#a282 :: Seed pod

November 22, 2008

It erupts in a fur of orange, seek link from a black pod. The skin is avocado-like. The seed is barely a quarter-inch in diameter. And it mystifies me.

Filed under: Found Object, Jetsam, Life form | Comments (0)

#a281 :: Cupcake topper

November 21, 2008

More than 500 million human beings live in absolute poverty. Right now. Their lot is not changing. More than 15 million children die of hunger every year. Starve. To. Death. How many children is that? Numbers are pretty meaningless when you’re talking about entire nations of people, try but do some math: Remember the faces […]

Filed under: Art, Artifact, Ephemera, Facsimile, Fetish, Found Object, Jetsam, Miniature, Model, symbol, Toy | Comments (0)

#a260 :: Meteorite!

October 31, 2008

Oh my gawd: Readers of this blog know that I don’t tend to post gushy teenage exclamations like “oh my gawd” that often (as in, page never) But here it is, one of those Heavy Little Objects that really makes you say “oh, my effing gawd: A chunk of bona-fide space rock. But check the […]

Filed under: Artifact, Found Object, Microfiction, Part | Comments (0)

#a258 :: Dessicated green bean

October 29, 2008

Don’t ask me how it got from the freezer to the cupboard, cheap but my son brought me this earlier today. I’m trying to picture it as an oblong green asteroid, and failing. You?

Filed under: Edible, Found Object, Jetsam, Life form, symbol | Comments (0)

#a253 :: Desk cleaning time

October 24, 2008

You own a lot of shit. You accumulate more of it every day. Sometimes, story you have to pick through it to get your desk clean. And you make little piles. That might or might not be photographs of your life told in debris. And yet, help you never seem to get rid of the […]

Filed under: Adornment, Art, Artifact, Blahg, Ephemera, Facsimile, Fetish, Found Object, Instrument, Jetsam, Life form, Miniature, Model, Objet, Part, symbol, Tool, Toy, weapon | Comments (0)

#a252 :: Dental casts

October 23, 2008

Overcome for a moment, order if you can, healing the urge to vomit: You’re looking at casts of someone’s teeth – full bicuspid-to-incisor replicas of a human’s business end, cast in peach-colored plaster, mounted on more white plaster that is set into a hinged contraption meant to approximate the original owner’s jaw. Only the hinge […]

Filed under: Artifact, Found Object, Instrument, Model, Tool | Comments (0)

#a248 :: Straits Territories penny

October 19, 2008

I’m magnetic. Have I mentioned this before? Small metallic tools seem to fly into my hands wherever I walk. Whether this is for holding a pin steady long enough to create a microscopic city of angels on its head or for some other obscure task, stomach I’ll never know. But its jaws can clasp something […]

Filed under: Art, Ephemera, Fetish, Found Object, General, symbol, Tool, Toy | Comments (0)

#a236 :: Stanley Handyman bullet level

October 7, 2008

It’s fitting that today’s object is a level. For today I have finally brought HLO completely up to date, no rx after a double-whammy punch of working vacation with my family in London for a month and a full-bore trip to Burning Man crushed my daily blog output. A good level operates with an oracular […]

Filed under: Artifact, Found Object, Instrument, Part, symbol, Toy | Comments (0)

#a230 :: Tintype

October 1, 2008

Balefully he stares at the lens and struggles to hold his pose. The photographer has gone to lengths to make him appear comfortable – with a little wall and urn upon which to lean poeticallly – and “natural” – with tufts of grass and twigs underfoot and a bough of oak leaves overhead. But he […]

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#a216 ::

September 17, 2008

Also from my wife’s collection: hollowed, ampoule hand-hammered silver of questionable virtue, yet molded with the heavenly curves of a nimbus cloud.

Filed under: Adornment, Art, Found Object, Objet, symbol | Comments (0)

#a212 :: Hand-carved Indian candlestick

September 13, 2008

This appeared in the house some time in the past month. I have no idea where it came from, advice beyond the tiny “India” sticker on its base. Around it, try a lion chases an elephant that threatens to trample the elephant that flees the lion. Candlelight sounds nice.

