My Paper Is Made of Meat

Two weeks ago I bathing in the brief but wondrous period of magazine discovery and appreciation. When I came across Meatpaper, I was on the sexy Mag Culture blog. I was scrolling through, checking out various magazines and news when something caught my eye. A sandwich booklet that will be shipped with 13th issue of Meatpaper. I thought, Meatpaper? What kind of a joke is that? And then, Sandwich?!! Who said, Sandwich?

Because recently I have fallen in love with sandwiches like never before, anything sandwich-related caught my eye. Especially when there’s a white and pink unicorn sleeping soundly between the slices.

Back to Meatpaper. It’s a quarterly San Francisco-based magazine. And it’s amazing.

What is this ALL about? In the words of Meatpaper:

At once divisive and universal, delicious and disturbing, funny and dead-serious, meat polarizes us unlike any other food.
Us, we’re ambidextrous here at Meatpaper — no agenda except to gnaw on the ideas, artistic excursions and bone-deep emotions the subject inspires. We invite you to dig in with us.

The reasons I fell in love with it:

• Covers. Mixture of New Yorker and art/life photography. I can’t quite place it, but there is something crisp and beautiful about all the covers.
• Quarterly. Good fucking content comes in quarterly packages. For a topic such as this.
• Amazing collection of topics.
• The culture of meat. I’m a foodie, okay, I like to read about food besides consuming and photographing it. Meat is an interesting topic. It can be very polarizing, and it can be quite uniting. It is painful to some, and delightful to others.

I subscribed. After checking out the kinds of articles presented in this publication, I contacted the office and subscribed. And yesterday I received my issue 12 and 13. Off to reading!

(I highly recommend you check out their website)

Just look at the sample articles and coverage:

• stories about a variety of meats, including python, locusts, tripe, beef tongue, porcupine, dog, and jailhouse meat
• report on competitive eating, bug tacos, squirrel hunting, sea turtles, and more.
• learn about oyster farming, meat facials, and the global origins of one taco’s ingredients.
• a multi-disciplinary, sensory extravaganza of topics, including meat perfume; meat aura photographs; meat in rock, punk, and soul music; meat as building material; and rabbit farming as a sustainable food of the future.
• the controversy about eating seal meat in Canada (and what that has to do with maple syrup)
• the day-to-day life of a livestock veterinarian, the lard vs. butter debate among pie bakers, and that age-old question: What did T. rex taste like?
• how a county fair sow is like Miss America, pig lit, chefs’ pig tattoos, a fake bacon taste test, and much more.
• AND MORE

As you can see, this is interesting to everyone interested in food or ethics and aesthetics of meat. I can easily be a vegan and read this. Moreover, I will most likely be put off meat (or very much drawn to it, haha) after some articles, but in all cases I will gather a better understanding of the world of meat and its elements.

On their press page you can see that they’ve been mentioned in New York Times, GOOD magazine, HuffPo, BBC, Boing Boing, Maclean’s etc.

Oh yeah, yearly subscription is $28 in the US and $34 in Canada. You can buy individual issues too ($7.95 per issue + shipping to wherever you live).

Left Brain, Right Brain

Last night I met a woman who was an accountant (in fact, last night I had a terrible luck of meeting people only in the field of finance and who were mesmerized by my cherry red tights and starry-eyed dress). The event at which I met her was the AGO Next launch party. It was a lovely event, albeit full of dark clothes and semi-socialites mingling with each other.

But besides that. The lady with whom I talked for half an hour was an accountant and she said that she liked art and wanted to learn more about it. I told her about Slow Art etc, and ways she can improve her knowledge. Did my good deed of adding value to a conversation.

She said she wanted to get more involved in the arts (and creative pursuits) because she used her right brain so much at work. I didn’t skip a beat, but my poor brain received a fresh influx of confused thoughts. Right brain, left brain? As far as I was concerned, the left brain was more of an accountant’s realm than the right brain (unless she worked in the “creative accounting” field which the Enron types were so fond of).

I had the urge to correct her, but I abstained. Embarrassing her would not be the best karmic activity on my part. I even assumed a role of her ally by referring to the correct, left side of the brain, as the right one and vice versa. I didn’t cause a single blunder, and managed to explain why she should read Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind. The book is about the increasing importance of right sides of our brains (I’m using it in the correct sense now) in the workplace, and creativity in general. She’ll learn there.

Books I Read This Year

December is for summaries and lists. I’m not doing any music selections (yet?), but I’ve been keeping track of books I’ve read. I had to recreate the list from memory this November, so I am sure I am missing a 2 – 3 books that I forgot about (not memorable enough? Too much information to remember?)

