Category: symbol

  • #a175 :: Printing blocks

    ENLARGECarved 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.

  • #a170 :: Lead “Indian brave”

    ENLARGEThe micro-war between the races of earth still rages on in English toy shops and adult imaginations – even though most young Londoners have graduated to XBox, what is ed find Flickr and Legomania.

    Most warriors wear meticulously handpainted uniforms. In the antiques stalls of Portobello Road they rest, medical weapons at the ready, approved medals ablaze in gold and polychrome, in carefully made beds of styrofoam with ridiculous prices on their heads, since they’re now considered antiques.

    All except for this specimen, who lurked at the bottom of the £1 bin, crunched beneath Hussars with chipped uniforms and fusiliers with badly broken muskets.

    He creeps across the plains, in U.S. cavalry trousers, the very picture of menace, his shiny hatchet at the ready.

    His near-black skin is a dead giveaway that he was finished by some clueless British toy-plant drone who – when he asked about the man’s complexion – was likely told by an equally clueless art director, “Oh, he’s a savage, paint him like an African.”

  • #a167 :: Stonehenge keychain

    ENLARGEThere is a certain poetry to this tiny portrait of one of man’s oldest surviving places of ceremony:

    A matrix of dots, physician etched or blown into a block of clear glass, pharm spells out Stonehenge‘s shape at palm size, giving you a portable tour of the place.

    Here, no less than there, the broken circles of pillars and lintels leave you with nothing but awe and questions. How’d they do that?

    But there, time really does feel stopped. Here it’s merely captured in a glassy snapshot, fetishized for the tourists. Of whom I am one.

    Being at Stonehenge gives one the impression of having become stuck in time – an everlasting moment as you walk around these unmoving

  • #a165 :: Oyster card

    ENLARGEThis debit card gives you full access to the Tube and bus system. With one in your pocket, page you can go anywhere in London, ampoule never thinking about the fare.

    “Touch in” – wave it at the yellow oval pad that reads it and debits cash from it for your ride – and padded turnstiles gates in the Underground snap open with a heavy “thwunk. Slide it over the pad as you board a red double-decker, more about and you’re off across town in the upstairs of the bus.

    If you’re lucky, you get seats at the very front, where the world slides past some 12 or 14 feet above the street, like a magic cinema show.

  • #a161 :: Rabbit’s foot

    ENLARGEThis one was loved. Someone’s constant rubbing and fondling robbed the thing of its fur, viagra dosage pilule put tarnish on the stump-cap and the (shudder) ring. I picture him humped over his bowl, beneath his one gas lamp, drowning his sorrows and yet keeping his heart on the world around him by wishing on this thing.

    Whatever luck it may have had is gone with its owner and the children of his era. All that remains is another, slightly more hapless creature’s knuckles, claws and skin.

    Portobello Road gave it up.

  • #a158 :: Goldfish

    ENLARGETwo insistent goldfish dance from side to side against the glass here when they’re hungry.

    This is an extremely difficult activity to capture adequately on camera.

    Drop them a few flakes of food and they zip about the tank, diagnosis there eating.

  • #a156 :: Demolished Croc

    ENLARGE“Daddy, no rx it’s stuck!”

    We’re coming up out of the Tube this afternoon after a long day noodling around Brick Lane‘s rolling flea market and art swap meet.

    My 6-year-old’s ahead of me on the escalator. “Get your toe out of there! Quit screwin’ around!”

    It’s been a long day, capsule everyone’s tired and punchy and grumpy, side effects and this is just another way of her pulling my chain, I’m convinced.

    “I can’t!”

    “Shit!” I grab her arms and pull her just as the escalator devours the toe of her Croc and pulls it off her foot.

    Thank God they were loose. After we all recover from our near-coronaries, we stand around and laugh the laughs of people who have jointly cheated death. Or at least a horrible maiming.

  • #a152 :: British National Rail tickets

    ENLARGEWe arrived in London yesterday morning, website jetlagged beyond belief.

    I then had to put in a full day of work at my normal hour, physician which turns out to be 4 p.m. to midnight here – which on a daily basis has wound up leaving me pretty swacked – and just now (5 days let) catching up on HLOs.

    So here are the first truly heavy things – passage to Brighton, a one-hour trip from Victoria station.

    The train carriages are modernized now, far slicker and cleaner than the enameled, wood-and-wool lined jewels I remember from my last visit more than 30 years ago.

  • #a151 :: Feather

    ENLARGELook, information pills web let me level with you. I’ve been slamming in four nights worth of HLOs for the past hour or so, and just to get ’em done. In fact, seek I’m post-dating this one because I’ll be in transit 24 hours from now. We’ve been packing and prepping our own house for a big house exchange with a London family, and it takes time to square things away.

    This fell off the feather duster when I was dusting out my office last night. Its color always fills me with hope.

  • #a150 :: Glitz stickers

    enlargecomes home with my daughter
    it sparkles when you turn it
    push back the darkness.

  • #a148 :: Spork

    enlargeA hybrid. A multi-utensil. A solution. A ridiculous word.
    Say it a few times:

    Spork. Spörk.

    Spoooorrrrk. k. k.

    Admire its completeness. Say no more. Spork.

