Morning people stop kidding yourselves.

As it turns out, I'm not a morning person. I've been struggling for months to wake up before 10, and get to work promptly and effectively, and failed every time. I never seem to get it together, and off of other people's websites and the couch before 6pm, which is long past the threat of morning. I must be a night owl because night seems to be the only time of day that I can write lucidly, and think clearly about what I'm writing, without feeling panic stricken by the whole ordeal. The problems is that night is also very distracting.

I'm considering some kind of sleep reprogramming, where I wait until I'm absolutely dead tired before I go to sleep, and regardless of hours, wake up at the same time everyday. But that seems unfun.

Clearly, this blog is going nowhere fast. From what I gather, most blogs live and die by their ability to focus on a singular topic, preferably a singular topic that people want to read about, and especially a singular topic that people want to read about from the person writing the blog. These credentials seem as though they're unlikely to materialize for this here Micropsic Vision.

With that in mind, here's my friend Sharlene's movie 57 ways (formerly Vag), fresh to the internet.

Enjoy

57 Ways (2009/ 5 min. / Canada) from Sharlene Bamboat on Vimeo.

Marcel Dzama

I’m pretty enamored with Marcel Dzama right now. His small-scale, seemingly quaint, ink and watercolor drawings offer profound emotional depth and political critique that’s surprising for their form.



With all the talk of torture in the news lately, these wartime figures that recall the traumas of WWI, seem as appropriately commonplace as the trees and birds that he combines in these whimsical conversion of everyday life.


















He recently directed this video with Patrick Daughters for the Department of Eagles song “No On Does it like You”.



I love the tone of this video, and how these desperate scenes of human depravity appear almost effortlessly celebratory. It’s pretty haunting.

Yesterday was for the people.

Lately, life has felt good. I’m riding my bike in late November; my thesis is back on track; and I’ve had art published twice in the past two weeks. It feels good, really good to live in a place where I’m continually confronted with inspiration, and opportunity for collaboration, and until yesterday I was convinced that life in Toronto was for me.

I woke up happy and clear headed, made coffee, turned on the CBC, and heard on the news that a deer was found sleeping in a tiny park in the downtown Financial District. Growing up in the suburban scrawl of St. Catharines, I remember a sense of excitement when our overly manicured, playground landscape, was disrupted by a deer, or another undomesticated creature. Wild animals amazed, not only because they challenged the tedium of our everyday scheduled clockwork life, but also because they reminded us of the space and shape of the wilderness we encroach upon. Aside from the odd grumbled-at raccoon, we used to feel lucky when we happened on a wild animal. But not anymore, and not in Toronto.

Apparently the urban world has completely lost touch with the part of humanity that feels bad about our ever-expanding environmental destruction. Yesterday, at around 11:15 am, shortly after the arrival of a veterinarian yielding a tranquilizer dart, the Toronto Police Department tasered the shit of the deer. The doe had been lying calmly in the garden for hours, a calamity that apparently brought much of the downtown core to a “standstill”(where would we be without the National Post)!?! When surprised by the dart, the Deer made a break for the sidewalk, and was met with tasers, according to Const. Tony Vella of the Toronto Police, in the interest of its own safety. You can see the video for yourself here on Blog TO.

Its pretty horrifying to realize that we live everyday in an environment that is a danger to all animals except for humans. Our own ambition has shaped us into creatures that navigate the world aggressively by neon street signs, walk always on the right, and bridle our children with adorable leashes for their own safety. I hope this trend turns around, but with the ever urbanization of our world, that seems unlikely. I feel helpless.
This is making me think about working on a series about confrontations with animals. Here’s something I did a few weeks ago for my Dad’s birthday present. I think I’d like to do more.