Here’s a few photos of my recent Crafterdark projects, which are for sale.  Message me, or visit www.getfunky.ca   Hoping to generate a little cash to save for my next research trip to Stanford next summer. Be cool, keep a mom in school ya’ll.

Devo Dogs. $40 Get Funky Boutique, Kingston. (sold...wow that was fast!)

And another:

Real Friends. $45 (Sold)

z’omg, there’s more? You betcha!

Conan says. $40 Get Funky Boutique, Kingston.

And finally,

And We Will Call It 'This Land.' Firefly Shadowbox. $60. Real coal! ooooOOOooo!

Here’s the playlist from this past week’s installment of Primordial Soup, heard live Thursdays 1-2:30 EST, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Listen Now! Part One  Part Two

Tom Waits-Raised Right Men
Wilco-Capitol City
Bombay Bicycle Club-Your Eyes
Library Voices-Be My Juliette*
Acres of Lions-Reaction*
Charlotte Cornfield-If you don’t pursue*
The Falcons-Another Tear*
The Falcons-Western Dreams*
The Bon-Kaleidoscope*
Tommy Paxton-Beasley-Someday*
Sigur Ros-Vid Spilum Endalaust
Ohbijou-Balikbayan*
Magnetic North-When You’re Gone*
Ringo Death Starr-Down on You*
The Perms-High School High*
xoxoxo-Perfect*
Bella Clava-Conflict & Desire*
Pack AD-Lights*
Dutchess Says-L’ordre des secteurs*
MFMB-Seconds Away
Lights-Heavy Rope*

Just finished making a big batch of creamy leek and parsnip soup (plus the odd carrot, white yam & potato). Funny thing is that when I make a big pot of soup to last a few days, it tends to get eaten in a day. I suspect by lunch tomorrow, it’ll be gone. Ridonculous tasty.

Had some thesis breakthroughs this weekend…reading some theory stuff and the juices are now flowing…enough that I can envision at least 2 chapters ahead (chapters 2 & 3). After that…well, who knows. Once I’m underway, I’m sure I’ll know where to go beyond chapter 3. To make it all work though I have to drop some of my ideas I wanted to pursue for the moment…need to refine the focus…which has been my major problem to date.

Still doing some awesome cross-stitching which I’ll post evidence of in the future. Not your average stuff…mostly inspired by Steotch.com. (the net’s best kept secret).

Later skaters,

d

Oh, here’s a tasty treat furnished to me by the fine folks at With a Bullet:

Here’s the playlist from this week’s installment of Primordial Soup:

Wilco-Casino Queen
Elliott Brood-Lindsay*
Vandals-Sugarplum Fairies
The Bon-Whammy*
Greengo-Ghosts of the Future*
Acres of Lions-Reaction*
Hexes & Ohs-Elementary*
xoxoxo-London Girl*
She wants revenge-The end*
The balconies-300 pages*
Ohbijou-Niagra*
Annie-Breakfast Song*
Lights-Siberia*
Arkells-Book Club*
Bosswich-OK*
Craft economy-tonic
Black Phoenix Orchestra-No Guarantees*
Go for the Eyes-Narcissist*
Huddle-Islands*
Diamond Rings-All Yr Songs*
Ladytron-Ace of Hz
Electric Soft Parade-If that’s the case*

*cancon

My class is going swimmingly and the students remain keen.  Our department sent out a notice for all post-proposal PhD candidates to send in their annual reports including a writing sample.  Given that what I have so far I may as well have written on an Etch-a-Sketch, I’m a little flipped out.  I have about 30 pages of a very very rough chapter but so many blank holes, I’d be embarrassed to submit that. There are even sentences that aren’t complete and dangling paragraphs.  Yerg.  I’ve got perhaps another 20 or 30 pages of very short writing samples regarding some elements that will appear in later chapters, but even though these tiny tidbits are well-written, they’re tiny…2-5 pages.  So I’m caught: do I send in the polished but tiny or the bulky but inarticulate mass of ideas strung loosely together?  I’ll go for the latter…a concerted effort this week will be made to plough through it and tie up loose ends.  Where there are obvious gaps that I can’t yet deal with, I’ll leave them and simply identify it in my report. which I may fill out with a crayon.

