Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Julie Ruin, LED Music & Weird Books

Weekly Update 2016-29: Get your grrrl power on to the sounds of The Julie Ruin, how I might possibly get some LED rope lights to blink in time with said music, and then onto some excellent graphic novels that I came across by chance.

Music: Julie Ruin
I went to see the wonderful Kathleen Hanna and her current band play Lee's Palace last night. I loved her old band Le Tigre, and this current band fits the same bill with Hanna's deliciously unique singing style and feminist lyrics. She herself was also on point last evening, interspersing some truly extravagant dance moves with the occasional shimmy of pulling up her stockings under a sequined dress. The crowd was lucky enough to glimpse all the way up to Hanna's belly button on a number of occasions as she raunchily righted her underthings. No shame found here. Listen to the show closer and a personal favourite of mine:


Accomplishment:
In one fell swoop, I rescued my bike from being removed and taken away (possibly forever) by my landlord, found a new place to keep it, and managed to drag it all the way up two flights of stairs for safe-keeping this weekend. Between cycling for my legs and dragging my bike everywhere else with my arms, I'm hoping to become pretty well fit by the end of the biking season.

I also found out how dangerously easy it is to bike to the beach. Less than 20 minutes door-to-door. Living in the city is great in the summer, less so in the winter.

I also attended my second Spelling Bae at the Ossington Bar – at which I won SECOND PLACE! I'll never spell idiosyncrasy wrong again. It is also noteworthy that in the same day, I finally spent my Bang Bang stamp card – on a delicious hazelnut ice cream inside a cinnamon bun. Heaven.

Goal:
Go to Wayhome! Seriously, there's no way I'm getting anything else done this week.

I do have a driving lesson tomorrow after work though, so I suppose my goal is to do that. After I speak to my instructor, I'd like to book a G test (since they have a month waiting period), so depending on what he says, I'll do that too.

This is being really ambitious, but I'd like to create another calendar like the March one for next week. If not by next week, then certainly the week after. I haven't really felt like I have been truly productive since about the time that calendar ended, so I'm hoping there's something there that I can draw upon.

Random Thought:
I was at a very cool party on Saturday night (more on that in the section below) and had a nice moment looking across the space between my friend's balcony and the balconies across the street. One in particular caught my eye: someone had set up some LED rope lights along their ceiling in weird spiral patterns, and the lights changed colour, seemingly at random. I would love to do something like that on my ceiling, and perhaps be able to control the lights with a vibration sensor. So the colour patterns seem random, but are actually controlled by my hand making movements against the sensor. I haven't fully fleshed out the idea yet, but it's something.

Inspiration: Books
This inspiration is three-fold. First of all, my sister made some excellent Bunz trades last week and has lent me some of her spoils to read.



The top one - Jimmy Corrigan The Smartest Kid On Earth - is incredibly sad and incredibly well drawn/written. The pacing, the way the book gently moves the reader to turn the book 90 degrees at certain points with only panel layout, the book is a wonder. I'm only twenty pages in, by the way.

The 13 Clocks is another mesmerizing one. It's a childrens' novel, only about 120 pages long, but the story and illustrations both are AMAZING.




I purposefully took pictures of text pages as well so that you can read some snippets and see how delicious the book truly is. And there's a foreword by Neil Gaiman!

Second, as I mentioned above, my friend had an excellent party this Saturday night. She had everyone bring books and records they didn't want anymore, and piled them on a table. Then, people could take anything they liked home and donate some money to a pot for charity. These are my spoils:


I am most excited for that retro Isaac Asimov book with the amazing cover. Makes me feel a bit trippy.

Third, all of this has actually encouraged me to start reading again and I have finished two books in the past two weeks! They were on the lighter side in terms of challenge, but it's better than nothing. I'm hoping that I can slow down on the television consumption (which I haven't really been keeping up with anyway) and keep up my habit of reading before bed. With all of this amazing new reading material, I don't really have much reason not to.

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