I do, I love coffee, so color me happy when Kaija surprised me with a bag of quality Jamaican Blue Mountain that I never drank before. I usually drink Ethiopian Sidamo, that I swore to be the best coffee beans in the world. Now I’m torn and undecided which one is better; the Jamaican Blue Mountain is putting up a good battle that I never saw coming.

Like most writers/artists I’m a habitual coffee drinker. It’s part of the whole ritual that most of us go through to concentrate our focus, to get ourselves to work mood. A habit we could probably break really easy, if we only wanted. But when coffee tastes so good, why would we ever?

Protip: Try coffee with honey, and none of that milk stuff – it’ll blow your brains out.

Last night we watched a conversation between Henry Rollins & Amanda Palmer, both performers and artists extra-ordinaire. It was an interesting one where two famous performers discuss about relationship to work and fans, how much they share of themselves and about humility. I liked it I and hope you guys enjoy it too. And if you don’t, that’s fine too.

Fun fact: We once walked out of an Amanda Palmer gig; it started late, was really loud and we got cranky. We spend the rest of the night eating dates and watching Happy Endings instead.

The video’s inspiring in many ways, but if you didn’t get enough, then turn your glances here: Sebastiao Salgado is a photographer that you should not forget soon.

And if you crave for more, then I recommend you check out the Boston Globe’s The Big Picture section; it’s full of great journalist photography from recent events world wide.

I’ve lost myself there for plenty of hours, right-click saving them one by one to my reference folder where I already have more pictures saved than a sane person would ever need.

On the matter of photos, we did a small shoot of ourselves today and put this together, enjoy!

Have a great Weekend,
Silver

I read a lot of books and comics last year. Stories from epic science fiction concentrated to a sand planet, to a chocolate shop in small French town. I read about defending your home from the Yakuza, about being crazy, about the everyday misery of post-apocalypse and about the deep, deep sorrow of knowing that one day soon you are going to die and how really it’s more sad for the people who you leave behind. I read a lot more, both comics and novels and most of them I loved. Some I hated, but I can’t always win.

Out of all the stories I read, one stood out to me particularly: The Perks Of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.

Some of you might know this as a fairly recent movie where Hermione lets this weird kid touch her boobs, but there’s more to it. I just watched the movie and it made a great job transforming the novel into screen; I enjoyed it, but my real love is for the novel.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower was the strongest and the most vivid reading experience for me last year. It’s hard for me to explain what made it so special. I guess in essence, I feel as if it was hand-crafted just for me.

It was one of those books where you really can get into the main characters head without any of the annoying angst and instead you have all these interesting feelings of conflict and confusion. Surprising twists and relatable narrative. All around it was a great story and I enjoyed it so much, that even months after I still remember how I felt reading it. It’s incredibly awkward, sad and funny book at the same time and with one of the strongest soundtracks ever.

Those of you who like movies and want to watch it (I know you want to see Hermione’s boobs, you pervert.), please consider reading the book first – it will be infinitely stronger experience as a whole.

Kaija just started reading Everything is Illuminated. Judging by her reaction to the first chapter (snorting and giggling) it’s definitely something I want to pick up and fast.

– Silver

I got my second tattoo done! Me and Silver spent last week scrambling to come up with perfect designs for ourselves. We went to Dave’s Tattoo here in Frankfurt and got appointments with G, who did an amazing job with my tattoo. I’m on cloud nine about it :) It turned out Silver couldn’t get a time for his tattoo for almost another month. Instead he photographed my whole session and even got some videos. They turned out awesome!

Presently I spend half my time staring at the tattoo mesmerized and the other half trying not to bang it into anything, which is hard since I’m as clumsy as Bambi on ice. I also need to keep it greased up for the time that it’s healing, which means going nowhere near the inking board for couple of weeks. My plan is to sketch out as many pages as I can and then ink them all in one go when the tattoo’s healed, that way hopefully I won’t fall behind my weekly quota too much:)

I recently came across an amazing fashion photographer: Ellen Rogers. Her photographs have an amazing quality of abstract, haunted moments, that made me fall in love with them immediately. She works only in analogue, even the colors are painted entirely by hand. Her book is on my shopping list now :)

Here are just a few examples of her work:

Smiles,

– Kaija