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Photoessay: The Tui (Prosthemadura novaeseelandiae), Port Chalmers.

31/8/2016

 
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For the Tui, spring lies not in the angle of the sun as it begins its slow dissociation from the westward hills, but in the pink-stained depths of fruit tree blossom and in the dark little bead-like flowers of the Pseudopanax bushes.   
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Spring and summer are tastes; honey and the brittle/squishy umami of moth and cicada protein.

Tui are large, slightly ungainly birds- endlessly motile, gratuitously vocal honey-eaters and insectivores belonging to an ancient Gondwana order that has radiated scions all over the planet, producing everything from Wrens to Ravens.  They retain all the slightly oafish simian characteristics conferred by an environment devoid of mammalian predators until recently- oversized grappling feet and legs, almost boorish curiosity, arboreal agility and prominent sense of entitlement.  

Halfway through winter they come surging en mass out of the nearby bush into our seaside gardens in their search for the nectar and hatching insects that will fuel their first broods for the year.  On a still day at the end of the season you will realise you are hearing the whipcrack pops, curlicue squawking, liquid fluting, swallowed wails and general broken-synthesiser stylings of their bizarre songs and even recognise the vocal idiosyncrasies of individual birds.  They can mimic human speech with incredible accuracy.  Follow the link by all means for video documentation but prepare yourself for what is possibly the creepiest thing you will hear all year.
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This guy (above and centre left) is a large male we call Mr Yelpy, because he is in love with an annoying curling peow! sound that he voices both as an accent and an exclamation, over and over.  And over.  
​His dance and song are apparently intoxicating to lady Tuis (above left), who like what they see when he's at full fluff and volume.  Mr Yelpy has mad flow.
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Anyone who's ever tried to photograph a Tui know​s how rare it is to see them static and unobscured; here he is on top of the aviary underneath the blossom tree with a golden dusting of pollen on his cere.  

Black when silhouetted, Tuis are revealed in all their satin-lacquered glory by direct sunlight, wearing pheasant greens and petrol blues and brief flushes of gilded rose and olive alongside their wiry silver capes and bone-white throat tufts.  I have never seen those crazy bouffant throat feathers looking anything less than pristine, despite their messy habits.  Tuis regularly visit the craggy old elders in our upper garden to wipe the stickiness from their faces on the lichen encrusting their branches.
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We arrived here twenty years ago and though we were treated to the odd Bellbird (a related native passerine) visit, we would have to venture quite a long way into the bush to encounter a Tui.  

Perhaps another five years passed before we began to notice the Bellbirds sticking around and the odd Tui was making a vocal flyover, but it was a while after that before they decided our amenities were finally up to spec.  Which probably correlates with population pressure due to successful breeding at the nearby Orokonui Sanctuary. 
Revegetation has probably helped tempt them back after the slash and burn and horrendous predation of colonial times.  Both Tui and Bellbirds seem to be returning to their ancestral haunts, possibly due to pest control in some regions; behavioural adaptations possibly play a role in their regeneration, with aggressive birds breeding successfully where their more retiring cousins failed.
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Tuis enjoy every moment of their piratical intellect and alpha status in the local avian hierarchy.  Smaller exotic species tend to regard them with affrighted suspicion, probably equating them with crows and they exploit that racial memory, burning off excess calories vigorously trolling hapless finches and blackbirds.  We even saw a young New Zealand Falcon being mobbed by Tuis as it passed over us with a prey item in Sawyers Bay recently.
The sound of their swooping acrobatic passes over obstacles and through seemingly impenetrable vegetation is a violent combination of intense taffeta skirt rustle and a crossbow bolt slicing air beside your ear, thanks to the arrangement of their wing feathers.  Nothing can distract them from their aerial pursuits once they are involved and we are treated to regular near-misses as we top the garden steps and venture across established flyways.
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The Lovely R did really well this year to get this suite of images.  We have a window of about two weeks while our Bird Plum blossoms on bare branches; after this, the leaves obscure its occupants and the equinoctial winds arrive to blast away the last of the bloom (they're blowing as I write this).  He used a Tamron 70-300 VC telephoto zoom, wide open at 300 in nearly every shot, if that means anything to you.  (I have to stop him discarding anything that is even slightly out of focus; as a non-photographer who takes photos I deplore the exclusive obsession with focal plane at the expense of every other valuable visual element.)

​Tuis are the embodiment of everything that is lost when our species goes rogue.  It is horribly ironic that in the midst of our gloating exploitation we are cheating ourselves of life's most important metric- the presence of our greater family.  We are so grateful for their forgiveness.
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Monday slash Tuesday slash Aloe rupicola flower pics slash hi / bye

30/8/2016

 
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Superbusy real world week for us so I'll just drop these as-promised Aloe rupicola photos detailing my plant's first flower spike.  It made it through the frost unscathed (under open shelter but unheated) and has been opening out slowly like a cobra in drag or a firecracker on quaaludes.  
​Will post something else midweek.
​Have a good one.  Last day of winter 🐳
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liked this hi-fi Spongebob shit by Jonathan Ball / Pokedstudio

28/8/2016

 
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​Vectorism

​😀  I get a toothache looking at this but I still want more.  
​Hard as fuck yo.   
See more here

The Blackthorn Orphans Serialization:  Jubilee 2

26/8/2016

 
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Edward had lost count of the vaguely acquainted women that had broken from Opal’s preview party to attempt over-familiar congratulations, the most insistent dressing his clean pallor with itching stains in pink and coral gloss.  That braving an early arrival to secure an audience with the artist was a tactic lacking originality became quickly evident, and having expended the advantage to no avail they were left to clutch their drinks and keep their offers open via wretched bouts of hard posing.  Opal had selected Edward’s official consort for the evening carefully, burdening him with the daughter of prominent patrons in a salute to their lack of discernment and pecuniary restraint.  Leighton Sotherby-Aldrich hovered beside him looking every second of her eighteen years, smelling of her stylist's perfume and the blood that oozed from the margins of her bitten-down fingernails.  Her high-school ponytail had been recently amputated and she marked its loss by stroking at its ghostly length before returning the hand to her mouth; she shied at unexpected movement, stretching Edward’s nerves toward the limit of their considerable elasticity.  Opal cast several pointed glances toward them, standing before the largest of his paintings wrapped in black, swagged chiffon.  Leighton lifted a hand and ripped another strip of saliva-softened fingernail from the raw quick of her thumb.  


The tiny silver hand seemed to sweep too slowly around the face of Susan’s watch; she looked up from the earrings laid out between her elbows into the dressing table mirror, popping her jaw.  The black straps of her dress kept sliding from her shoulders and she tugged the neckline down to keep them in place, then decided that the result was too revealing, picking up the hairspray can to add another dose of lacquer to the pinned-up style she had already begun to regret.  Philip had effected the shade of willow-pattern blue she had requested but the alteration sat uneasily in her reflection.  She chose tiny diamond drops and pushed them through her ears.

The bed legs groaned across the floorboards as she dragged them toward the windows, pushing the frame beneath them with her knees and kneeling upon the mattress to lean out over the sill, toward the casement William had patched for her.  The breeze sweeping upward from the wall fluttered the thin silk velvet of her dress against her body; with her hand on the latch she held herself in grim, determined stasis until fear lost its grip and fell away, allowing her to gaze down at the ground with a word in praise of her own fortitude.  Still smiling, she stooped for her shoes on her way toward the door.

William stood in the hall before the line of picture windows, watching the hot white face of a three-quarter moon through the tallest branches.  The solemnity of the suit that he had peculated from his brother's collection surprised her; she stared at it as she walked past him, pausing, then sitting down on the chair that had escaped the disused room.  Her reaction perturbed him, persisting as he came to her and knelt to fasten the straps on her shoes, his hands conferring a small cascade of incidental pleasures that distracted her momentarily.  

"You look..."

"Like I'm here to collect the body of your great uncle?" he proposed, grimacing slightly.  "I don't know about this get up... it's always Halloween for Kala'amātya..."

"Be quiet... I’m trying to think of the word.” she told him.  "You look lovely, actually."  She lowered her head and her voice together, looking down at her toes as they wriggled in her shoes.  "Too lovely."  He glanced up but she shook her head with her eyes screwed closed.  "I can't... I mean..."  She brought her hands to her mouth.  "It would be bestiality...wouldn't it?"  

“Oh... you mean... oh.  If you like...”