Filed under: Art, Found Object, Objet, Tool | Comments (0)

#a207 :: Cat’s eye reflector

September 8, 2008

This is what became of California’s elegant Bott’s Dots: Instead of a crisp ceramic disc, ampoule this species – a hideous amalgam of ceramic compound and cheap-ass diamonded plastic – now graces the centerlines and gore-points of California, purchase indicating to anyone who cares to notice, price where the center of the road lies. Quite […]

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#a202 :: Charcoal

September 3, 2008

This is the last of the Burning Man jetsam for a little while – a chunk of the true man transformed at the height of The Burn by several hundred fireworks shells and a huge, for sale oily-looking propane explosion or two. We always make picture boxes out of our MOOP and ephemera, blenderizing it […]

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#a201 :: Fragment, burned Bible

September 2, 2008

Like a butterfly amid the Burning Man’s ashes – a scrap of a holy book that someone thought offensive, information pills or more probably, rx oppressive enough to burn flutters in the playa breeze. When did any idea, story or work of art or culture threaten you so much that you had to set it […]

Filed under: Found Object, Jetsam, symbol | Comments (0)

#a200 :: Jawbone

September 1, 2008

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 […]

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#a199 :: Melted neon tubing

August 31, 2008

The morning after, page sale we bike out to the smoldering embers of the Burn, and we glean for souvenirs. Most prized among us early-Sunday ash-diggers are melted blobs of the Burning Man‘s neon veins. Twelve hours ago, you could still grasp the electrodes of a galvanometric device hookup that measured your pulse and send […]

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#a190 :: Pizza protector

August 22, 2008

Inside the box from Hard Times, order an itty-bitty thermoplastic table stands, poised to protect our 18-inch half-bacon-half-mushroom-and-black-olives pizza from the combined effects of gravity, pressure and corrugated cardboard. A tiny insurance policy, a finger in the dike, a talisman against doom. Landfill material.

Filed under: Found Object, Jetsam, Tool | Comments (0)

#a170 :: Lead “Indian brave”

August 1, 2008

The 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 […]

Filed under: Found Object, Miniature, symbol, Tool | Comments (0)

#a161 :: Rabbit’s foot

July 24, 2008

Filed under: Fetish, Found Object, Life form, Objet, symbol | Comments (0)

#a135 :: Bottle caps

June 28, 2008

They began life as sheets of tin (following a long and, nurse one can only imagine, viagra buy complex refining process) – punched into circles, thumb crimped, printed, lined with plastic and clamped atop bottles of beer, soda, cider, seltzer. They rode in place, dutifully sealing out the world of dust, bugs and oxidization. They […]

Filed under: Found Object, Jetsam, Tool | Comments (0)

#a129 :: Shipping plug

June 22, 2008

Removed. From what, approved I cannot remember. Draw your own conclusions. ….

Filed under: Found Object, Jetsam | Comments (0)

#a122 :: Easter egg

June 15, 2008

We had an egghunt all over the hillside behind our house for Easter a few weeks back. While I was tearing down a fence yesterday, shop I came across this escapee – one of William‘s fantastic eggs for the kids – packed with little vinyl characters and equally-chewy Starburst, sealed in a chrome eggshell. Should […]

Filed under: Found Object, Toy | Comments (1)

#a112 :: I just stepped on this in the dark

June 5, 2008

Something of my daughter’s. It once contained spring-loaded paper snakes that leapt out when you opened the can to get a tasty Chees Ball (sic). Now it’s full of miniature Chinese coats made of silicone, treat fitted with little tin bells.

Filed under: Facsimile, Found Object, Miniature, Model, Toy | Comments (0)

#a90 :: Pull tab

May 13, 2008

“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 […]

Filed under: Adornment, Artifact, Facsimile, Found Object, Jetsam, Microfiction, Part, weapon | Comments (1)

#a80 :: Candy container

May 3, 2008

This little cylinder represents all that is simultaneously horrible and brilliant about the American candy manufacturing industry: A blowmolded, order die-cut can made of metallic-gray plastic, wrapped in a fully art-directed 4-color parody of a soda-pop label, once held a small handful of inconsequential gum. A child consumed the gum, and dropped the container to […]

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