the Blackthorn Orphans
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The Blackthorn Orphans Serialization:  Reconnaissance

30/4/2016

 
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A dim, flesh-red light suspended from a cord swung slowly over Sachiin's head so that its lurid glow dragged his shadow behind and then before him.  Heat was compressed into moisture; it gleamed on dank walls and dripped in a dense, sanguine precipitation, his naked body glistening with it, sludge swallowing his feet and sucking wetly at his ankles.  He stood imprisoned in that boundless depth of solitude that trapped all dreamers within nightmares, each small notion of escape stillborn in his unconscious mind.  The light swung more slowly still, both glare and shadows brought to rest; pulpy, elastic, spineless things writhed beneath his toes, squirming under the bare soles of his feet, arching and sliding in the ooze.  Something brushed heavily by his leg, its greasy fur easing past his skin.

In the distance, from interminable isolation, came the footfalls he awaited.  The gore-red light dimmed with the ponderous tread until the bulb gave only a bloody, enfeebled bioluminescence, like a dawn sensed from behind closed lids.  The heat turned the gas inside his lungs to brackish liquid, drowning one chamber of his chest then spilling into the other; he bowed his head and felt it run from the corners of his mouth and down over his body.  Like a cloud illumed by lightning flashed the shell-white flicker of eyes burnt blind by the ocean.  A woman stepped out of the darkness, as slick and unclothed as a newborn, made by those same forces that had fashioned him; water streamed from the corners of her stare, its passage over his skin raising blisters in which blood simmered and turned septic.  Long claws slid from the fingers that sealed his mouth while another arm flew back and plunged into his body, punching through skin and sheets of flat, striated muscle.  He was spared nothing, not the ripping as she dragged a fistful of his slippery, trembling viscera from him and not the sight of her stuffing the coiled mass into her mouth, sucking it down her throat until her long neck bulged and black ran from her nostrils.

He awoke and bolted upright, staring into the darkness in his hunger for the sight of anything else.  His brother regarded him from the chair beside the French doors.

“Fuck!” he whispered, rubbing at his eye.  “Has no one told you about those boundary things?  If someone’s going to stare at me while I sleep it can’t be you.”
“You’re too loud."
"You don't sleep."
"Frost is an insomniac.”
“No she’s not.” William insisted, shaking his head with his eyes still closed.  “I’ve been crashing at her place for years... she snores like a fucking carthorse.”  He could see that his assertion troubled Edward, but would not qualify it for his benefit.  “If she’s still up it’s the junk.  And the toxic relationship she just jumped into, with this guy, who thinks affection is something caused by bacteria.”

Edward received the remarks with uncharacteristic solicitude, and William glanced at him again, still acclimating to the sight of him.

“I don’t think she’s using injudiciously.”
“She will... you’ll freak her out and she’ll run for the spike.  And who bought it in the kitchen?  Smells like a hippo hit a fucking claymore in there." 

"Frost v Orb."

They gazed at one another in silence while William tried to pull the details together.

"When did you scrub in?" he demanded.
"My involvement was superficial."
"She must be a fucking ninja with the steak knife." 
“You look like a third degree burn yourself.”

“Yeah well... shitty dreams.”

“A problem shared is everyone’s problem.” Edward suggested.

​“Kala'amātya, you're freaking me out with this pretending to care shit so... practice on someone else.  Practice on Frost.”  

They sat in the warm, expansive darkness that spilled in under the crooked doors and from the narrow breach that had opened in the roof, looking more alike than not and reflecting each other in their opposition.

"Rana, alright?” William sighed, to his companion's patient stare.  “I don't know what it is, but I'm dreaming her, I'm hearing her... I can’t close my eyes and I’m too afraid to look."  

Edward frowned, as he never did at a threat or at an insult.  The name quelled their fractiousness and they retreated from each other for a moment. 

“After I went to so much trouble.” he murmured.  “Can I ask how this has declared itself?”
“Call it womens’ intuition.”
“Sachiin, you hear bells at the thought of food, and I do not envy you that.  To paraphrase Ms Christabel, be forthright, and your angry ghosts will disappear.”  

William was forced to concede the eminence of his logic.  Edward leant forward and eased himself out of the chair. 

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK 
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

*   Read the Book onsite in its entirety   *


RubyHue Lipstick Review: Nars Iberico & Provocative Red Velvet Matte Pencils

28/4/2016

 
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Provocative Red looks nice enough in the tube, doesn't it?  But it's neither provocative (unless you count my wanting to slap it upside the head) nor red, and that is annoying, especially when I've noticed a few too many versions of this shade creeping into my collection. Muddy pedestrian pinks are everywhere; MAC has about fifty thousand fucking iterations, as I'm sure you already know.  They can be a total facial drag, the equivalent of an ashy rag on the kisser, snuffing out any positive interplay between your native tonalities. While the formula ranks with the nicest of the Velvet Mattes, Provocative Red is a dull, bruised, 8-days-in-the-vase rose that murders the green in my eyes and makes my skin and lips look strangely dingy.  Unlike MAC Retro, which may be in a similar vein but is more complex, caramelised, far more flattering and far less sort of... roadkill flat.  Gumpy is my personal onomatopoeic summation of PR. It's a gumpy bitch.

I can see it suiting an overtly cool-toned brunette regardless of the depth of their complexion, but neutral to warmies should probably avoid. Which shouldn't be too hard since it was a limited release. Problem solved.
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Strangely, this clean and rather brilliant tonality doesn't turn stupidly, scarily loud or Ronald McDonald-nasty on the lip, and even cancels out the annoying peekaboo shit my dark mouth likes to pull under lesser oranges.  ​
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One of these things is not like the other.  They're both Nars Velvet Matte Pencils, but Iberico is a vibrant burst of vivid visual virtuosity and Provocative Red (LE) is... not.  I was disappointed with the latter when I picked it up a while back; it has since found a narrow niche in my lipstick rotation, but I'll probably end up giving it to someone else.
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Iberico is another LE shade and that, friends, is a tragedy. I've been getting further into oranges lately and thought I'd hit the ultimate citrusy jackpot with MAC So Chaud, a really delicious clean matte orange.  Iberico makes it look almost reserved in the swatches.
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If you have trouble with this colour for that reason, So Chaud and Iberico are here for you.  The latter is the brighter of the two, but only slightly when in situ, the effect is largely the same and the former is more widely available. Though perhaps similar chromatically to the horrid MAC Morange (I haven't compared them directly) Iberico suffers none of that shade's unpleasant tangy, greasy sourness, perhaps by virtue of its whisper-soft, almost vaseline-filtered matte finish. It possesses the delightful toasted beeswax scent that is typical of this Nars matte pencil range.

Texturally, Iberico is miraculously smooth, totally clump-free and very buildable, which is an unexpected bonus- orange often turns funky if you try to fuck around with it on the lip. This guy is perfectly amenable to a smudgy finger treatment in which case it exhibits a sort of endearing ghostly watercolour quality; not something I thought I'd ever write about a true balls-out orange.  It is still floating around online here and there so grab it if  you can find it.
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L2R (All MAC unless stated)
Russian Red, Nars Provocative Red, Mehr, Nars Iberico, So Chaud, True Red (LE), Nars Kelly
Across top, L2R: Retro, Lady Danger.  
natural outdoor light, autumn afternoon.
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*   More RubyHue Lipstick Review   *   Hostile Witness Film Review   *


Photos du Jour: Autumn Business, Port Chalmers.

27/4/2016

 
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Lichen and foliage in the Careys Bay cemetery.  

​Haircut-dodger Felix and Hamish and R on the track up to Scott Memorial on a dry April afternoon.

The reward: a view of the world's most incredibly beautiful rooster with a fresh blade of grass in his beak.  The deep jewelly tones of his plumage just do not translate digitally, unfortunately.  A magnificent beast.
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Monday slash Tuesday slash Prince slash odonotiophobia

26/4/2016

 
I thank Prince for almost osmotically suggesting to a sizeable chunk of the unconventional men I have personally enjoyed that being a nasty sexy unsporty semi-effeminate dirty-talking freak was absolutely okay and that girls love that shit.  

​Bless him for that.  And for writing 
Gett Off, which is fucking awesome.
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< And bless youtube commentator kl17 for the pithy nature of their commiserations and eschewal of florid hyperbole.  Don't go changing.

So yeah, sadly, Prince is dead while numberless unsightly fucktards survive and continue to try our patience.  Except t
he second last molar from the upper left side of my mouth is also dying/dead/undead in sympathy with Prince and is currently poking my sinus nerves in the fucking taint with its emo bullshit; I would kick aside all odontophobic considerations and go get the bitch ripped out, except today is a fucking public holiday and my date with two xs novocain is thusly cockblocked.  We go to the local Dental School clinic because A: we're poor and B: we prefer treatment protocols authored by practical necessity rather than profit.
When you ask your trainee dentist what to do about a suicidal molar, they shrug and blithely recommend extraction, confessing there are no real advantages to root canal procedures in an otherwise healthy mouth and outlining the potential pain, expense, uncertain outcome and sheer fuckery quotient attached to RCs with the sort of cheerful candour that is strikingly absent from the discourse of their senior contemporaries.  

​Interesting, isn't it?
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All this comes from leaving a cracked tooth untreated for a year because I was afraid of the dentist and had previously dodged that date with destiny for nearly three decades.  Don't do that, people.  It's fucking stupid.  

In my own defence, I have bad previous experiences, a small mouth, hypodontia, and the redhead-related MC1R analgesia-fucking gene to contend with so it's not all just me being dumb and/or a pussy.  If you suspect you have the MC1R variant (it's not just a redhead thing- look it up) and tend to require heroic sedation/analgesic measures, tell your dentist, yo.  Insist that they double your pain relief and you should be fine.  My tooth was seriously fucked and required a lot of speculative drilling but after a shot on each side (which didn't freak even a needlephobe like myself), I might still have been able to feel what was going on but it wasn't painful or particularly bothersome at all.  To put it in perspective, I was more annoyed by the sensation of someone's hand in my fucking mouth.  Everyone I've spoken to says extended drilling is a lot more traumatic than a simple extraction but honestly, the former didn't bother me once it was underway.  So I'm hoping the latter will be less of a horror than my imagination suggests.  