“It’s not funny!” Susan insisted, putting out her foot again.  “The left one’s still loose.”  To her relief the demanded amendment removed his gaze toward the ground.  He smoothed the silver-shot stocking down over her ankle, the sensation annulling her rebuttal, and his hands ascended and closed on her velvet-clad rump, drawing it toward him over the seat.  The silken lining of her dress slid beneath her as her knees parted wide on either side of him, her protestations falling spineless and propitiated.  The sight of him so close made her blood lurch in the darkness of her vessels, flushing through her chest and burning in its empty spaces as though she had held her breath too long.  

“Christabel, this is the woods, we are all animals, and that is all there ever is.” he told her, taking her hand and pressing it to the side of his throat, where her fingers settled, sensing the slow, eccentric cadence sounded by the chambers of his heart, a variant of her own, the rhythm that underscored all discourse.  He bent to kiss the eider-soft slope of her neck and the warm swell of her cheek, the quiet colour of her eyes disappearing beneath their lids under the influence of his impalpable curare, so subtly narcotic that she wondered if he had been devised by some opprobrious authority to stamp a face on sin.  Her hands opened on his shoulders and came together at his nape, bringing his mouth to hers before some conflicting notion intervened.  He felt and tasted as he looked, cool and lunar, faintly honeyed, inviting so much more that she forgot herself and wound her arms and legs around him.  Opening her eyes, she saw that his were closed, his artlessness chastising her.  Susan let him go and sat back slowly.   

“We should go...” she smiled, belying her own suggestion by unbuttoning his shirt.  “I mean... to this thing...”  She wiped her pink gloss gently from his mouth, her own lips parting as her thumb slid between his teeth, exclaiming softly at her own immodesty.  "We could... no.  We should just go.  I think I used too much hairspray.” 

“Your hair is making my hair jealous.” William assured her.  She glanced down at her cleavage, tugging at the bra that rode too high beneath the velvet and pinched beneath her arms; reaching back, she swore, loosed the catch and shucked it off, pulling it from the neck of her dress and throwing it away along the hall.  Susan consulted her reflection in the window pane, then his expression, his wide-eyed, blinking smile mutely applauding the measure.  

"Come on." she insisted, striding away down the hall.



Edward watched his phone ring unanswered in his hand, and slid it back into his jacket, feeling his own perverse resolve transforming into a regret of far greater mass.  None of the dubious interlopers of his worst expectation had showed their faces, though the night was still emerging from its infancy.  Not even the addicts and alcoholics in the invited crowd had begun to exhibit the behaviours for which the small but determined corps of paparazzi loitering outside were patiently waiting, kept from the gallery entrance by an equally dedicated phalanx of security.  Leighton Sotherby-Aldrich stared at him like a laboratory monkey sucking on the bars of its cage, her shallow breath drawn past an abolished overbite.

“I’m not allowed any pets but I did have an alpaca... I came home from school last summer and he was gone... no one'll tell me what happened.  I asked the maids and they won't say... they know, though...” she murmured, shrinking again inside her gaily-hued, single-shouldered gown.  “I guess you’ve never lost anyone you cared about.  Some people are lucky.  You probably have a really pretty girlfriend waiting for you.”  The idea seemed to at once depress and console her.



Lilian stood before the rack that housed her working wardrobe, her black crocodile suitcase lying open on Edward's bed, patient and empty.  Together the two objects stood against her intention to decamp and declared it token.  Too many of her belongings had found a home for her to effect the cauterised departure of her desires; with both arms she pulled her clothes from the stand and dropped them onto the case, where they slid away amid their plastic garment bags and lay like loose, discarded skins. 

The scarlet counterpane was cool beneath her cheek as she knelt and lay her head and shoulders on the bed, reminded of its owner even in an absence still notionally preferable to his presence.  The sunless heat and enslaving duress of their engagements mocked her like a scourge, limned in black-lit detail when she closed her eyes.  With his voice still in her head her hand pushed down between her legs but found no welcome; so completely had he come to embody physical exaction that the thought of administering it herself had degraded into counterfeit.  Her phone flashed again on the beside table, throwing gentian light against the wall, and she turned her face from it, Edward’s tortious resolve, both in refusal and pursuit, heaping stones on her desire to leave and lighting flames under the need to stay.  

Seeking a path between the two, she rose and made for William’s rooms.  In his black coat she found the turquoise capsules that he had kept from her the night before and turned the heavy garment upside down, shaking it until the thud of his silver zippo and the flutter of a small packet of foil came to rest on the carpet at her feet.
​
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe

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Photo du Jour: angelic striations, Careys Bay Cemetery 

25/8/2016

 
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I know.  Morbid vintage angel shots need to die in a shitfire.  But I like the weirdly coherent strata in this one.
​Don't know if it really was cut from the one piece of stone or if it was just a dud batch of concrete.

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Today in WTF Guardian Fetishisation: 'Come with an open mind' What life is really like in New Zealand.'  An attempt to stop overseas mouthbreathers who believe this shit at the border with the maladjusted German Shepherd that is my detailed rebuttal.

24/8/2016

 
Okay Guardian, enough with this shit.  I was born here, have lived elsewhere, have been all over the fucking world and am by now feeling tingly in the arsehole- not in a good way- with this obsessive fondling of a mythical NZ from afar.  Let's look at the latest runny verbal poos opinion item and examine its contents, both gaseous and solid.

First image: Mitre Peak in Fiordland National Park.  Let me stop you right there.  It only looks like this on 5 days of the year because Fiordland has one of the highest rainfalls in the fucking world.  You'll also be treated to 9476530995646 sandfly bites while you're peering through the drizzle and fighting 4773557895693 busloads of bitchy tourists for the same shot.  Next.
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Anne says: British people should move here because they have a great sense of humour.  You're going to need it because the general local, behind-your-back view of English expats isn't particularly favourable.  Just saying.  Everything is really expensive.  A qualified yes to this, although you can buy our seaside cottage on half a scenic acre 10 mins from a major centre in a gentrifying town for about $300 000, which is not too bad from a worldwide point of view.  A decent muffin is around $4 in a cafe.  You pay about $3 for a cauliflower in season.  Dog registration is about $90 per year.  Auckland is stupidly expensive commute and house-wise, but you're a dumbarse to want to live there anyway because it's everything bad about any given place squished onto a soggy isthmus.  And yes, public transport is either nonexistent or barely worth the bother.

Rob says: It does need more people here.  Fuck off with that shit, Rob.  You're here precisely because we are relatively empty.  If there were more people, I doubt you would have qualified for entry.  With only 4.something million people, we're still dying of disgusting waterborne diseases that are a result of overcrowding and shit environmental practises.  So packing more punters into this already mismanaged biosphere sounds like a great idea.  Beer and travel are expensive.   Ya but they should be, for obvious reasons.  I recently paid $28/kilo for green beans and $6 for a cucumber.  It's the middle of winter, Rob.  That's like whining about the price of whores in jail.  The weather, house prices, salaries and traffic vary massively.  Almost like we're not some sort of homogenous theme park with hobbit greeters.

Graeme says: It's great for Brits/they feel immediately at home.  He says in a piece relating the many differences between the UK and NZ.  No, you probably won't feel particularly at home, because although we're largely white and say mum, the Brits I know are the first to tell you how different we are.  It's not inconceivable that immigrants will be blamed for pressure on services and housing.  Too late.  NZ really is as far away from family and friends as you can get.  No shit.  You're welcome.

Bob says:  Consider NZ if you want to add adventure to your life.  Not sure if serious.  I run a tennis group and get people from 20 different countries.  They're almost all white, though, aren't they Bob?  Maori represent about 10% of the population and have impressive spiritual and social values.  Bob, you slippery bastard.  The worst parts of living here include the poor infrastructure. Earthquakes and volcanoes might be a challenge too.  Touché re the infrastructure.  It's either victorian or inadequate in some other, more contemporary way.  Earthquakes- no more than half the other places in the world.  Volcanoes?  Last time one erupted someone had to move a sheep from a paddock down the road from it, but we're not Hawaii and no one is checking for lava in their garden.  Geological perception fail. 

Andy says: Auckland in particular is an ethnically diverse and exciting city with many beautiful parks and beaches, which are never packed in the way an English beach such as Bournemouth is.  I wonder why everyone from another 'ethnically diverse' place who comes to live here bangs on about how much they love that ethnic diversity.  Andy is from England which, last time I looked, is stuffed to the tonsils with people from everywhere else.  Why is diversity cool here?  Interesting, isn't it?  

But he's right about the beaches, they're great and generally depopulated because everyone's working three jobs to pay for their house.  
There is crime here, and terrible congestion at times.  There's a fuck-tonne of serious crime in NZ and a lot of it goes unreported, just. like. everywhere. else.  Congestion?  See: Auckland.  In Dunedin, people lose their minds if they have to wait 20 seconds to turn the corner.

Steve from Puhoi says: everything Steve says is awesome.

Hayley says: I was shocked at the culture difference.  To be fair, though, skimming Hayley's input makes me think she's surprised by most things.
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Mick says: Leave bigotry behind.  Good call.  You don't need to drag your sophisticated overseas prejudices all the way here- we have plenty of the homegrown variety, it's totally free of charge and better suited to domestic applications.  He goes on to state that refugees are utterly welcome, intolerance is unheard of and misogyny barely exists.  Wow, Mick; what part of Wellington are you smoking because I think we want to move there immediately.  New Zealanders are prepared for all seasons.  Which is lucky since it's a temperate climate.  In Dunedin there are very cold winters, including snow.  Yeah, not really, Mick.  We're not shovelling a metre of powder out of the driveway every weekend.  I grow tree aloes in my front yard.  It barely nudges zero all fucking year.  Everywhere is beautiful in summer.  Have to grudgingly agree.

Kim says: Be prepared to slow down and say hi in the street.  Pretty sure I saw this in LA and KL too.  Aotearoa, the north part of NZ...  *Gongs Kim loudly for specious usage*  Learn enough te reo Maori to be comfortable in Maori settings.  Why, tho?  Virtually no one does, including most of the people who identify as Maori.  95% of locals are woefully uninformed re maoritanga, so you should feel right at home not knowing what the fuck's going on during a pōwhiri.  Multicultural means eating Thai food here.

Does any of this sound familiar?  New Zealand is full of problems and secrets and greatness and woe, just like everywhere else.  The beaches are great, as long as most people stay the fuck off them.  Isolation is not an exclusively geographical phenomenon.  You can die from a poverty-related illness here.  You can be a flaming queen without being beaten to death, or just be a little bit weird and be totally ostracised.  You can live in a penthouse and know you're a failure.  You can grow your own carrots and feel like a billionaire.  

​Mitre Peak doesn't care and most of us who live here never bother going to see it anyway.


All pics:  the G & their sources.

Photoessay: Birds at Aramoana mole, Otago Harbour New Zealand

23/8/2016

 
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We took a trip out to the mouth of Otago Harbour during autumn.  ^ This is the view of Port Chalmers, in the midst of said harbour, looking back down the windy ribbony road to Aramoana, path to the sea in Maori.

Aramoana and its beaches occupy the western side of the heads and are a fairly decent, non-life threatening surf break, nice walking and the chance to see the local avian and marine wildlife.
Below; still on the way out there.  Some of the small bays along the road are good for cockles (Littleneck Clams) and the occasional scallop.  There's fuck-all dairying around here and very few sewage outfalls so the water is cleaner than you might think.
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Above:  Looking across the from the mole at Aramoana toward Karitane and the Silver peaks of the Otago coast.  Delightful progressive types tried their hardest to obliterate this landscape with an enormous aluminium smelter in the early 70's, to the horror of everyone with a viable IQ.  

Thankfully logistics and local opposition prevailed and all that remains of that shitty prospect is this gimpy old mole, which extends for over a kilometre into the Pacific ocean.  

Orcas, dolphins, Right and Humpback whales migrate right past here on their way to and from Antartica.  The larger species occasionally enter the harbour but their memories are long (their putative lifespans exceed 200 years) and people are only just beginning to regain their trust.
​I hope we deserve it.  I fear that we don't.
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Terns, gulls and shags appreciate the mole's amenities and their olfactory signature can be pretty intense on a hot day.  White Fronted Terns Sterna striata breed in and around the harbour though their populations are apparently declining.  They are still a pretty visible presence locally, their slim, swept wings rendering them incredibly agile in the air.  Watching them plummet like shards of white glass into the black water after fish makes you wonder how their hollow honeycomb bones can sustain the assault, but they emerge, unfazed, their sabre beaks full of silver.
 Black Fronted and Caspian Terns also frequent the area.
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Above: The eastern flank of the harbour terminates in Taiaroa Head, home to a lighthouse and the only mainland Royal Albatross breeding colony on the planet.  

Albatross need all the help they can get due to the massive assault on their global populations both from overfishing and bycatch mortality.  But when we went to the Royal Albatross tourist centre we thought the tour charges (upwards of $100 for a family) were pretty obscene and in fact prohibitive to the majority of local punters.  Considering there are no other opportunities to get a decent look at these astonishing birds, the price is unfairly excessive and just one more example of how access to wild places and species is being throttled by exclusive and commercial interests.  

​The Albatross Centre is a trust but still: those prices.  Not cool.
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Other interesting species frequent Aramona beach including New Zealand Sea Lions.  We were once on the rickety Aramoana wharf with our nephew when a massive black shape cleaved the water just a few metres directly below; though my first thought was Great White, it lumbered out onto the sand as a mighty black pinniped.  Their heavy shag, blunt dog faces and sheer massive presence (3.5m/450kg) are hard to convey if you've never had the pleasure.  The words sand bear definitely spring to mind.
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Advice for photographers visiting Dunedin: Aramoana is a primo, subject-rich site.  Access is free and relatively easy for peeps without mobility issues, but there is no public transport to or from.  Early morning offers the best light and an often human-free window and penguins, seals, dolphins, birds and whales are frequent visitors.  Locals can sometimes get pissy with strangers poking about their private properties in the small adjacent township; there was a gun massacre here in the early nineties which many people are not keen to discuss with nosey tourists.  Much of the area is a wetland sanctuary so it's best not to drive all over it or let your dogs and kids harass protected species.  The fishing and diving from the beach and mole can be pretty good; there are local catch limits that you can view here.
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Monday slash Tuesday slash persistent drone slash what was I going to say?  I forget.

22/8/2016

 
The day is dying down to greening turquoise behind the cloud-tongued hills and it is six thirty-nine pm, exactly.  When night starts falling past the VI, you know for sure that winter has lost its bones and is sagging and sloughing away, along with frosty starts and felted wool and vintage fur.  All that is a good thing this time; I don't usually relish summer but I really think I need the prospect at the moment.

The low sound droning in my ear is tinnitus.  There's a weird viral thing going around that fucks with your ears and thusly I have fluid lodged behind my eardrum and I am massively sleep-deprived, fatigued and unable to concentrate on any fucking thing.  Persistent tinnitus is a shitty guest that was kind enough to bear gifts.  It has reminded me what despair feels and tastes like, both in my own experience and in my memories of someone else who used to suffer the same thing, to a far greater and more tortuous extent.  In physically sharing one of the many things that blighted his existence, I am having long-lost questions answered; this is how it feels, this is what is does to you, this is how an intensely troubled person was dragged another fifty clicks away from help and comfort, even when they were sitting right next to him.  There really is some stuff that no one else can fix; that's a hard lesson for a practical person to learn.

As an aside, if you know someone who's toughing a bad thing out alone, keep trying to reach them.  They don't always realise that they want or need the help you're offering.  They may not know how to use it even if they do relent and let it in the front door.  Always
try, in the way you hope someone else would try for you.  I have never regretted the effort, just the inevitable failures along the way.
Silence truly is wholly fucking golden.  Having the prospect of it yanked out of my handbag, at least for the moment, prompts me to consider my obsessive love of it.  Why is it so important?  Why do I need so much of it?  Am I just being selfish?  

I wonder now if too much silence has let me decompensate or downregulate too far.  Maybe I've gone past peace and quiet and wandered into low-functionality, that place that tastes like drain water and feels like balding velvet. 
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So thank you, hellish electrical-drone tinnitus, for tipping me off to the fact that I might have been bottoming out.  Sometimes we need some bad fucking volts to the taint.
​
It's like learning a new language.  Honk if you know what I mean.

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liked this collage by Lola Dupre

21/8/2016

 
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​My Moire / Liquid Badger

If you've ever been an art student, you'll know collage is much abuse'd.  But this work by Lola Dupre using digital printing and trad manual construction is extremely legit.  See more, including some studio pics, here.

