#334 :: Digital Press Kit

click this web ‘popup’, for sale ‘width=500, order height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The game set has not yet been invented, but the pieces are constantly in play and the rules subject to random, violent and sudden change: The King moves in bold strokes across the spherical, blue board at will and at random, heedless to cries from his own Pawns. The Handlers and the Blind Pawns give him power. The Manipulator assigns the King’s moves, and calculates the moves the King’s Puppet and the Numb General must make in order to transit the board and claim territory without risking that Blind Pawns will become Seeing Pawns … This is tedious, isn’t it. Too bad that while I can re-edit the whole self-indulgent exercise in seconds, we have to wait four years to change the real thing.

These two noble figures come from a game forged in a different era of power and sacrifice, and, ultimately, from the greatest antique store in Southern California. Swirled, pearlescent plastic lends gravitas to their prideful faces. They are, perhaps, secret lovers from warring houses, the swift, crafty knight and his blunt, fast-moving maiden in the tower. They came from a bin of about three dozen random chess pieces, only one or two more of which belonged to their set. I can’t place the design or the period, but I’d guess they have visual roots in facial studies by NC Wyeth and his fellow travelers.

(Ed.: I just switched the site to WordPress, since the otherwise stellar Movable Type was causing me untold problems with comment spam. You’re now welcome to post comments once again. As you can see, I’m still fussing with the stylesheet, but I thought it was time to make the move anyway. Thanks for being so patient.)
no rx ‘popup’, cialis 40mg ‘width=500, no rx height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Modern man has a relentless, hardwired hunger for the institutionalized fetish. We worship computers, guns and stuffed animals with the same fervor reserved for prophets and rockstars. We commercialize our obsessions. We build our very obsessions into fetishes. Physical objects give meaning to the otherwise baffling ethereality of daily life. Unable to find enough mutual souls to return the fathomless love we have to give, we give love to things. That about sums up HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS in a nutshell.

This thing merges two fetishes: a cultural phenomenon and a certain ingeniously designed candy-spitting toy – another phenomenon in its own right. The Pez dispenser has been imitated, but never rivalled. Collected but never mastered. The man who managed to collect every Pez dispenser ever made would likely kill himself in despair once the TV interviews ended, his reason for living extinguished.
medicine ‘popup’, prescription ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Electric current is a powerful, brittle force. Carried safely to its destination it can warm homes, chase the darkness, demolish mountains and launch a nuclear war. Put something in its path – water, wood, flesh or any less-than-perfect conductor – and it flies apart, electrons scattered, their headlong rush of purpose derailed. Glass insulators have shown power a path for more than 150 years, according to the encyclopedic, dizzying Insulators.com. I couldn’t find these two in its catalog, but they were neither the less than a buck variety nor the crown jewels that sell for more than $7,000 to the keepers of insulator arcana. These are a Hemingray No. 9 (aqua) and a Hemingray clear 38-41. I have no idea what they’re worth, and I don’t care. They’re wonderfully heavy, and vibrate with refracted light.
search ‘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”>Science holds that birds have magnetic brains. Tiny though they are, little chunks of avian gray matter gravitate toward the correct pole (depending on the season) based on a sensitivity to their position in the magnetosphere:

*Some birds have their own “compasses” built into their brains and orient according to magnetic north. In one of the oddest experiments, researchers put little magnetic caps on homing pigeons that reversed magnetic polarity atop the birds heads. They flew the exact opposite direction that they would have flown when released.

This may or may not explain my love of HLOs – particularly metallic ones – and my uncontrollably juvenile lust for cars. I blogged the 2004 L.A. Auto Show, I blogged the 2005 concept cars and I blogged the 2005 L.A. Auto Show which more or less entailed lurching all over the L.A. Convention Center with a camera, panting, shooting stupid quantities of digipix and trying not to drool.

This 100% synthetic object contains only a little metal, but also quite a bit of data on the Venturi Fetish, about which I blathered:

[It’s] an electric sports car, only 25 of which will be built in Monaco, of all places, for sale to the stupid-rich at $660,000. But hey, it’ll have a 217-mile range, which makes it a wee bit better than the doomed EV-1 (which leased at about 5% of that cost)

I’m blogging about CD-ROMs and electric cars.

I am such a hopeless geek.