Unfortunately, my imagination wrote this book.  God dammit.  Don't know what I'm posting this week; it will be dentistry-dependant.

For your delectation- Prince, Gett Off.  Are you here for that audition too?
  


liked this series by Paul Hollingworth

24/4/2016

 
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artificial anatomy 2

'Artificial Anatomy is an ongoing personal project intended to explore our understanding and perception of surface, texture and volume. Whilst part one of the project used paint to define the form of the human head and skull, part two uses light.  Long exposures of a highly reflective skull and head were captured as they were illuminted by a single piece of electroluminescent wire. Lasting around 10 to 15 seconds each exposure captures the movement of the flashing wire as it passes across the surface. As the speed, frequency and position of the wire is adjusted, so too is the definition and complexity of each image. The film that forms part of this project is an edit of brief clips filmed whilst capturing these images and is intended to help demonstrate the nature of the processes involved.'

cool, isn't it?  See more here

The Blackthorn Orphans Serialization:  Fêtê  3

23/4/2016

 
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In its extreme decrepitude the walk-in chiller at the back of the catering kitchen had begun to freeze champagne in the necks of the bottles still crowding it, a fact pointed out to Susan by a colleague as the latter departed.  Hunching in her jersey, she shuffled in its frigid depths, hauling boxes of Pol Roger and Cristal toward the glass door.  Propping it open in the hope of defeating the malfunction, she had succeeded instead in rousing the motor to fresh exertions and cursed it heavily.  The thought of William recurred with troubling frequency; she huffed clouds of steam and paused to rub her hands together in an attempt to distract herself.  The motor shuddered to another of its erratic halts, and she heard the clatter of the kitchen door.
“I’m not doing this alone...” she called, glancing at the room reflected in the glass before her.  Susan listened for furtive activity, the rustle of a bag as someone helped themselves to food, or the clink of purloined bottles.  Slowly, she scuffed across the icy floor toward the door, hands clasped to her stomach, wiping her frosted nose and listening again.

The quietude was broken by three small, deliberate sounds, the sharp little tap of something metallic against formica.  Curiosity pulled a frown across her face; some element of its isolated artifice urged her to consult the glass again.  

A small, circular face, depleted by the paucity of tones and contrast in the reflection, floated between the rows of benches.  Inside its annular outline two dark eyes and the oval-shaped hole that was its open mouth formed the entirety of its features.  Flat and disembodied, it was as simple as a child’s mask lofted on a stick and yet it stilled her breath and clamped both feet to the ground.  She sought to drag a name toward it, framing possibilities until a match was volunteered by a glimpse of sickly, pliant gold; it was Opal La Rue who stood in such purposive immobility, gaze fixed, her small mouth open so that she appeared not to seek with her eyes but to siphon the air.  Her hand was poised upon the bench around the handle of a spoon, ready to tap another bar of feinting noise.  The idea that she was the object of such a lure settled on Susan like the crystalline cold drifting around her and she eased herself behind the boxes, relieved that they were still numerous enough to conceal her, pulling the neck of her jersey over her chin to smother the steam that billowed with her breath.  Securing the neck of a bottle with her left hand, her gaze fell to the white floor, ears tuned to any advance until the motor coughed and struck up again.

Opal sucked air past the wet walls of her palate, licking back the taste of prey, the girl's fragrant, salted warmth and the promise of the blood that it protected.  Three quarters of a century had passed since she had claimed a first unwitting victim and the hundreds fallen to her since had imparted wisdom with the contents of their veins; the vampyre knew that fear and cold and prodding disbelief were on her side and savoured ragged, oozing thoughts that curled her cold tongue against her teeth.  She failed to detect the presence seated on the counter behind her and William's stare, turned scathing apple green, met her wordless scowl with the same intent he had accorded the back of her head as he sat with his arms folded.  Opal straightened slowly and looked around herself. setting down the teaspoon and turning toward the door.  He slid onto his feet, stare remaining on her profile, and they exited together.  After a while, Susan's wary consultation of the chiller door revealed that she was, to her bafflement, once more alone, the kitchen holding no sign of occupation beyond the stacks of dirty dishes.  Rubbing her arms, she rounded a counter and leant over it to peer between them.

Opal glared blackly at William as they strode along the passage, desiring liberty from his determined chaperonage, but he shepherded her into the entrance hall and outward through the front door without obliging her.  Rage had struck her mute, her glare clutching at his face as she slapped her phone to her ear, fury burning blue-white at the sound of Edward’s voicemail but he kept her moving down the driveway, putting out an arm to prevent her darting back toward the house.

“Paint a number on that little slut." she spat.  "When I'm done with her, that is the only way you'll recognize what's left."  At the threat he thrust her out between the iron panels of the gate.  

"You go near her again and you’ll wake up in a fucking tin of catfood.” William promised as her driver drew up behind her.



A stripe of dull magenta had begun to flush the blue horizon as Susan looked toward the window and the encroaching dawn.  Her shoulders ached; the valet squad had long since gathered their equipment and departed, leaving the house in peace, and she stood alone in the smaller kitchen, frowning at the distinct impression of stickiness beneath her slippered feet.  Out in the entrance hall the stairs creaked but she was startled by the sight of Lilian in a black robe, her pale hair loose against her shoulders.  She said nothing, standing curiously distrait in the shadow of the doorway as though listening to distant conversation.  Her gaze fell slowly to the floor before Susan's feet.

“Can you smell something in here, or is it just me?” the latter asked.  “I wouldn’t come in with nothing on your feet... there's broken glass.”  She shook her head at the ceiling, indicating the blinking light.  “And I have no idea what happened there.”  Lilian remained where she stood, hands poised on the sash about her waist.  Without the kohl around her eyes or the distractions of her wardrobe, the fair and almost gentle simplicity of her features were a surprise to Susan, the differences unsettling to her eye, as were the colours marking her neck and mouth.  “Are you... alright?”
“Fine.”
“Are you with...?”
“Edward, yeah.  Whirlwind romance."  Susan’s preoccupation with the damage to her face prompted her to smile darkly.  “He's not the type to smack you in the piehole and just leave it at that.  We're on the low, so...”
“Oh... no, I won’t say anything.” Susan promised quickly.

She followed Lilian into the porch, taking out her cigarettes and offering her one.  Blackbirds had begun to sing in the garden like a chamber of tuning musicians as the eastern sky turned several shades of fuscine pink, the air already warming over the dew-cooled grass.  The paper boy rode by and heaved a broadsheet over the wall; he caught sight of the women and turned his bike in a circle before the gates, craning for a better look until Susan lifted an offensive finger, prompting him to pedal on.

“It looks the same.” Lilian murmured, taking in the gardens with a slow turn of her head.  The remark hung unaddressed as her companion struggled with its context.  
"This place does my head in.” Susan confessed.  “I see things, I can hardly sleep... half my brain is telling me to go upstairs and pack.”

Lilian took the stairs back toward Edward’s room, leaving Susan frowning after her from the shadow of the porch.  Pausing on the landing, she leant in toward a painting, struck by the impression that the glass had conveyed in passing.  Even in the darkness she saw it was her mouth that had begged notice, its half-circle of bruising already faded almost to nothing.  She closed her eyes, dissolving something of the immuring unreality but her reflection persisted in confounding her, a thin, pale stripe remaining where the two sides of the wound had fused.  
​​
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
​© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

*   Read the Book onsite in its entirety   *


liked this series on Naga elders by Trupal Pandya

22/4/2016

 
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The Last Living Headhunters
As collectors of other peoples' nice gear, we're always grateful to anyone who documents material cultures in situ.  These days it's often for the last time before they are subsumed.  We think Trupal did a nice job with these images.
​See more of them here.

Celebrating three bloody years of this shit: The Blackthorn Orphans Blog Retro Week

21/4/2016

 
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Maximum Respect: Port Chalmers, Otago Harbour, New Zealand.
We moved down from Christchurch a long time pre-quake, but in part because of the risk to our inner city hood should just such an event happen.  We're glad of our geological nerdening but do ponder our propensity for living in the once-throbbing hearts of extinct volcanoes.  Otago Harbour is the petrified remains of a massive shield cone and Port Chalmers would have gotten caught in its throat if this were 10 or so million years BCE.  Luckily, the closest one gets to active vulcanism these days are the palls of coal smoke on a winter evening, the odd social pyrotechnic and the rusty brown rock that tumbles down and flattens something in your garden or trips you on the footpath.

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Kitchen Bitch: The Blackthorn Banana Blueberry Spectacular Cake, née Edmonds.
We're not scarily competent pastissiers here at the TBO kitchen but we know a good cake when we see and inevitably eat it, and we are concerned with not wasting a damn thing lurking in the fruit bowl, chuckling to itself blackly at the bottom of the crisper drawer or wrested with so much angst and labour from the surrounding soil.  So we have tweaked a few peasant staples that have long been a friend to the mediocre baker; today we shall discuss banana cake.

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Development Hell:  Designing your Book Cover- my own experience.
It's probably safe to assume that not everyone has subjected themselves to the process of designing and producing a book cover.  Some of you might be interested in having a little peep behind those images that eventually stare at you from atop that endless pile of words.  I mean... why did they choose that horrible thing?  Why wasn't it pink?  Why go representational when snappy reductionist graphics and retro type are so now? Why that nasty font?  Why is your name so teeny?  All perfectly good questions.

Putting together a cover made me feel seventeen all over again.  Everything sucked; all my ideas were just too sophisticated, oblique and original for an ununderstanding world etc etc.

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The Franz Joseph Glacier, Westland, New Zealand.
I am not sure why people insist on portraying glaciers as icy white and pristine, as though they must glow and even fluoresce in order to be significant to the human eye.  Glaciers are not generally white and do not possess that kind of energy; they are dirty, injurious and protean, hungry monsters chewing and scraping the mountains as they plough downward, cleaving and collapsing on themselves along the way.

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We have a vintage cheesecake pack of cards and they piss me off so much that I did this to them. 