The Blackthorn Orphans Serialization:  Jubilee

19/8/2016

 
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With his attitude of engrossment in his newspaper, Edward might have lulled the less familiar observer into believing their entrée to the drawing room had gone unnoticed.  Lilian knew better, and said nothing as she set a kitchen chair against the wall, where she sat down with the bowl of crackling cereal that served as both diurnal meals.  The afternoon had pushed two broad, glowing arms into the shadowed chamber through the doors; her own indifference to domestic convention allowed her to appreciate the beauty of an empty room, though not, she suspected, to the same extent as her companion.  Resting the bowl on her bare thigh she sucked the spoon and returned it to the cereal.

“What's that called... when you can’t think what the fuck you were just doing?  Or if you did it?  Starts with D.” she asked, her voice echoing slightly.  

“Dissociation.” Edward replied.  He glanced at her briefly; her small grey T-shirt and brief skirt emphasized the condition she had begun to lose.  “It’s associated with insomnia.”

“Did I say I was dissociative?” she muttered.  An inquisitive bird rustled high in the chimney spout, the soot dislodged by its sortie dusting the tiles before the empty hearth.  “What if you get a dissociative thing, and when you come out of it you’re on the other side of the house, or like... in the garden, and you don’t know what just happened?”  

Edward stood largely in the shade of his own body; the pages cast a little of the daylight back toward his features but in profile they were unintelligible, except to Lilian, who saw his gaze shift in a slightly less methodical manner across the text.  

“Dissociative fugue."
"That's bad, right?"
"A number of discreet conditions involve fugue states and somatic passivity.  I’m not a psychiatrist.”
“Susan asked me if she should wear the black thing from the store to your show tonight.  Your brother's taking her."  She leant back in her chair, letting it rest against the wall.  "To your show.  You know... the one you’re going to.”   
“I’m contractually obliged to attend.” 
“I’m contractually obliged to split my fucking take-home with local Vice.”  When he maintained his silence she tapped the spoon against the edge of the bowl.  “You just fucking get along to that thing, Lamb... pat some scrawny ass, suck it in for the paps, make like you're not getting intrusive thoughts about spreader bars.  Opal'll love you for it, she’ll book you a whole bunch of gigs just like it and I can go get a real fucking job.”
“You told me you had no intention of ever attending anything like that.  You were very specific about it.” Edward reminded her, folding the paper over and dropping it next to the three he had already digested before selecting another.
“Fuck no, I didn’t want to go back then.  Now I do.”
“You also said something about loathing everything associated with art.”
“And you gave me the idea that you weren’t a hustling bitch who’d sell my ass out first chance you got.”  She regarded him bitterly from her chair.  “So when you’re done blowing Opal for one more fucking C note or whatever, ask yourself how flush you feel.”
“I would prefer you stayed here tonight.”
"Are you out of your mind?" Lilian demanded, incredulous.  "What am I, your butterface shamefuck?  Lock it up til you want to get it wet?  Give it to me straight, Lamb, right now, or I swear I’ll be gone when you get back.”

He looked up from his paper.

“It’s not your reputation that keeps me from taking this public.  It’s mine.”    

With her pale eyes intent on his Lilian sat still for short while, then stood, firing the bowl at the skirting board as she remembered its weight in her hand.  On the landing Susan held her tongue as she stalked past and a moment later observed the other party disappearing into the garage, waiting for the sound of Edward’s vehicle to recede along the drive before descending into the passage that led toward his library.

It took a great deal of her courage to brave his private station, its black desk and chair seeming almost to impersonate him in the static, watchful seclusion.  The narrow panes of glazing stood aloof; she gazed around herself, rubbing her fingers together before dragging the chair out from behind the desk and setting it carefully before the shelving.  At the very edge of her reach one of the small compartments yielded; she took down the closest volume and cradled its heather-brown and half-defeated binding in both hands.

The pages, far more ancient even than its protective shell, revealed the xylographic text and woodcut illustration of an incunabula, the stiff paper shedding pale matter from its ragged edges onto the inside of her wrists.  It was a bestiary, peopled with a catalogue of smiling, bright-eyed chimeras, thorny bears, monoceri, purple goats, golden, horned, hybrid panthers and sardonic basilisks, accorded their enduring colours by hand.  Scowling at the rubricated Latin she confined herself to a study of the images, though no anthropomorphi stood amongst them, no vampyres or werebeasts nor anything resembling the brothers' own confounding order.  On discovering her William stood for a short while in his amusement, then crossed the room behind her on bare feet and breathed a short remark into her ear.

“Certa amittimus dum incerta petimus.” 

Susan exclaimed and began to totter, dropping the incunabula.  He caught it in a puff of dust.  

"Stop doing that!" she hissed, keeping her voice low.  As her face regained its colour she ignored his proffered hand, bending at the knees until they were of equal stature to peruse his features from that novel perspective.  "One of your eyes is completely different to the other, like you were made from different bits..." 
"I think we were." he confessed.  She sighed, opening the volume he had handed back to her and flipping speculatively through its pages.
“That is incredibly creepy.  What do you think you are, scientifically?”  

His expression became dry and weary. 

"A rose by any other name, in the dark, still walks in beauty or whatever.  I am open to being captured and handled by Sir David Attenborough, but I wouldn’t let anyone else do it.”  He smiled again.  “Present company excluded.”  
“What do you want, then?  I’m busy.”
“Philip’s here.”
“I don’t know a Philip.”
“My spectacular folicular technician.”  He rolled his eyes.  “He does hair.  Sort of... now, so come on.” 
“What’s wrong with my hair?  You're hurting my brain.  I don’t like arty things... can we not just stay in and watch a movie?”

He took her hand as she stepped down and began to drag her from the room, then along the corridor outside; she muttered to herself as he shepherded her before him up the stairs.

“Pink elastic.” he remarked, abstractly, until she discerned the subject of his observation and slapped her skirt against the back of her legs with both hands, stepping against the wall so that he was forced to precede her.  “At least you’re wearing some." he laughed.  "I had no such good fortune when you violated my personal sanctity at gunpoint.”
“If I'd known that I would have turned the bloody thing on myself." Susan assured him.

Against her private expectations, Philip the friseur presented as a tall, scrupulously gym-fit man of forty in a fitted, wet-look T-shirt, the limpid black fabric embracing both the barbells in his nipples and the impressive girth of his toast-brown biceps.  Wraithlike, sculpted sideburns descended from a fauxhawk of the same pale shade.  He awaited them in William’s ensuite bathroom with his kit bags and glossy, transparent apron, the stern centrepiece in a scene of unimpeachable professionalism.  Philip smiled for William as he ushered Susan into the chamber, but greeted the latter with an undisguised lack of enthusiasm.

“You know I’m always here for you... why make me regret it?” he sighed in an aside, eyes sliding in Susan’s direction as the latter sat on the edge of the bath.  Pushing William down into the kitchen chair he began to draw handfuls of the latter's parti-coloured mane toward himself, bemoaning its amateur modification.  “I could put a thousand homosexual hours into this mess and a day later you’d be back to ghetto homefried.”  Philip turned to look at Susan accusingly.  “Did you do this?  Friends don’t let friends go Midnite Madder.”

“She’s completely innocent, and it was Wicked Cherry anyway.”  William chewed his finger absently.  “Wicked Cherry, Nuclear Red... and okay, maybe there was a drunken Midnite Madder incident.”
“Lucky you're a gruesome freak of nature that grows hair like nothing should.”

Susan looked up at the remark and then at William, who smiled tranquilly.

“Christabel... what do you want done?” he inquired, squinting as his head was bent forward and his hair combed out with a punitive hand.
“I wouldn’t mind a decent haircut.” she murmured, returning Philip’s glance.  “If you do those.”
“You know, she sounds like Midnite Madder.” the technician decided.  Laying back his head and staring up at him, William succeeded in softening Philip's expression, the capitulation manifested in his handling of the comb.  “Speaking of female ruination... I heard someone had to peel that Rachelle Whateley off your slutty sectors in front of a hundred weeping innocents.  Why do I now feel the need to scrub myself so intensively?”
“Rumours of my participation are exaggerated.”
“Have you seen her lately?  Don’t go looking is all I’ll say...”
“Why?” Susan inquired.

