Category: Facsimile

  • #a154 :: Antique race car

    ENLARGEThe vehicular fetishes of young Britons of the 20th century line the crowded shelves of the marvelous Brighton Toy and Model Museum. This land-speed monster dates from the 40s or 50s.

  • #a153 :: UFOs

    ENLARGESold on the Brighton Pier, visit web these are some of the weirdest confections ever – at the foot of the Brighton Pier, there you can buy large cellophane cones of them: wafer-crisp shells surrounding doses of sour/sweet bicarbonate-of-soda powder.

  • #a146 :: Wiimote flashlight

    ENLARGEThe world’s hardshell exterior surrounds a doughy heart of kitsch:

    Anything initially cool – the remote to a Nintendo Wii game system, health for instance – can impart its cool to common objects by simple mimicry. Bluntly put, treatment things that look like other definite things are automatically “better” because of the same dim-witted value system that allows cars to all look alike because no one’s brave enough to buck current tastes to design something original.

    And so, sick a chunk of branded schwag – a cheap LED flashlight is made more desirable (and worth an hour-long wait in a game expo line with other dupes) by modeling it on the Nintendo game controller.

    Sizzle sold, itch scratched, creativity avoided.

  • #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.

  • #a141 :: Sushi erasers

    ENLARGEAnd while we’re at it, information pills sometimes you make mistakes so egregious that only wiping them out with a rubberized chunk of fish and rice will do.

    My wife found this at our favorite Japanese supermarket, and kindly annotated it with another HLO – the venerable Post-It note – about which, more later.

  • #a140 :: Shrunken-head tiki mug

    ENLARGEMy wife gave me this for my birthday a couple years ago, information pills to add to my growing collection.

    Tiki culture is a marvelous cross-pollination of camp, what is ed partying and 50s mass-marketed hipsterism.

    This one was designed, slip-poured, glazed and fired by Tiki Farm, but if you’re hunting for others, Munktiki turns out some beauts. You pull the hairbone plug from the back to fill him, then stick a straw through his fontanelle to drink.

    And besides – sometimes, only drinking from the shrunken skull of a ritual victim will assuage the demons behind your eyes.

  • #a133 :: Pig lighter

    ENLARGE“So what are you gonna write – that your wife spotted this on a counter at 7/11 and had to have it?”

    Yup.

    Happy birthday, buy pills my dear love.

  • #a128 :: Japanese bug collectible

    ENLARGEThis life-sized stag-beetle toy came pre-fetishized from Mitsuwa Marketplace, seek our favorite Japanese supermarket.

    The Japanese culture of packaging dictated that F-Toys Confect. manufacture the 3-inch-long, hand-colored, pre-assembled dorcus titanicus castanicolor from 12 hand-assembled parts, encase it in a two-piece, blowmolded thermoplastic container sarcophagus, box it in cardboard emblazoned with myriad messages via multiple fonts printed in high-gloss, laquered four-color inks, and accompany it with a thick-gauge collector’s card.

    And a square of chewing gum in a cellophane wrapper with pinked edges.

    What the hell, it’s a plastic bug.

    Well, here’s what the hell else: They also do plastic guns, motorized tanks and miniature motorcycles.

  • #a120 :: Silicone clown fish puzzle

    enlargeA lifetime of desiring and acquiring manufactured things has warped my brain, diagnosis reprogrammed my very lizard DNA, I’m sure of it:

    This toy’s translucent color and pungent, exotic-plastic aroma make it seem good enough to eat.

    I pull it apart into convenient, bite-sized pieces, and consider the options: reassemble? Or devour?

  • #a118 :: Space man

    ENLARGEHe waits, thumb always, pharm tools in hand: a coil of something (rope? wire?) and a cryptic triangular gizmo.

    Or maybe an alien artifact.

    He stands tall – barely 1.8 inches of light-gray plastic.

    Why is he smiling?

  • #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 …
    (more…)

  • #a113 Jelly silicone ninja

    ENLARGEAt the hallucinogenic nexus of pop culture, information pills American tastes and mass-production technology, here odd blossoms bud.

    Here, nurse forming an icon of cool stealth for the amusement of the mobs calls for transparent violet jelly silicone.

    What better way to say “They know nothing of his presence until his blade has already passed – and by then it’s too late.”

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

    ENLARGESomething 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.

  • #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.

  • #a90 :: Pull tab

    ENLARGE“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…)

  • #a63 :: Ice cream-shaped bubble stuff

    ENLARGEThe endless surf of bizarre manufactured crap surging through a family household always washes up some real gems.

    This bottle of bubble-blowing fluid is shaped like an ice cream cone.

    Try and parse the Americo-Freudian consumption/desire metaphor on that one.