Golly Jeepers...

Where'd you get those peepers?

Peepshow, freakshow, where'd you get those eyes?

Peekaboo cover by Bertie Blackman

Originally by Siouxsie & the Banshees

Give me a minute to brush the dust off.

Hello!

I've come back from the dead (I got better), and while school seems to be taking over every spare moment of my life at the moment, hopefully in the foreseeable future I'll be able to spend more time on here, and less time writing essays (and playing Red Dead Redemption...). If I'm lucky I might even have the time during the September holidays to redo the blogger template and start showing off some of the stuff I've been doing while I've been gone (mostly essays. But interesting stuff as well).

So I'll see you again once I have my life back. For now, I give you this:

Oh Halloween!

the blood you drew

you carved a space to climb into
and like a lantern, like a pyre,
I burn, I burn with holy fire.

Check out Washington's 'How To Tame Lions' while you're at it.

My Tiny Chicken Army

I can't be the only one who finds these things creepy, surely.
Look at them. With their EYES!

Ricky Swallow

Tusk

 I know that I, personally, would like to have skeletal arms on my wall. However I'd probably end up using them as coat racks, which I don't think the artist, Ricky Swallow, had in mind.

Everything is Nothing

Venn Diagram of the Dead

Had this saved on my hard drive for awhile now.

If you know who it belongs to give me a heads up.

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na, BATRING!

I was going to write something really intelligent for this post but then I found these and they're much more interesting than anything I have to say. Also prettier.

Stainless Steel Bat Design Ring : Dark Knight Puzzle Ring

Putting The Fun In

Took this on the weekend. Also got some nice shots of the funeral parlour, hopefully I'll get to upload them sometime this week.

Putting The Fun In

Explosive

Looking for some nice x-rays of horrific injuries? Check out radiologist Surfactant's flickr stream, which includes gunshot wounds, things where they really don't belong (shotglass, anyone?), and my personal favourite, Hand Trauma, which you see above, where a homemade explosive exploded before it was thrown.

There's also some neat pictures of shells and other objects that are worth checking out.

Via wasteofbaco.

Meet Google

From Wednesday night's episode of Hungry Beast.

Australian people with TVs (and who also watch ABC) might have seen the show before.

It's a bit of a news/current affairs show, with a few comedy sketches thrown in for good measure.

My favourite part has to be the Beast Files, which you can watch above, where they make pretty pictures out of occasionally scary facts.

Ten points if you can guess the shape they're making before they've zoomed out.

Gustav Doré

An illustrator from the 1800's, Gustav Doré used painting, engraving and drawing to illustrate a myriad of works, with the prettiest (in my opinion) being those from The Raven (above), Paradise Lost (bottom right) and The Divine Comedy (bottom left).

These are really worth viewing larger, the detail is amazing.

View a gallery of his art here.

Logic by Operator Please

Australians will know of Operator Please, even if just for their irritating single 'Just A Song About Ping Pong', and England/Europe might know them for the infinitely better 'Get What You Want', but I think most of you will have no idea who they are.

The band members are only a few years older than I am, which always tends to make you wonder why you haven't played Leeds and Reading Festival yet, if they have.

Anyway, this is the first single from their second album, and pretty awesome. The projection effects look like something that'd be interesting to try out as well. 

Hurt by Johnny Cash

Okay, so I'm two days late for the anniversary of his birthday, but that's not important.

I was not aware they'd made a video for his cover of NIN's 'Hurt' until this morning, when they played it on a countdown of the 500 best music videos. It placed around 54ish, which is pretty impressive considering that it was on Channel [V], which is watched predominantly by 13-28 year olds.

Ron Mueck & Puppetses

 

 I was informed today that they're having an exhibition of Ron Mueck's giant half-naked people at the NGV in Melbourne. I'm told the only real way to experience his artwork is to see it in person but unfortunately it looks as though I won't get the chance, as the exhibition closes Sunday.

However, while I'm using Ron Mueck as a reference in my art folio (school again. I'll be interesting soon, I promise), it's not his giant naked people that interest me the most, but his other work. Once upon a time Mueck was a prop-maker and puppeteer, and he worked on the Jim Henson's Labyrinth, not only making a certain puppet, but doing the voice.

Now if they had his Ludo puppet in the exhibition I'd be there for sure.

For those who are interested, there's a video of Mueck making one of his giant people here.