​“My god, she’s been on a hyper sci fi bender since this here weaned her off the panty pork.”  Philip warmed to his subject, shaking out a black dye cape and laying it carefully over William’s shoulders.  “Dickmatized right off the deep end.  Opal La Rue’s ready to choke a bitch... all that time she spent corn-feeding that trainwreck... can you imagine?  Where was I?  Oh yeah... she cut Rachelle’s ass off cold when all the bills came back to her... ice cold.  So then Rachelle brings it with the plastic rampage until those camel toes at D&G cut up her last card, in front of everyone...”  He winced tightly.  “I had to throw her out of Salon Philip, which is a shame... fabulous natural body.  Just fabulous.  If she dies with that rogue weave on her head I will kill her all over again for going into the light looking like something waxed right off a taint in Reykjavík.”  He began to mix up the colourant in a little black bowl.  “It’s bad, but it’s epic bad, so you can’t complain.”  Susan’s expression contradicted him.  "Bitch please... don’t give me some vaginal monologue about how much you love Rachelle... you don’t.  That sensation you’re experiencing is pleasure.  You love what I just told you.  Love it.” Philip assured her.  “My sources confirmed she beat down her therapist with a lampstand when he tried to ease up her prescription shit... which I guess downgrades her from troubled heiress to crazy crack whore.  Oh the humanity.”  With William’s hair wrapped into clingfilm, Philip turned his attention toward Susan, who took the chair and frowned into the mirror.  “I know... why don't you just tell me what to do?” he suggested.  

Despite the declaration it did not take Philip long to devise the treatment she required, nor did it impair his ability to impart the lurid foibles of his diverse clientele.  The timer presiding over William chimed an end to his confinement and he reached in to wrestle with the taps over the bath tub while Susan’s colour was concluded.  She frowned again at the distinctive sound of garments being shed onto the tiles.  

“Is he taking his clothes off again?” she demanded, bringing a hand up to the side of her face.  
“Oh god, won't someone do something?" Philip sighed, shaking his head as he enjoyed the shower curtain's nominal opacity.  "So, so nasty." 
“Have you finished this?” she sighed, pointing to her own head.  Philip shrugged, noncommital, and she ducked out of the bathroom.

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

​

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liked these images by John Maher in the G

18/8/2016

 
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The sole house on depopulated Ensay, looking toward its chapel
John Maher recorded abandoned houses in the Hebrides for his show 'Nobody's Home' 
See more here

RubyHue Lipstick Review: Nars Charlotte (Audacious) & Majella Satin Pencil

17/8/2016

 
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Deep red will always have a place in my heart.  Obviously.  And on my face.  I don't care if I'm ninety eight years old and just one giant wrinkle- that wrinkle will be rocking shit like this.  A negative fucks-given balance sheet is just one of the pleasures of advancing age.

Nars Charlotte (Audacious) and Nars Majella Satin Pencil seemed like a couple of those generic median darkish reds that we all know and love and um, probably already own.  The price ($50NZ for the former) was a bit of a roadblock and the online pics just weren't really screaming love me in my ear.

That didn't stop me picking them both up when a special rolled around, though.
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Let's do Charlotte first. The tube shots could easily mislead you into bricky red assumptions but the swatches are the real business; it's a clean dark nocturnal raspberry or haute black cherry + a dash of currant, with very little dirt to speak of and a short lean into cool blue.  

Charlotte offers around 85% opacity- enough to allow quite considerable lip influence- and is buildable into a deep beetrooty shiraz reduction.  Chromatic composition is something Nars does better than almost anyone and while Charlotte is a stunning and typically superior rendition of this classic shade, it isn't totally issue-free
The finish can be quite variable.  According to thickness of application and possibly moon phase, you can end up with a quite-to-moderately glossy satin, then an off-matte drydown with wear.  The real culprit is obviously temperature and the amount you've slapped on, but that mutability is definitely a hallmark.  Wear time is perfectly acceptable as long as you don't eat or drink, which will quickly buff it down to a sad ghost of its full glory.  So not a dinner red without primer.  My mouth is quite 'turned out' and like Deborah from the same Audacious range, I find Charlotte a wee bit difficult to work into the central backward curve of my lower lip without a bit of brush coercion.  To conquer these deep and sometimes difficult shades, I brush on a light half-strength application to set out my desired shape and create a base, on to which I pat more product straight from the tube, building depth where desired.

In its favour, Charlotte doesn't bleed much (on me) and it is pretty darn comfortable on the lip, even in the sort of dry, windy winter conditions that can really crack shit up.  I seriously adore Charlotte's clean black cherry goodness- it really is the best version of this shade that I've encountered and can be built to a traffic-stopping midnight intensity.  For that reason I'm willing to overlook a few minor technical difficulties that are anyway pretty intrinsic to this colour.  She brightens your teeth like nobody's business, too, something most of us can be grateful for. 
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L2R MAC unless stated: Russian Red, Nars Charlotte, Absolute Power, Sin, Ruby Woo,
​MAC Red, Nars Terre de Feu, Nars Mascate
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Nars Majella is a whole nother thing.  I'm tempted to call it true blood red, but everyone seems to have a different idea of what blood looks like, so that isn't very specifically informative.  How about... Snow White red, if Snow White smoked Camels, had a thing with a drummer and a bass player, left pizza out on the bench for a week and never paid rent?  

​It's a (very slightly) dirty rock n roll red, medium-dark with a teeny soupçon of warmishness in an otherwise neutral base.  Majella is strong and satisfying, deep and rich like a good sauce without being super-vibrant, in contrast to a firecracker showstopper like F-Bomb.  It suits a wide range of complexions and is neither too garish for daytime nor too casual for dress-ups. ​
Above + below (L2R in both) Nars Charlotte (Audacious), Nars Majella Satin Pencil
I don't say this often, but if you're the sort of person who was only looking to own one red lipstick, you could do a lot worse than Majella.  (Five reds is the minimum required to escape Level 00: Basic, but whatever.)

​Like the other Nars Satin Pencils, Majella slides on with an almost nightmarish ease, depositing 90% opacity and an initially slick finish that persists for an hour or so and then dries down to low-satin.  For a non-matte, it's very resilient, fading slowly and evenly and readily accepting reapplication without clumping or funkiness.  

Drawbacks?  With the texture being so darn silky it's easy to pile on too much product, which can result in a bit of slippy blotchiness, but that's the only drama I've encountered.
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There's something very exemplaire about Majella, even in a crowded field of high-functioning reds; it has that same elusive, perfected Nars deliciousness that keeps me coming back to this brand and classics like Cruella, Red Lizard and Basque Red after some juicy new thing has briefly bogarted my attentions.  The first swatch image directly below is particularly accurate, although Golshan is a little browner than it might look here.
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L2R Nars unless stated: MAC Russian Red, Majella, Golshan, Cruella, MAC Dubonnet,
UD F Bomb, MAC Brick pencil  strong winter daylight, no flash
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Photos du Jour: #thuglife- Scott Memorial chickens overlook Otago Harbour

16/8/2016

 
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​This is our favourite rooster, an extremely low ranking bird who seems to prefer human company to that of his own species; we feel his pain.  He's probably an annoying crowing machine but he's such a card that we're thinking about bagging him up and taking him home.  We don't really eat chicken any more so he should be safe lol.

*   More of our photography   *   Port Chalmers, New Zealand   *


Monday slash Tuesday slash shepherds' warning slash the World Hum in Port Chalmers

15/8/2016

 
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Does it count if it was a yellow morning?  Because the entire world was like the inside of a drunk's bladder on Friday morning.  I was typing away at about 7am and this weird orangey-yellow glow came through the curtains. My first thought was someone finally snapped and nuked Australia, which is perfectly understandable, but it turned out to be a natural, non-vengeful phenomenon involving a brief nor'west flow.  

I did a panorama from the front door.  You can see a bit of snow hanging round on top of the Sawyers Bay hills (sort of).
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In oversharing news, for the last few days my life has been a sleepless grey blur of either A: low-frequency tinnitus or B: the World Hum gatecrashing my cranium.  Or both.  The sound is like a fridge humming against the wall or an electrical substation buzzing on a quiet night except it is deep in my right ear and I would gladly trade all of my hair and half of my skin in exchange for blessed cessation.  I'm going to write about the Hum for next week (after I've been to the doctor) because that shit is both intriguingly possible/insane and somehow totally rational/unlikely, especially in the context of my own hellish aural nightmare.  

I'd never really heard of the Hum before I started scouring the internet for experiences matching my own but I have an obsessive personality and just can't handle unexplained shit in regard to myself so everything I could find was emptied into the sloppy bucket of panicky possibility, along with brain tumours, incipient deafness, multiple sclerosis, sinister governmental experimentation and schizophrenia.  All the fucking lols, let me tell you, especially at three in the fucking morning.  

