Anything can happen, child.

I spent a snowy night a few weeks ago driving down from the mountains with my sisters and listening to Shel Silverstein poems on CD. I just found the Shel Silverstein website, which is suitably silly and has some great audio clips of Silverstein reading his poems, making noises and playing music. The excerpt from The Giving Tree accompanied by Silverstein on the harmonica is really lovely.. but then the story did always make me cry when I was little.


"There once was a tree... and she loved a little boy."

"I understand there is also a cannon."

It's a shame creativity isn't always rewarded.

heavens to Murgatroyd

Six hours, four technicians and a missed dinner later my computer is healed, save reinstallation of some drivers. No one should have to endure synthesized Pachelbel's Canon while on hold. The horror... the horror!

whiffle bats

I got the rage this afternoon after trying for several painful hours to fix my computer. I spoke to an unhelpful tech-type person who did nothing but make me want to beat him and others of his ilk senseless with a whiffle bat. I ended up spending the afternoon watching Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief in defeat. This evening, however, I went to see Faulty Optic's Dead Wedding at the Barbican with music by Mira Calix.. it was wonderful.


Orpheus, from Dead Wedding

day old kelp

Omar's Mother, a great short puppet film by Puppet Heap:

Also check out their shadow puppet short Ye Ballade of Ivan Petrofsky Skevar. Really wonderful stuff.

a touch of the rheumatiz

Spent lunchtime in the house comparing weather-induced aches and pains. It was wet outside and blustery in the studio.

This has been doing the rounds, but I think it's incredibly lovely:

I love 44 and just about everyone from eighty-zero on up. Is that it? Stop that banging!

it's still Sunday

I went out for a walk today and came home with a stack of books from Oxfam and this delightful Fudco bag:

..that counts as a fulfilling day, right?

a damn fine cup of coffee

David Lynch makes coffee. How did I not hear of this sooner?

the birds at night

Oh, minor jetlag and LibraryThing... a dangerous combination! The birds outside are chirruping very loudly considering it is the middle of the night. They're confusing my body clock, but at least they sound cheerful.

never mind the jetlag

I'm sure I remember it being worse than this. The hot cocoa and pomegranates must be helping.

Merry and Bright

...is exactly what my trip home was.












Thanks to everyone at home for for such a wonderful time.. lots of love from somewhere considerably less sunny. I miss you already!

Après-ski

A snowy long weekend in the mountains...

oh oh oh!

pirates! cupcakes! pirates and cupcakes!
get yer fill here.

(via Cupcakes Take the Cake)

a Caucus-race

`What IS a Caucus-race?' said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that SOMEBODY ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.

`Why,' said the Dodo, `the best way to explain it is to do it.' (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)

First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (`the exact shape doesn't matter,' it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no `One, two, three, and away,' but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out `The race is over!' and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, `But who has won?'

from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter III: A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale