But don't be fooled by the bullet shot; direct daylight makes every darn thing look like Viva Glam I.   The swatch above was taken in slightly cool indoor daylight and while Russian Red is looking a liiittle freaky, the others are close to median reality.  In the shot above right I'm wearing OPI Germanicure on my nails for reference.  

Sin is really just as delicious as all those LE tricks we chase so hard, certainly performs better than most of them and given it's being issued with the upcoming MAC Rocky Horror collection, I thought it was time to bust out a review of my own.  Are you as disappointed with the Rocky Horror sticks as I was?  Pff.  Franky is pretty much my spirit animal and I am revving my very own electric carving knife at MAC for not producing something a lot more nastily fabulous.

Sin is a mesmerising exercise in monotone.  Boiled wine is phrase that enters my head when I look at it for any length of time, probably in reference to its monster, doubled-down saturation.  I was surprised at how different it is to Diva, since I tend to get them mixed up in the glittery soup that is my forebrain.  Sin is much more blackened and Syrah-deep than Diva and is probably the darkest of MAC's permanent mattes.  In spite of all of this pigmented goodness, it manages to stay tight and even rather than clumping up; I mean, look at the swatches, especially the one below left- I was slathering it on hard and that kind of smoothness is some next-level shit.  

Sin is wonderfully photogenic, is beloved by MUAs for the drama and intensity it brings to other shades and is involved in a lot of those runway/red carpet looks that everyone loses their shit over trying to find out which shade Random Plastique McDucklips is werqing.  It makes fantastic drop-dead garnets with things like Ruby Woo.

<  Here we have Sin sheered out + maxed out.  In this climate I find the tube benefits from sitting in the sun for a few minutes in winter before application; too cold and it can be a stiff bitch to work with.  This tenacity equals great lifespan, though; Sin persists until you scrub it off.  There's zero bleeding as you might expect from something this resolutely matte, no shine at all and only faint staining.  Despite its rather dry (but not unbearable) mouth-feel it doesn't fuck up my lips like a Retro Matte or some of the nastier MAC lustres.  And it's going to the front of the lipstick box right now.  

On leaving the Jaguar parked in an adjacent alley William and Susan negotiated the refuse-clogged way outside the Black Moth, the latter pausing to stand beneath the alien-green neon of the titular insect and watch it fly in a halting arc toward the wall, where it was extinguished in a dry, static buzz.  The night sky pressed down upon the greening brick to either side, airless and opaque; a fat drip struck the fetid black pool inside a dumpster with a lonely, reboant note that made her queasily disinclined to linger.  He pressed a hand against a stretch of patched mortar and pulled back a trompe l'oeil partition when it sprang free, all the more convincing for having assumed the moist, shaded decrepitude of its surrounds.  She was not eager to follow him, moved to do so only by her greater reluctance to remain in the alleyway alone.

The door behind the panel hung on blackened strap hinges as wide as her thigh.  Though she found she could stand upright in the passage beyond, William was forced to assume a hunch in order to descend steps hewn from clammy bedrock, their treads worn concave beneath ponderous timbers butted overhead, so that the passage resembled the shaft of an abandoned mine.  A single naked bulb protruding from the wall like a waxy rhizome provided an uncertain light.  The chrome-like smell of groundwater seeping through the rock conspired with the impoverished air to turn her misgivings into physical discomfort.

“Now you know how the gerbil feels.” he suggested, leaning back against the wall and allowing her a view of the landing dimly apparent below.  She drew him back toward herself.  
“We need some sort of thing... I’ll... I'll touch my nose, if I want out.  Don’t forget.”
“Or you could just ask to leave."
“No!  I don’t want it thinking I’ve bottled out.”  
“Christabel, if it even looks at you the wrong way, I’ll rip its fucking head off.” he promised.  
“Please don’t ever do anything like that in front of me.” she whispered, then smiled, leaning closer to him in the darkness.  “But that did sound very butch.”  He bumped her with his hip, grinning, and they concluded their descent, Susan waiting while he pounded on another ponderous door.

It was hauled back on shrieking hinges and a pallid, knuckle-faced inmate shuffled forward to squint at them, affecting myopia in order to survey Susan intimately while it slathered a tube of panstick over its chin.  The creature stepped aside to allow them in, a flesh-coloured skull cap imprisoning what remained of its hair in the absence of a wig.  A terrible smell wafted from the lurid green satin of its housecoat.

“Heh... mighty nice a ye t’ git back th’ wernce after ah call ye three score fuckin tahmes.” Siobhan muttered, returning to a dressing table and seating its sagging frame upon the velvet stool.  Summoning the will to gaze at their surroundings, Susan found they stood inside a domed chamber almost the size of William’s bedroom, though it seemed much smaller in the stagnant darkness, the sloping walls daubed with lime and streaked here and there with gruesome splashes of brown.  The blue stone floor was intensely cold through the soles of her boots, as if sealing the pit of an obsolete hell.  A sooty encrustation marked the ceiling where it flickered orange over an iron candelabra, a floating aroid stink exuding from its icterical tapers.  The same candles stood on the crowded dresser, once the pride of some post-war debutante, sickly kitsch amid the shambolic herd of balding, uncouth colonial pieces, fashioned by farmers' sons in a twisted spirit of apathy and repression.  Nailed to the plaster were a trio of polyester rugs featuring white tigers disporting in a rainbow jungle and a band of Arab horsemen carousing through an oasis, the second identical to the third, but for a slight chromatic variation.  Their arrangement curled Susan's toes inside her shoes, as did the taste already forming on her tongue, of aged orange candy rolled in graveyard soil.  Siobhan’s wardrobe hung from a stand, the vintage gowns sagging like the freshly-flayed skins of alien fauna.  

The dresser mirrors returned a perfectly faithful, if gruesome, triptych of the creature, contrary to popular supposition, while it flicked dust from a pair of electric blue lashes and began their application.  William sat down on one of the daybeds, long arms lying in passive disuse on either side.  The vampyre devoted a jaundiced eye to Susan.  

“Thought ahd git meh a better fuckin look at lil White Dove, since ye seen fit t’ ella-vate her t’ the rank of kint say ye weren’t fuckin warned."  Its manifestly anaerobic state produced speech that was airless despite its rancour, the wingless observations flopping at her feet.

“I didn’t ask to be told if that makes you feel better." she replied.   

"S'at raght?  Guess every night's a fuckin hentai night now, aint it?" Siobhan smirked, warming to the subject.  "Mebbe ye kin riddle me this... rumour fuckin has it old Red here gits in t' double figures with his icy fuckin devil-wood... can ye con-firm or de-ny?"  William bit a loose claw from his fingertip and spat it onto the floor, shrugging at her narrow, pointed glance.  "An kin ye tell meh... do it blow hot or cold up there aginst ye chit'lins?"  It was visibly gratified by her wordless stare, and turned back to her companion.  “Fuckin lights look on, but there aint much home, ah'd sey." it chuckled.  "Used t’ be th' thing standin tween a cooter an ye private fuckin dealins was a edu-cational whuppin, but ah kin see ye aint raised a guiding fuckin hand t' this wern.” the vampyre complained.  “Ye gotta git em in th’ house an git em too full a child t' fuckin run.  Mah mammeh, she fed critters, cut corn, cook’d, chop wood an still bend over fer mah pappy when he durn whissle at her... only peep ye fuckin heared outta her were when she squit out another fuckin mouth t’ feed down bah th’ tater yard.”  Siobhan directed a thumb at Susan.  “Ye cud still set her on the path, an hev yeself a fuckin tahme into th’ bargin.  Even eight month gone, ah bet she still look thirteen from be-hind."  

Taking out a cigarette, William looked to Susan with a wide-eyed grimace, touching his nose repeatedly.  She pressed a dry smile into submission.

“You could have told me that on the phone.” he sighed.  Siobhan swore and ripped off its misplaced lashes, shaking its little bullet head; its mouth dropped open and its eyes wrinkled up into slits, and Susan watched in horror as something resembling a monstrous sneeze was propelled in her direction, a spray of cold, watery blood from its flared nostrils splattering her even as she jumped back.  The vampyre sat wracked by silent, gaping laughter at the sight of her expression.