I'm less inclined to slit my wrists as my brain slowly downregulates the drone and I start to narrow the somatic possibilities, but I wouldn't wish low frequency tinnitus on anyone.

​That's a slight exaggeration (people keep hacking his Wikipage and the peeps overseeing it don't seem to be falling over themselves to fix that shit which is tremendously satisfying.)  
With my being so fucking wrapped up in my own ear canal, I think I'll be posting a lipstick review this week.  

​And I am nagging R into getting started on those 
Blackthorn Orphan audio files but that's reminding me of phantom tonalities so please excuse me while I put my head through a plaster wall like Roy in fucking 
Blade Runner.  
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​BWBW.  It's this sort of thing that's probably driven my cochlear to suicide in the first place, so it's eerily apposite that I'm using it to drown out its death rattle.  

God Corgan looked like the worst kind of drippy semi with that hair.  

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liked this ophidian surreality by Antoni Tudisco

14/8/2016

 
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​from Surreal Worlds 2.0
that is some high-functioning shit right there.  See more here

The Blackthorn Orphans Serialization:  Gnosis 10

12/8/2016

 
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From one of the enormous, slab-like couches crouching in the vastness of the hotel lobby, Lilian gazed out through her own reflection in the glass frontage at the Jaguar parked to the far left of her view.  The yellow streetlight rendered it in shadowed orange beside a bill pillar, five cars back from the dark sedan at the centre of her concerns; its male occupants sat in silhouetted profile, smoking periodically and nursing steaming beverages.  

Out on the street, she waited at the end of the gold-lettered canopy in her dark suit, short skirt fluttering against her legs in the wind while William pulled up beside her.  Across the road the strangers kicked open the doors of their sedan, revealing a police radio glowing in the dashboard as its rear sagged audibly upon deflating tyres.  She turned her head away as they drove past.

“Fuck.” she hissed.  “I knew it!”
“Relax, I handicapped their shitbox.” he assured her.
“You don’t get it... they’re not cop cops, they’re fucking Vice OGs.  Orb never made the drop and now they're after my ass.  Are you holding, because right now I will blow you for opiates.” she sighed.  He drove them into the waterfront, pulling up in the reboant darkness outside a fire-gutted warehouse.  
“I’m out.  But I’ll swap you the vodka under the seat for a southpaw handparty.”

She struck the glove compartment impatiently and began delving for narcotics amongst the contents that spilled onto her legs, pausing as she glanced up with a frown.  

“What's that smell?” she demanded, looking back through the car, then at William.  “Pick up a date?”
“Didn’t they warn you about questions like that in hoe school?  And you shanked your dirty pimp in the same place Christabel makes her bready things so climb down off the hygiene horse.”
"Sandwiches." Lilian hissed.  "They're called sandwiches!  How many fucking times?"
"Okay..." he exclaimed, wide-eyed.  "Fils de pute..."  
"Your fucking brother told you, didn't he?"
"About Orb?  Not really... it just smelled like a pimp died in there and I guessed the rest."
"He was breathing when I left." she asserted grimly.  

He watched her drink from the bottle while hulking ship rats frolicked through the fast food wrappers and soggy, carpeting newsprint scattered outside.  Lilian was classically endowed in profile, a quality subtly echoed in her wardrobe and comportment, a narrow superficiality upon which she was heavily reliant.  That he had known it for so much longer than he had known her was both a comfort and a bane to him, ghostly in the purest sense and beyond all partiality.  

“Have you heard from Ed?” he sighed.
“He only leaves voicemails.”
“Well... I have said all along..."  They sat in a silence thick with misgivings and abjuration, and he considered handing over the stash of pharmaceuticals in his coat.  “And just for the record... the longer you know him, the worse it gets.” 
“Why do I have to explain this shit to you?" she murmured.  He shrugged; Lilian shook her head, shifting her gaze to the pink graffiti sprayed over the brick before them.  "When I was a kid, with my crazy fucking mom and all her drunk-ass pedobear tricks, I always felt like fuck, is this the world?  I fucking hated being alive most of my life...”  William leant his head against the window and looked back at her.  “So here comes your brother, and he’s the fucking evil Jesus.  He’s fucked up, and his shit is bad, but...”  A spectral version of her smile returned.  “He owns forests, in Europe.  He speaks languages... he fucking knows everything.”  
“Frost, if you’re happy... I’m happy.  I just want to hear that you are.”
“Happy's bullshit."  Her smile widened slowly.  "I love the way he’s so fucking dry all the time, how he just comes in and says like, three words, and half an hour later you get that it was funny.  And he’s always right about the weather... which is creepy and hot.  That and he never gives a single fuck about what I do.  Do you know how great it is to come in at fucking dawn and not even get a look?  Nothing matters to him and that’s... I don’t even know what that is.  Whatever it is, I like it.  I love it.”

Despite her confession, her eyes held a strange, cureless sorrow.  William caught the pale ponytail on her shoulder and pulled her across the gap between their seats, planting a kiss upon her forehead.  She slumped back when he released her, staring at him, then fished out her compact and examined her brow in the glass.

“What?” he demanded.
“Hazmat sweep.”  They sat in their own thoughts for a while.  "Fuck her yet?" she added.  He let his head fall to the wheel and lay against it.  "Oh jesus... what?"  
"Don't laugh, you heartless strumpet.  She makes me feel like a pillowhumping virgin."
"When you have a god-given talent you know damn well it’s your responsibility to share it with the fucking community.”
“Have you ever tried that on the judge?"
"No, but I will.” 
“If you’re not going to give me complimentary executive relief, you’re just part of the problem.” 
“Jesus, get her drunk already.  Don’t flop it out at the fucking table and you'll be fine.  She's already looking to get on it." Lilian sighed.  "Crazy bitch."

He scowled at her advice and put the car back in gear.

“I’ve got to swing by the Half Moon on the way home.  Would you..."  She shook her head as he spoke and tossed her mirror back into her bag.
“Hell no.”
"Please?"
“I'm not going in, and those diesel bitches will beat the shit out of you for flipping their twinkettes.” Lilian predicted.
“I care nothing for twinkettes.”
“Oh that’s right... Susan’s back home, keeping it hot for you.”
“As much as I’d like to think so, I’m one hundred percent sure Miss Christabel the Absolut princess is unfit for active duty.” William lamented.

Sharing the elderly precinct alongside Avalon with the Black Moth, the Half Moon Bar was situated in a street so dense with ply-boarded bays and alcove doorways that it remained obscure until he was directly upon its unpromising facade.  A white veve extended from the doorstep across the footpath, both inviting notation and notice of hostile intent.  William skirted round it, stepped into the black space beyond the door and was brushed by a beaded curtain that dusted a glittering deposit on his head and shoulders in a baptismal gesture.  He passed a tall shape that had begun life as an oak sapling; the branches had almost disappeared beneath a smothering cowl of gris gris, little effigies of straw and cloth, hex-sewn rags, knotted bones and broken teeth and stiff, bloodsoaked ribbons tied in bows.  The saturnine, rubbed-over Deco masculinity of the interior beyond had suffered no refurbishment since its installation, expressed in scuffed black paneling and stepped veneers and the silvered metal trim that bound its tables.  Its formality satisfied a clientele diversely feminine and united by the direst dralna practises; through the cigar smoke the cold, unblenching stares of resident bulls and dark-garbed senior femmes, encircled by noviciates and thralls, regarded him unfavourably.    

The counter was darkly marbled beneath a garnish of candle-laden horse skulls draped in sable wax.  William sought the attention of the tall, rangy girl in a frayed denim cutoff shirt and sheriff’s badge behind it.  Her short, dark hair was slicked down from a neat part; she propped her hands on her own side of the bar and assessed him with a gaze framed by a generous constellation of freckles.

“I’m looking for Lydia and Cybelle...” he began.  She turned to a girl with a swan-white crop seated on the glass-fronted beer refrigerator, her crimped black tutu stuffed up against the wall behind her; she blew the dust from the silvered nails she had been filing into points.  The spiderweb tattoos spanning her neck were in turn encircled by a collar of steel-pronged leather.  Her legs swung slowly against the weight of massive platform boots.

“I’m Cybelle, she’s Lydia.” she assured him.  “How’d you dodge the ávnr?" 