Paper Street Soap Co.

 

Writing a desgin brief is a pain. Writing a design brief from the point of view of a fictional company from a movie you really like is much more interesting. But still a pain.

As well as studying Art this year, I'm also undertaking Visual Communication & Design, and part of your 'do this to pass' is that you've got to pretend that a company has approached you to do something for them.

Anyone who's seen (or read) Fight Club will know Paper Street Soap Company.

For those who don't, Tyler Durden makes soap from the fat that's dumped from liposuction clinics and sells it to rich people. I believe the remark about it is something along the lines of:

"We're selling rich ladies their own fat asses back to them."

 I'm pretending Paper Street is a proper company that just make fancy soaps, and thus far my teacher seems to not have picked up on it. Shame.

Anyways, in searching for a witty name for their latest collection of soaps, I found the Paper Street Soap Company website, which is full of wonderful in-jokes (hover over those little circles for links). And then I remembered that Last Exit To Nowhere, maker of wonderful movie-nerd shirts, has a PSSC t-shirt.

Available here, which I've been wanting for awhile.

Of Questions On Clays

I appeal to those of you with experience makin' stuffs. I know you're out there.

This year for art I'm required to make at least two artworks for my final folio presentation, and I'm planning on doing some anatomy/human body type sculptures.

I'd like to make one slightly bigger than A4 sized, length and width wise, and the other I'd hope to make about the size of an actual torso. I've used basic terracotta clays before in class, and the results were pretty good, but I've no longer got access to a kiln, wherein my problem lies.

I'm looking for a relatively cheap clay (or clay-like substance) that doesn't require kiln firing, and can be painted and perhaps varnished, something to that effect. Air dry would be a bonus, as well as light-weight, but I'm willing to pass those up for a better alternative.

Your help is much appreciated and willing particpants won't have their brains stolen in the night.

Unless you're into that kind of thing.

Not-A-Sci-Fi Sunday: The Wolfman

'Kay, so... The Wolfman is not a sci-fi movie but for once I actually saw a film within a short time of it coming out and I feel the need to share. Also my DVD player is possessed, but more on that at a later date.

The movie begins with a man walking through a dark fog-laden forest, freaking out at every noise, gun in hand. Something is after him and DUN DUN DUN he gets ripped apart by a big bad monster. It's probably the most tension you'll feel throughout the movie, with some nice pacing and good music cues. Expectations are raised. You think, hey, maybe this'll be pretty good after all. Depending on how high your expectations are, you might be right. But probably not.

We discover that the walking in the fog man was Ben Talbot, and his widow Gwen (Emily Blunt) writes a letter to his estranged brother/Shakespearean actor Lawrence Talbot (Benicio del Toro) beginning him to come back and help them find him, because at this stage he's merely missing to the good people of Small English Town. 

When Lawrence arrives, he's greeted by the corpse of his dead brother, as well as some small-town politics ("It's the gypsies!"). Lawrence decides to go investigate and visits the gypsy camp just as the angry townspeople arrive to chase the gypsies out of town, bringing with them a nice big full moon. Cue wolfie.

Big beasty circles the camp, taking out villagers one by one before just going nuts, and ripping everything/everyone to shreds. The best moment occurs when after hearing noises coming from a gypsy van, one of the men goes over, all casual-like, to have two wolf claws shoved into the underside of his jaw, with the fingers/claws coming out through his mouth, before he's pulled into the van and cut into tiny pieces. It ellicted an 'ooh' response just for the imaginative use of claws alone.

Lawrence gets chased by wolfie who then bites him but is scared off by Men With Guns. He's taken to the gypsy healer who sews him back up (in real nice detail), while the gypsies argue that she should just let him die. She doesn't, obviously.

This is around about the point where my attention started to wander. The slaughtering scenes are quite entertaining to watch but all the storyline in between is just a bit hollow. There's some great villiany from Talbot Snr (Hannibal Lector Anthony Hopkins), and the awesome Inspector Aberline (Agent Smith Hugo Weaving), who was the highlight, for me, although my mind kept making Matrix references where del Toro was Neo and that was quite distracting. You never really care about the characters' plights though, because well, you just don't. You've got some excellent actors and great scenery, sets and costumes but there's no real emersion in the movie at all. And so when the big dramatic climax arrives, you find yourself wishing they create as much carnage as possible so you can see some more disembowlings.