  • #a147 :: Perfume bottle

    ENLARGEI found this little beauty in a basketful of them in an Indian curio shop on Melrose Avenue.

    The high-impact barrel was molded and lathed in bone-colored plastic, view then hand-notched for detail. You unscrew its cap for a trace of your favorite stink-nice, this and the rest of the time it sits on your dressing table reminding you how worldly and cultured your life has become by adopting it.

  • #a145 :: Metal turtle

    ENLARGEWas he forged in lava? Does he swim in mercury seas? Of tinfoil jellyfish is his diet made?

    He came into our house from I know not where. He is small, link heavy, perfect.

  • #a144 :: Rosary

    ENLARGEAnother 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 …
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  • #a143 :: Movie ticket

    enlargeDad brought home movies. All the time. He’d set up the projector. I’d set up the screen. And we’d watch – Citizen Kane, doctor The Court Jester, Swingtime, The General, Soylent Green, They Were Expendable, Serpico – old movies, newer movies, all genres.

    I’m grateful for that, as with all things from my father.

    I love the contract the moviemakers make with us: You just sit there and give me 90 or 120 or 270 minutes, and we’ll do our best to show you something worth your time.

    I spent this $11.75 on Wanted, which suggests that a 1,000-year-old cult of weaver/assassins has learned the art of curving bullet trajectories and otherwise obliterating the laws of physics. It is loud, witty, exciting and quite possibly the most preposterous thing I’ve ever watched … at least since sitting through National Treasure 2 and Shoot ‘Em Up last night.

    My wife and kids are out of town. Nothing for it but to watch noisy, stupid cheese.

  • #a134 :: Word beads

    ENLARGE 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?

  • #a130 :: Stogie

    ENLARGEMy vices are few and far between.

    But this evening, viagra while my family is away camping, adiposity leaving me to a regular work schedule and an empty house, website like this I had my once-every-six-months cigar.

    This 9-inch-long Gurka has been sealed in a glass tube – perfectly preserved, I might add – since William brought a box of them to Burning Man two summers ago.

    I broke the wax seal on the tube, snipped the butt of the cigar with this, fired it up with this, poured myself the tiniest sip of Glenlivet and set to work.

    It was delicious.

    Two and a half hours later, I really liked what I had written.

  • #a124 :: Miniature Indian corn

    ENLARGEIn the vast pantheon of American kitsch (and it is vast), recipe the significance of miniature “Indian corn” just baffles me.

    Farmers cultivate the basic (full-sized) species to sell to craft stores and maybe florists. Yet here’s a tinier – cuter? – version for the express purpose of … what?

    I’ve never had the pleasure of eating it – no one ever sells it fresh – but I have to wonder: Did this country marginalize because yellow and white corn species were considered sweeter? Purer?

    What would it taste like if you slapped the farmer’s hand before he signed the deal with Michael’s, and forced him to take it to market so that you could shuck it, grill it and slather it with butter?

    It’s a mystery. A small, one, I’ll grant you. But a mystery – to me, at least.

  • #a117 :: Dot-com relic

    ENLARGELike all major American newspapers, thumb the Los Angeles Times – as we know it – may be doomed.

    Never thought I’d say that – I worked in newspapers for 17 years, side effects including ’90 to ’97 on staff at the Times, and I always kept the faith.

    I had rough moments mixed in with the fantastic stories, but hope barnacled my frequent reality checks – “Oh come ON, they’ll figure it out sooner or later – they’re just an information company that needs to retool for the digital age!”
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  • #a115 :: Ivory manta ray

    enlargeWe 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 …
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  • #a111 :: Moo cards

    ENLARGEWhy is this – get up to 100 of your own images printed on the back of little half-width business cards – such an immensely attractive offer?

    Because you can print whatever the hell you want.

    Because it’s like owning the factory. Or perhaps renting it.

    Because since they’re double-small, advice people look at them twice as hard. (more…)

  • #108 :: Chibi giant robot warrior

    I’ve written before of chibi.

    No more about that need be said. Right here, erectile Scope Dog (or someone very much like him) packs two big fat weapons on his short, stout person.

    He’s 5 inches high and balances quite well on his feet – one at a time – if you provoke him.

  • #103 :: Cast-iron mermaid

    ENLARGEShe waits, information pills coyly fanning her hair.

    Demure yet voluptuous, site sensual yet pensive, she waits for the tide to rush in and bear her away.

    At barely five inches tall, she weighs more than a pound. And she is magnetic, both figuratively and literally.

    With no maker’s mark to introduce her, no indications of origin to lead us to her story, she’s a perfect blank slate for fairy tales.

    She’s simply what you want her to be.

  • #a98 :: Refrigerator magnet

    ENLARGEHome turf’s on my mind today.

    Senator Ted Kennedy’s illness left a vacancy on the commencement program for Wesleyan University this Sunday.

    Barack Obama is stepping in.

    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.

  • #a96 – Craftsman adjustable pliers

    ENLARGEI love the Sears Crafstman tool guarantee. It’s simple: break it and they’ll replace it.For the rest of your life. Period.

    I bought these adjustable pliers a good 25-some years ago, sildenafil when I was spending hours at a time lying on my back under a filthy Volvo. Cursing. A lot … (more…)