“Did ah git ye?” it cackled hoarsely.  She stared down at the dark spots soaking into the suede of her coat.  “Are we gonna fuckin sit here lahk she aint a im-pediment t’ e-ffectual fuckin communication much longer, ‘cause yew surely aint th’ only shit ah got t’ deal with.”
“I’m not standing out there on my own.” she told them.
“She’s not standing out there on her own.” William reiterated.
“So ye fuckin what now?  Ye know bout everywern?” it demanded of her; she stood frustrated in her inability to command the silence as expertly as William, who sat as tacit and unreadable as the stone beneath her feet.  Siobhan circled its lips with orange gloss and precious little regard for physiological convention.  "This shit's got more fuckin gut-laughs than a wall-eyed re-tard with a flayin knafe... in-formin yer bitches... gittin chugged fer th' soshul pages, bein a degenerit fuckin drug fiend or de-jayin nekkid or some other hell-bound fuckin outrage... an ye jest hed t’ fuck that piece Opal were raisin up straight, then ye jest hed t’ put her in th’ river when it turn out about as good a idea as jammin ye dick in a fuckin hornet nest... brung untold fuckin shit down on us... rott’n po-lice... now ye gummin' them shitpumps from th' Old Side jest prior to 'em kickin down our fuckin doors..."  Tearing a glittering sheath from the rack of gowns, the vampyre dumped its robe and began struggling into the dress, tugging it over the bony little processes studding its sunken cadaver.  Breathing slowly, Susan moved toward the door, hoping for some merciful draft of sodden air from outside.  William lifted a hand against the sight of the creature's ensemblé.

“Siobhan, sequins are for the living.”
"Teh!  What kinda live bitch kin rock all this at wernce?  There aint one!" the vampyre retorted.  
"No one with a fucking dumpster full of missing minors and a don't-ask organ trade gets to tell me to tone it down."
"Heh heh heh, that's raght... ye don't git t'be older then Satan hisself without knowin how t' slap th' fuckin blame down on the rah-chus.  Now this cooch durn know us all by our first fuckin names, an a shit an a shave aint gonna help yew beat the fuckin line-up when she's durn yappin t' th' gover-mint!"
"Actually, I think I will stand out there on my own." Susan asserted, glowering at him beside the door.  
"Ye kin square ye fuckin tab b'fore ye go." Siobhan muttered, squinting harder as it slapped a cloud of powder onto its nose with a greasy puff.  
“We're having liquidity issues." William advised languidly.  "Opal ripped Ed Brazilian-styles, so have a fucking heart.”  
“Boo fuckin hoo.  That ol’ split-tail frauds her ‘sociates lahk a tick bites fuckin curs.  Aint no con-cern a mine." the vampyre observed, wiping a case of cocktail cigarettes from the dresser.  “Git ye asscheeks topside an settle up... ah'll tek what ye got on ye.  Aint none a us gittin any fuckin younger.”

C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe   do not reproduce

This is Hamish, my mother's dog, and his look of cheesy undershot inquiry.  Hamish fronts like one of those lovely little fluffy white darlings but his hobbies include chasing rubbish trucks, lunging at poultry, frenzied excavation, yapping at storms, cat persecution, household drain inspection, twitchy food-guarding and treating himself to decaying possums and hedgehog shit, both internally and externally.  Our poodle Felix, one year his junior, regards him as some kind of riant thuglife demigod and worships him shamelessly, following him around, agreeing with everything he says, carrying his pimp coat and probably lighting his cigarettes when we're not looking.  If Hamish told him to jump off a cliff, he totally would.  

Neither a leader nor a follower be; a lesson to us all.

"Luzinterruptus & the Dockville festival’s 100 man installation ‘Radioactive Control’ is represented in Hamburg, Germany. This project brings up the issues of nuclear plants & radiation that’s currently spreading in Japan."
actegratuit

A year ago I would have beaten you with a switch for suggesting I walk uphill at pace for a sustained period.  It's amazing what ditching a sizeable volume of delicious lard can do for a person; I highly recommend it to anyone looking to become an obsessive self-righteous health bore complete with lengthy exhortative monologues on a permanent basis.  If all this sounds idyllic, as you're reading perhaps imagine me droning, slightly breathlessly, about the latest nutrition research whilst walking too fucking quickly up a 20º grade.  Our dog drags on the lead a lot and raves at other dogs like a psychopath; we're constantly reassuring/apologising to strangers.  It's the start of the good weather so we're already sweating under three layers; the sun is hitting you right in the backs of your eyes and we forgot our water bottle.  You're wishing you were here right now, aren't you?  Aren't you?  Blink twice for no.