Looking from one to the other, William noticed for the first time that both women wore the same narrow, tattooed insignia on their foreheads, and he blinked past the failing charm that had concealed it.  He glanced back toward the door and it's softly clattering curtain.

“Er... yeah, that stuff doesn’t work on me sometimes, it’s...”

“Who sent you?” the blonde demanded, looking to her partner incredulously.  He recalled Frederica’s injunction and smiled.

“Tilde said you might be able to help me.”

The women chuckled darkly at his falsehood.  Two rows of little black ducks had been inked into the skin of both their forearms; he counted seventeen before the total disappeared beneath Lydia’s sleeve.  Cybelle slid down and leant over the bar beside him, lighting a chocolate-papered cigarette from the candles.  William placed a roll of bills on the counter. 

“I need some practical advice.  I...”
“What are you?” the white-haired witch inquired.  She eased herself up onto the marble and leant forward on her hands and knees, staring into his eyes with a gaze that darkened as though infused with a staining agent.  “Holy freaking crap, you’re threefold...”
“No way.” Lydia avowed, inspecting him more closely.  Their exclamations attracted the attention of the senior practitioners at the tables behind him, halting their conversations.  
"Damn, you're a threefold fam."  Cybelle looked toward Lydia.  "A threefold familiar this big, opposable thumbs, verbal fidelity...” she continued, describing his gifts as they occurred to both herself and her proximate colleagues.  With eyes like the shadowed orbits of the skull beside her, she lay back on her elbows, blowing a slow chestfull of smoke at the ceiling, the other witches sliding up against the bar on either side to assay him in an eerily similar manner.  "I know who he is..." she smirked.  "You're Edward Lamb's brother."
“Do you have any Latin?” a newcomer inquired.
“You know he does." another assured her.  William sucked in his lower lip.

“Okay, so... I want to banish someone...” he confided.

"Half-inch chain would hold him...” Cybelle suggested, as though arguing with herself against such an expedient.  He felt hands sliding along his arms as the figures massing about him sampled the texture of his skin.  Lydia squinted critically at him and took a shot of liquor already swaying in its silvery little vessel from beneath the bar, shucking it across the counter at him.  The candle flame writhed in its crystalline belly as she butted the glass against his knuckles.  

​“Beast, you sure you don’t need a job, because to me you look underemployed.” she told him.
“Be all you can be.” her partner agreed, laying one leg over the other and swinging her boot by his ear, its toe lifting the hair from his neck.  "Lyddy's solid gold, but I'll let you fill my position."  

He shrugged slightly against the intensity of the interest coiling about him, and glanced down at the glass, easing it back toward its purveyor.

“I’ve er, I’ve seen banishing done but I need help with the details..."

The two witches regarded one another with an expression laden with arid sentiment, and Cybelle returned to the beer fridge, shuffling her frilled derriére back against the wall.

“Align the head to the south, run through the whole text, if you fluff a line, repeat it... keep the head south when you put it in the ground.  And peg a net over the hole once you’ve patted it down.  Don't use lime... it cooks the grass.  Too much decomp signature.” Lydia told him.  

“A net?”

“Chicken wire.” Cybelle smiled blackly.  “Eight by eight foot, stake it down hard.  Stops the raccoons.  And dogs.  That way your neighbours don’t get chunks on their kitchen floor.”  The women shared a look that glittered with some private reference.  

“It’s all about affinity.” Lydia told him, sucking her stomach in as she poked the cash down into the front of her jeans.  “Like commands like.”  

​“You got like, right?” asked Cybelle, lifting her chin and stroking an itch on the side of her neck.  He expressed a curse in his own tongue, throwing the silvery curtain aside and striding out into the street. 

​William scowled at Lilian from behind the wheel. 

“It’s a dead body, alright?  I had a ritual in mind, but it turns out I need a female corpse and that's against my religion so I’m back to square one.” he sighed.

“You’re such an asshole.” she told him, bringing her phone to her ear.  He overheard his brother’s voice and watched a smile spread across her lips, her lashes falling with the gaze toward the darkness at her feet; for a moment he chided his own revilement of their bond in the face of the private, esoteric happiness it brought her.  “He’s back.” she murmured.

William found that Susan had fallen asleep across the end of his bed, snoring irregularly beside the photo album she had pulled from underneath the mattress.  She lay slackly on her side with a little stream of drool at the corner of her mouth.  In the bathroom he washed the smell of death from his hands and arms before returning to her, sitting down on the edge of the bed to draw her feet into his lap and unbuckle her silver shoes.

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce 


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Sad Kente: experimental hand-washing of a vintage silk textile.

10/8/2016

 
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Philip at The Old Trout Boutique had a textile calamity a while back; to cut a long story short, two of his lovely vintage kente cloths ended up in an attic in plastic bags getting mouldy and buggered. Sadness! 
​

​I'd never actually handled a kente before and was both impressed by their beauty and appalled by their fate, so I offered to have a go at washing them in the hope that we could salvage some sections.  < Here they are on the ivy wall catching some UV to kill those shitty mould spores.

Wet-washing vintage textiles is always contentious.  Most authorities advise against it because amateur munters have ruined a good chunk of the historical record with their ham-fisted laundering fails.  Under normal circumstances I would never wash pieces like this and I do not advocate it unless you either really know what you're doing or the item is definitely not historically or academically important.  Establish that before you wash something, not afterwards.
In this case, both kentes were stinky landfill anyway so we literally had nothing to lose and I thought we might as well squeeze some learnings out of this misfortune.  

​Older kentes are generally medium-weight silk with some cotton. In my experience, ethnographic textiles from the 20thC often feature both stable and unstable dyes, and so it was with this piece.
It's best to just assume you'll be dealing with leaky dyes when you're washing an older textile.
​
Though the structure was generally still robust, this blue kente was grimy and tired, with mould, a few rotted holes and some of the strip-woven sections were coming apart.

I ran a third of a bath of cold water, shook up some conventional glycerine hand soap in a jar of hot water and added it along with a litre or so of plain white vinegar to the bath.  (Mould stink is one of the most stubborn smells to try and exorcise but vinegar tends to abolish all manner of aromatic funkiness.  It also tends to prevent fugitive dyes from 'fixing' in the lighter sections of the weave during the wash.)  

​With the water lukewarm (not hot- don't be tempted) I submersed the fabric and subjected it to a bit of gentle manual agitation to ensure even exposure to the water and to coax some of that dirt free.  No scrubbing, just swishing around. 
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Never, ever actively scrub an older textile, no matter how much you'd like to.  A stain is always better than a bald patch or a hole.  Below: the loose dye and general dirt that came free.
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After ten minutes of this very respectful treatment I drained the bath, lay the kente as flat as possible in the empty tub and used the shower head to hose it off immediately (always cold water), paying attention to both sides of the cloth.  

Be really careful with wet textiles; they're in a weakened state and all that extra weight makes them particularly easy to rip.  Try to find someone to help you handle and support the larger pieces.
You want to flush the soap and keep that rogue dye headed for the drain. If you have a nice smooth concrete driveway with a slope, take it out there, lie it flat and hit it with the garden hose (not too hard). Blast all that loose dye and dirt away before it can be reabsorbed by the wet fibres. Try to refrain from concentrating too hard on any one area or you could end up with patchy colour.
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When the rinse water was looking cleaner, I let the fabric drain briefly in the bath.  There is still a slight danger of dye bleed so keep an eye on it and don't be tempted to squeeze or bunch the fabric.  

Ideally, silk should be laid out flat somewhere shady to dry because wet suspension can stretch the fibres and cause permanent deformation.  But it's the middle of winter and and I don't have clean dry grass or a concrete pad handy, so this guy goes on the washing line.  Never peg silk or vintage cloth and if your dyes remain stubbornly unstable, try to ensure the doubled-over areas don't come into contact with each other while still wet.  Laid flat and straight on an old towel or sheet is best if you can possibly manage it.  I should have laid a towel over this wire line but I didn't think of it.
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Don't panic if your wet fabric looks substantially different from its original state.  They usually dry lighter.  Expect a small degree of lustre loss in shiny virgin silks- that's just how the biscuit breaks down.