More fun than hiding swish in the houseplants!

is keeping me sane and out of the bar. At home, I can  hide my new addiction to girlie drinks from my brewmaster.  Take for example, the pumpkintini

Pumpkintini-1/2 oz. amaretto, 1/2 oz spiced rum, dollop of whipping cream, 1 tsp. brown sugar, pinches of cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, and 1/4 cup of pureed pumpkin, 1 tbsp milk.  Shake that shit up and suck it back.

Anyhoo…

As for CFRC, I’ve got a number of playlists from the last few weeks, but most importantly, here is a link to the audio file with my interview with Maya Miller of the Pack AD.  This incredible duo played last night at the Mansion with Hollerado.  If they swing through your town, get your ass to that venue!  Punky, bluesy garage rock.  Great stuff by really awesome people.

Listen now to The Pack A.D. on Primordial Soup, CFRC

Primordial Soup Playlists ya’ll

Oct. 13

Male Bonding-Channeling Your Fears
Lazy MKs-Sled Dogs*
Portugal the Man-So American
The Fays-Self-Centretown*
White Denim-Anvil Anything
Butch Walker and the Widows-Day Drunk*
Fist City-Demon Birds*
Black Devils Brigade-Raised by Wolves*
C’Mon-Psychotic Retraction*
This City Defects-Data Limbs*
Besnard Lakes-Devastation*
The Kills-Satellite
Slam Dunk-Only Fun*
Hoa Hoas-Modern Men*
The Bon-Mincemeat*
The Pack AD-Sirens*
The Pack AD-Haunt You*

Oct 6

The Kills-Future Starts Slow
Blood Orange-The complete Knock
Library Voices-Generation Handclap*
Miracle Fortress-Miscalculations*
Hooded Fang-ESP*
Planet Smashers-My Obsession*
Spoons-Breaking In*
Knock Knock Ginger-If you recall, I spent that summer in Rome*
Music Maul-Second Story*
Krista Muir-Start Again*
Sleuth Bears-Never been past the tracks*
Captain Kife-Smells of Lucky Strike
Polymorphines-Anna-Lee*
Whosarmy-Maggie’s Alright*
Pack A.D. Sirens*
Hoa Hoas-Blue Gumball*
Paint Movement-Fortune’s Window*
Absofunkinglutely-Local Celebrity*
Slam Dunk-Bleacher Lovin’*
Flogging Molly-Don’t Shut ‘em Down
The Bon-Zig Zag*
Sandro Perri-Futureactive Kid I & II*

Sept. 29

Drawn Ship-Sick with Sound*
Camp Radio-Murder on my Skin*
Cuff the Duke-Time is Right*
Modern Field Recordings-Banana Split*
Elliott Brood-Hold You*
MF/MB-Seconds Away*
Besnard Lakes-Albatross*
Krista Muir-Ultraviolet Eye*
Man Your Horse-Elastic Points*
Sexy Mathematics-Retrograde*
Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks-Senator
Library Voices-If Raymond Carver were born in the 90s*
Cobra ’65-Surf Zombie
Blood Orange-I’m Sorry We Lied
The Horrible Crowes-I Witnessed a Crime
In Media Res-This could be the one*
Pack A.D.-Sirens*
Idyl Tea-2 Straight Lines*
Cymbals eat Guitars-Kee Me Waiting
Whiskey Face-Broken Smiles and Busted Teeth*
Sleuth Bears-Quickest Way to Burn Gas*
The Shrugs-Me against You*

*cancon

Cousins-Speech*
Entire Cities-A Coat of Loup Garou*
Fruit Bats-Tangie & Ray*
Extra Happy Ghost-Fire on Fire*
Bruce Peninsula-2nd 4th World War*
Fast Romantics-Pretty Strangers*
Malajube-Pate Filo*
The Besnard Lakes-Devestation*
Miracle Fortress-Spectre*
Politique-Love Catastrophe*
Naked & Famous-All of this
Thievery Corporatioj-Culture of Fear
Jay Dahbi Lailat al Miraj-Harmonizing*
Spoons-You Light Up*
Death Cab for Cutie-Some boys
Light Bulb Alley-Long time coming*
Minotaurs-Get down*
Polymorphines-Clean and the Dirty*
Teenage kicks-Beasts of England*
Planet Smashers-Looking Good*
Myelin Sheaths-Everything is Contagious*
Aggrolites-Trial and Error
Secrettes-Enjoy It*

