Stripes and Polka Dots

Where I am.

2008-10-26T16:15:46Z

Dear Livejournal,

I've left you. If you need me I'll be over here.

Sincerely,

Dory

Etsy!

2007-04-06T04:56:17Z

crumpled pennants, originally uploaded by dorywithserifs.

I put my first thing on etsy today--one of the pennants from this pile. Look: dorywithserifs.etsy.com.

More to come!

joey and larry

2007-04-04T16:19:48Z

joey and larry, originally uploaded by dorywithserifs.

In the height of thesis-writing madness, I made cheese scones, the site of an epic battle (there are a few more shots on flickr, click the photo to get there).

I put these pictures up on the "real" blog a little while ago, and I've realized that I've all but forsaken this livejournal, since livepress broke.

So follow my adventures at renf.org, if you like.

Dory

the best place to live

2007-03-04T16:20:49Z

the best place to live, originally uploaded by dorywithserifs.

who wouldn't want to live here? It's the epitome of apartment.

hamilton windows

2007-03-04T16:19:22Z

hamilton windows, originally uploaded by dorywithserifs.

Sam and I went to Hamilton last week, lots of big brick buildings looking a little shabby on a bright+cold day. We got good swag at Value Village and then saw Julie Doiron play in the corner of someone's livingroom.

alternate rituals

2007-02-14T18:22:14Z

If you asked me what my new years resolutions were, you may have received my joking reply that I wanted to create new holidays this year. 2007 is off to a good start on that front; I was delighted to celebrate New Years Eve, Eastern Standard Time (and then again, at actual Vancouver-midnight), and then later in January we celebrated Mittens.

So my new holiday proposal for February is probably better described as an altered ritual: I think that Valentines Day should be spent with ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends, drinking whiskey, sitting on the floor, and cutting letter "X"s out of pink and red construction paper, and writing passive-aggressive, yet sweet notes on them.

(Fork photograph from flickr user rakka, part of the craftzine valentines day card contest.)

The Wavelength top 4-T is a perfect art form

2007-01-21T16:11:34Z

1. Shade grown sweaters
2. Fair trade kisses
3. Organic bicycles
4. Heartbreaks from local farms.

new words for things?

2007-01-09T08:48:13Z

The other day, at dinner at Sarah's I put for the question:

Is there a name for the phenomenon of breaking up with someone by just not returning their calls while they are not returning yours? And if not, can we think of something?

We debated for a while about the name being a phrase including the word "mutual" or "common", generally agreeing that if the other person gets beligerant and leave messages or emails to the extent of "What's going on? Are you ignorning me?" then it is a) not mutual or common, and b) not the situation we're really trying to name. What I'm concerned with is when, after a number of dates, neither party makes any move to contact eachother.

Now, we didn't settle on anything at Sarah's, but I kinda like "breakup by inaction." And so today, I casually slipped the phrase into conversation with Graeme and Caroline, and it was understood without explaination, and the conversation continued.

Does it work? Breakup by inaction?

that explains all the grizzliesi n my geography department....

2007-01-07T08:52:32Z

Awesome edition of Cat and Girl.

midnight mass

2007-01-06T21:16:31Z

So a couple of thursdays ago Graeme and I went on a Midnight Mass bike ride. It was awesome, cruising throught the oft-biked streets of Vancouver on my Dad's steed, in the middle of the night, in a pack of friendly folks. There are some pics up online, but here are two that make me really happy:

(I'm the one in the turquoise, of course)

(eating at the Naam, with G and Marlo and Sascha)

Not too far into the ride, my feet were super-frozen, so I put my mittens on my feet, with the thumbs sticking out through the window part of my mary janes, and just when I had resigned my hands to being cold, a rad gal (Patricia? I feel awful for not remembering) lent me an extra pair of mittens she had brought along just in case!

Friday Morning

2007-01-05T18:45:33Z

It snowed in Vancouver! I know this is far from the first snow, but it's the first that I've seen this season. I looked out the window when I woke up and immediately thought that I'd have to stay home all day--then I realized that, no, people still leave their houses and go places and do things when there's snow on the ground. We've figured that one out, us crafty humans.

My mom comes home from Toronto this evening, so I'm cleaning the kitchen, listening to Uncle Tupelo (with the iPod radio transmitter, so it comes through the little radio in the kitchen a little bit scratchy. Which in this case seems a bit more...faux authentic) and drinking coffee.

cooking music

2006-12-28T02:20:09Z

oh my god, I am totally smitten with the theme song from the post punk kitchen!

what you can do with words

2006-12-24T22:46:14Z

It's raining and it's the day before Christmas. So I'm sitting on my bed, reading this blogpost from Yarn Harlot, it's a guide to non-knitters about what to get the knitters in their life for that big gift-giving holliday. She writes:

Yarn. Buy yarn. I hear muggles say it all the time "But she has so much yarn. I'll get her something else."

Muggles! It now generally means "outsider." Awesome.

Similarly, please see Pontiac Quarterly, a Magazine in Toronto that is actually a monthly event (of words and music and art and other things that would be in a magazine if they actually were in print).

And then, Kat and Graeme both independently told me the story of sitting around in person, trading URLS, prompting G to say "We're IM-ing!"

What are we dealing with here? Folk etymology? Backformation? Just plain old meaning-extension? Any other examples, people?

livejournal knows just who you really are

2006-12-18T15:46:16Z

Kurt posted the results of his...I ought to do the same because this really is a list of things that make me pleased! Cities full of organic knitting veggies riding bikes in cardigans!

On the twelfth day of Christmas, dorywithserifs sent to me...