Walking the Black Mile: On Depression & Armed Resistance.
I aspirated a sliver of bone while eating a roast for lunch this afternoon.  I felt my breath whistling past this brittle fragment as it sat pinched between the walls of my trachea.  I got up, went into the kitchen, suppressed the gag and swallow reflex, worked it out of the place into which it was wedged and eventually spat it into my hand.  It was almost an inch long and maybe a millimetre thick.  Then I walked back out onto the deck and finished eating lunch.  That's flattened affect for you, when it's at home.  Impoverished reaction
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Hostile Witness Film Review: Man of Steel (Superman) (2013 Zach Snyder)
Superman.  My attitude toward the phenomenon is encapsulated in its entirety by the immortal words of Vivian- cornflakes.  Cornflakes, cornflakes cornflakes cornflakes, cornflakes.  From this, the perceptive reader might surmise that I don't much care for the Man of Steel, and they would be right. Having no Supercredentials to speak of, I subjected myself to this spectacle in company with my 16 year old nephew Purple, a hawkish Superfan who had keenly anticipated the reboot despite the fact that "Superman's a bitch who doesn't really kill people" and Snyder's gorey proclivities had him shaking his head from the start.
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Vintage Greenstone Pendant, circa 1970.
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. ​
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Blackthorn Perfume Review: Muscs Koublai Khan edp - Serge Lutens.  
Muscs Koublai Khan.  Prrrrrrr.  Some say eeeek, but then there are two sorts of people in the world when you think about it; those who embrace their own biology, and those who find our mammalian reality discomforting and even repugnant.  The latter haven't been backward in coming forward in regard to that repugnance, which annoys me.
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Kitchen Bitch- Cooking Quail Eggs.  And a bit about Quails.
Quail eggs are generally those small chocolate-splotched numbers you see clustered in fancy gourmet food emporium cartons with the WTF price tag.  We pick them up from the bottom of our aviary, courtesy of our Coturnix (Japanese Quail) family.  The small dusty blue guy in front is Napoleon, a widower of the Chinese Painted Quail persuasion; Napoleon likes big butts and fancies Hilary and Lightning Bolt, our two larger girls.  The darker gingery beast is Michael Fassbender, our cock (yes, that is the technical term) who fancies himself, mainly, treating us to a surprisingly loud and incredibly annoying whiplash crow-loop during the breeding season.
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How to string a necklace from great big vintage beads.
​
I've collected big vintage beads for a while now and have quite a bit to play around with.  I restring them regularly according to whim and while a lot of us love scale, a problem arises once you've amassed some; how the hell do you make something wearable out of such large and irregular components?  It's a far easier process than you might think once you get the hang of the basics.  All you need is the teeniest, briefest, almost crotchless grasp of design and a few basic materials.  If you're not confident about tying off etc, just consult one of the many excellent beading guides online or take the almost-necklace in to your local bead or craft shop and they'll do the honours for you.
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How I lost a lot of weight.  Why dieting is bullshit.  Some thoughts on body image & the Paleo regime.
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Fat is a wonderful thing. It is a miraculous physical resource, an emblem and artefact of success, an architect of beauty, intelligence and wellbeing and a mighty aegis against hardship and ill-health. If it were not for our ability to store delicious fat, our species would undoubtedly be a grunting footnote on an evolutionary flow-chart to something that could.  Fat is our friend; I love it and am unstintingly grateful for everything it's done for me. (Epic three-part series.  I'm going to finish off my thoughts about staying not-fat some time soon.)
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Homosexuals are possessed by demons & will forever tarnish the spotless dignity & propriety of marriage which is a blameless institution just like heterosexuality.
Since that was pretty much the entire conservative judicial pitch, I'm not 100% shocked to see gay marriage made legal in the US at this juncture.  Hearty congratulations to all my geys Stateside.  I get excited for the people who now have access to the legal entitlements they were denied for so long on such ludicrous fucking grounds, but just can't get excited about the institution per se, and say that as someone legally married for 20 years.
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Port Chalmers: Incident Report
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Small towns, eh?  To me, gossip is a comprehensive sensory experience just like everything else, possessing the gently luteal glow of ear wax or scorched formica (darkening with the degree of prurience); it feels like broad-gauge distressed underwear elastic or the textured glass of mid-century ashtrays, and smells like hat sweat.

We have little to no idea what prompted this massively ambitious (check out the page numbers in the upper right hand corner of each sheet and marvel as we did) account of (alleged) darksided nautical-themed shenanigans, but someone took a break from their meds, bought all the staples and decided to fuck brevity right in the arse with an epic non-linear passive-aggressive public j'accuse, distinguished by both the breadth of its scope and the tenuousness of its literacy (yes, they go together down here too).  ​

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Our Textiles: Two vintage Indian Banjara Gala embroideries with shisha and cowries.
Disclaimer- I have a pretty superficial knowledge of Indian textiles and this series won't be any scholarly dissertation.  But we do collect an eclectic range of Islamic and Asian material and have a very broad sort of meta-familiarity on our side, so hopefully our observations will be of some use.  We both love this field and it has never been easier for the dufus or layperson to appreciate and acquire items from its immense artistic legacy.     

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Night Monkeys: Blood Moon, October 2014, Port Chalmers NZ
Ever seen a total lunar eclipse in the flesh before?  Neither of us had either, so we decided to add that sucker to our list of notable experiences.  Here in southern New Zealand it was scheduled to begin at 9 something pm. or other hurm hurm errr wasn't paying attention.  Well, that was our understanding; as it turns out, astronomers were talking about that being when the umbra getting sort of near the moon a wee bit, rather than actual celestial conjugation.

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'The Light Between Oceans' - Set images from filming in Port Chalmers, NZ.
We'll kick off coverage with some set shots. There's no Fassbender werqing the shit out of some vintage trou here, but as we were walking past anyway, we dropped in on the two Port locations before every barking arsehole in Dunedin was crawling all over them, as will probably happen tomorrow.  We heard some sort of production person lamenting the fact that they could only afford to work on the front of the buildings; luckily Port is a pretty comprehensive anachronism before a bunch of techs and (rather pissy) dressers get their mits on it.

I refuse to read the book and have no idea how a drapery and a bookshop fit into what passes for action in such a farrago of nonsense, but here 'tis.

That should do you for now; I'll get round to posting more if I have time this week.


Photos du Jour: Otago Harbour on an autumnal morning

20/4/2016

 
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Hello morning
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Hello sun, says Hamish
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Hello sun, says Little Shag
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Fuck off with the camera, says Little Shag

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Monday slash Tuesday slash wobbly camera Moon slash Aurora slash three years of TBO

19/4/2016

 
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I know it's boring and self-indulgent to everyone else, but I fucking love letting the camera jiggle during long nocturnal exposures.  This is a crescent moon over Sawyers Bay after about 20 seconds @ 200 ISO.  I was trying to get it to look like a cock or something but the shutter exhibited more taste and maturity than me.  

When you don't have children, the part of your mind that would otherwise have to worry about playdates/toilet training/overdue tuition lives free and just sort of wanders around at night singing to itself and touching the darkness with its shiny eyeballs.  I don't know if it is the preferable state, but personally I don't regret falling through space without spawning, especially when I look at the moon and remember that it doesn't care either way.
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Here are some much better pictures from local astronomer Ian Grffin's Twitter feed.  The Aurora Australis over various portions of Dunedin in the last few days, the result of a solar storm.

A lot of people (in NZ, anyway) shit on Dunedin because they imagine it's cold (it's really not- I grow tree aloes outdoors for fuck's sake) boring (everywhere is boring after a while.  At least we're not taking sniper fire) and conservative (not particularly).  But I realise lately that we've been taking Dunedin for granted and not sharing enough of it with you, dear readers, so we'll do a few local shoots and show you just how awesome this part of New Zealand can be.  

​In the fullness of time.
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Speaking of chronology, The Blackthorn Orphans Blog is fucking three years old, man, on the 20th of April.  

This is the first thing I ever posted.
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Which is the view from Taiaroa Head north toward the Otago coast on a massively bright summer day.  Three years is like three fucking centuries on the internet and the fact that I can still find shit to moistly besmirch strangers with after one hundred and fifty six weeks of doing exactly that is... gratifying.  In a strange equivocal sort of way.  Sort of like getting to fuck someone you've always fancied in a dream; deliciously immediate and yet still tantalisingly remote.  

We hope you enjoy what we do and post here.  Traffic is really picking up this year, so I suppose some people are into it, for whatever reason.  I hope it hasn't always been hideously obvious, but the blog has chronicled such a strange and painfully murky watershed in my own life that I hope by ploughing through and onward and maybe upward if not sideways, some of my blackwards-leaning peeps will feel less like unaccompanied atoms and more like part of the creepily resonant dysfunctional plasmic organism that we actually are.  

​I'd post this sentiment as a piece of interpretative dance but Karen does it better and has glitter.  It's for the best that I leave the lamé ballerina shit to her.  Believe me.

This might be a retro week full of historic thingies.  Haven't done one for a while.


liked this illustration by Simon Prades

18/4/2016

 
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forest / crow
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See more of his recent work here

The Blackthorn Orphans Serialization: Fêtê  2

16/4/2016

 
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The starry white seeds of the clematis drifted into Susan's hair as she stood in the drawing room doorway, tugging down the hem of her skirt with her eyes closed, adjusting them to the darkness.  It began in a dim gradient beyond the pool, the water lapping slowly at the tiled sides and the cool smell of the orchard replacing the stink of cigarette smoke, confused perfumes and dirty glasses as she walked out.  William lay on a sun lounge almost halfway to the trees with headphones over his ears.  Away from the house it was so quiet that she could make out his choice of music, though she was given pause by movement in the shadow beneath his chair.  A fox sat on its side, plucking burdocks from its tail; at the sight of her it sprang up and slunk away, its low shape merging with the grass.  William's clothes and hair were still wet from his traverse of the pool and he lay with his hands curled on his stomach and his eyes closed.  In lieu of their absorbing influence his face proved entirely serene, dreamless, though as she leant closer the rhythm of his breathing was so slow that she was relieved to see him stir.  While he pulled his headphones down a smooth, retractile movement swept across each eye, concluding with his focus on her face; blinking, she opened her mouth to speak, then shook her head. 