Next week, I’ll be having a chat with Becky and Maya of The Pack A.D. to be aired before their show here in Kingston on 13 October (at the Mansion with Hollerado), so stay tuned for that.  I’ve had a listen to their new album, Unpersons, and it’s a must-have for anyone into bluesy garagey rock.  The album and single, ‘Sirens’, is currently sitting at number one across college radio charts, so we’ll be hearing a lot more of them soon for damn good reason.

School stuff…teaching is going smoothly enough, but I’m spending perhaps too much time prepping for each class, as I feared.  Time is eating in to my thesis thinking/work periods.  Still need to find the balance.  I have a reasonable chapter outline prepared and have been reading a lot with some tentative stabs at writing.   Still, hard to get motivated when one feels like they’re writing into the abyss (where’s this going and all that).  But I’ve started, so that’s good.

Working on a fun new cross-stitch project and thinking about buying a canner.  We make a lot of stuff, sauces, pickled things, jam etc., and well, we just don’t have freezer/fridge space I think it’s time to learn a new skill set.  This weekend I’m keeping it low key with pumpkin…pie, muffins, ravioli stuffing, and salty salty seeds.  Also pulling together ingredients for some Bun Thit Nuong (Vietnamese marinaded pork with vermicelli salad), which I will make for guests coming on Monday.

So, what have I been up to.  Went to New York City for the first leg of PhD thesis data gathering for a month.  We moved from our sketchpad to a pretty fabulous place downtown.  I played domestic goddess for basically most of August, taking care of my family, sewing curtains for the new place, cooking and crafty stuff, hosting dinner parties, and generally ignoring my thesis for a bit.  I did, however, construct a personal finding aid for the 12,000 photos (yes, twelve thousand) of documents I shot at Columbia U and organized them by relevance to particular themes.  I was also commissioned for a book review so I spent some time on that before diving back into fall term.

Fall term, so far, is crazy and harried.

I'm pretty ok with tarts, especially when they are sweet and comforting. I'm partial to butter tarts mostly, but I can deal with raspberry ones too.

I’m teaching this year, so a lot of my thinking at the moment is about the course mechanics, content, and otherwise effective facilitation of a seminar.  I’m a little freaked and a little excited…I’ll have more to report once we get past the introductory phase of the term.

Thesis-wise, I’ve got a decent fall plan set up with the aim of producing a usable chapter and a conference paper.   I have broad ideas about winter too but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself when I’m still trying to keep up with what’s on my to-do list this week.  I spent the last few days thinking and reading about empire versus nationality so that I can lead up to a few weeks of solid reading on the Paris Peace Conference (1919) and the impact of treaties on former Imperial Russian territories.  Tomorrow I’m going to punch out at least 5 pages on empire, whether they make sense or not, but I want to get into a habit of writing again.

Hopefully I can do that at a reasonable pace.  But I still have a BIG pile of evidence to translate.  Baby steps.

Anyway, here’s the playlist from today’s show.

Listen Now!

Extra Happy Ghost-so at one*
Austra-Spellwork*
Hooded Fang-Tosta Mista*
Fruit Bats-Tony the Tripper
Knock Knock Ginger-Margot don’t be a hero*
Adverteyes-Help Yourself*
Bon Iver-Towers
Krista Muir-Tired Angels*
Chad van Gaalen-Burning Photographs*
Open Hearts Society-Boatbuilders*
One Hundred Dollars-Work*
Braids-Plath Heart*
Miracle Fortress-Everything Works*
Spoons-Imperfekt*
Music Maul-Second Story*
Planet Smashers-Hippopotamus*
Flogging Molly-Revolution
Whipping Wind-Don’t Get into It*
Say Domino-Amount*

*CANCON

We should seriously talk to this guy about the advantages of hiding out in grad school. Oh frack, I can't think of any...

oil drilling.  With water? Under water?  I have no idea. That’s why it’s my new word of the day.  I’ll wiki that up later.  Still, I do wonder what it would mean as a concept or perhaps a fun activity on Battlestar Galactica.

