Trash Bag

Hunting around for links between art and environmentalism I came across Nico Van Hoorn's Trashlog. Every day for three years he found something on the street that had been discarded and posted it to his website.

 I like it for lots of reasons. I like the aesthetic of bright and graphic objects dislocated from any meaning or utility. I like imagining the paths the objects took from their production to their disposal. 

I like knowing that something that has been forgotten by its original owner has found a new home. I like that it makes you think about all the things we throw away carelessly. 

I like the tenacity and determination of someone who can keep going with such a banal exercise to create something quietly wonderful. 

Goat Of The Day

This really does speak for itself: A ridiculous photo of a goat standing in front of some wallpaper. What more could you want in life? Thanks to Catherine's Animals via Lizzy via Tara's Facebook wall. (Yes I am a stalker). Goat! 

There Are No Words

My lovely friend Tara has a not so lovely, yet very curious obsession. She has a special soft spot for the truly bizarre and wondrous lives of sea creatures. Last night we were talking and she shared this small joy with me 

I think that it is, quite simply one of the most disgusting things I have seen in my whole life. As such I felt compelled to share. It is an isopod that eats out the tongue of sea creatures and then installs itself as a replacement, seemingly without too much detriment to the poor host. Argh. Yuk. Wow. If you can handle it, you can read the original article here

The Internet: The Good, The Bad and The Simply Curious

You just came on here to check your email and then all of a sudden you've been here for four hours, and you're several cups of coffee and many confused, delighted and disgusted facial expressions later. Welcome to the internet. 

This week I have thoroughly enjoyed trawling through Ashkahn Shahparnia's website which is a combination of his own graphic work 

and funny little bits of debris that he finds inspiring

(It's not all text, lots of pretty pictures too) 

I have been horrified and addicted to Crappy Taxidermy, a train-wreck-don't-want-to-know-but-can't-look-away inducing tidbit passed along to me by my partner. 

I've also had my curiosity piqued by the work of young Mr. Robin F Williams a 25 year old New Yorker. I can't quite decide if I love it or hate it? 

One Three Pretty

Seeing as Marco started on the subject of Mondegreens I thought I'd share one of my own. See the thing about mondegreens is once you've misheard a lyric you always construct a narrative in which the completely illogical version makes complete sense. I somehow, misguidedly I admit, convinced myself that Lovecats by The Cure was all about a call-girl based on the fact that I thought that Robert Smith was belting out the phone number to ring for love...

...One Three One Three One Three One Three Pretty

Oh you know I'd do anything for you... 

As soon as it was suggested to me that perhaps it was instead "Wonderfully Pretty" I had to concede that it might make sense. Well, I didn't concede as much as try to fight to death because I thought I was right and everyone else was wrong. Have a listen and see if you can hear what I'm on about... 

...Still at least it's not as bad as my mother who was convinced that "I believe in miracles, you sexy thing" was "I believe in milkos".... you know, the little white chewy lollies. Hmm. 

Over The Hills And Far Away

"The things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as Columbus discovered, an inexplicable continent; 
and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy. 
The toilet-paper-pink creature lies on its back: a rabbit-mountain like Gulliver in Lilliput. Happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woolen landscape of the rabbitÌs body, a country dropped from the sky; 
ears and limbs sneaking into the distance; from its side flowing heart, liver and intestines. 
Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel. 
Happy you leave like the larva that gets its wings from an innocent carcass at the roadside.
Such is the happiness which made this rabbit.
i love the rabbit the rabbit loves me.

After almost 5 years of knitting the rabbit found its final place in the italian alps (close to Cuneo). It waits there to be visited by you. You might even take your time or check back every now and then as the rabbit will wait for you 20 years from now on."

gelitin 

Hase / Rabbit / Coniglio

Artesina, Piemont, Italy

2005 - 2025

The AntsR

The universe directly balanced Polo’s nice work day with mine being several kinds of unfortunate. I managed to exit one work location early, on the grounds of being ill and fairly useless, only to pass another personal work hotspot to see the man I am forever karmically indebted to swamped with customers.  I jumped in, worked hard for a few hours, received some free though somewhat odd tasting bread and accidently accrued more karmic debt to this super Samaritan by accepting an offer to have a rope ladder made on my behalf.

The point of this post, before I suddenly discovered a whole vault of angst that needed exercising, was to start sharing my mondegreens. 

 Lyrics I’ve misheard and wrongly sung at people often enough to eventually have be corrected and be made aware of my adaptation. This month I’ll start on a favourite one I’ve always struggled to relinquish; “ants are my friends, they’re blowing in the wind. The ants are blowing in the wind...”

That About Sums It Up

Friend                              

How do we get through the waiting?

