Your mind could fall straight out of the top of your skull, there discount trying to wrap it around this object. In 2-D, order information pills it’s a bit drab, hospital but once you turn it beneath the light and watch the 3-D strands of Pearls finding their way across its honeycombed surface, you become persuaded you’ve found Fate’s master plan for us all personified in a little button, one inch across.
Category: Adornment
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#a218 :: Optical-illusion button
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#a217 :: “Leight Sleepers” brand earplugs
I’ve worn a lot of earplugs.I’m a light sleeper, viagra sale unhealthy I have kids and I camp on the playa, remedy thumb which readies you for pretty much any cacophonous grab-bag of a soundscape the world can dish out – while making it impossible to cobble together 3 decent minutes of sleep for the noise of hooting, bumping and explosions.
I’ve worn full cranials to protect my delicate, shell-like ears from jets screaming skyward atop lit afterburners at Southern California Airshows. They were solid.
I’ve worn Class 4 ribbed earplugs that were given out at the brain-fuckingly loud Survival Research Labs show in L.A. a couple years back.
But sometimes you need nothing more than a cheapass thimbleful of foam to keep everyone else out of your night.
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#a200 :: Jawbone
Another item gleaned from the burn site – or maybe just fancy-lookin’ MOOP that landed there in the middle of a dance, buy a debauch or an idle walkabout – this jawbone of a squirrel or a raccoon (or something) bears three hallmarks of Burning Man couture:It’s goth-y. It has a mounting hole drilled through it. And it’s been cast off on the playa by accident or wild dance or wilder fate to become the sort of trash that the legendary DPW fucking hates.
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#a197 :: Patch
Of all the sorts of trinkets given out at Burning Man, look the gorgeously mass-produced ones always grab me a bit harder than the small-run handmade items – probably because I’m a shallow consumer in love with manufactured goods.A guy handed all of us one of these today as we picnicked on the shady second floor of the massive steel Babylon tower out far beyond the rim of 1:30 and Esplanade.
I’m waiting to decide what to sew it onto. It’s too handsome for hasty decisions.
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#186 :: “Thunderbird”
The decision had cost Daniel. Which is why he was standing here now with this ridiculous knife in his hand. Ankle-deep in all the tools he had yanked from the toolbox and flung to the floor as he rifled fruitlessly for a real weapon. weapons. Both blades out. Ready. Wicked.He tried not to look at the pickup truck. It had just parked across the street.
The driver eyed him. He hefted the thing without daring to look down at it. He was high when he picked it out at the pawnshop. $10.52 with tax, recipe the man said. He pushed over $6 in quarters and a $5 bill.
It looked wicked. Like Gene Simmons’ boots.
The guy in the pickup glanced back over his shoulder, buy then turned to Daniel again.
What the fuck am I gonna do with this fucking thing? I almost cut myself just getting the twin blades open … – their hooked bottle-opener jaws had snagged in the sleeves of his old raglan.
Now he held it clenched in fist, where the vicious edges and impossible gothy points settled into his fingers along four grooves molded into the handle.
Come ON, he mouthed. The man across the street was now missing from his truck. Daniel had not seen him go.
He whirled but it was too late.
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#a182 :: Bluetooth headset
Six weeks ago, case California law did not require me to wear this while driving and using my cellphone.Five years ago, treat this sort of gadget did not exist.
Fifteen years ago, doctor I counted myself lucky to be using a cellphone the size of a brick – one that had been issued by the Philadelphia Inquirer news desk.
Sixteen years ago, I carried extra quarters in case I had to call in from the road.
120 years ago, I, the quarters, the road and the phone lines did not exist. People counted themselves lucky to get a handwritten letter within a month, and especially lucky to receive a telegram hand-clicked and transcribed by people who knew Morse code.
Which should make me feel lucky to own such a thing, but all I can say about the Motorola i375 is that I dislike being yoked to it because the damn thing doesn’t fit my earhole.