Music:

Primordial Soup playlist for today:

_______________________________
We are the City-Get Happy*
Pete van Dyk-Battle Your Cage*
White Cowbell Oklahoma-Cheerleader*
Low Anthem-Hey, All You Hippies
Ron Sexsmith-Eye Candy*
Mookie & The Loyalists-All In*
Music Box-Immaculate Conception*
Monogrenade-Obsolete*
Sean MacDonald-Wunder*
Monster Show-Count the Ways
Ringo Death Starr-Do It Every Time*
Paper Maps-Complicate Things*
Shortcut to Last-Undone*
The Reason-Where Do We Go from Here?*
The Soles-Illusion*
Hey Predator-Things They Don’t Teach You in Flight School*
Les Breastfeeders-400 Miles*
Beladeans-I Want It Now
Mother Mother-Chasing It Down*
Burnettes-Never Leave*
Deer Cadence-Explore Canada’s Arctic*
Dinosaur Bones-Making Light*

*Cancon

Listen Now to Primordial Soup!

Part One Part Two

School Stuff:

Got nothin’ done this weekend since I deejayed, went to see Creepshow/BA Johnston/Slick Whippet, and spent the weekend chauffering and cooking for my teenage children and a number of their friends.  Today, I managed to at least pick up some new necessary reads, photocopied relevant stuff, and will get to another translation shortly.  Happily, I was informed that I received the Dean’s Travel Grant and the Timothy Franks grant for doctoral field research.  So yes, New York this summer is definitely a go-go, and I’ll still have funds left over for Palo Alto in May.  I bought a new London Fog luggage bag on sale so I can look more legit.  Tomorrow, I’ll stop at the public library to pick up the NYC lonely planet they have so I can study up on Manhattan before I get there.

Now to drink some beers and eat the Koodoo noodles my husband has furnished for me.  Rewards after a long long day.

Geoff Berner-Daloy Polizei*
Burnettes-Falling*
Hooded Fang-Straight Up the Dial*
Deer Cadence-Your Defence Wins the Game*
Square Root of Margaret-Attack of the Giant Problem*
Dinosaur Bones-NYE*
The Soles-JLV*
Cardinal Family Singers-Colleague*
Slow Down Molasses-Late Night Radio
Ringo Death Star-2 Girls*
Papermaps-Can’t Make a Living*
Monogrenade-M’en Aller*
Mother Mother-Baby Don’t Dance*
Low Anthem-Boeing 737
Kurt Vile-Jesus Fever
Cowboy Junkies-Wrong Piano
Beladeans-Pay for My Sins
Grave Mistakes-Dig Your Own Grave*
PJ Harvey-Let England Shake*
Grey Kingdom-Haunted
Ghosts & Angels-Ghosts & Angels*
Cut/Copy-Blink and You’ll Miss the Revolution*

*Cancon

Listen Now: Part One Part Two

Gigs of note in Kdot:

Geoff Berner/Rae Spoon @ The Artel 13 April, $10

Creepshow/BA Johnston/Slick Whippet @ The Mansion this Friday, 15 April  $13 adv.

Live How You Live @ The Merchant Friday, April 15th.

The Acorn @ The Grad Club, 20 April.