“A person with a naked lady tattooed on his neck came to the kitchen and told me to give you this.” she reported, handing over the brown paper parcel she had been entrusted with.  He lifted it to his nose before looking at the house, disgruntled to see that the event was still in progress.  

“Christ, don’t they have homes to go to?” 
“It’s only twelve.” she replied.
“Have you decided where we’re going yet?”
Susan shook her head.
“I can't think where I'd take you.”

At her frown he beckoned to her, and she set aside uncertainty before offering the hand he had requested.  He took it in his own, finding one of the small hollows on the underside of her wrist where her skin was shaded blue and paper-thin; it transmitted every nuance of the strange and dislocated pleasure that his touch imparted, bleeding upward toward her elbow in concert with the softly-stroking dulcet of his voice.

Opal let the overworked smile drop from her face and turned her stare upon the garden from the balcony, a glass full of expiring, untasted champagne clutched in her small hand.  With nyctalopic acuity she perceived the figure of the maid in her formal attire standing before William, her will divided between his invitation and the failing boundaries of discretion; Susan inclined toward him slowly, until he seemed to reconsider the solicitation and let go of her hand.  She stepped back, as though released by a far more comprehensive grasp, hesitated, and returned alone toward the house. 

In Susan's absence, no peyote phantoms came to rattle flashing scales or spill out from behind the shapes and colours William already knew, and he concluded that the potion’s uncertain effect was hardly worth its evil savour.  The veil of ornamenting galaxies strung across the darkness overhead were but a dying echo of the skies seen from the mountains and the soundless wastes of memory, their fearsome splendor crowded with divine memorials and the glitter of portended dooms and auspices.  Weary, he closed his eyes again, until the sound of high heels punched into the thick turf pulled them open.  Rachelle stumbled toward him in a silver-mesh dress that troubled her ankles, decollétage dusted with a micaceous powder, as though she had narrowly avoided a minor industrial accident.  It shimmered with the heaving of her chest, and she swayed as though with the passage of some toiling swell, sweat already polishing her face and neck.  

“We're going somewhere private.  We need to talk.” she began, coming to a halt before the lounge, her voice too loud and eyes held wide.  Tottering slightly with the tilt of her horizon, she smirked and slumped down on the grass.  William's gaze returned to the sky.  In the pinched midst of her expression Rachelle resembled her progenitor to a startling degree.  “Just cut the crap, Wil-liam... we both know why you brought me out here.  My god, why am I even talking to you?"  

“Rachelle... you're right.  I don't deserve you." he murmured.  For a moment she softened, then bristled.  "Go back inside and huff some more glue and have a rainbow party or whatever it is young people do today.  It's easier to make your own fun than it is to suck it out of someone else.”  He concluded his inelegant appeal and closed his eyes again.  Her voice assumed a creaking, infantile tone laden with skewed menace.  

“You’re not making fun of me are you, because you can't do that and still think everything's okay with us..."  She struggled to her feet and almost toppled sideways in her haste to hoist her skirt over her thighs, straddling the lounge, chuckling to herself until he took her importuning hands in both his own and held them still, insisting on her attention.

“Rachelle... listen to me.  If you bomb her show, Opal will have a fucking core failure and start auctioning your organs online.”
"I don't give a shit, okay?  All I want is f..." 
“Okay... I’m just going to say this out loud.  I thought you might have known, and it's been bothering me that you don't." he sighed.  "Opal’s a vampyre... I mean a real one, you know... bad teeth, no UV... she's a nasty, baby-munching talking corpse, as evil as they come and that's really fucking saying something, and if you don’t watch your back she’ll end up bleeding you out over a bucket, so don't flip her off too many times... they’re always hungry."
"Why are you always trying to control me with your bullshit?  Do you really fucking think I don't know she's an energy vampyre?  Harvey told me that..."  Her hands turned to fists as she grasped his T-shirt and pushed him hard against the canvas.  “Opal can go fuck herself... I'm going up there and she’s gonna find out she's not the only one who knows how to work a fucking microphone.”  
"Please don't do that..."

Rachelle's shoulders sagged and her head dropped to what might have seemed a coquettish angle, had her stare submitted to the same moderation.

"Oh baby... you don't want me to?"  She shuffled back and begun struggling with his jeans, tongue curling over her top lip.  “I know what you're looking for."  Rachelle cupped a hand over his mouth.  "Shhh baby..."

To Opal’s increasing displeasure, Edward had ignored her instruction to attend the circle of buyers corralled upon the balcony.  They represented the closely-guarded apex of her stable of patrons and collectors, a fissile mix that required decisive handling if it was not to split like some temperamental emulsion; widowed matrons, their plicated skin weeping falls of diamonds, brokers who could not be weaned from their phones to choose between the drinks they were plied with and predatory designers who rearranged the many homes of their clientele with ruthless biannual pedantry.  Opal devoted her own attentions to a middleweight Ukrainian oil baron who had professed a desire to pack a shipping container with the work of her ascendant conceptual names in order to annoy his even wealthier father in Kyiv, who favoured early Sérves.  Alcohol had brought a high pink shine to his face; he did not seem to be able to prevent himself from peering over his shoulder into the night, as though someone were calling him from that direction.

“Look, there..." he chuckled finally.  "I think is hooker...” 

Edward and Opal turned simultaneously, roused by the portentous nature of the remark.  Drawn by the promise of vulgarity, the crowd massed against the balustrade.  Approximately twenty metres distant, and more visible than not due to the nature of both her apparel and uninhibited theatrics, Rachelle attempted to wrest gratification from William’s stubborn flesh, her dress flashing like the side of a fish against the darkness, the tableau rendered grotesque by the grim flourishes of rapture even in its unmistaken absence.  At the side of the house a pane cracked in the door that Edward threw back against the wall as he strode onto the lawn toward them.  Rachelle cried out and struggled free of William, losing her shoes and screaming as she fled toward the trees.  The latter sighed and buckled his trousers.

“Thanks for the save, but I'm over eighteen.” he murmured.
“So is your audience.” Edward snarled.  William fished around for his cigarettes in expectation of an extended admonition, but his brother's attention swung in a new direction.  “Have you seen Frost?” he demanded suddenly.  William shrugged.
“Didn’t know she was here.”

Edward started back toward the house without another word.  The stab of apprehension deepened while he scoured the gloomy ground floor for a glimpse of Lilian’s hair and shoulders, discovering instead the gatecrashers condensed into a smirking knot around the kitchen door, filling the darkness with their cold flesh.  Light filtered underneath it in a slim, inconstant line, the handle secured from within.  He could sense the vivid, expanding silence that pushed against the walls and smelled perfume, the new-suit scent of the pimp, broken skin and blood.  Leaning against the door he spoke Lilian's name, but received no reply, and stood back to throw his weight against it.

The kitchen was thickly stuffed with the dirty, matte-red stench of savagery, its lashing shapes preserved by the hollow flicker of the florescent tubes overhead; one had given out, its housing crushed flat against the ceiling, the other smeared with dark stripes.  The chairs had been swept out from beneath the table into a chrome-legged tangle behind the door, the refrigerator displaced sideways and resting at a heavy angle, painted with lightning bolts of red that had bled into the slick of milk oozing from the corner of the door, marbling the white with greasy pink.  Two drawers beneath the counter hung from the last inch of their lengths, their contents lying in a complex disarray that flashed white under the blinking tube.  Everything formerly stationed on the bench had found a new place in the chaos scattered across the linoleum, the cardboard boxes of cereal and pasta soaking up the blood in which they had settled.  

Orb lay where he had fallen, on his back with arms splayed out, surrounded by a slowly spreading pool of mirroring darkness on the pied linoleum.  It formed a dense, satanic gloriole beneath him, reflecting the bars overhead and soaking into his matted ivory locks.  Lilian stood upon his chest in bared feet, her pale eyes fixed on the pain twisting his features, her floating, static poise at once weightless and transfixing while he choked on the blood glutting his airway, her forearms painted with it.  Her left hand clasped a pair of scissors, their stout blades like something cast from a ruby-hued alloy, having gained the colour in the wounds struck into the man's throat, into his shirtfront and clean through the palms of his hands.  Slipping over the edge of shock and subject to its strange array of gasping, spastic contractions, Orb's plight could not keep Edward from the sight of his assailant.  A slicing whine rang in their ears, the shrill voice of a red stare.  He stepped over the chairs and pulled the curtains against the garden.

A blackening bruise encircled Lilian's neck where it had been impressed by a throttling grasp, developing on her skin like a darkroom image.  The dark, drenched satin of her dress hung about her in a slack embrace; slowly, almost imperceptibly, whatever held her began to wane with the sound in their ears and she wavered like flame, shoulders sinking as she listed toward the counter, forcing him to catch her arm.  A neat line of her own blood divided her chin where it ventured from the deep split in her lip.  He eased the scissors from her grasp.  Freed of them, she stood under her own volition, the colour of her eyes consumed by bloated, staring pupils that were the fearsome hallmark of her state while on the ground her victim groaned and jerked.  She lifted an arm and pushed it around Edward's neck, closing her mouth on his with a need that shared its flavour with her blood, whispering the black words that brought his hands to her and pulled their bodies down onto the table.  He pushed her dress over her waist, grasp sliding on the slick, dark red it left on her cold skin as he dragged her hips toward himself.  She tore his belt free and hissed another exhortation, closing her legs around his waist but the sound of her voice against his neck opened his eyes and caused him to step back from the table, where she lay down slowly, bringing her hands up to her face.  

Wresting back something of his resolve, Edward doused a cloth under the tap, coming back to take her wrists and wipe the thick stains from her arms.  Cold water trickled from her elbows.  

“Can you walk?"  She stared at him with dry, blank eyes; he struck the ends of his fingers swiftly to her brow, an ancient antidote to her immuring fugue, and Lilian came back to him slowly, looking from his mouth into his eyes as she returned.  “Can you walk?”

She pressed her lips to the back of her hand, regarding the blood as though it was some unfamiliar substance.  

"Where?" she murmured hoarsely.  He dropped his jacket from his shoulders and handed it to her.  
“Go up to my rooms and lock the door.”