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#a175 :: Printing blocks
Carved in Africa or India or perhaps on some island, buy I know not where, approved these found their way to the gift shop of Brighton Pavilion.They were lumped in mysteriously with all the other gift-shop trappings of chinoiserie, the Chinese-design fantasy that George IV lost himself in while having Sir John Nash design his summer palace.
They have a rough majesty of their own.
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#a150 :: Glitz stickers
comes home with my daughter
it sparkles when you turn it
push back the darkness. -
#a144 :: Rosary
Another Tuesday, story another morning with little Kylie, site the
niña pequeña she cared for three days a week.She trudged uphill once more, the rosary draped over her fingers. “Nomini patri et fili et spiritu sancto,” the sign of the cross trailing from her lips as she kissed the little madonna milagro and worried the yellow and garnet glass beads with her fingertips.
Traffic surged down the steep hill, past the place where she walked with no sidewalk. Cars and trucks gave her a respectful berth of three feet – almost colliding with oncoming traffic on the narrow street – and rolled on, brakes squealing to a distant stop …
(more…) -
#a142 :: Rubber watch
They gave these out to the kids with tickets for Wall-E.Movie – gorgeous to look at, page groundbreaking, but not nearly as smart and funny as Kung Fu Panda.
Watch – blue silicone rubber around a little cheesebox chip of Chinese chircuitry. My son’s came broken.
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#a134 :: Word beads
The notion of the exquisite corpse is simple: By juxtaposing random words, illness you create a new reality. You can manufacture newfound logic that approaches poetry. Or you can hash a bunch of meaningless verbiage that probably only sounds really cool after a couple of bong hits.Leave it to the American kitsch industry to commoditize this experiment in nonlinear linguistics – into Magnetic Poetry Kits and, pilule now, word beads.
We’ll be flinging a few of these into the playa gift culture swamp this summer so as to perpetuate the question we so often ask ourselves when blogging here: Is this art? Or just nonsense?
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#a115 :: Ivory manta ray
We swam with manta rays in Hawaii last summer.Yes, cialis 40mg it really was that idyllic.
We tell ourselves it was kharmic payback for a summer of pain – our dear friend Keith died horribly and too young, we were both working 14 hour days and struggling to be with the kids, our daughter broke her arm. And to top it all off, a skunk crawled into the foundation of our chimney and died. And stank. A lot.
So when we spent the most glorious week off we’ve ever enjoyed in our lives, we came away feeling as though the universe was rebalancing the scales. But the bulk of it – like this experience – smelled like magic – or some absurd positive kharma that we have yet to earn …
(more…) -
#a98 :: Refrigerator magnet
Home turf’s on my mind today.Senator Ted Kennedy’s illness left a vacancy on the commencement program for Wesleyan University this Sunday.
So, click it’s a big deal but:
I grew up on the Wesleyan campus (Mom and Dad have worked there for decades).
Let’s hope they hold it somewhere more secure than the athletic field. The whole thing is surrounded by sixth-floor book depository windows. The blood curdles just thinking about it.
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#a93 :: Hawaiian fishhook
I hunted it down, this web searching from gift shop to gift shop in Kona last summer, stomach wiith a will.I wanted something real – of bone – something distinct from the beautiful, sildenafil overly-copied and -cheapened polynesian talismans littering the tourist coast of Hawaii’s big island.
I eventually tracked this down at a shop specializing in such Oceanian symbols. Hand-tapered and shaped, from a single cow’s vertebra, it hangs from a nylon thong around my neck. The artist shaped the points to razor sharpness, around a circular space that keeps the points from severing my jugular veins in my sleep.
It is transparent to airport metal detectors, impervious to all the chemicals I bathe my body in daily
in the shower, inscrutably timeless in its design and beauty. It was an object of pure obsession until I found the right one, and fulfillment the moment I chose it. Even now I can’t say for sure why I’m so attached to it, but that it’s honest and powerful and beautiful.
(more…) -
#a90 :: Pull tab
“Hold him, order Teck, approved I wanna piss on him.”Boomer loomed over the prostrate sophomore and began unbuckling his pants.