^ Funny story.  We almost bought this enormous rimu villa (above left) back when we first moved to Port, (it could have been ours for about 90 grand) but couldn't afford it.  Did I say funny story?  I meant true.

Many if not most of the Christchurch examples of this grand format were munted in the recent earthquakes, both by seismic activity and the dreadful attentions of overly expedient owners and insurance companies after the fact.  As with most things, some of the worst aspects of any natural disaster are anthropogenic.

ABOVE RIGHT   Rows of old shopfronts on Grey St.   BELOW  Town Hall, just across from them.  

Right, so we're at the bottom of this hill and juuuust about to head up another and into the wilds proper when I cut this pictorial short and condemn you to the infernal limbo of yet another fucking serialisation.  Will we make it past the Port Royal café with its beguiling and eternal sillage of frying bacon or will our scenic quest for fitness end with a face plant into a plate of crispy pig and cinnamon pinwheels with maybe some hot chocolate on the side, even though there are no marshmallows in that shit?  

Find out.  Next Week.  In Part II.

Despite looking more Irish than Paddy's pig (apparently) thanks to the blunt force of dominant paternal inheritance, I recently discovered Iberian mitochondrial roots, and that is bitterly ironic and poignant and consoling all at once, for a host of private reasons.  It also explains a lot.  The never wanting to go out before midnight.  Sleeping in the afternoon.  The loud arguing.  My thing for almonds, Español, Spanish men and their Spanish hair.  Flamenco has always given me such a fucking hard on; the flesh wants what it wants.  We are all subject to its mysterious imperatives.

Like the cameraman (because you know it's a guy), I am somewhat mesmerised by this dancer's delicious posterior.  Absorb her moves, let the whole thing roam your bloodstream and try to keep one eye on that guy's strumming hand because: ¡muy bueno!  

There seems to me an obvious connection between Roma dance practise and the nautch ( नाच, nāc) dancing of their Indian antecedents, with a few Middle Eastern influences collected along the way.  A Spanish associate told me of stuffing himself into ever-tinier flamenco joints in southern Spain back in the day, complaining of low ceilings (he was 6'3") and assuring me if you weren't shitting your pants with fear at 3.30am in some random alley to see it, the show wasn't worth the mugging.  But he was a drama queen and a music snob so he may have been exaggerating.

The house had begun to cast an angled pall over the swimming pool in the last hours of the afternoon, darkening the water.  Susan pushed off from amid the leaves that had settled on the bottom and broke the surface, climbing out over the side into the sun and dropping a trail of water behind her.  Her pink T-shirt bra and polkadot knickers were pasted in translucent ripples to her skin; she glanced back at the house before reaching down with both hands to adjust the latter garment on her rump while William ended his phone call.

“These things ride up my bum like a bloody gay cowboy.” she complained.

"Now my pants are chafing me.” he sighed, groaning as she turned and shuffled her damp behind against him, turquoise dye running from her sodden hair along her back and into the towel she wound around herself.  

“And it’s cold as a witch’s tit.”  
“That’s just an old wives' tale.” William smiled.
“Yes, well you’re the expert...” she conceded, frowning as she slumped down on the lounge beside him and accepted the enormous blunt that he had almost finished, coughing at its egregious potency.  “Since you are an expert, how do you rate my tits?”

