Pouring out a forty to ill-starr'd gerbils everywhere.
And ahhh, High Voltage- the gift that keeps on giving.
Can't look away; don't know why; would pay good money to be able to.
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Someone I once knew was such a font of disturbing/raunchy/totally fucked shit like this that watching Gay Bar is like streaming his consciousness live. He's not around to see such magnificent realisation of his personal conceptual wonderland, but it always comforts me to know that there are others out there with minds like rotary clothes lines whirring in a force 10 gale and hung with strings of sausages and blow up dolls and eight kinds of tinsel. Despite being one of the most perversely heterosexual men on the planet, he was a gay bar superstar and just accepted it placidly, back when such things were still genuinely risqué and even quite hazardous. I loved that about him. Pouring out a forty to ill-starr'd gerbils everywhere. And ahhh, High Voltage- the gift that keeps on giving. Can't look away; don't know why; would pay good money to be able to.
In our discussion of this very subject today we came to the conclusion that dominance/submission is circular rather than linear; that to choose to submit is possibly the most dominant thing anyone could possibly do. How do we reconcile that with what many feel to be the compulsive or personally indigenous nature of the two states- that legitimacy requires us to identify as either/or rather than both? Who knows? Sexual orthodoxy is vexatious but also amusing. I've been told to piss or get off the pot in regard to my own ambiguity (who doesn't love a bossy bottom?), but fuck that. I'll tinkle where I darn well please. We can define our own pleasures right out of existence; that shit's for masochists. Nice concise view of McQueen's process as he went about his last collection. Waplington's book out now (I think) if you're interested. Oh Alexander. Why? READ THE PIECE HERE Designer Patricia Norris talks about her work on '12 Years a Slave' READ IT HERE. Typos + slightly patronizing but hey, it's Vanity Fair. I haven't seen the flick yet myself; I'll review it in the fullness of time for the benefit of like-minded arse-draggers everywhere. Considered as a whole, it could be argued that this piece encompasses a meaningful corpus of the highly-faceted subtleties and contradictions of the Feminine experience and indeed, the human narrative per se. Whatever your philosophical position, it is impossible to remain unmoved by the sentiment so eloquently and resolutely articulated within the pulsating text of this deeply-venerated classic. =) NSFW, btw. If you're anything like us, the carol mixtape oozing out of the speakers in your local supermarket/mall/cafe/bus/everywhere by now has you thinking some pretty fucking dark thoughts about organized religion, your own species and the Gregorian calendar. Here's a little something to numb the pain. Frustratingly, we could not find the performance that we're sure featured on that Elvis tribute thing Always On Our Mind, or whatever it was. It is seared into out memory; we were lending half an ear to the TV when all of a sudden Cale sat down at the piano and proceeded to suck the marrow from our very bones with his desolating interpretation. Neither of us have ever heard a song so deeply gaffed and made to do a stranger's bidding. It was some deep shit. Check it out if you ever get the chance. This is a more contemplative rendition but he's still bleeding it out over a bathtub, transforming the words we thought we knew so well, as if they were just code all along. Do any of you remember this Later with Jools show? There were some other decent performances but to my mind, Björk and Raimundo took the cake and pretty much sent everyone else home with this song. It remains one of my faves, despite a slew of melancholy associations. I've always been a sucker for flamenco and the ragged passion of her vocal transcends any idea of naff appropriation. Muy bueno; ella me habla. Now I want a pink cape. After coming in from planting roses we were sitting in the darkness of the bedroom drinking tea and I noticed the cut on his hand. And how much I loved all the details; sinuous turquoise veins, the plicated reciprocity of the lines and indentations, thickened skin, wear and tear, even the slightly dirty fingernails. His hands are much softer than they look and far more picturesque than mine.
Having bought this beautiful jade online yesterday under extremely serendipitous conditions, I was equally astonished when it turned up this morning, and overjoyed to say the least. Greenstone (the typically reticent NZ epithet for this mineral) should always come to you, it's said, and I feel this was the case in this instance. It's an estate piece from the carver's family and is apparently from an historic stone discovered by the late Jean Derry, one of New Zealand's foremost jade prospectors back in the day. I believe it; it is manifestly a taonga (treasure), strongly coloured and fine-grained and possessed of that soft, sensuous lustre that so invites the hand.