Kyle looked up – as much as Teck’s kung-fu grip on his neck would allow, at least – sighed, and resumed staring inches away at the defocused glitter of burst Lowenbrau bottles and Molson caps in which he knelt.
He really needed to figure this out.
Stoned, Boomer was harmless. Just another burly, ugly, dumb asshole dropout loser from Hull, who bailed out of junior year and found work sheetrocking crackerbox condos for Beacon Hill yuppies to feed his beer and pot habit … (more…)
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#a89 :: Rubber LED pendant
In the realm of burned-out rave gear trends, more about the blinky LED pendant burns on – loud and frenetic as an 8-year-old on his fourth bowl of Cap’n Crunch. In fact, for sale it’s always as perpetually in style as the good Cap’n himself.Squeeze this complex polyhedron in the right place and it bursts to life, information pills its RGB-LED heart pulsating with the promise of an endless string of nights in Ibiza or Goa with no cover, no closing time, no hangover, no guilt.
Squeeze it again, and it dies. Or reverts to what it is – an ounce of exotically-molded silicone wrapped around a mass-produced irritainment generator and hung from a chintzy ribbon necklace. I imagine after it goes for an extended swim in the kids’ toyboxes it will stay in that state permanently, as there’s no clear battery port anywhere on it.
Ah, well. Factory hands in China get to eat for another 5 minutes because we now own their work.
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#a81 :: Stickers
It folds out from a ripstop nylon pouch the size of a cigar case.
Its fiberglass ribs hold it together in 30 mph winds.
It’s barely 8 inches long fully assembled.
It’s a Finger Kite!
Our endless list of household projects marches forward because of my wife, buy information pills the movie producer.This week’s tribute to her ambitions is me shoveling out the large storage area in my office – which means going through virtually every bit of hard-copy media I’ve ever owned, sorting, refiling and throwing out crap.
The room looks like a geek hoard. Every horizontal surface bears a stack of tools, books, CDs, tchotchkes, gizmos, whatses, thingummies and scraps of half-usable art material – any one of which could be EXTREMELY IMPORTANT AND PROBABLY SHOULD NOT BE THROWN OUT YET.
Actually, I’m doing a reasonably good job throwing things out – all in advance of painting said closet space and then replacing the massive, ugly, old four-drawer legal file cabinet with three brand-new (and much smaller) four-drawer legal file cabinets.
In the midst of all this, I can barely think.
I keep one mental tunnel open for family obligations, another for work, and the rest of my view is 720-degree,
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#a55 :: Yoda handlebar ornament
I’m actually a little proud of this. I built one for everyone in our camp at Burning Man a couple years ago to mount on their handlebars:I found a box of little “crystal” Yoda figure kits for a quarter apiece at a flea market. I glued each together, link drilled the base out and inserted a high-output Chinese LED.
I then wired the LED with alligator clips, running the wire through holes I drilled in a chunk of yellow-mirrored Plexiglas I had sitting around from a previous Burning Man …
(more…) -
#a52 :: Tattoo needle & inks
This evening, more about visit web Justin (this gifted gentleman) used these to finish my arm (front | side | three-quarter | full | video).Not just fantastic work. Deep art.
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#365 :: Ring
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Here are some of the posts I had the most fun writing and/or shooting.If you like any of them, maybe you’ll email one to a friend who might enjoy it, too. And if you just discovered this site, any of these is a good place to jump in:
Rubber Ghoul
Drain Valve/Bell
Photo-Theremin
Saab Front Wheel Bearings
Nuclear Bomb Test Souvenir
Monocular
Battle Suit
Daguerrotype
Brownie Hawkeye
Vinyl Frog
Lightcycle
Minnie Ball
Spoke Wrench
Art Deco Reading Lamp
Spiky Silicone Keychain
Fuckin’ Wirenuts
Tiara
Doll Leg
Shalom Bracelet
Gunslinger
Last Resort
Novelty Lighter
3 Red Demons in a Little Rowboat
Fortune Cookie
Wallpaper Print BlockWelcome newcomers: For clarity, I have swapped this post’s halves from its originally posted state. Note also that I’m running around cleaning up some bad internal links – a legacy from when I switched to WordPress at the end of the 2004-2005 run … mr …12/16/08
The old man lived in a small trailer park in one of the Carolinas, by a huge stand of bamboo. He sat beneath the awning of the old Airstream with his second wife. I don’t remember her saying much. But I remember him bouncing me on his knee, asking questions, listening with that sort of benevolent, distant warmth that I came to know ever so briefly as grandfatherly.