“Oh no no no... there is not a thing you can do to make me compare any portion of your person to that of any other female creature, living, dead or imaginated."
"Come on... you must have seen a lot of boobs."
"And they are a great comfort to me, as are yours."  
She coughed again and waved the smoke away, handing it back to him.
"All I want to kn..."
"More than a handful is a bonus, less is an opportunity for something else to shine.  They are all more interesting than my own, and I am grateful for every pair that comes my way.  That’s all I have to say on the fucking matter since the Count of Toulouse’s sister threw pot-au-feu at me for agreeing with her fuckbuddy that she had a third nipple.” he assured her bitterly.  She chuckled and lay her head beside his.
"Am I cheering you up?" 
"Does a hard-on count?"
"It might." she smirked, drawing the towel from the region in question and stroking it fondly, causing his eyes to roll slowly backward.  “But if you don't get the hot water on in your bathroom we might never have sex again, because I don’t fancy mine any more.”  He sighed at the unflagging nature of the insistence.  “It is not unreasonable of me to not want to use a bath a vampyre's been lying in all day like Gary bloody Oldman."  She scowled again.  "Why does Lilian get hot water and I don't?”  William pulled the towel over his head; she tugged it off him.  "Who was that on the phone?"
"Fucking Auberjonois." he admitted.  "He's in town for the Christie's."
"Really?"  Her smile exacerbated his frown.  "We should take him out to dinner.  Oh come on... I've seen his picture... I know he's fit."
"That plouc salopard thinks I’m rough trade.  Do you know how it feels to be thought of as rough trade by someone who eats fucking pigs' feet and loses their pants in the woods?”
“My nana used to eat pigs' feet.” she laughed, wiping at her eyes.
“Did she get pantsless amnesia twelve times a year?”  Susan did not reply, her cheeks flushed as her mind’s eye was taken by a notion that aroused his suspicion.  “I have this weird feeling, like somewhere, someone is abusing my personal history for their own unsavoury gratification.” he complained, at which she burst into unabashed laughter.
“Well if you weren’t such a horrible slapper it wouldn’t even occur to me to think about you getting off with hot French guys, in one of those shower rooms... with shiny black tiles... and those rails on the wall... to hold on to..." she admitted, picking at the nap of the towel.  "I like how body oil looks, but it is slippery and I wouldn't want you to fall over or anything, because in my mind, you're standing up, and h...”  
“You are so barred from that material from now on."  
"I think you might still be a little bit into him." Susan suggested, inspecting her nails.
"No."
"You are..." she grinned.  "Look at your face."  

His phone began to vibrate again, scudding in a slow arc across the paver beside them; she picked up his hand and placed it on the neglected appliance, laughing as she tried to form his spastic white fingers into a grip, lifting them together and holding it up to his reluctant eyes.  

“Fuck... it’s Siobhan.” he complained, scowling against the prospect, then hissing a private warning.  “Christabel... psychokiller, qu’est-ce que c’est...”

She looked toward the house in time to see Edward step down onto the grass with a face that tightened her grasp on her towel, its perfect absence of expression somehow more terrible than any overt demonstration.  William glanced at her as the sound of her pulse accelerated, his brother halting before them.

“Ms Christabel, I no longer require your services.  I've deposited a severance into your account as compensation for the short notice.” Edward told her.

“You’re sacking me again?” she exclaimed, in spite of herself.  He turned his vivid gaze on her, the colour shifting with their interest.  
“Changing personal circumstances.” he replied. 
“These personal fucking circumstances better involve smallpox or demonic possession.” William scowled.  "And where the fuck is Frost?  I haven’t seen her for days.” he demanded over Susan's attempt to quiet him.  At her intervention Edward looked down again, her reaction attracting his instinctive scrutiny.  

“She wants privacy.  I am providing it.”
“If Christabel goes, I go with her, and that leaves Frost here on her own... if you don’t give a shit about that, I do.” William assured him.

As Edward returned to the house without addressing the concern she gasped a dyspeptic breath and pressed a hand to her chest. 

“He knows... you saw his face..."    
"He always looks like that."
"Fucking hell.  Now I’m unemployed.” she hissed, hands on her hips.
“Christabel, just go on the game like everyone else... I don't mind.  The Black Death was just a fucking marmot issue when I started paying for it.  You'll never be hungry again."  Though she swung a slap at his arm, her attention was claimed by the guard as the latter walked across the back of the house, raising a hand in a greeting she ignored until William picked up her arm and waved it for her.  “You might not like him but you have to agree he is unfeasibly gifted in the arsal region.”
“You're not the one who has to sit there every morning while he makes one stupid cup of coffee last three quarters of a bloody hour and asks personal questions.”
"You never mentioned him fancying you..."
"He doesn't, at all.  That's the creepy thing about it." she muttered.
“If Rana’s still around she’ll pop his clogs, if that’s any consolation.”

She shook her head to herself as she rolled the towel down around her waist, slapping his hand away.