21:42Me

I don't know how to survive, you get antsy and angry and drink four thousand cups of tea

and then wait some more

21:43Friend

Because its all you can afford

Reminds me of Oh The Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss

On Wheels

When I finish work in the afternoon jumping on my bike and riding home makes the whole day disappear. I feel weightless and free and my feet stop hurting as I fly home. Today was particularly lovely, I finished while there was still light and while riding my music player seemed to pick all the right songs. Belle and Sebastian came on and it was so right, I haven't listened to them in a while and the moment has rekindled my love. The dulcet tones of Stuart Murdoch fitted in perfectly with the day of the year it is today: cold enough for people to have smoke curling out of their chimneys but bright and warm enough for every blossom tree in town to have spontaneously burst into flower. I ended the evening by talking to my far away best friend Bridget and debating which B&S songs we liked the best, funnily enough we differed greatly. However I did find this rather lovely clip of Dog on Wheels. 

Oh No Not The Goat

We sort of fell down a lego wormhole and ended up at The Brick Testament and seeing as how we're on the topic of goats (always) this one in particular got us a little upset:

Judges 13:19
Manoah then took a young goat and sacrificed it on a rock to Yahweh.

Oh noes! Not the goat. 

Lego'd

Imagine all the people living life in pieces.... 

A series of famous photographs re-imagined in lego, here

And Then There Was Tea.

Today I worked all day in my horrible retail job. It is a particularly bad weekend because three events collide: The store in which I work started to install Christmas land, I am horrified that Christmas is starting in September; It is father's day tomorrow which means that the store is promoting familial love as a chance to spend more money and finally, this weekend is the first weekend of Spring. Spring that blossom filled, sun shining season. There is more to this cheeriness than ducklings, signets and bouncing lambs. The other creature that crawls out of hibernation is The Bride (or Bridezillas as they're affectionately known). So after a whole day of preempting elves, recommending ties and avoiding brides I couldn't face a night of doing anything useful and sociable. To this end Marco and I are sitting on the couch watching The Good Life

and fantasizing about growing a house all of our own with organic vegetables and goats milk, wearing hilarious seventies dresses and sporting big hair and walking around saying things like "you let them in Gerry, I must get my gavel" and "I did have one or two adolescent dreams about Duncan Sandys" 

                                       Duncan Sandys

We're also drinking tea, or rather we're trying to drink tea. The first attempt went cold while we were distracted cooking quiche. The second go ended up all over the kitchen floor after Marco reached for the kettle and accidentally threw it across the room and created a momentary flood. The third was aborted when I announced that I may have accidentally put my foot in the cup (no, I don't know how either). The fourth time was perfect. So here we are warm, happy and antisocial full of long awaited tea and lots of chocolate. 

As our evening continues we have discovered that the goat from The Good Life is called Geraldine and thusly we have decided that when we get a he goat called Gus we must also get a she goat and call her Geraldine. 

Hurrah for antisocial Saturday nights.

I Don't Want To Play Blog Anymore (An attempt to learn how this caper works)

The Amazing LED Sheep

Today I Rediscovered My Love of Fractal Brocolli

No tampering. True story. Ain't nature amazing?

We Know Our Goat

Good morning, hello and welcome. The time has come and I have given in to having a blog. Not that I was against the idea I just doubted that there was much I could say that needed to be uploaded and archived. And while there still isn't any reason to upload and archive any of my musings I'm sure I can find something to say. The crunch moment came when I was idling through a few of my friends blogs and one of them posted a recipe that I had a smallish part in creating. She linked my name to a blog I am sort of associated with, when I clicked it I realised that I hadn't posted anything since April. This instilled a great amount of shame and I decided it was time. 

Once I'd committed I knew that I wanted my friend Freya to be involved. Freya is one of my bestest friends ever, her and I spend a lot of time coming up with silly ideas over endless pots of tea. Many of these whimsys aren't recorded and float off into the universe never to be remembered and this seems like a good starting point to try and catch them. Mostly she is Marco and I am Polo, although sometimes I am Marco and she is Polo. It mostly depends on which one of us is lost at the time. Marco has a hopeless sense of direction so we've resorted to searching for each other by yelling, screaming, whispering or yodeling Marco and Polo until we're safely in each other's arms. 

Marco and I have lived together in a few different places. A long time ago we met at college and used to spend an awful amount of time visiting each other and making plans for what we'd do when we were to escape. One of those plans was to get a goat called Gus. We did move out, alas we never got a goat, there was a rabbit with an identity crisis for a while, who one day got fed up with our inability to name him and ran away. Despite our lack of caprine friend, goats have always remained part of our repartee. When hunting for a  name for this here blog we came across this very helpful drawing:

And so, we had found a name for our blog. There promises to be no logic to our content, just bits and pieces that we find on our travels.