We had ridden in Frog Belly, our beaten third-hand two-tone Ford (?) for so many hours to get there. Down from the little Connecticut college where my father taught and would later turn to glorious painting, where my mother wrote like a weaver, with focus and care. That evening, after lemonade and maybe it was fried chicken, I lay in the motel room nearby, all of six or seven years old. Night heat smothered any chance at sleep, which was already elusive, thanks to the rock’n’roll band blaring from a stage beneath bright lights in the field next door. Insects keened outside, the cicadas out in force on their once-every-17-year cycle of birth, sex and death.
The next morning, we went back over to the trailer for breakfast. And my father’s father took us out to the bamboo afterwards, where he cut chunks from a stalk and fashioned it into a little two-piece slide whistle that he gave to me. I wish I had kept it. I can’t even remember what became of it – I must have left it behind because the aching memory puts it only and fully in that place, no other. Just there, blowing the bamboo mouthpiece and sliding it up and down the octaves – and then it was gone.
Joseph Wayne Reed Sr. was my father’s father – a medical corpsman in WWI and a Red Cross medic in the Pacific in WWII, a Linotype operator for the St. Petersburg Times in his later years. Heart disease killed him – I remember, he was overweight and not too athletic – when I was eight.
Four years later, my father gave me his ring – white gold and onyx. I have worn it every single day of my life since then. Dad had the stone flipped over to hide what must have been a lifetime of chips and scars, and new gold added to the bottom where abuse and wear had ground it down to the thickness of a kite string.
Once in 1984, body-surfing high at Misquamicut, Rhode Island, I thought I had lost it to the sea. The empty-handed sensation of realizing this was a head-to-toe shock that overpowered the full-body battery of cold October breakers and left me feeling naked, careless and stupid. At this point in my life, my young journalism career seemed to have fallen apart and I was casting about for some sense of direction. So I bounced on tiptoes in the surf as my mother had taught me there long ago, and tried to absorb the loss of the ring as an omen – a clean break, a fresh start, a way out to new thinking. Weak, I thought. Fuckup. I dragged myself back to the parking lot to towel off in abject depression, which shattered in a paroxysm of joy only when I realized that I had sensibly stashed the ring in the glovebox of Steve’s Celica before jumping into the ocean.
I nearly lost the ring again 20 years later. A brain-crushingly bad week at work sent me home in a funk, and drumming seemed the only way to shake it off. Pounding out amateurish polyrhythms and 2/4 tribal stomps at full volume in the empty house, I pummeled the shit out of my kids’ tubano until my arms tingled. Then I looked down and saw that not only had the circle of white gold cracked, but the stone had disappeared and the empty prongs gaped up at me in blinded reproach. After five solid minutes of knees-and-fingertips searching through the pile of the thick Oriental rug around the drum area, I found the small, black stone, and resumed breathing. Our local jeweler set things right, and my arm is complete again.
My wife says she considers this the ultimate Heavy Little Object – it’s not the sort of archetypal machined steel gizmo upon which I first focused this site. But it is of stone and precious metal, and freighted with meaning and worth beyond the reach of my words. It’s part of me, and a good place to stop – maybe so I can devote a bit more time to my other blog – and think about where I’m headed next.
This site is dedicated to my parents.The contest results are here.