C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe   do not reproduce

José Guadalupe Posadas
There will be a free exhibit of the artist in Rome very soon:
La muerte tiene permiso:
mostra di José Guadalupe Posadas INGRESSO LIBERO  Instituto Cervantes  from 23-10-2014 to 23-11-2014

Which makes me feel old, and in the words of the delightful Gabriel Byrne, tired all over.  But trust an old person to give it to you straight, because if there's one thing a gen-x junior metacrone doesn't give a shit about, it's your precious feelings.  We know you buy this stuff, wear it once around the house then dump it in a drawer because it looks fucking horrible on.  Don't feel too bad about that; it's not like I didn't fall for it too.  And it's not our fault; blue-mauves do not suit everyone, as is popularly stated over at MakeupAlley.  On the contrary, they barely suit anyone, and holy shit you're er, really wearing lipstick there isn't always a complimentary observation, no matter what an Ava or Maddison tells you.  Examine the swatches and ask yourself if that stripe second from the left is really how you want your mouth to look in daylight.  Because these images are pretty darn accurate, utilising both neutral daylight and colour-correction software.

Shades like Heroine make 90% of people look like something pinned in a rat trap after a meth binge, or like they've been tossing random clown salad.  And not in a good way.  It looks low-IQ, if you know what I mean.  Unintentionally  gacky.  The exceptions to this principle are the 5% on either end of the spectrum ie. people with either deepest delicious darkness or icing-sugar pallor in their epidermal fortunes.  Blue-purple can actually be conventionally pretty on those guys.  Blame organised religion.  If a monotheistic god fashioned us in such a manner and then imbued us with free will, it totally makes sense that we do dumb shit like buying Heroine.

 Yes- it will get you noticed.  Most likely noticed like the aforementioned clown is noticed while psychologically scarring children, so if you must wear shades like this, be prepared to own that awkwardness.  If you must wear it, forsake pretty and go for graphic instead; embrace the fucked up drama of looking like you put your face on in the dark; like that's exactly what you meant.  That's how you make stuff like Heroine your bitch, and not the other way around.

As you can see, it's not at all like Rebel, (which is the fuzzy stick to the left in < this pic for comparison) despite what you might have heard.  Rebel is much, much easier to wear, so don't buy Heroine thinking you're just getting a slightly more hardcore version.  The two mix well, though, and amendment with the former can salvage the latter when you eventually come to accept that it's just not working ( I'll wait here).  MAC Beet lip pencil is another life-saving addition and the one I favour personally.  

The formula's very nice, a smoothly-pigmented matte that's really more like a cross between a good amplified and a stiff satin, with a slight sheen and acceptable mouth-feel.  For a purple you get great even coverage.  So all in all, Heroine deserves some of the hype; it's just a shame it's such a broadly unflattering colour.  If you can embrace that difficulty and bend it to your will, good luck to you and wear it in good health.  But I have a feeling my tube's going to end up on the resale merry go round.

As a final irony after all these years of Heroine's infamous unavailability, check out the swatches below- on the far left we have MAC Violetta (beside Ruby Woo) and to the right we have Heroine (sheer + max).  I know Violetta is a frosty ho, but ignore the slight lighting differential- they're the same colour, folks.  Monozygotic twins.  The whole time.

EDIT: I've just discovered a really great use for Heroine- patted thinly over a neutral like Nars Walkyrie Velvet Matte, MAC Del Rio or Taupe.  Sounds mad, I know, but you get a fabulous subdued, complex mauve-tinted off-neutral that is really beautiful with grey, taupe or blue-shot purple clothing.  Try it! 

Taken at the Otago Museum.
I always want to read and say it as chilchid.
The Lovely R has a thing for fish and birds.  And grain.  Two out of three aint bad.

And oh god he's wearing a kilt with those boots and knee socks.  
Excuse me while I take a private moment for myself.

Do you drive?  We've never owned a car and are starting to feel pretty smug about that abstention now with everyone else selling a kidney to fuel and maintain the fucking things.  We hate what the combustion engine does to both cities and people and rejoice that bikes have seen such a resurgence in latter years.  While we currently walk almost everywhere, we'll be investing in a pair of wheels each once the cycleway from Dunedin to Port Chalmers is finished and we have a clear non-state-highway-full-of-logging-trucks run into town.

Enjoy this small slideshow of sexy machines.

Don't let anybody tell you you can't write a children's book.  That it's some... dazzling bastion of creative and intellectual excellence ordinary mortals can only view obliquely due to the scintillating magnitude of its (runs out of words, lacks the will to go on but you get the idea).  If you can muster the intellect to read a kid's book out loud, you can probably put one together yourself- I promise.  I mean, it may not be very good but jesus, who cares?  Your audience is four years old and it's all over in ten minutes or less.  

