kinaesthetic education??

words on addiction

Okay maybe I'm on a bit of a Russel Brand kick, but this is a pretty good bit on addiction (in his "For Amy" blog entry) and I just watched a thing about prohibition and how it did little to prevent alcohol consumption:

I was myself at that time {when I first met Amy] barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his “speedboat” there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they’re looking through you to somewhere else they’d rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.