• Economics of Strategy was definitely for the Industry Analysis class I was taking in January. Again, this book features a picture of a pretty painting on its cover. Reminds me of the times I took a statistics class and each chapter in the textbook featured a fragment of this or that modern art work.

• -(Clickable image) Bukowski’s. Way too repetitive, sad and overflowing with erotic scenes. Got boring halfway through.

• – Ghosts, not a bad book by Cesar Aira. A poignant story about young and impressionable hearts, lots of magic, ghosts and hardships.
• I wish Someone Had Told Me That – girls were making fun of the author photo, and I  understand them. The author seems like a solid square, but his publisher and people he interviewed for the book, have both been helpful. Great kernels of experience.
• Housekeeper and the Professor – great book, a lot of math and humanity. I wrote a review.
• A Whole New Mind – positively inspiring, set me on a quest to find a masters program with the perfect blend of art and business. Daniel H Pink is really good, supports his ideas with references, and is an all around fun and important non-fiction writer.
• – DeNiro’s Game was not bad, mostly a boys’ book about badass youngsters in a struggling part of the world, salvaging what they can.
• The Sleeper Awakes – the classic. Interesting vision of 2100. What the heck, Wells was great.
• – Bonjour Tristesse was a little self-indulgent, but an important book nevertheless. It’s like an overpoweringly cliche French movie you watch on a Sunday afternoon in bed
• Pride & Prejudice & Zombies – hilarity!! I wolfed the book down, especially because I couldn’t be bothered to read the original Pride & Prejudice. Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters are next on the list.
• the medium is the massage – confirms my belief that McLuhan was seriously ahead of his cohort by many, many decades. His statements still ring true. Amazing.
• Choice Theory: A very short introduction – purchased at the Harvard store with the intention of learning to make better, rational choices. I make more rational choices now, but can’t 100% say they’re much better or worse. They’re just rational choice. (Which probably implies that they are indeed “better” than the irrational ones)
• Pnin – and thus my love affair with Vladimir Nabokov started.
• Lolita – serious lust, for little girls, for language. Best written book, ever. Nothing can compete. I felt all kinds of emotions when reading it, deeply, painfully and ecstatically. I’ve yet to write an actual post about it. and I will.
• The Eye – not the best work of Nabokov, but luckily it is short.
• Lunar Park – Bret Easton Ellis did really well in this one. If I read it in 2005, when it came out, I’d probably feel like everyone else who read it then and expected yet another repetitive party story (like his other books); or worse, expected something of an American Psycho saga (since so many people only read that book by him and know nothing more). There is an American Psycho presence there, btw, but also a good blend of real and unreal, of true and false. An intense and rapidly evolving downward spiral that gave me nightmares and even made me terrified of a potential toy in my hallway. Lulz, I told you I was an emotional reader.
• Miro: A life of passion – wrote a blog post about this. An inspiring story.
• Meditations in an Emergency – I can’t believe I let Frank O’Hara slide by for this long. He’s inspired me to write a new series of poems.
• How to talk about books you haven’t read – Pierre Bayard treatise for those who actually love reading. It makes a great gift for someone who loves reading and has a sense of humor. I also felt like I read a lot more books than just one because each chapter explores a particular literary issue in the context of this or that novel.
• Crush It – Gary Vaynerchuk’s high pitched to-do list for a successful persona-driven online enterprise. I was pleased to know that I already knew or did 75% of the things listed here. Learned about new services that I could employ and felt energized. Good guy. Fellow USSR-born import.
• White Out, pt 1 – Consumed this in 1 hour on a plane. I wish I brought part 2 with me, because I spent 3 hours watching TV on a plane instead of exercising my reading muscles. Dang. And on that note:
• White Out, pt 2 - Will read it before the year is over. Just an hour of my life, right
• Speak, Memory – Nabokov’s autobiography. Masterful renewal of Russia lost, of innocence gone, of the society that will never appear again. I love it. I fell deeply into it, and don’t want to raise my head and blink at bleak reality right here. I’ve 40 more pages to go, but I’m positive I’ll complete the tale before the clock hits 12 on Dec 31.
• Eating Animals – hurrying to finish this startling, well-supported case by Jonathan Safran Foer (fiction writer, eh), before the year is over (100 pages left), so that I could dismiss meat in the new year. In fact,  this Christmas I’ve been dealing with agonies over cruelty-full turkeys and cows. Bah. An illuminating read.

Note 1: I am utterly terrified that I haven’t read anything in Russian last year (besides e-mails). Really? This cannot be. I’ve half a shelf of Russian classics in my home, and I better get to them come new year.