What makes a good piece of nephrite jewellery? Taste is a many-splendoured thing, so we apply the criteria we'd use to assess any artisanal object- is it pleasing, and is it well executed? Price is generally some indication though we've seen some god-awful rubbish wearing a four-figure tag. Poorly-worked stone requires a thick coat of wax to create lustre and running your fingernail over the surface will reveal how heavily this has been applied. Too much wax = not enough elbow grease. Is it waxy, wonky, dull, crudely-figured? Avoid. In a simple form like the one pictured, you should expect symmetry, a nice even taper and skillful attention to detail; laboriously polished and slightly convex on one side, this stone is perfectly flat on the reverse so that it sits flush with the skin and is almost invisibly riveted into a silver mount so tightly-fitted that I can scarcely imagine how it was achieved. Clouding and inclusions are not an indication of inferiority but more a central characteristic of the material; those seen here are present in the thick rind of the parental chunk, so this is a partial cross-section. Kahurangi means treasured, prized, heavenly or distinguished and usually describes this sort of medium to pale green translucent nephrite which is also known as 'flower jade' (confusingly) because of its blossom-like figuring. I also enjoy inanga, and kokopu, or trout stone, named after our native Galaxiid fish, which is an opaque variety with a lot more of the speckles to be seen in the top third of this piece. 'Good' colour is a matter of contrast, saturation and personal preference, as it is with any other gemstone. Though I've always loved greenstone it can be a difficult wear, sharing an intimate, almost tender affinity with the right person but visibly militating against a less sympathetic companion. Time will tell if this pendant decides I'm cut from the right cloth. I certainly hope so. * More random goodness Here *Oh skinny ginger bunnyboy, you can spray me with your enchanted bathwater any time. Did I ever tell you about my Mint Chick thing? Especially their drummer, incorrigible percussion slut that I am. They've impressed the pants off me ever since Octagon Octagon Octagon. Not too sure what they're up to these days since they pissed off to America like the petulant hipsters they undoubtedly are, but they sure could rock an ombre mullet and conniption chord 2-3-4 years ago. Why the fuck can't I find the video to Crazy Yes Dumb No on Youtube, seriously? Rebel L is the kind of non-ironic and totally fucking baffling subcultural appropriation that made me the vortex of disfunction that I am today. Never mind. Here come the puh-luh-luh-lice. You guys! Look at this amazing little beastie I bought off TradeMe (New Zealand online auction site). His name is Bill the Intestinal Bear. (My nephew insisted.) Unfortunately this blankety little guy has already attracted the unwelcome attention of Felix, obsessive Toy Inspektor (First Class) and scourge of anything stuffed, tufted, furry or pliant. It suffices to say that he will be living strictly above navel-level from now on. Leigh in Greymouth (NZ) is the mind behind the beast and constructed him from recycled blanket and various vintage fabrics and findings. "I like to make things with their guts coming out, but in a tasteful way." says Leigh. "My workshop is usually for making beasties that mount on the wall like trophy heads, but I do make batches of different things such as the soft toys with guts, trifod style hair and hat pieces, mounted insects made out of fabric and fly tying gear." See the pic above for the dragon-type mounts she's working on at the moment. Leigh's getting a website together and I'll post a link to her great stuff once it's up and running. Spectacular Microscopic Art Is Also World-Changing Science We own a vintage research microscope ourselves and the lovely R whiles away many a dorky hour twiddling knobs and raising and lowering the stage etc in his attempts to wrest images from his variously illuminated subjects via very special sock-and-cardboard-tube based focal extender. Lol. Its intricacies have been explained to me, but I forget them. We've managed a few money shots this way but they are scattered into dust before the above-depicted masterpieces; never mind, we're more than happy to be humbled. You should definitely hit the link and check out the rest of it. H e l l y e s t o b o t h. How many calories in a jelly snake? Who gives a shit? We used to walk halfway across Christchurch at three in the morning baked out of our little minds to secure both the disgusting greasy 'chicken' rolls from an infamous petrol station + huge multicoloured foot-long jelly snakes from that same depraved after-hours vendor. Giant squishy rainbow serpents. God I miss them, but then I miss a lot of things. I'm getting old. I've started collecting vintage coral necklaces and restringing them, hoping to form some sort of aesthetic critical mass but I'll probably just end up looking like the coast of fucking Queensland at low tide on a bad day. I'm not sure what prompted this but you know... I bought some green beads which led to turquoise, which inevitably leads to orange, and I've got some nice carnelian kicking round that needed a friend so yeah. Anyone else collect/remodel old jewellery? It's great, isn't it? I might blog some of my pieces. If you're very unlucky. A jailed member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot has been hospitalised after going on a hunger strike to protest prison conditions, her husband said. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was admitted to the hospital at the prison where she is serving a two-year term for a protest against President Vladimir Putin in Russia's main Orthodox Christian cathedral. Her husband Pyotr Verzilov said the acting head of the prison had described his wife's condition as "horrible" but had given no further details. He also said prison officials would not show him documents about her transfer to hospital or allow her lawyers to visit, Reuters reports. The administration of the prison could not immediately be reached for comment, and prison service employees in the remote Mordovia region declined to comment. The 23-year-old announced on Monday that she was starting a hunger strike to protest against "slave labour" at the prison camp where she is serving her sentence. She said inmates were forced to work up to 17 hours a day, deprived of sleep and subjected to collective punishment and violence from senior inmates enforcing order. (Via Radio NZ News) Both the lovely R and I would like to express solidarity with Nadezhda and every other prisoner of conscience. Get well, stay strong, live to piss them off some more. Free Pussy Riot.
Let me slap some lipstick on that pig and advise you not to put your face anywhere near members of this admittedly awesome family while they're at peak stank, which is a pretty short window. They're blowfly pollinated- that's all you need to know. * More plants Here * Photoessays Here * Photo du Jour Here * |
Independent Creativity
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