I saw The Wolfman with two friends - all of us female, between the ages of 17 and 23 - and I'm not sure what it is other than the possibility that we're a bit sick, but... we didn't find it scary, just kinda funny.

And we might have just maybe laughed through a lot of the not-at-all funny moments, such as the attack on the gypsy camp, the human to wolf transformations, the Wolfman vs Wolfman end battle which looks a bit more like wookie vs wookie and that weird wolfboy who looked a hell of a lot like Gollum.

There are a few jump scares that caught out a couple of audience members, but a lot of them are so predictable you can spot them from a mile away. And when the evil doctor-man says that Lawrence turning into a werewolf is as likely as him sprouting wings and flying out the window, you better believe he gets thrown out the window once Lawrence turns.

And then impaled on a fence!

All that said and done, I really enjoyed The Wolfman - just for all the wrong reasons. It was entertaining and funny and the music was pretty good, but the best part about it had to be the sets, scenery and costumes. There's so many great foggy woodland areas and the dilapidated mansion and mausoleum are so well done, that's it's almost worth watching the movie to see those things alone.

A classic, this movie is not, but it's worth renting the DVD or going to the movies if you've got some time to kill to see it, and confirm if my friends and I should go see a therapist or something.

Temple Run

I thought I'd share with you one of the more successful runs from Legends of the Hidden Temple.

Rarely did teams make it out of the temple after completing the Shrine of the Silver Monkey, either running out of time or getting caught by the Temple Guards.

Ideally your team would have both Pendants of Life (won from previous games), so that when captured by a guard, you'd be able to trade it in order to keep going. With three guards hiding throughout the temple, a team with both pendants would be able to survive the guards, who could only attack once (first player exchanges a token for life, but gets caught by the second, then second player exchanges a token for a life with the third), and it would only be a matter of running out of time. 

I probably spent a lot of a time as a kid checking hallways for hidden doors so that I'd be prepared in case of attack by Temple Guard. Which probably explains a lot.

Nickelodeon Vs The Winter Olympics

By Madatoms. Via mypopculturebrain 

I say bring back Legends of the Hidden Temple.

The final temple maze level always had me in awe as a kid - unfortunately I was too young to watch LOTHT during it's original run (1993-95), seeing as I was born in '92, but I was lucky enough to catch the end of the golden age of Nickelodeon, not to mention plenty of repeats.

Miami Metro & A Cocktail Party

You would think that from all the shirts I've posted and talked about in the past, that I would always be seen in them, but in fact the opposite is true. Rarely am I seen out in the wild wearing a tshirt. Or pants.

Because I'm a more fancy shirts, skirts and dresses type of person lately, rather than a nudist.

However, if I were to wear tshirts, these are the ones I'd be wearing:

From ThinkGeek and Split Reason, respectively, these two shirts both highlight two of my favourite things:

Showtime's Dexter -the serial killer with a conscience- and Valve's Left 4 Dead.

But not L4D2. Because I still don't own it, and most likely won't own it until I can get my hands on a non-censored version. What's the point if you can't dismember zombies, build giant piles of their bodies and set them on fire?

Anyway. Go buy shirts. Better yet, go buy me shirts.

Happy "I didn't get a Valentine" Day

Now, before we start, it'd be supercool if everyone actually watched the video I linked to in the For Future Reference post, but if you haven't, then this will (most likely) make no sense to you at all. 

If you can't be bothered watching the whole thing but still want to know what's going on, then this is the link again, and watch from around the 4 minute 20 mark.

 

 Valentine's Day is a holiday I appreciate more in theory than I do in practise. If you're in a couple, there's too much pressure to choose the right gift and to make everything perfect. If you're single it can be incredibly depressing to be surrounded by other people's flowers, chocolates and happiness.

A quick chat to my friends revealed that even those in a relationship were hating on the holiday - something which, despite my distaste for it, I found rather disheartening. 

So, drawing on a shared love for a certain crazy drunken Irish man who owns a bookstore (Bernard Black), I decided I'd make an Black Books referencing anti-Valentine card.

Also I really wanted a use for the accordion sketches I've been doing lately.

 

 The front of the cards read (in case you can't read my awful handwriting):

I've come to serenade you.

I can't play guitar.

I can't play this either, 

but I thought it would be less obvious.

While the inside reads:

Happy "I didn't get a Valentine" Day