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#358 :: Bow
remedy adiposity ‘popup’, drugs ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>
This is the cultural equivalent of a successful GoogleWhack: A purpose-built frippery with one and only one use. The peach-satin confection came flat in a glassine envelope, a little stack of ribbon rectangles. To set it up, you pull a little thread at its center, which bunches the strips into loops forming a perfect, gift-ready visual confection. It is an emotional virus, designed to carry a “message” of “festivity” and “affection” to the recipient, and then to be simply torn off and discarded. If you put together the production chain, from designer to industrial loom operator to dye-maker to cutter and packager, you wind up with a micro-economy of specialized laborers whose only professional purpose is to construct the physical manifestation of a hoary old meme in visual semiotics. You could work yourself cross-eyed deconstructing the symbolism, or just trying to understand the way the flat thing becomes a rounded, resilient and brilliant bow. But then you’d have given it way too much thought. -
#277 :: Coin-silver Cross – Africa
decease website ‘popup’, drug ‘width=500, store height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
Now available for the first time, you can own a piece of the darkest hour of modern American history! This museum-quality replica of the very weapon that launched America’s War on Terror(TM) is meticulously rendered in vinyl-clad stamped steel, with a razor-like blade and a terrorist-approved pedigree. Made here in the U.S.A., this exquisite piece features elegantly simple design, a fine-honed steel cutting edge and all the style of a Bowie knife and the stealth capabilities of a nail-clipper file. Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, yet powerful enough to carve a hole right in the Constitution, this piece is being issued in a limited edition, and available through this site only. Act now, and get yours!
sickness ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
Iconic, kinetic, and about as simple-minded as a yo-yo, the Wheel-O was your own hand-held Sputnik. The red wheel spins on axle-tips of magnetized metal that cling to the wire frame. Tip the frame back and forth, and it spins faster as it rolls around the frame. Get good enough at it, you can get it up to around 500 rpm, and more than two complete “orbits” per second. It’s the perfect desk toy – the quiet whir of magnets on steel, the whipping action of your wrist, the circular/linear motion always seem to relieve stress and restore focus when the project I’ve been staring at for far too long has begun to numb my wits. Sadly, there’s not much to be found on the Web, even on Amazon’s still-in-beta A9 search engine (which seems a bit unreliable, but has plenty of entertaining bells and whistles). Search results are far better for the still-in-mass-production Superball (“made of amazing Zectron(tm)!”), which is a heavy little object in its own right – though arguably not so elegant as Wheel-O. eBay is disappointing, offering only this ferociously ugly and overengineered knock-off. Dig deep enough, and you’ll find some true believers still selling this space-age delight, along with Sea Monkeys, Etch-a-Sketch and Wooly Willy.
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Z-Cardz are nifty. Z-Cardz are stupid. Z-Cardz are collectible. Z-Cardz are 3D DIY models that start as 2D cards. Z-Cardz come five to a box. Z-Cardz might be laser-cut. Z-Cardz might be water-cut. Z-Cardz manufacturing methods don’t show up easily in Google. Or A9. Z-Cardz are boats. Z-Cardz are animals. Z-Cardz are airplanes. Z-Cardz are spaceships. Z-Cardz are now, just two years after their introdution, some ridiculously elaborate game. Z-Cardz are a bore. Z-Cardz are more delightful when you put the pieces back into the cards, stick them on the shelf and forget about them until two years later when you suddenly stumble upon them and have to build them all over again. Z-Cardz are serious irritainment.
order ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
So much of faith is expressed in symbolism. This logo or that ritual, those laws to follow, these hands to wash beforehand. True belief takes such a leap of … faith that entire sects, churches, religions, nations, races engage in regular obeisance to symbolic propriety to reinforce their oneness, their righteousness, their might, and their identity as followers of the true way, the one God. Their temple. Their book. Their eyes cast heavenward and their hearts beating forward in visceral, passionate progress toward fulfillment of that way are the greatest testament to their dedication to their faith. In the greatest and gravest cases, the symbolism of faith becomes physical, curdles to disrespect, insult, bloodshed, war. And some wars have gone on as long as the faiths themselves, which have turned from codes of humanity and spirituality to mandates for genocide.How do you symbolize faith in peace? The symbols are far fewer, less legitimized, hardly noticeable at all in human culture. One man’s peace symbol is another’s “footprint of the American chicken,” as they used to call it in the 60s. Lately, movements religious and otherwise are adopting bracelets as symbols. In a different era, it might have been hair shirts or amulets or tattoos. For the past 10 years it’s been a smug little slapfight of bumper-mounted metallic fish. But these days, it’s bracelets.
The Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles is trying out this object – a simple blue strap of elastic, tin-crimped to form a hoop, silkscreened with a few words in Hebrew. My good friend Yael Swerdlow, Press Officer for the consulate, explains:
It says Shalom in Hebrew, which means “Peace”.
The message we at the Consulate created it for is “Israel wants peace.” It’s nonpolitical, not aligned to any person or policy or specific population— Israel is a multicultural and diverse democracy, with over twenty percent Arab, Bedouin and Druze, and people of different faiths, Christians, Moslems, and they want peace just as much so this is not just Jewish, it’s just Israel wants Peace.
Because of the way the consulate is chartered, they cannot use the bracelets for fundraising, Swerdlow says. So they’re still working out exactly how they want to distribute the “shalom bracelet” but it will probably be via something like SASE so that anyone who wants one will be able to order it.
Bracelets can be ordered by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to:
Consulate General of Israel
6380 Wilshire Blvd Suite 1700, LA 90048
Attention: Yariv Ovadia, Consul for Communications and Public Affairs.
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And now, something I have to do. This is the grim saga of this. It was the worst pain of my life, and the most hellacious 3-month round of shopping for a cure I’ve ever endured, but you should duck out if you bore easily. You’ve been warned.My summer trip to Hell began on the July 4 trip to Yosemite, at the very moment I tore the bike racks off the car.
Instant stress. By the time I had blown through three bike shops and wasted two hours on the road and spent two more on the mountainside corkscrew hairpins into Yosemite with bughouse kids and carsick wife, I had a roaring headache. I thought nothing of it at the time, just, “Oh. This too. Great. Gottagettocamp.”
Next day, a duller version of the headache persisted as I wrestled with rebuilding my thrashed wheel rim beneath the redwoods. Popped a couple aspirin, it subsided a bit.
Next day, another headache. Now it’s getting weird. Stress, I tell myself. it’ll even out once you’ve stuck your feet in the river and hear the sough of wind through the pines for a few more hours …
(more…) -
#238 :: OoogieBoogie pin
decease website ‘popup’, drug ‘width=500, store height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
Now available for the first time, you can own a piece of the darkest hour of modern American history! This museum-quality replica of the very weapon that launched America’s War on Terror(TM) is meticulously rendered in vinyl-clad stamped steel, with a razor-like blade and a terrorist-approved pedigree. Made here in the U.S.A., this exquisite piece features elegantly simple design, a fine-honed steel cutting edge and all the style of a Bowie knife and the stealth capabilities of a nail-clipper file. Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, yet powerful enough to carve a hole right in the Constitution, this piece is being issued in a limited edition, and available through this site only. Act now, and get yours!
sickness ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Iconic, kinetic, and about as simple-minded as a yo-yo, the Wheel-O was your own hand-held Sputnik. The red wheel spins on axle-tips of magnetized metal that cling to the wire frame. Tip the frame back and forth, and it spins faster as it rolls around the frame. Get good enough at it, you can get it up to around 500 rpm, and more than two complete “orbits” per second. It’s the perfect desk toy – the quiet whir of magnets on steel, the whipping action of your wrist, the circular/linear motion always seem to relieve stress and restore focus when the project I’ve been staring at for far too long has begun to numb my wits. Sadly, there’s not much to be found on the Web, even on Amazon’s still-in-beta A9 search engine (which seems a bit unreliable, but has plenty of entertaining bells and whistles). Search results are far better for the still-in-mass-production Superball (“made of amazing Zectron(tm)!”), which is a heavy little object in its own right – though arguably not so elegant as Wheel-O. eBay is disappointing, offering only this ferociously ugly and overengineered knock-off. Dig deep enough, and you’ll find some true believers still selling this space-age delight, along with Sea Monkeys, Etch-a-Sketch and Wooly Willy.