Twelve letters drumming

Eleven cities piping

Ten bikes a-leaping

Nine googlemaps dancing

Eight peanuts a-milking

Seven cardigans a-moving

Six jars a-knitting

Five chi-i-i-ick peas

Four trade paperbacks

Three girl bands

Two organic veggies

...and a punctuation in a people who drink coffee.

the plan

2006-12-14T02:40:49Z

thursday: train to new york city

friday: driving to falls village, CT

monday: driving back to new york

wednesday: flying new york to philly, philly to las vegas, las vegas to vancouver

thursday until january 17th: stayin in one place

words and buildings

2006-12-06T06:10:41Z

Anna pointed me to this today--it's a book about Brooklyn, photographs by Kate Milford and words by Jonathan Lethem (who has a new book of stories {i think} called How we became insipid--it's being published by some indie press that is rumoured to be prohibited from advertising the book so as not to draw any attention away from J.L.'s "major label" works).

I like Jonathan Lethem's words about Brooklyn. Fortress of Solitude is certianly one of my favourite works of fiction, and his essay about the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station set me off on an exploration of the ghost platform.

I assume that this book is going to be a pleasure to hold in my hands someday.

anna takes a nap before people show up

2006-11-28T01:33:07Z

anna takes a nap before people show up, originally uploaded by dorywithserifs.

And I should say, that dinner party of my last post was really just a wonderful start to a fabulous weekend. Anna came all the way from Brooklyn to visit, we cooked and ate food, rode bikes from one end of the city to the other, went to a craft fair, drank coffee outside at I Deal (it was a beautiful day, we were there without hats or scarves or mitts or anything, and my Dad called to say that it was snowing in Vancouver), saw panels at the book launch for The State of The Arts (in which I have a chapter, but I’m sure I already told you), did all manner of craft projects.

I heartily reccomend having an Anna come visit every now and then.

jessica, ricky, daniel cohen

2006-11-27T05:51:18Z

jessica, ricky, daniel cohen, originally uploaded by dorywithserifs.

This is the best of the few photos that I took at the dinner party I had on friday when Anna came to visit. Everyone just looks exactly like themselves in some perfect way. Also, they are balancing plates of cake.

what to listen to when marking undergrad papers

2006-11-13T15:50:44Z

Manitoba
Bell Orchestre
The Books
Zubot and Dawson
Animal Collective
Deerhoof
Beastie Boys (insound from way out, exlusively)

does anyone have any other suggestions of things in this vein?

Me and Graeme, about to leave for Montreal

2006-11-11T01:10:16Z

IMG_3221.JPG, originally uploaded by duncanmm.

dear world, here is a photo that duncan took of graeme and I outside my house. my front yard is spadina.

new project

2006-11-06T16:02:20Z

I've been thinking about making some sort of GradSchool Cookbook. It would have instructions like, "put potatoes in the oven, bake for the amount of time it takes to mark one undergraduate paper" OR "chop carrots into pieces about as wide as The History of Sexuality is thick."

What do you think?

top ten commandments

2006-11-06T03:49:58Z

I know that I posted these rules already, but I hereby offer you the first installment of the downloadble pdf 'zine that Graeme and I are working on. Here it is.

In the bathroom at Ronnies, the best piece of graffiti:

2006-11-03T18:19:10Z

I Heart Prague Rock
.

(syndicated from my real blog)

a really great list of things that people have searched for, and ended up somewhere in renf.org

2006-11-02T16:13:03Z

This list is incomplete, these are the ones that enchanted me:

knit robot

title sequences

sarcastic writers

keys fuck

"list of things I like"

green girl fish

savory jelly

nerds and women

squirrel cop

hey hey hey baby peugot

404 haiku

crazy streetsigns

"graeme" chicago

donut diner

centurion generator

science fair entries las vegas

house of boobs

stifling innovation

easy bruising

ballroom dancing blog

montreal voyerism

boys undies

(syndicated from my real blog)

the things that are funny, these days

2006-10-27T07:49:13Z

So New York was a bit of a mess, but fun all the same. So good to make food in Anna's kitchen, and stomp around Brooklyn, and revist some of the spots I left behind, and find some new things.

Let me explain that link up there, for a moment:

I was reading an article for one of my classes that was explaining that Charlie Chaplain, because he used his human body to mimc machinery and industrialization, was the perfect example of quitensentially Modern humour. I thought for a bit, and realized that I think that the quintessentailly Post-Modern form of humour takes advantage of the breakdown between official and amateur. That is--because of all this technology we've got kicking around, it is much easier to fake authority or mass-market appeal, because personal projects and one-off projects look just as good and slick as professional ones.

example: During the whole fast ferries fiasco in BC a few years ago, someone put the fast ferry up on eBay. That is, they took a photo from the government of BC website, set up a seller account for "Glen Clark", and put the blasted things up for auction. This made the front page of the Vancouver Sun at the time. It was really funny, because there was no distinction between the joke and things that are legitimately for sale.

Our postmodern sensibilities allow us to move seamlessly between taking the authoritative down to a plebian level and taking our own personal lives and making them seem like national phenomena. The above-linked t-shirt is number two in a series, and the initial joke was funny because it took something that was an incident that had meaning to a small group of people, and made it a t-shirt slogan. Back in the day, a sentiment had to be held by a certain mass of people for it to be worth making t-shirts, or else you'd do it yourself with a sharpie or fabric paint. Now, with cafepress, you have have professional-quality stuff (or even just the appearance of that, which is totally enough in this case) for the most personal and small of incidents.

(I think that the fluidity between personal and professional-quality things goes beyond humour, though, and I've been thinking about it a bunch in terms of blogs and the proliferation of digital photography, and garageband, and other things, but let's just leave it at comedy for a little while)

(syndicated from my real blog)