The formica slid beneath her legs and she stood looking down at the man on the linoleum with the detachment of an incidental spectator, still feeling the stroke of Edward's hands under her dress.  The soles of her feet felt glutinous beneath her and her head ached dully from behind where it had been slammed against the cupboards.  He walked her to the door and pressed a key into her hands; Lilian stared down at it.  

“I thought no one could ever scare me, but..."  She spoke slowly, clearing her throat and the last words trailed off in her reluctance to complete the admission.  "But you do... and now you got me cold.” 
“I was never going to let you walk.”
“Smile when you say that.” she murmured, expression conceding an appreciation of the unwholesome sentiment, eyes falling to Orb once more.  “Fucking cops are looking for him.”  Bowing her head, she slid by him, walking through the onlookers as they stepped back from her.  When she was out of sight Edward returned to the prostrated man and studied his condition before leaning forward and kicking at his broken arm, satisfying himself that he was as moribund as he appeared.  Drawn like requiem sharks, the lurking presence clustered in the entrance hall waited impatiently, agitated by the prospect of blood so thickly saturated with the desperate, petrol-sweet essences of violence and agony.  Their blank, expectant faces greeted him as he emerged.

"Thirty minutes." he muttered.  "Clean it up."

The scavengers surged into the kitchen, sinking down on all fours around the dying man and immersing him in the dry, jagged sounds of the clothing torn from his body and the jerking violence with which it was disputed, addressing his slippery skin with their greedy wet mouths.  The junior participants contented themselves at the back of the scrum, wiping their hands through the congealing, wine-dark puddle and grinning as they licked the taste from them.  Some paused in their preoccupation to glance at the surrounding disorder.  In the garage Edward pressed the door closed with his shoulder and stood alone in the vacant gloom awaiting their act of disposal, the taste of her blood still articulated in his own mouth.

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
​© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

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Alexander McQueen: a personal retrospective.

12/4/2016

 
Been reading a McQueen biography. I've been an admirer for a long time and his experiences remind me that some things are universal and eternal; I'm going to bang on about them in semibulletpoint form whilst posting a few of my favourite pieces throughout just so it won't be a dead loss.  

- Then as now: art school bullshit.  The pitting of creative people against one another right from the fucking get-go in a scrabble for the shitty resources and grudging recognition artists are schooled to accept.  Inculcated on this fundamental level and virtually impossible to exorcise afterwards.  Although Lee was a wee bit of a native arsehole, he (and many like him) might still be with us if he had not been compelled to cannibalise so many relationships in his struggle to do anything material.  

Related: the depressing virtual impossibility of being paid a decent wage for a decent day's work as an artist of any kind.  We are either flat-out exploited, blithely under-compensated, or paid ridiculous sums to do impossible things for people who expect obscene returns.  McQueen was either eating someone else's cold chips in a mangey squat or wallowing in megabank and neither condition does anyone much good for long.
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Why does it have to be like this? The financial insecurity of so many talented people is fucking outrageous and a cancer on every society that tolerates it.

- Isabella Blow might have briefly been the wormhole between worlds that sucked McQueen into the one containing notoriety, but she was also a controlling attention-seeker, dramatic leg-dragger and bottomless psychic vampire who probably did as much harm as good with her toxic nuttiness.  We've all met them.  She blew through the kind of (entirely undeserved) opportunity that truly capable, productive people would have killed for, and to hear her whine incoherently about her self-inflicted predicament from her husband's historic country house makes me want to stab something with a fucking fork.   I don't credit her with much in regard to McQueen's output- he would have done all of that shit anyway- and find the hyperbolic posthumous homage distasteful.  Bona fide patronage is important but all these overprivileged do-nothing bitches who want mad props for wearing hats can fuck right off.  

- After learning that he was routinely expected to produce ten collections a year by various parties, most of whom were in a much better position than McQueen to know exactly how sisyphean that task would be, I am prompted to dump a shitload of credit in the lap of his production team.  Like, 80% of the damn credit.  Anyone involved in practical creation knows just how much unglamorous piecemeal drudgery and desperate last-moment expedient genius must have been poured into those frocks by a gifted support crew.  So massive claps and flowers to all those nameless techs and interns and cutters etc who were the ribs and femurs of his operative giant.

- McQueen's darkly legendary personal indulgences are an object lesson in the afferent dangers of overdoing shit.  Overdoing anything will reverse its polarity; the sustenance it initially provides becomes poisonous and bleeds into everything you're trying so hard to sustain.  Too many drugs sounds like an oxymoron while you're huffing booger sugar on an Olympian scale, but it really is bad for you.  Fucking too many predatory or indifferent strangers will turn the dial sinister, too, which is a shame because fucking while fucked up can be a merciful escape from one's own shrieking consciousness.  All things considered, Lee's nuclear gimptastrophe is a cautionary tale for the ages.  The stuff his arsehole went through gives my arsehole the cold sweats, and it too has done... questionable things.  Seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.  You know what?  Never mind.

Which brings me to my next point: Blade Runner, specifically the costume design by Charles Knode and Michael Kaplan.  I've never seen any critical mention of the utterly obvious and almost explicit references McQueen made to their work in his own and I can't really be bothered looking, but it sticks out like dog bollocks as far as I'm concerned.
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- It's very interesting to me that so many of my age cohort have embraced the destruction of the human exemptionalist paradigm in their métiers.  I'm convinced that comes from the thousand televised hours of natural history we were treated to as children and thank fucking christ for it every day of my life.  McQueen's abolition and hybridisation of the human form is as much a child of Attenborough's relentless advocacy as his own internal prerogatives.  Thanks, David :)
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​- I think my favourite McQueen show overall was Horn of Plenty (2009, above), ​because it had everything; awesome staging, consistently brilliant technical accomplishment and that shit was ready to wear, motherphuckas.  Everyone loves Voss and Widows of Culloden and they are both the shizniz in their own ways, but to me they lose points for... I dunno... resorting to emotive, slightly gimmicky staging.  They lacked the utterly unassailable coherence and fuck-you assurance of Horn, which was all about the clothes and pulled completely clear of art skool stunting.  Each piece was an entire world within its greater universe and I doubt we will see its equal any time soon.  See also: Dante (1996) for the nasty spectacle, Joan (1998) for the slick lines and sanguine, pro-femme symbolism, The Overlook (1998) for its nonpareil goth-o-rama and The Girl who Lived in a Tree (2008). 
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- Re the contemporaneous charge of misogyny (though I see that once-popular stance has given way to universal acclaim now that the poor bugger's dead).  I didn't think McQueen was a misogynist back in the day and I'm even less convinced of it now.  He admired, befriended, consulted and employed women.  In his rejection of feminine aesthetic norms he both empathised with the ferocity of our desire to kick away the deadweight of tradition and dared to express the darker ghost of that aspiration; the self loathing and masochism of victimhood, into which he had been initiated courtesy of the sexual abuse he experienced as a child.  In his sexuality he was formatively monstered and discounted- just like we are.  McQueen knew what it was like to have to eat shit and shut up and smile like a good girl.  

His work and its performance expressed all that angst, contempt, violence, fragility, sarcasm and hypocrisy alongside celebratory grandeur and this is not anitfemale- it is honest.  Like it or not, women are still deformed by the weight of all those oppressive millennia.  I personally find the work most derided in Eshu and La Poupée incredibly valuable in its vicious, unapologetic bulldozing of traditional notions of beauty and believe that is precisely why people were so fucking determined to characterise it as derogatory.  They were mad at his pissing all over pretty, as though this sick convention was the most precious thing imaginable.  As a woman, I feel the gross confines of pretty like a plastic bag around my head and take solace in living outside it, in solidarity with other creatures, in our rhythmic affinity with the organic world.  McQueen celebrated this in virtually everything he produced.
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To me it seems obvious that his own wish to escape the physical cards he had been dealt was utterly and perversely seminal to his aesthetic.  McQueen yearned with the diametric vehemence of the incorrigible self-loather to be everything his body was not- thin, athletic, ethereal, elongate- subjecting himself to the kind of excoriations only too familiar to women for far too long.  That he could not apply his boundless talents to celebrating personal diversity, to the very things he lamented about himself is hardly surprising and ultimately pretty forgivable.

​It is painfully ironic to consider the sort of compassionate, comprehensive self-acceptance that can come to those of us who make it into our forties, knowing it will forever be denied to the people who did not survive its absence.

How powerful that realisation might have been to someone like Lee Alexander McQueen.  RIP.
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Photos du Jour: Rugosa Rose Hips

11/4/2016

 
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​These are from our own roses; Rugosa scabrosa (which is a hideous name for a truly beautiful rose), a noted hipster, but also Roseraie de L'Haÿ and Blanc Double de Coubert, which aren't really supposed to set any at all.  Pics of them below, in stated order.

The hips smell like a fistful of crushed rose petals a day or so past their best; slightly warm and dank rather than high and 
volatile like the blooms themselves.

When softly ripe, their outer pulp has a startlingly true rose-y taste with a hint of citrus, but I think they have irritant hairs close to the seeds, so it's best not to go too crazy.
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Monday slash Tuesday slash filberts slash mazafati slash Robocop

10/4/2016

 
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Hazelnuts.  Or Filberts.  Whatever.  Filberts sound like something that gets bullied for wearing thick glasses and masturbates with the aid of midpriced underwear catalogues, so I'll stick with hazelnut.  Reading about hazelnuts in Wikipedia referred me to a list of organic fats and oils, which prompted me to investigate whale blubber.  Which as it turns out tastes like arrowroot biscuit.  Do you believe that?  I'm not sure that I do.  Most cetaceans eat krill and I know from personal experience that krill tastes like prawn cocktail (after being briefly parboiled) and that dolphin breath smells like five day old fish.  So suspicions remain.  However; my father told me that human flesh really does taste like pork and he had this on excellent authority from several of the old hill tribe head-hunting reprobates he encountered whilst working as a mechanic in PNG.  Cheers, dad.

