Higher powers command: Buy this glow-in-the-dark plastic rat!

Some facts:
The guy in the shop sold me this rat for two dollars. It was on a shelf with other nik-naks with a hand-drawn sign labeling them as "statues". He started talking about how ebay was changing the way people shop and said to me "You could photograph that in a dark room and sell it on ebay for at least ten dollars". I have had my eye on this rat for a couple of weeks, and would have bought it even if it didn't glow which, in fact, I was unaware of until I made the purchase.


One of my friends recently revealed to me that he was injured by a broken pipette containing "Radioactive rat DNA". On the surface, he suffers no ill nor super-heroic effects and does not resemble the depicted glow-in-the-dark plastic rat.


My earliest memory of receiving a novelty plastic animal/insect is of my father going into a shop saying he was going to buy me something, and for me to be good while I waited in the car. Upon returning he apologises to me, saying they didn't have what he was after and then shouts "OH MY GOD!!!!" and throws a plastic spider in my lap. I laugh about it now and will no doubt subject my own offspring to this type of behavior in the future.


Apologies to Sigmar Polke for the title of this post.

OID

-oid is a suffix much used in the sciences and mathematics to indicate a "similarity, not necessarily exact, to something else". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, -oid is derived from the Latin suffix -oides taken from Greek and meaning "having the likeness of".

Wikipedia page on -oid.

Put stamp here and sing 'La Cucaracha'

La Mano (loteria 3 of 9). Found postcard with a link to Bizarr Verlag, a publisher in Germany. Printed in Europe.

Thought of the day

Posted anonymously, Balaclava train station.

Good thoughts, bad thoughts - Funkadelic [14.4MB mp3 file]

A bit of positivity-inducing funk-noodling goodness, from the 1974 Funkadelic album 'Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On'. The audio aspect of this post was inspired by watching episode 5 of the BBC documentary, 'Soul Deep'.

Boulevard of broken dream... er... discs

My work involves a lot of burning discs and along the way the odd soldier falls in the name of duty and ascends into the realm of coaster-hood. Here are some that I found while looking around my studio for a disc that worked.





The top one with the skull actually says "RIP", but you'd be forgiven if you thought it said "PIE". The bottom one is a text version of the 'Funeral March' (I think).

That gum you like is coming back in style

I just finished watching the 'Twin Peaks Definitive Gold Box edition' (buy) set, complementing it with a viewing of 'Fire Walk With Me'. Been a very Lynchian long weekend. The Twin Peaks box set was an absolute treat, and I happily endorse it. For a 10-disc set, I also think it's good value - like $2.75 an episode, with the extras (of which there are many) for free!

On the Twin Peaks theme, here's a track by Mister Hopkinson's Computer with The Audrey 3000™ - a cover of 'Falling'.

Falling (Theme From Twin Peaks) - Mister Hopkinson's Computer with Audrey 3000™ [5.6MB mp3 file]

Check the linked MySpace pages for opportunities to purchase music, and enjoy.

Life ain't a comic strip, baby

Here are some scans from 'Sinner' - a couple of comics I've been hunting down for some time by the amazing Argentinian artist José Muñoz. I ordered these from Fantagraphics Books and have been searching the web for the rest in the volume (with the English translation) to no avail.

These scans are from the 'Viet Blues' book (the images are non-sequential, and you can click on them for larger):







And some scans from 'Life aint a comic strip, baby' edition:





That's Muñoz in the last panel, him and writer Carlos Sampayo both appear in the above comic, where they are attempting to create the comic in that they're in. Very meta. The thing I love and am studying in Muñoz's work is his line work and, to a greater extent, his use of black. He offers the slightest bit of detail in a sea of black, yet it's enough to get the idea across. Inspirational.

[Art by José Muñoz, 1989, 1990]

Oh-Four-Oh-Three-Oh-Eight

I looked at the clock on the train platform and it read 09:56:56 and I thought to myself - that's just way too many numbers!

The Doctor is IN (CMYK)

Aah... Just sent a major print job off to press yesterday, which may help to explain why I've been a little lax on the posting front.

While my mind is still on the printing process, and to follow up on a post I did a while back, I'm going to show some example of what I think is a true four-colour hero.

Doctor Fate is one of my favourite DC heroes, and I like him because technically, Doctor Fate is the printing process. Observe:

The four colour printing process consists of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. Here you can see that Fate's costume is pure Cyan and Yellow, he's outlined in Black, and his magic is pure Magenta. Fate is made up of the stuff of comic books, the component colours of each and every one of them in their pure, unadulterated forms.

Tatjana Wood is the colourist for these pages, and I think she's one of the best. Her work on 'Swamp Thing' is incredible and she has a true mastery over mixing inks and knowing when to let them stand on their own for impact. Check this panel out:

Aside from the green (consisting of, at a guess, a mix of full Yellow and 50% Cyan) the piece is mostly percentages of Cyan and Magenta with black for little background details and text. I love how the creature is a line drawing done purely in Cyan. These panels could almost have been produced in a 3 colour spot-printing job using custom ink colours.

And just to bring it home, this incredible panel which, as above could almost be a spot-job.
The four-colour process is essentially four spot inks screened together to give the illusion of colour, but I love in these examples how they are used as the colours they are unmixed, and either at 100% or screened back a little.

[Art by Keith Giffen and Larry Mahstedt, 1985]