Before I get into this post, here’s virtual high-fives to all y’all who remember Clone High and forever mourned that it only ran for one season.
Anyway, in between my busy schedule of making friendship bracelets while watching Judge Judy and playing a computer game wherein you help two seeds, a twig, a mushroom and a maple key solve puzzles, I’ve found the time to change things around a little on Forest Friend. Along with the new(ish) look, watch for fun new Forest Friend posts every few days, including:
I made a thing Monday Instead of like, cleaning the kitty litter or doing laundry, I make things with my hands and on the computer while the filth piles up around me. I’ll be posting things that I make and share tips and tricks on how you can make them too — if you’re home with scarlet fever and have run out of seasons of Supernatural to watch.
Professional development Monday Ever wonder how to be continuously productive with your projects or business while cooking three organic lentil-based meals a day, sewing all your own clothes out of hemp grown in your backyard, inventing your own language and founding a local, sustainable, carbon-neutral space program? Yeah, me neither. But I’ll share the few things I have figured out, like how to create a client estimate without freaking anyone out or screwing yourself over, or how to make your computer’s desktop look like the one on the original Macintosh.
Film school Tuesday Let’s talk about movies! Because face it, watching movies is what you’re doing when you’re not at work or in the grocery store figuring out which vegetables you’re most likely to make yourself eat this week. This section will focus on aspects of production design and style in film — like Leeloo’s makeup box and Gauthier costumes in The Fifth Element, or the hipsterific shabbychic of Never Let Me Go, or the differences between postwar America and postwar Britain as portrayed visually in Mad Men and The Hour.
Crazy idea Tuesday Remember all the times you thought of something crazy, like “Let’s design a new paradigm of local governance based on mandatory participation and a socialist division of labour!” or “Let’s paint the ceiling with a mural of the constellations in the night sky on the day Leonard Cohen was born!”? It’s a scientifically proven fact that cases of the rabid brain-crazies decrease exponentially every year after high school, and that is a damn shame. You know why? Because every time you follow one of these crazy ideas down a rabbit-hole, you find out something new about the world — for instance, that running the North End like a kibbutz would probably be really complicated, or that the constellation of Orion looks like a robot with three balls. (I’m right, aren’t I? And now you can’t unsee it.)
Today I learned Thursday Okay, so I know that this is what the TIL board is for on Reddit, but sometimes I learn something so mind-bendingly insane that it has to be shared. Like in grade 11 when I found out that porcupines live in trees. MIND = BLOWN.
Treasure Bin Thursday Some days, you come away from the Sally Ann with eight striped shirts and a pair of stretchy pants. Other days, you find a vintage MEC travel backpack with detachable day pack, made of forest green canvas with leather details. And on these days you must celebrate, give thanks and share the amazing finds with which you have been blessed. For this is the only way to invoke the Karma of the Good Haul. May the Thrift Elves guide your fingers through the Racks of Destiny.
Fashion Friday Clothes are mostly things we use to guard the eyes of the sensitive from the horror of lopsided genitalia and superfluous third nipples. They don’t have to be bought new every season or made of vegan silk unraveled by hand from shed cocoons. But they can be lots of fun. Here I’ll talk about what’s newest and most important in the fashion world based on my highly scientific, unbiased and universally appreciated opinions.
Closet trauma Friday You know how every year around the same time you’re like “OMFG, winter again?? It’s cold and I don’t remember what to wear!” Or when you pick up a fashion magazine on impulse and quickly discover that, even though Teen Vogue styles their models wearing everything they own at the same time, you end up looking like a madder, uglier and much less successful Helena Bonham Carter at an awards show when you try and do the same thing? Basically, this section is going to be about the multifarious challenges of putting on your clothes every morning. (Other strenuous challenges of modern life, like basic hygiene, will NOT be covered.)
Longer editorials — “We Love,” “We Make,” “We Find” or “We Wear” — will appear once a week… mostly. And readers will also get a weekly round-up of generally awesome stuff straight from the gooey centre of the giant virtual Twinkie that is the interwebs.
Yay makeover!