​Sometimes you just have to take peoples' word for it.  Check out the photoessays I did a while back using the pretty amazing pics he took there with his shitty old camera in the sixties.  The Lovely R remastered them and they're worth a look.  Part one here.  Part two here.
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Anyway.  We bought a fuck tonne of fresh hazelnuts from a local seller online; they are huge and delicious.  It's quite strange to eat non-rancid nuts and the experience always reminds just how gross most of the shit from the supermarket really is.  In other riveting food-related news, we've also discovered some fucking awesome Iranian boxed dates from an Indian grocer which are $12 a kilo as opposed to around $40 for medjools, which has always annoyed the shit out of me.
They are mazafati dates from Fars, and, quoting directly from the ebullient Datefruit.ir description, the mazafati 'is used as rotab and no one feels bad after eating the Date!'  ​That date-crazed Persian copywriter wasn't lying.  According to Datefruit, they're also good for 'pregnancy womens' and 'there are different Date's fruits in the worldwide but Iranian Date fruit is considered one of the world's most best and famous dried fruits. All of Iranian Date fruit has taste, smell and excellent fragrance and uses them in different medical consumptions, delicious and funny foods and drinks.  We will mention good contents about this matter for you.'

​I shouldn't really be taking the piss out of Iranian date exporters because we love their work, I can't speak any Farsi at all and quite frankly Persians have suffered enough bullshit to last twenty average lifetimes.  Everyone thinks they're Arabs, for a start, which is like calling a New Zealander Australian; I recommend the quite cool Guardian piece on contemporary Iran- Sanctions, Western Misunderstandings and Religion: 100 Iranians Share their Views.  Life under a retarded theocracy sucks arse, in case you were wondering, but some hope still springs.  Western culture owes so much to Persia's vast intellectual heritage that Iran's pariah status is a tragedy for everyone.  

​Fucking organised religion, man.
Do you ever urge other people to do quite radical things to themselves out of boredom and/or totally idle curiosity?  Intoxicating, isn't it?  I goaded the Lovely R into shaving off his beard and moustache for the first time in about ten years at 1.30 am the other night, and after a few days of staring hard and letting my eyes go out of focus and poking the result, I'm still not sure how I feel about it.  He's less of a man but not more of a woman.  I think I want the beard back.
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This monday slash tuesday bulletin is brought to you by the power of Robocop (original version) which we are about to watch, also for the first time in too many years.   

Please put down the weapon.  You have twenty seconds to comply.
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liked this Ukiyo-e Tale by Nicolás Castell

9/4/2016

 
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'Personal project about the journey of a foreign artist to the ancient Japan. The traveler finds a magic pen that enables him to create anything he wants. The influence of Japan in my work is evident, I wanted to create a story placed in this marvelous country, as an homage to the aesthetics of the ukiyo-e.'

see more of this cool series here

The Blackthorn Orphans Serialization:  Fêtê

9/4/2016

 
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​Susan yawned as she spooned pink fish roe onto croutons and transferred them to an enormous silver platter.  Several members of a morose, diminutive indie band loafed about the catering kitchen in chucks and constrictive, threadbare jeans, eating from the benches and dourly deploring any attempt to move their guitar cases.  The aged facility, mothballed on the far side of the garage, had been resurrected to the acclaim of no one forced to toil within its glossy orange walls; the catering corps bemoaned their draconian conditions over the din created by the clashing trays and dishes extracted from the ovens, shaking out the tiny pastries to be plated up.  Susan pulled out another tray while a short woman in coin-gold lamé and oily purple lipstick stalked in through the swing doors.  Opal swept the youthful faces with a hooded glare.  

“You all belong to me so I should not have to start at zero.  But let me make a few things absolutely crystal clear." she began, as though addressing a vanquished army.  “No smoking, no drinking, no stealing  food you haven't paid for, and no drug use.  Remove all lipstick and jewellery... if you have a tattoo you cannot conceal, turn in your uniform and leave the property.  Some of you seem to be strangers to personal hygiene... if I tap you on the shoulder I don't want to see you again.” Opal declared.  "Do not speak unless you are asked a direct question and if I see an autograph request, the offender will be dismissed without remuneration, along with the person nearest to them.  The same goes for fraternizing with the entertainment.”  She glared at those band members who had neglected to slide out of the kitchen on her arrival.  "So remember.  You, and the person next to you.” 

Opal made a slow circuit of the kitchen, each member of staff suffering a personal inspection that resulted in a number of the summary dismissals she had prognosticated.  With her review concluded, she left the hirelings to their grievances while Susan hoisted the tray in both hands and took the same route through the swing doors.  She was startled by a flash of gold in the darkness of the hall where the woman had waited for her, standing behind the tall white plume emitted by her cigarette.

“Ms Christabel... I always wondered if that was your name or just something you just made up on the boat.”  Opal’s heavily-shadowed eyes formed twin foci for the darkness that leaked into the air around her like radiation; a chugging little chuckle developed in her chest and rolled out past her tiny nostrils.  “Oh... that’s good... that look, and the accent... working the uniform, sleazing your way out of your obligations to me... and they say it’s not a skilled profession.  What exactly are you doing?  What's..."  Her face contracted tightly as she sucked both cheeks into a speculative scowl.  "What's going on here?"  She had doused herself in costly perfume to such an uncomfortable degree that its fatuous base notes reached out with choking fingers, as though the bottle lay emptied on the floor between them.  The longer Susan stood frowning at her peculiar gloating, the stronger her suspicion became that there was something physically wrong with her, some profound metabolic disturbance that had turned the skin of her face waxily inflexible and stilled the little chorus of unconscious gestures that she expected in someone so arrantly vocal.

"I do actually have a job to do, so..."

"I don't think I appreciate your tone."
"Well, I work for the Lambs now, so I don't really care." Susan assured her.  "Talk to them about it."

Opal sneered and flicked her cigarette against the panelling, forcing her back to the wall in an attempt to safeguard the unwieldy platter as she stalked off.

Edward’s studio had been stripped and transformed by a large, fractious team of dressers into a vault of stark, draped, cosmic blackness, partitioned into chambers that ensconced the works of three exalted novices, one freshly paroled and making the most of the thrilling spectacle posed by the tracking device affixed to his ankle.  The crowd, intercepted at the gate and ushered directly into the studio, was split between those enjoying vintage Dior, costly toupees and the ability to purchase, and the artists' acquaintances with their gallinacious hair and devotion to the open bar.  William stood alone next to an installation contrived from tangarine plastic melted onto a coil of chickenwire over a bed of quartzite pebbles.  He clutched a deep green milk bottle of bollchu and regarded the undesired masses with a displeasure to which he could scarcely commit in the face of their engrossing conceits.  From the door their hostess worked her way through a circuitous trajectory, closing steadily on her target.  He heaved a sigh at her approach but took no evasive measure.

“There is a dresscode.” Opal snarled.  William’s T-shirt and slouching, indifferent trousers forced her lips back from her teeth.  “You look like landfill.”  He cast a retaliatory eye over her own attire; in the lamé she resembled a tightly-foiled chocolate but he reserved the observation, leaning down instead and pointing into the opposite corner.  

“This is all awesome, but if you screw up your eyes, that one there looks like a mermaid humping a paperclip.  Or... a cow, stuck in a bong.”
“Keep this up and Rachelle will be eighty-four before I pull her off you.” she informed him with a smile.  
“Haven’t you already sold her arse to some blinging dynastic concern?  Better wrap that shit up before she elopes with Knuckles McConvict over there.” he laughed, nodding toward the conspicuous felon.  “Opal, she’s your descendant, not something in a paper bag you set fire to on peoples' doorsteps.  How can you be so fucking shameless about kicking her around?”  
She joined in his facetious mirth.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Do I look disinterested?”
“It’s because that simpleminded bag of hair has disappointed me.” Opal admitted, lifting her chin.  “I was hoping for so much, and am forced to work with so very little.”
William swigged from the bottle.
“You and your high standards.”   

She scrutinized the crowd again, quantifying no-shows.

“Tell me, whatever your name is... what’s your take on our friends over the sea?  Don’t you think it’s time someone brought a little order to this side of the Atlantic?”
“You mean do I want to be fucked prison-styles by bossy vampyres?”
“I don’t think your brother sees it that way.”
“I don't know, Opal... he’s not that great as an evil henchman... better men than you have tried to put him in a uniform, so don't get too excited.  He’s more of an evil independent contractor.”
"He knows as well as anyone that the House always wins... your brother and I will be skimming the take from our corner suites while the Prague contingent are taking you out back.”
“You can grind on him all you like as long as it's keeping me in the style to which I'm accustomed... I don't have any shame about that... but if you're trying to put your dick in my mouth, dip it in jam or set up an account in my name.”
“Is that what it would take to make you go away?”
He smiled.
“I'm just kidding... you can't actually get rid of me." he shrugged.  "You could leave.”

He watched Opal abandon him and swallowed the last of his drink, leaning down to set the empty bottle in the pebbles beneath the installation.  The heavy black cloth hung from the ceiling caught and bent the voices in the middle of the room in a curious aural anomaly, and William enjoyed it as he walked around the partitions.  Outside, the hallway was curtailed in both directions by velvet ropes; stepping over them he made for Edward’s rooms and in the doorway of the adjacent chamber discovered Susan on a requisitioned chair, a plate of sushi and bottle of beer in either hand.

"Is he in there?" he whispered.  She shrugged, spilling sesame seeds down the front of her shirt.  “Wow, how crazy is this party?  I won’t know myself in the morning.”

“It's fantastic.  That bloody cow Opal threatened to RDT us.” she muttered.
“Did she give you any shit?”
“She did, actually.  God, she’s well creepy when you see her up close.”
“I know, she just tried to land on me in the studio.  What did she say?”
“Something about..."  Susan frowned to herself.  "I don't actually know... it's like watching telemundo.  I sort of told her to bite her bum... hope you don’t mind.  Wish I'd been more rude now.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you fed her rat poison.” 
“We practically are.” she grinned.  “The fridges aren’t working properly.”

He leant back against the framing in the doorway, bowing his head to light the joint that he slid from his pocket.  