Observations: A moderate amount of blue dye exited stage left in the rinse, but the blue sections were only very slightly (maybe 5%) lighter overall and there was little to no staining in the lighter colours- even the yellow resisted.
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So from a purely chromatic point of view, the result was perfectly acceptable.  Much of the speckly mould staining departed and what remained was substantially diminished, along with that surface dirt dinginess.  Not a hint of nasty mould stink remained, even to my very particular nose.  Silk is always texturally affected by washing no matter what you do, but in this case the change to its handle was limited to a maybe 5-10% loss of that absolute virgin pliability via a slight contraction of the weave, which did not amount to noticeable shrinkage.  I forgot to take pics before I gave the kente back but any differences were too subtle for the camera to convey anyway.  There is no hint of vinegar scent after a few hours in fresh air, if you were worried about that.  I haven't washed the yellow kente yet and I will update this item when I do.

Verdict?  Both thumbs up to this treatment in the case of (non-significant) textiles that are otherwise too stinky or too dirty to tolerate.  I was surprised at the decent colour retention and pretty sure I could have gone a wee bit harder with the soap concentration without detriment to the fabric.  Your results may vary depending on your dyes and construction, but if your item is otherwise destined for the discard pile, you might as well roll the dice and give this process a try.  Substantial portions of these kentes can now be salvaged for further use, and that is gratifying.

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Monday slash Tuesday slash fuck off winter and tonsils

9/8/2016

 
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> Don't like the look of that poor little Aloe capitata there, though.  That bruisey patchiness, so close to the basal area- no bueño.
Oh so now you're going to bring it with the sub-zero bullshit- in the last few days of winter when all the plants are feeling horny and expansive and are busy extruding their delicate private parts.  We had a big dump of snow inland and a hill sprinkling hereabouts, which sent a bunch of cold air rolling down the hills onto our arses.  I got the frost cloths out in time but there may still be a couple of casualties.

< The Red Angel Trumpet datura took it in the face but it'll be fine; I don't think it will even defoliate.  
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Most of you in temperate areas will be looking at these pissy little barely-subzero frost shots and rolling the fuck out of yours eyes in anticipation of the metre of snow headed your way sooner than you care to imagine, summer lovers * Andrew Eldritch laughter*   But we're maritime/
mediterranean zone succulent fanciers and this is gratuitous attention-seeking bollocks from a winter that's barely bothered to show up at all.
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In blog content news, I have some sort of weird tonsil/ear tube virusy thing that's going around and fucking with my ability to concentrate, so you might not get much in the way of original output this week.  You don't even care because you're out enjoying summer and looking to hook up at the park or the pub or whatever.  You're probably checking out someone's arse right now as they walk past you and not even reading this carefully-crafted sentence.  So I will go back to bed and suffer in dignified underappreciated silence, consoling myself with hot Olympic musculature and learning the bass part for this song because I can't believe I never have and even though this version doesn't have one.

This might get me burned at the stake but I like the solo version.  This song was born to be shrieked over a tape track by a lone pencilneck in sweaty linen and white trainers.

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liked this mask & modelling by Christoph Bader for Bjork

7/8/2016

 
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' Rottlace is a family of masks designed for Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk. Inspired by Björk’s most recent album - Vulnicura - the Mediated Matter Group explored themes associated with self-healing and expressing ‘the face without a skin'. One of the masks from the series was selected for Björk’s stage performance at the Tokyo Miraikan Museum, and 3D printed by Stratasys using multi-material printing. '

*Rottlace is a cognate of Roðlaus (“skinless” in Icelandic).

See the entire project here




The Blackthorn Orphans Serialization:  Gnosis 9

5/8/2016

 
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Helping Susan into a taxi and watching it drive her away was an exercise in smiling self control that had almost defeated him when she slid across to make room, giggling and patting the upholstery with a wanton grin.  Having watched the vehicle out of sight along the avenue, William attended to his phone, blowing a sigh as he put it to his ear.

“I’m in the car right now.”
“No, hey it’s cool, I met a trick... I’ll meet you out front in an hour.” Lilian assured him, dragging on her cigarette.  William rubbed an eye with his free hand, speaking through his teeth.
“I just sent Susan home after she made several lewd offers of her person.” 
“Wow... to you?” she laughed.  He threw his phone down onto the passenger seat and pulled the Jaguar into a wide U-turn across the avenue, directing it back toward Avalon.

Desultory business at the Black Moth allowed William to collect his thoughts at the bar, though a waitress, bloodless shoulders sagging over her black basque, regarded him from behind it with a hooded and unremitting gaze, as though she were sick with poison.  She picked at the sore on her chin while he regarded the row of smeary spirit bottles behind her head.  The stale, bone-grey smell of death floated in the dry ice behind him.

“It's all outta two drums.  We got light or we got dark.” she advised.

“Light.” he murmured.  At the word, Siobhan slid along the counter toward them as though on wheels, smacking red lips together.  The plunging V-neck in the creature’s cerise crepe gown revealed the fleshless hollow on either side of its breastbone; ropy black veins, bloated with stolen blood, radiated outward from its pointed sternum over a narrow fan of ribs. 

“What ye havin, Lammeh?  Jolene here bin keepin ye fuckin whistle wet?” it croaked, glancing at the barmaid as she shuffled off.
“She’s been great, thanks.” said William.   
“Ahm trainin her up.  She were real fuckin friendleh t’start with but ah durn beat that cornball shit outta her.”
“I need a stiff.  Maybe two.  No... one.”
“Well, ye know what they fuckin say bout that.  Two’s a crowd an three’s a pardy heh heh heh.”  Siobhan mopped at the counter top with a filthy rag, squinting at William speculatively.  “What c'ndition ye lookin fer?”
“Fresh is best.”
“Ah got a real nahce tow piece ah picked up down th’ fuckin pier... she were good t’go when she were kickin.  Bitch durn wriggle lahk a fuckin cut snake.  Now, ah aint gonna lie... she’s shop-soiled... still got skin last time ah looked, but.”  Smirking at William’s cool reception of its remarks, the vampyre shook its small head in exasperation.  “Ye gotta git over all this shit bout not desecratin women, havin feelins fer em, whatever the fuck else keeps ye awake a'night.  It aint natural, an they don’t fuckin thank ye.”
“A stockbroker suicide would be great” 
“Speakin a killin sprees... where’s ye bad-seed fuckin son of...”
“Ed’s in Spain.”
“S’at so?  Wha...”
“Working.”
“Werkin?  Werkin out how ta ass-fuck th’ rest a us with them inbred fuckin Cont’nentals, or partin out some critter that don’t need ta fuckin die jest yet... that’s what he’s fuckin all bout, certes...” Siobhan muttered bitterly.  “An what a yew doin anent that shit?  Nothin.  Feedin ye fuckin jungle dick t’ half-wit poontang.”

​William stood from his seat and skirted the loose clot of slaves and predators shuffling on the dance floor on his way out.  

By the time he had reached the Jaguar his host had effected its own appearance in the dripping green shadows of the fire escape, pushing a geriatric wheel chair weighed down with a bundle swathed in potato sacks and tied tightly at several points with thick hemp string.  The vampyre negotiated the potholes and pushed the chair up beside him with an ingratiating smirk as he sat down behind the wheel.

“Whatever it is, it smells like Eid in Zakatal.” he scowled.

“Quit ye fuckin whinin.  It’s as good as ah got.  That’ll be four hun’ded and a fuckin thank-ye.” the creature grunted, wiping its hands on the sides of its dress.  Siobhan was barely half his size, cheated by the grim colonial deprivation of its nativity and bent by the arduous and unrelenting demands of its own corruption.  It reached over and loosened one of the hemp ties, tugging back the sacking to expose the cadaver’s arm.  “Nice an fuckin tight.  Don’t go tellin meh ye aint got no fuckin use fer em... there aint nothing they kint do.” it chuckled, aiming a laborious wink at him.  

​“One fifty.”  

The vampyre gasped as though winded, sitting down into the cold lap of the corpse and causing the wheelchair to sag on its joints.

“Three seventeh-fahve.”  William wound up the window glass against its leering features and brought the ignition wires together.  “Three fifteh.”  When it was handed two crumpled bills over the window the vampyre hissed and spluttered, enraged.  “Ah must look lahk one a ye cock-hungry bitches, cause ye sure tryin ta git meh ov’r a fuckin chair.”

“In the boot is fine.” he told it, remaining where he was while Siobhan humped the wheelchair over the cobbles and tipped its rigid contents onto the ground behind the car, steering its clattering vehicle back toward the club without a backward glance.  Cursing, William got out and stuffed the body into the boot himself, slumped back down in the front seat, frowned, and then leapt back out again, brushing himself off in the alleyway in an attempt to disperse the smell from his clothing.

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce


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