School-y stuff

Still translating away and writing here and there.  This week is all about marking finals though so nothing terribly exciting.  Going to meet with my advisor next week to talk about my May/June research plans while she’s away in Paris for a couple of months.  Columbia University emailed today with a confirmation of a study residency so I can now go to New York on the cheap-cheap for a month for the first leg of my archival research.  I have full access to Columbia’s archives, libraries, and a nice spot to rest my head a block from campus in Morningside Heights along the Hudson River.  The archives are closed on the weekends, so I’ll be able to exploit the New York Public Library and well, heck, get on the subway and visit some landmarks.  My husband will come with me for a few days prior to my scheduled arrival so we can hang out together for a bit, which is pretty awesome.  I’m pretty jazzed!  I just hope I’ll know what I’m doing when I’m there and on task.  Still waiting on word from Grad Studies if I’ll get a travel grant, but at this point, I’ll set it aside for Stanford next May if I do in fact get it.  Also still waiting to hear about SSHRC and OGS for next year.  The suspense is the worst, but I suppose getting neither will suck harder.  But I’m confident my OGS will be renewed at least.  Wish me luck!

"Your supervisor has a few notes on your thesis" Photo credit: Disapproving Rabbits.com

We had a hoot and managed to spend a few hours not thesising or thinking about thesising.  Mostly farting around and pushing buttons and listening to quality music.  Hopefully our advisors weren’t actually listening as the F-bombs were dropped a lot this aft with all the punk rock.  Overall, it was an awesome day, we had a blast, and hopefully Doug will come push more buttons on our brave little station again soon.  Playlist and streams are below.

As for school stuff, my TAship is winding up nicely, only another round of exams to mark later this week, then I’m clear til fall when I start my teaching fellowship.  Research has proceeded slowly, incrementally, sorta, kinda, & maybe.  I’ve been bogged down with translation but have managed to get a few pages of useful stuff written though it’s the worst of the worst in terms of writing.  More like random thoughts.

Still uncertain what’s really ‘relevant’ at the moment so I think I’m in a trap of overreading/overthinking.  At this point I feel like I know a helluva lot more about Romania’s annexation of Bessarabia from Soviet Russia than I probably need to.  However, Allied complicity in that sordid affair is what I’m actually working on at the moment, but though I know I’m spending more time on it than I probably should, I can’t just let it go either.  Maybe it’s the uncertainty of what I’ll do next that’s kind of keeping me locked in a political coup no one really cares about (except Bessarabian nationalists).

We’ll see.  Anyway, New York this summer is a go-go.   Fortunately, I have enough time to figure out what I need and where I’ll find it.

Onward with the music:

Playlist and Links:

Sean MacDonald & the Astronauts-Homelette*
Beatdowns-It’s Alright
Mahones-Great Night on the Lash*
Geoff Berner-Wealthy Poet*
Gramercy Riffs-17
Action Makes-Into the Night*
Jesus & Mary Chain-Far Gone
Tricky Woo-Ring Sweet Mercy*
SNFU-Reality is a ride on the bus*
Mudhoney…-
The Spitfires-Piece of You*
Goober Patrol-Over the Wall
Choking Victim-Infested
Go! Team-Tornado
Memphis-want the lights on after dark*
enjoy your pumas-weight of the circles*
Les Breastfeeders-Le mond tourne autour de toi*
Cage the Elephant-aberdeen*
Mookie & the Loyalists-All in*
Pixies-Dig for Fire
Raconteurs-5 on the 5

*Cancon for people who care

Listen Now Part One Part Two

Upcoming K-town gigs of note:
BAPTIZED IN BLOOD + October Blood + Ponderous Chain
$10 adv, Mansion, April 8th

Memphis, $13 adv. April 8th, Grad Club

PS I Love You, $10 April 9th, Grad Club

DANIEL ROMANO + Charlotte Cornfield + Justin Andre
$7 door, Mansion, Apr. 9

DON ROSS + BROOKE MILLER
$25 adv. Apr. 9th, Time to Laugh Comedy Club

FRED EAGLESMITH + Rueben deGroot
$20 adv. Apr. 13, Mansion

Friday April 15 @ The Mansion **tickets selling fast**
THE CREEPSHOW + B.A. Johnston + Slick Whippet
$13 adv. Apr. 15, Mansion

D-SISIVE + Slaves of Spanky + My Son the Hurricane
$7 door, Apr. 23, Mansion

THE STANFIELDS + WAX MANNEQUIN + Andrew Laviolette
$8 door, Apr. 29, Mansion

http://www.muchmusic.com/music/thewedge/