Note 2: I may be missing a book or two, because I forgot I read it this year. Some books aren’t as memorable as others, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something.

What have you read this year?

Slow Art Toronto

I want to tell you more about Slow Art Toronto, taking place on Saturday, October 17, at the Art Gallery of Ontario at around 11am. I’d like you to join me. Art viewing starts around 11:30am (I know you like your sleeps ), lunch and discussion starts at 1:30pm.
The event is “Slow Art” and it’s designed to help all of us perceive art in a new way – to exercise our seeing, thinking and listening muscles. I see it as a springboard for newbies to art, and a discussion board for those familiar with the art or design world. Considering that, on average, a person spends 8 seconds (!) looking at an artwork in a museum, challenging someone to devote between 10 and 60 minutes to a work of art may lead to unexpected art discoveries. This October, there are slow art events happening all over the world. Boston, Copenhagen, London, New York, Los Angeles and more. I’m thrilled to be hosting the Toronto one! Register here!

Slow Art was originally started by novices in NYC to invite other novices (and connoisseurs) to come, to feel welcome, to not worry about what experts say but rather to take the time to see and explore what is possible when gradually viewing art. It’s a perfect opportunity to see what one can discover with a few guiding paragraphs and considerable amount of time.

Having gone back to my art history training and theory, I’ve pre-selected a collection of interesting pieces; I will be emailing those on the Slow Art TO guest list soon.

I’m looking forward to hearing what you think about the pieces you see, and I’m excited to meet you all. If you know of others who may find this interesting, please extend the invitation.

My Toronto Ignite Talk

Last week I put all my courage in a bundle and took it on stage to quickly and – luckily, – entertainingly to tell about my passion for art, especially the conceptual variety. My previous Ignite post addresses the issue of nervousness as well as general fears of a first time speaker.

It went well I think. Aside from me looking and acting like a squirrel on crack (I was nervous after all!), I did well. Didn’t mess up my lines and communicated the point in a comprehensible fashion! I hope you all are now inspired and spending more time with Sol LeWitt and Joseph Kosuth in galleries of your cities.

PS. Stay tuned for my Slow Art Toronto 2009 post. If you enjoyed this talk, and love art, then you should really pay attention to what I’m going to write and curate for Slow Art Toronto.

Toronto Ignite

So I wanted to tell you that I’ll be speaking at Ignite Toronto on August 25, 2009 at the Drake Underground. Michele Perras asked me to participate, and since I’m a Yes woman, I went for it.

Now, if you’re not familiar with Ignite, you should know that these talks happen globally. Speakers go on stage in front of hundreds of people and tell a story in 5 minutes and 20 slides that auto-rotate every 15 seconds. That’s some pressure. O’Reilly Media is behind all this, and I should say that I’m really excited to participate.

Now, I’m nervous. I’m hella nervous – I haven’t really done any public speaking before, and although I’m quite outspoken and have no problem presenting in front of a class (given that I prepared, of course), this is going to be a lukewarm shower welcome into the world of speaking on stage. I’ve got a couple of strategies I want to test out, and – wow, – even a couple of jokes. If all else fails, my slides speak for themselves, I just need to do a jig.

Oh yes, I am speaking about art, one of my most favorite topics. I had to do a bit of reviewing and lecture notes-digging before compiling the presentation to assemble crisp and easy-to-grasp points down. After all, it’s more important to drive home key points instead of trying to explain everything. Conceptual art does not necessarily come in 5 minutes, but I will try to spread the love anyway.

The event is at the Drake Hotel, and unfortunately for my friends who haven’t RSVPed, it’s sold out. But perhaps I can bum a video off organizers.

Searching For Words

Originally uploaded by brandis78

Yesterday I was passing by Umbra, because I needed to buy a present for someone, and I slowed down considerably because I forgot the word “dragonfly” in English.

(For those that don’t know, I’m originally from Russia, and speak her language fluently, and write and read it with no problem; a few years after I moved to Canada I started thinking in English and most of my schooling was in this language as well). I remembered it in Russian of course.

Then I realized that when it comes to language and expressing myself, the simple words come to me quicker in Russian – that is, words I learned when I was a child, words that are hardwired in my brain. They come to me in my native tongue first, so that I sometimes have to think hard before naming a ladle or watermelon to an English speaker.

On another hand, words that I learned later in life, that I used most or originally understood in English, arrive in my brain in English, and take enough seconds to mentally locate their Russian counterparts. That is why I struggle when explaining bigger concepts involving brand management, mergers & acquisitions or exasperation in Russian to my parents. Takes forever to translate the big ticker words to them.

