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Scans from some 'Bizarro Glasses' I bought for Iggy yesterday with the tagline "AMAZE YOUR FRIENDS AND AMUSE YOURSELF".

The bottom one is the winner of the 'Tobias Fünke look-alike competition'.

Super-Normal

After being inspired by this post on my friend Scott's blog, I've been a little obsessed with Xtranormal, a site that allows you to convert text to avatar-based movies, complete with stage directions, Foley sounds and animated movements. It's a lot of fun. For your amusement, I present my Xtranormal version of Laurie Anderson's 'O Superman'.

Ap-p-pa-ri-tion

The inflatable duckling we bought for Iggy for his birthday is deflating. Slowly losing its helium-based life force it now hangs eerily upside-down from our ceiling.

When we first bought it, I kept going on about how it reminded me of one of my favourite photographic works by Harry Crosby - Apparition.


I like that it's funny, weird, atmospheric and a little spooky. Excuse the text bleeding through the image, that was the best scan I could manage. The scan is taken from 'In Transition - A Paris Anthology' [Amazon].

This morning I photographed the duckling in all of its upside down glory, flipped it and gave it a slight Apparition-ation.



OR THEREABOUTS.

Terrifying clown action

My family and I were recently in David Jones being disappointed by the scarcity of decent reduced-cost infant-ware (there was supposed to be a sale) when I snapped this clown-sculpture in the children's ware (is that one word?) section:

So here's the brief, Bob: I want you to create a clown whose eyes are sunken in their hollow sockets and glazed with terror. Also, make its mouth gape open in a silent, ululating scream only hinting at the promise of a grin.

Fear me.

FEAR. ME.

Stuff in my studio - part 2: Kaiju + inspirational terror

You should take a good, long look at yourself (knife optional)

The Japanese Kaiju figure is an Ultraman monster (name unknown) that was given to me by a friend. I think it has electrical skills. I inherited the work behind the Kaiju from a previous share-house situation.

This land be made of squares

This tranquil magnetised and pixelated nature-study used to be where the slimes lived, until they were consigned to the white expanse of our Frigidaire.

A warning - staring at this for too long may make your eyes go square and your thumbs turn green...

Flightless future bird - Cryptozoology

Here's some photographs I took of a figure I bought while in Japan.

The premise of this particular item is that they are animals from the future, a future where natural selection has perhaps taken a detour, and a little inter-species shenanigans has taken place. Or something. The figure I ended up with (from a blind-box) was an odd-looking bird with single-clawed armlets. Probably flightless.

Viva evolution!

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.

Baltan! Plush!

A friend recently alerted me to these Cthulhu plushes and I thought I'd post a little something I picked up in Japan for my impending "junior" - the humble Baltan Plush, made by MegaHouse (2006).

And the detail:

Baltan is a crab-clawed enemy of Ultraman. For context here's a still taken from the awesome 3-disc series one, volume 1 set, available here.
I gotta give credit and kudos to my pal Spacey Space for pointing out and suggesting the plush AND gifting the DVD-set to me! What a bloke!!!

Love, curiosity, freckles and doubt

Leave it to Charlie - The Gadgets [3.8MB mp3 file]

This album has been one of my favourites for YEARS and has a recipe for Cornish Pasties in the liner notes!! Also, Peter Greenaway has a credit on one of the tracks. Wow. Colin Lloyd Tucker is credited on many of the tracks, and there's some Gadgets details here.

[Disclaimer - if you have a beef with any .mp3 files you find here, send me an email and I'll remove 'em. Files are for evaluation purposes, and will hopefully get someone out there to buy the original]

The slimes draw near!

Ahh, the slime. I picked up these magnets as part of a magnet and paper diorama in Japan, but opted just for the magnets on my home refrigerator. Look at the grins on their plastic pixellated mugs. And you've got to love the ole 5-pixel highlight.

The slime is my favourite enemy and probably the most instantly regognisable character from the DragonQuest series. I like their simplicity and perpetual slimy happiness.