information pills ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Z-Cardz are nifty. Z-Cardz are stupid. Z-Cardz are collectible. Z-Cardz are 3D DIY models that start as 2D cards. Z-Cardz come five to a box. Z-Cardz might be laser-cut. Z-Cardz might be water-cut. Z-Cardz manufacturing methods don’t show up easily in Google. Or A9. Z-Cardz are boats. Z-Cardz are animals. Z-Cardz are airplanes. Z-Cardz are spaceships. Z-Cardz are now, just two years after their introdution, some ridiculously elaborate game. Z-Cardz are a bore. Z-Cardz are more delightful when you put the pieces back into the cards, stick them on the shelf and forget about them until two years later when you suddenly stumble upon them and have to build them all over again. Z-Cardz are serious irritainment.
order ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>So much of faith is expressed in symbolism. This logo or that ritual, those laws to follow, these hands to wash beforehand. True belief takes such a leap of … faith that entire sects, churches, religions, nations, races engage in regular obeisance to symbolic propriety to reinforce their oneness, their righteousness, their might, and their identity as followers of the true way, the one God. Their temple. Their book. Their eyes cast heavenward and their hearts beating forward in visceral, passionate progress toward fulfillment of that way are the greatest testament to their dedication to their faith. In the greatest and gravest cases, the symbolism of faith becomes physical, curdles to disrespect, insult, bloodshed, war. And some wars have gone on as long as the faiths themselves, which have turned from codes of humanity and spirituality to mandates for genocide.How do you symbolize faith in peace? The symbols are far fewer, less legitimized, hardly noticeable at all in human culture. One man’s peace symbol is another’s “footprint of the American chicken,” as they used to call it in the 60s. Lately, movements religious and otherwise are adopting bracelets as symbols. In a different era, it might have been hair shirts or amulets or tattoos. For the past 10 years it’s been a smug little slapfight of bumper-mounted metallic fish. But these days, it’s bracelets.
The Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles is trying out this object – a simple blue strap of elastic, tin-crimped to form a hoop, silkscreened with a few words in Hebrew. My good friend Yael Swerdlow, Press Officer for the consulate, explains:
It says Shalom in Hebrew, which means “Peace”.
The message we at the Consulate created it for is “Israel wants peace.” It’s nonpolitical, not aligned to any person or policy or specific population— Israel is a multicultural and diverse democracy, with over twenty percent Arab, Bedouin and Druze, and people of different faiths, Christians, Moslems, and they want peace just as much so this is not just Jewish, it’s just Israel wants Peace.
Because of the way the consulate is chartered, they cannot use the bracelets for fundraising, Swerdlow says. So they’re still working out exactly how they want to distribute the “shalom bracelet” but it will probably be via something like SASE so that anyone who wants one will be able to order it.
Bracelets can be ordered by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to:
Consulate General of Israel
6380 Wilshire Blvd Suite 1700, LA 90048
Attention: Yariv Ovadia, Consul for Communications and Public Affairs.
cialis 40mg ‘popup’, cure ‘width=500, recipe height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>And now, something I have to do. This is the grim saga of this. It was the worst pain of my life, and the most hellacious 3-month round of shopping for a cure I’ve ever endured, but you should duck out if you bore easily. You’ve been warned.My summer trip to Hell began on the July 4 trip to Yosemite, at the very moment I tore the bike racks off the car.
Instant stress. By the time I had blown through three bike shops and wasted two hours on the road and spent two more on the mountainside corkscrew hairpins into Yosemite with bughouse kids and carsick wife, I had a roaring headache. I thought nothing of it at the time, just, “Oh. This too. Great. Gottagettocamp.”
Next day, a duller version of the headache persisted as I wrestled with rebuilding my thrashed wheel rim beneath the redwoods. Popped a couple aspirin, it subsided a bit.
Next day, another headache. Now it’s getting weird. Stress, I tell myself. it’ll even out once you’ve stuck your feet in the river and hear the sough of wind through the pines for a few more hours …
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