Now, if only I learned all kinds of words when I was younger – in whichever language came first, – then I’d have less mental pauses… Nah, it’s not so bad, really. But I do struggle with occasional vegetable or grain naming, and I completely suck at naming birds.

As Sally says, “There are two kinds of birds in Karin’s world. Ducks, and birds.”

Monopolist Half The Time

We return to you once again. In the past week our orders skyrocketed and we couldn’t manufacture enough to meet the demand. Process innovation, in which we engaged,now allows us to produce more, faster and at a lower cost.

Speaking of which, I’m enjoying my Industry Analysis class. My professor, a former art director, is an eccentric, socialist wine connoisseur Dr Richard Michon, well-versed in creative positioning. I’m loving the class, despite originally wincing at the Economics of Strategy text. You see, I didn’t really like to listen during econ lectures back in the day, but it came back to me.

Strategic thinking and seeing the big picture are my strengths. I kinda drool over the military terms that we deal with, and I learn useful things on positioning and sustainable competitive advantage. I’m eager to do the best job I can on the class project which involves a novel-long analysis of a particular industry and maybe more.

One line I’m going to remember for a while and possibly invite into my fleet of mottos, came from a discussion of early mover advantage. Some firms may not want to move in first only to share space with other, possibly improved products of competitors. But! “It’s better to be a monopolist half the time than oligopolist all the time.” I’m running for the market! Bye for now!

On Learning

Originally uploaded by dreamtiger

When I was about 6 or 7 years younger when it was the time to choose some kind of a profession, I used to say: “If I could just learn for the rest of my life, and get paid for that, I’d do it.” And I suppose I can become an academic, but the second problem that occurred was the choice of the subject to become an expert on.
Eventually, I gave up that idea, but I still possess this hunger for learning. I’m lucky to have a job where my task is to actually seek out new knowledge and amazing content. Some of the greatest educational video blogs of priceless information are Fora TV and TED Talks. I recently found Change This, which is just full of amazing documents. And of course Wikipedia is there for up-to-date information.
But learning for me is not just about keeping up to date with the blogosphere and fads, it is also learning about music (that includes visits to the symphony orhestra), culture, language, film, scientific advances, fashion collections, dancing (see photo), literature of the past and present. The list can go on forever. I want to know everything there is to know about the world, and I want to learn as much as possible. Self-development ends on a deathbed.

Literary Escapades

“Equal parts biting satire on neo-Russian consumerism, drug-fuelled muckabout, sci-fi adventure, love story, literary in-joke and mystico-shamanic treatise on the nature of enlightenment. Disruptive, transporting and very funny, it’s one of his best.” – The Daily Telegraph

I started reading Victor Pelevin’s (more about the author) “The Sacred Book of the Werewolf” (NY Times review, read if you don’t speak Russian). I wolfed down 330 pages in two days, and I am sad to say that the book will be over today by 1pm PST. Not only is the main character a red-haired fox-woman (who looks like me on the cover of my edition), there is also an irresistible wolf, and myriad other crazy events all over Moscow and the north, from ketamine-taking guards to howling at the skull of a cow to discover oil, from thousand year old foxes hunting occult-loving English aristocrats to silver bullets. I suppose by an apt stretch of imagination, I can say it’s the 21st century Bulgakov on LSD. Something like that. The book is engrossing not only because of its characters, but also because of a healthy dose of political discussions, social issues in Russia and in the capitalist pigsty, as well as a handful of Eastern influences. Pelevin at Amazon, take a look please.

The next book I will be tackling is Dostoevsky’s “Demons”. I cannot wait. Reading Russian literature, as well as reading anything in Russian, makes me so much more susceptible to learning and taking the work seriously. It’s funny, whenever I read something in English, I take it half-heartedly, as if it was a comical thing, reading in English. To me, English is such a technical language that I cannot believe I can enjoy Jane Eyre in the original (I read it in Russian). Hence reading marketing texts and Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy is very educational, but only in English.

Russian language is so poetic. I find the best poetry is written in that language, as well as the most obscure linguistic acrobatics are possible in that language. Love it. Reading Russian literature makes me feel so much more alive, much more… thinking. I think I understood that this April when I was reading Dostoevsky’s Humiliated and Insulted and really felt the author’s love for the less fortunate people in this world, as well as his healtfelt kindness for them. Same way with reading Pelevin these past couple of days, I felt sadder for my mother land, for my fellow Russians trapped in there, for this dirty world in general. Sigh.