“The art’s pretty rubbish.” she observed.  William laughed in hearty assent.
“That’s cruel, but fair.  It’s worse than Ed’s steaming pile of hoe shit and I don’t say that lightly about anything.”  They cackled together at the thought of it.  “Those little connards out there just don’t know any better, but in real life Ed’s so fucking talented I used to be scared of his pictures.”
"I know, I saw one." Susan shuddered, brushing the crumbs from her skirt.  "I wish I hadn't... it gave me bad dreams for a week."  She raised her rice ball in a little flourish, smiling from her chair.  “Did I tell you the good news?  I’m hired.”  

Without replying, he crabbed suddenly into the darkness beside her, pressing himself against the paneling so that he could not be seen from the hallway.  She pulled back her chair and leant out cautiously; the sound of a familiar, imperious gait on the stairs appraised her of the unseen menace before it swept up onto the landing.

“Congratulations on the job.” William whispered.  The toes of her patent heels touched those of his disheveled sneakers as she shook his hand; she bent down to reclaim her bottle from the floor and his eyes fell to the black seams of her stockings. 

“Thanks, but you'll have to hide from Rachelle somewhere else because this is my special slacking bunker, and if she comes in here I'll have to bottle her.” she smiled.  Her face was full of mild, glowing colours and amused distrust as she watched his eyes change, his pupils spreading out into the silky green; he slid down against the wood to resolve the differential between their statures.  “Cake or death.” she added.  
“Where?”
“On your shirt.”  She nodded to the small French phrase printed across his chest.  “I worked it out.  And you know that language, the one you argue in... say something to me.”  
“No no no... it’s dialect.  You’ll think I’m backward and country.”
“Go on...”
“Alright...” he sighed.  “Er... il ava'ilsii li n’ thi’ii sa’e shama y'lissa sahsa'ih sae ai’ina.”  The sleek, luxurious syllables relieved his voice of its mundane aspects and it became almost a stranger's, each vowel bleeding coolly into the next.  He watched her attempt it, whispering to herself in wayward repetition.
“What did you say?”

He laughed uneasily, tongue sliding into the corner of his mouth.

"Er... the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, but also on the hotties... it has no real preference.”  A small clutch of new arrivals began to mount the stairs, ushered toward the studio by chaperones.  Again Susan became contemplative, and she leant closer.  

“You smell like... something with... flowers... like a florist’s shop.  Like when you walk past in the morning and they’re doing all the bunches for the day.”  
"Bien?" 
“No..." she tisked, rolling her eyes.  "It’s horrible.”  Studying the label of the bottle in her hand, Susan spoke again without looking at him.  “Do you want to go out somewhere?  For dinner?”  His head sank toward his shoulder as though he needed time to consider the proposition and she stepped on his foot in reply to the provoking affectation.
“Are you making a pass at me, Christabel?”
“It’s not exac....”
“Where're we going?  I’ve got a place in Paris... well, it’s Ed’s, but I have keys.  Do you like France?”
“I don’t know!  I’ve only ever been to Bruges on a school trip.” she scoffed, vaguely disturbed by his apparent lack of guile.  “Stop taking the piss!”
“You’re right, we should keep it local.  You could pay, and then maybe... you know... pressure me for sex.”  His long legs parted on either side of hers.  “Don’t worry.” he smiled.  “I’m cheap.  And easy.”

Edward appeared at the door to his suite and Susan excused herself hastily, ducking out and hiding her bottle behind her short skirt on her way toward the stairs.  William gazed after her in an abstracted fashion while his brother stood knotting his tie in the doorway, his woolgathering attitude prompting Edward to await an explanation.  Bringing his hands together beneath his chin, his brother performed a grateful namaste.

“You picked up her contract.”  
“That is clemency, not license.”
“Who was the hot guy in the garden yesterday?”
“Now that privacy is just something other people enjoy, I've drafted in security.  She can’t be alone here at night.  Though solitude hardly seems her most pressing concern.”
William shrugged lazily.
“What can I say?  She's got standards." he declared, leaning back against the wall.  "BTW... your bad news bear is here already.  I tried to make conversation but she takes every fucking thing the wrong way.” 
“Go to bed.”  
“I will, but you owe me, and I just dropped enough mescaline to put a fucking Clydesdale into orbit so make the spooky kids take their crazy tupperware with them when they go.”  

He scooted past the studio door and vaulted the ropes that cordoned his rooms.  William had hardly retired before Lilian ascended the stairs alone in a backless sheath of lustreless satin, sullen copper buried in its blackness.  Though compelled to turn toward Edward as she passed him in the doorway she neither spoke nor smiled, making her way into the crowd alone in an arc that wandered past the central pieces, their structures obscuring then framing his view of her.  When she had attained the site of their private debut she accepted a glass from a passing tray and sipped from it before looking toward him.  The nature of his gaze conceded nothing to her apprehension of it; admirers spoke to him in passing, walking on with puzzled scowls while he ignored them, staring over their heads at her as though she were the only other sentient presence.  Lilian drank champagne while she remained in her remove, but her slow return took her once more past his position.  He could hear her standing behind him in the shadow that he cast into the hallway; she spoke over his shoulder.

“Looks lucrative.  Who’s your agent?”
“Opal La Rue.”
“Thought she only handled entertainment assholes.”
“She’s branching out.  I left a message on your machine.”

She stepped closer, bringing herself against his back.  The shoulder of his suit smelled faintly of his skin, of dry white wood and the ghostly amber that had once sustained it.

“Oh yeah... that.  Lucky I don’t have a room mate to call the fucking cops on your degenerate ass.”
“As long as you enjoyed it.”
“I liked it fine.  I liked it about five times today already... I liked it right before I came out here.”  The words fell from her lips while her hand moved between the silk lining of his jacket and the cool fabric of his shirt.  She found his belt and eased her fingers down behind it.  “I put it on my ipod and liked it in the store after I closed up.  The counter’s stone, and jesus... it's so fucking cold when you lie down... sometimes, I have to force myself to do it...”
"I intend to relieve you of all such responsibilities."
"Tough gig."

Edward took her wrist and led her from the studio, dragging aside the velvet rope.

“There are some pieces you should see.” he insisted.
“Lamb, I hope that’s like, a euphemism... I’ve seen your art and I’d rather you fucked me.”
“Have it your way.”  
She pulled him up, sliding her arm through his hand and nodding toward the stairs.
“No beds.  I’m going through a phase.  Cars.  I like cars.”

The lights in the stairwell, tenuous at the best of times, had either been extinguished or fallen victim to their wiring; the darkness had become more populous since her arrival, its deep green walls loosely thronged with a disturbing clade of gatecrashers, akin to one another beyond the unifying values of their dark garb and contempt for the occasion.  The sinister avidity of their stares stayed with her as she moved in Edward’s wake, their low-pitched exchanges pausing and resuming with their passing. 

“You got a wide circle.” she observed, watching him produce the keys to the garage.  Sharp, cackling laughter made her glance back over shoulder; when she looked once more to Edward, the figure in the front door consigned her planned remark.

“Now here she be.” the pimp observed, his face halved by a malicious grin.  He stepped into their path, tugging on his cufflinks.  “You like this one?  All the bald head like this snowy bitch but I say, nuh close your eye... she chalk your roll an gweh while you still in agonies.”  His host received the advice stoically, but Lilian proved less taciturn.

“I’m not on the meter so back the fuck up, and I swear, if you bomb my phone one more time, I will fucking kill you with it.”
Orb stamped a foot down in an attempt to discompose her, pulling up when she stepped behind Edward.  The former tipped back his locked head and coughed out a croaking chuckle.

“Wha?  She nah belong to you.” 
“Brian, go eat a fucking bowl of dicks.” Lilian directed.  His move to reach her overstepped the latitude her companion had allowed, and Edward seized and pitched him hard against the wainscoting, the panelling clattering on its framing with the impact.  Walking up behind her advocate, she stood with her arms folded, smoothing the edge of the rug down with the toe of her shoe.  “If you could wipe him over that would be great... I need to wrap this shit up somewhere.  May as well be here.” she advised.  He obliged her request, Orb’s white suit yielding a small black handgun and a folding knife; Edward continued his manual survey until it had satisfied them both, then allowed his subject to stand unaided.  She pushed open the smaller kitchen door.  “In here okay?” 

“I’m not comfortable with this.” he said, putting out an arm to stay her disaffected handler.  Lilian looked back to Orb.  
“If you pull any shit, I'll let him put your head right up your ass.” she told him.

In an allegory of their confrontation a disturbance had arisen behind the stairwell, the heckling flaring into a brief, scrabbling struggle that was ended by the sound of Opal’s voice as she clattered down toward it in her determination to quash any escalation.  She shoved through her leering biological contemporaries in no mood to tolerate them.  Lilian shook her head.

“Lamb, your tricks are my tricks, but greed's only good when it does you right.”
“Have you told your pimp?”
“Have you told yours?” she smirked.  She withdrew and pressed the door closed before Opal could intervene.  

“It’s that little dirtbag from the Moth and it’s filthy horde... I want them out!” she snapped, tossing a hand back at the crowd milling behind her, but Edward walked from her before she could conclude her admonishment, parting the onlookers with his expression.

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
​© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

*   Read the Book onsite   *


Charming Creek Walk, West Coast of the South Island, New Zealand.  Part 2

5/4/2016

 
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The sun was creeping higher and making photography more difficult for lazy-arse amateurs like myself who hate having to meter and indeed barely remember how.  But that petty annoyance was more than compensated for by that weird species of ambient drama conferred by the presence of a gorge, even when you're just hearing the water through the old growth before being treated to explicit views.  These glimpses confirm what your ears have already conveyed; that something is happening.  

​The topography is tightening up.  The water is getting its way.

You can read the first part of this series here.

As amazing as suspension/swing/whatever bridges constructed by underfunded government departments with thinly-stretched maintenance budgets are, I was pleased to be off the first one and back on solid ground.  Solid-ish ground, because you can feel the spongey root-bound earth dipping slightly and exhaling as you cross the boggy patches sometimes.
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There are crude tunnels hacked historically through various outcrops along the way.  We were hoping for glow worm action but like most other organisms, glow worms probably clench their little buttocks when they hear me coming and thus we were cheated of our luminous due.

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The tunnels are narrow, clammy, smell like arse, wet khaki and occasionally sulphur.  They are just long enough to bury you thoroughly in a decent quake, should one occur while you're fucking around with a camera in the middle trying to take a picture of your spouse and dog child who would probably survive such an event by speeding prudently and ungallantly ahead.  
Just how persuasive water can be is writ large on the walls of the gorge, which has been licked open by the Ngakawau River and its tributaries through beds of Eocene shales, mudstone, grit, brown coal, lignite, sandstone and limestone etc.​ right down to post-Ordovician gneiss according to this fairly awesome geological survey map. 

​The defunct coal-carting tram line clings tenuously to this mossy and uncertain geology like a drunk against the counter in of a chip shop at 3am, sliding away here and there with the earthquakes and scouring rainfall that the region is infamous for.
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It may be reiterative to say that the Charming Creek walk is all about slivery glimpses and abrupt revelation, but this peekaboo shit reaches its zenith as you come upon the Mangatini Falls roughly two thirds of the way along.  

​There is very little to tip you off about either their size or imminence as you trundle through a thick stand of I think matai and beech trees.  

Quite suddenly it is there, all shadowed and veil-like and ampitheatrical, its water turned to plumy ivory as it drops over the scarp, then back to sullen olive and tannic brown as it resumes it slack meander over spate-carved stone.  

​The falls are around 20 metres high from memory; I'm not sure that they're always this impressively furnished so if you're a cascade size queen, I'd visit during spring.

​Look at the tilt on the underlying strata.  All this was once ancient sea bed; it's been hoisted skyward by the ascent of the nearby Southern Alps.  
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Above: Dracophyllum, emergent from the cliff beside the falls and flowering busily.  I think these are D. traversii (mountain neinei) but I'm often wrong and you probably don't care anyway.
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High water must be pretty impressive and/or terrifying. judging from the evidence gouged into the river-side rock.
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Oh look.  Another bridge.
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And there's a really stiff breeze coming down the gorge to make it sway randomly sideways to go with the undulant, unpredictable bounce and drop of the decaying ply underfoot.  It crackles and squeaks loudly.  It is strung over the surviving pylons of an earlier structure.

Which has not survived.  

​I took one picture upstream, one down, and that was fucking it, man.
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Bye, bitch.
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Their sound must have a lot to do with their appeal.  The biggest cascade-skeptic I've known had a serious hearing deficit and I don't think the zero fucks he gave about fountains or waterfalls was coincidental.
More aqueous action further down the gorge, from one of the innumerable side streams that feed the Ngakawau.

What is it about waterfalls anyway?  It's just a glut of H20 passing over the edge of something hard.  We piss into water every day and we curse the hard thing when we stub our toe on it, but put them together a few clicks from civilisation and it's suddenly magical.  
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We may or may not have obscured the warning sign with our persons and then waited to see if a falling chunk of rock would decapitate one of the mountain bikers that passed us at this point, but they selfishly disappeared from view before we could conclude our observations.  

​Ha ha, just kidding.  I love the mountain bikers who insist on riding walking tracks, and I really love negotiating the rutted, dangerous, fucked-up mess they leave for everyone else wherever they go.  They're like jet skiers at a quiet beach; everyone just wishes there were more of them, really.
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< From here on in the hillsides liked to relieve their boredom by firing quartz-rich boulders at unluckier pedestrians, so we kept our dawdling to a minimum as per the signs.  I was impressed by the utterly fickle and inscrutable nature of this threat and almost disappointed that we didn't have to run screaming with only a crack and rumble as warning.  Below: micaceous pyrites for everyone.  The track becomes quite glamorous at this point with all the glittery minerals lying about even if they stubbornly refused to sparkle for the camera.  I like to take them home and put them in my cactus pots.
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The beauteous and diamond-white flowers of Celmisia morganii, an indigenous Asteraceae daisy known only from this gorge.  One of the many species that will be flushed down the toilet should these coastal rivers succumb to the seemingly endless crackpot schemes to dam the living shit out of anything not already in that sad condition. 
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Toward the end of the track where it emerges near the Ngakawau river mouth and the small (and I mean small) settlement of the same name, things begin to feel as though they're coming to a conclusion.  Sort of like the end of a theme park ride when you're pulling up in the roller coaster trolley and the carny is there hoiking and scratching himself while you're herded out.  The light and the land become flatter and you are spat out into a car park  with a coal depot nearby; utterly and strangely prosaic after all that prehistoric immersion.

We enjoyed Charming Creek for its no-bullshit, lowfi seclusion, challenging photographic opportunities and heavy bird count and will return next time we're over on the Coast.

There is a pub about a seaward click from the end of the track and it does a fairly respectable fish (ye olde rig) and chip lunch.  The region's only highway is nearby for anyone needing to hitch to Westport or Greymouth, though a quick word at any of the local shops should be able to secure informal/homestay accommodation in either Ngakawau or Granity if you're looking to spend a few days in the area.  Local knowledge is everything in the Buller region.
LADY WALKER SAFETY NOTE  it's good practise to walk these more isolated tracks with a friend regardless of gender.  NZ tracks aren't patrolled or actively monitored, really, aside from the longer, most popular hut walks, and if you fuck yourself up or fall etc, no one's going to come looking for you and you may not be found for days, especially at either end of the season.  Don't depend on cellphone coverage either because it often sucks away from the main centres.  If you're walking alone, even just for a day, it's a good idea to register your intentions somewhere nearby, even if it's just leaving a note at a DOC visitor centre, or on Facebook.  

The human peril posed to unsuspecting walkers is exactly the same as everywhere else on the planet.  Sexual assaults and all forms of violence against visitors is massively underreported, just like where you come from.  Please don't buy the promotional bullshit about NZ being unusually safe and friendly.  Take all normal precautions and listen to your instincts. The unsavoury behaviour we've personally seen has tended to be on tracks closer to major towns, but it can happen anywhere.  Not trying to freak you out, just wanting to counter some of that worrisome visitor complacency.

Don't be a dipshit about parking up in isolated places if you're dossing in your car, either; everyone assumes you've got a laptop/party drugs/fancy overseas stuff under the front seats.  You are seen as an easy mark- don't give predacious arseholes privacy.  And while you probably won't run into the secretive dope cropping operations that flourish in areas like this, be aware that growers do remotely monitor and sometimes booby trap their plantations.  If you go off-road and see weed, discretion is the better part of valour.  Buy it in town, yo.

​You can read the final part of this series here.
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* Our holiday on the Coast series  *  Photoessays  * Selected Ravings  *  Read the Book  *


Monday slash Tuesday slash Scarlett Robot slash flaming acres of rage slash Mossack Fonseca slash Paul Banks dream.

5/4/2016

 
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Some arsehole made a Scarlett Johansson robot.  Imma ask a few questions.  
- Am I really the only one who wants to push the unsavoury freak responsible for this abomination off a fucking cliff onto some really sharp granitic formations?  Along with his unfortunate creation and anyone who who can look at these pictures without feeling like their skin is crawling off their fucking bodies like Squidward on methamphetamines?

​- Why, in the sweaty, fucked up, meta-offensive, real-doll hell do male animatronic enthusiasts make all their fucking AI/robotic/computer bots female?
- Is it gay to make a boy robot?
- Why do their faces always look like someone skinned a 12 year old girl?
- Who the fuck are these stunted neckbeards and why do they still feel entitled to appropriate female shit when I'm 100% certain that living women have been explicitly delineating their personal shortcomings for years?
- How many more actual real-time images of this demented fuckery does anyone need before we decide to hit flush on this entire concept?

I don't enjoy Johansson's work personally and she sounds like a vapid dick in a lot of interviews.  But this guy stole her fucking face.  I'd like to see some witless dweeb build an Obama robot and have it call them masser and pose next to it with a smug little smile and maybe tweak its nose for the cameras.  The online outrage would singe his fucking brows off before you could get the words Twitter and mob out of your mouth.  Because, you know, obvious and compelling reasons.      
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But hey- build a tittylicious ladybot, model it on a fucking extant woman without her permission, have it giggle when you sexually harass it and that's just how shit goes, right?  Perfectly healthy and natural.  Yeah, if anyone wants to know where all this automated bollocks is headed and why: behold.  Before we as a species can even clear the table of pathetic male privilege, we're laying out the next course of disenfranchised objectification like it's no biggie.
I just really hope I'm dead before I have to deal with the sight of triumphant basement trolls overheating their intergluteal clefts whilst tonguing their Scarlett dolls on the bus into town, and maybe knocking their plasticised heads angrily against the window glass when Scarlett's behavioural inhibitor board gets gummed up with stray tonsilloliths.  Because I don't want to have to support private ownership of large-calibre assault weapons or weaponised phosphorous.  
If you're going to read one single piece of adult seriousness this week, you should probably have a fucking look at the Guardian's Mossack Fonseca Panamanian tax haven leak coverage.  While it may sound boring, it's a massive calamity for rich cunts everywhere which is always important and it even looks like the G is going for the Putin jugular in its funny old way.  This is a huge leak and thinking people need to give it their full attention.
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Depressing, isn't it?  I'll post some nice, almost human-free escapism this week in the form of the second half of the Charming Creek Walk experience.  You can read the first bit of this photoessay here.  No robots, no robot-making shitlords, no 1%er arseclowns.  I promise.  And here's some amazing camera trap shots of the elusive species still hiding out in the Batang Gadis National Park, Sumatra, by Conservation.org.  The Beeb fucked up one of the captions but the images are a hopeful reminder that our fellow creatures can still get along if we preserve their spaces.
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PS: last night I had a dream that I was in a weird semi-detached relationship with Paul Banks from Interpol.  We lived on some sort of Caribbean island and I organised tours and mansion stays for rich people while he sat around looking cryptic and withholding affection.  I've never been in a withholding relationship because I'm a messy sadist who attracts overheated freaks, so it was an interesting insight into the whole dynamic.  Earning his notice and approval was amazingly intoxicating, which must be why so many people get sucked into that nutty shit.

* Read the Book- no robots  *  Kitchen Bitch- no robots  *  Selected Ravings- no fucking robots *


liked this series of Great White images by Antti Viitala

4/4/2016

 
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Great White Shark

All the more compelling for their retention of water as a mysterious element rather than trying to eliminate its obscuring qualities.  See more here

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