Why do adults get all bent about the content of Little Miss Poobar Does Whatever when kids just want you to read the damn thing already?  That's my sweeping, minimifidian and somewhat controversial position on the discipline, and with that in mind I approached this project without too many concerns about bruising tiny flowers/developmental psychology etc etc.  Besides, I'd made books for my first round of nieces and nephews; they were happy with the results and that should be good enough for anyone.  

My partner works at a primary school and I spend some time in their library checking out the mainstream and while these commercial efforts are yes, very lovely and well produced and oozing high-minded intentions... I dunno.  They're too... something.  Slick.  In that processed-cheesy sort of way.  Like there's this enormous looming edifice of plush, watchful convention and downtalking and politenessness breathing hot-chocolate breath into your face every time you turn a page.  There is way too much pandering to unformed, over-anticipated sensibilities, which seems to me a product of insecure educational policy in general and a source of the shitty spinelessness that afflicts so much contemporary fiction per se.  

Am I the only one who finds something a bit icky and perverse about the resources devoted to crafting and honing and finessing something that would be perhaps be better off simple, organic and even spontaneous?  I mean, I don't really care if I am, but it's from this point that I urge you to be creative on your own childrens' behalf.

In my day, Golden Books and those large-format Grimm-lite editions with the seriously fucked-up seventies big-eye shroomy illustrations were the shit.  The Grimm stuff astonished, disturbed and informed me with its fathomless social and cognitive insights; after all, it is the definitive condensation of the Indoeuropean myth cycle and remains an essential entrée into the Western human soup.  But I happily consumed the fluff along with the heftier stuff, benefiting from the contrast, gaining discernment, memorising everything and staring unblinkingly at the unlucky adult charged with delivering my nightly text fix, just waiting for them to try and slide an omission or abridgement past me.  You had to read the whole page again when that happened, even if you were coming off a double shift or hungover.

Kids seem just as predatory and demanding today as when I was personally larval.  Let's be comprehensively humane and give them what they know and want in ten minutes or less.  Everyone loves dinosaurs and everyone knows about houses; I decided to shrink the former and stuff them into the latter and stage the whole thing thusly.  

Text is hardly ever the problem, in my experience.  This lot was pretty much farted out in about an hour and anyone enjoying even the most basic facility with verse can do the same.  Pick a topic and write a few silly rhymey lines and you're three-quarters of the way there.  I mean- Tiny Little Dinosaurs- does it sound like you need a degree?  

Book illustration proper is a hugely skilled discipline and currently quite beyond my rusty self as far as commercial standards are concerned, but I can still make a watercolour pencil my bitch.  So there was that in my favour.  Since I wanted it to look like something their aunt drew for them on a boring weekend, my lapsed artist status actually came in handy.  (Yes, one of the dinosaurs defecates, but you know... it's motivated.) 

In considering my own manual skills, I thought it might be nice to encourage kids to acquire some of their own, so I included black and white line drawings of the illustrations along with the book itself for people to print out and colour in (see below).  If you'd like to do the same, just make sure you duplicate and save cleaned-up files of your own images before you add colour, filters, glitter or whatever you're intending. 

Layout and publication are pretty easy these days with things like E-pub (the industry standard) and everybody's friend, the trusty .PDF file.  Scan or jpeg your images, plop them onto the templates and there you go.  I was going to provide a Tiny Little Dinosaurs E-pub file via iTunes but decided just to put it on this site instead.  If it gets enough traffic I may reconsider.  

There's a few other kids books and bits of kids books lying around in the analogue archives so I might dust those off and post them in future.

A note on the general suitability of this site for underaged sensibilities- obviously, there are issues with this, depending on your level of prudery/helicoptering.  If you go directly to view the book, there's nothing to besmirch their little minds except the 'bitch' in the category 'Kitchen Bitch' in the overhead menu bar (the thing at the very top of the page)  Because it's a scrolling book, it's easy to just scoot down past that nastiness before you show the kids, but honestly, I can't change the layout just for one item and let's face it- they probably already know what it means and will most likely be calling you that under their breath before you can say puberty is a horrible place for everyone involved.  If you're having trouble viewing TLD and the site in general on your older iPad or laptop since I've added more flash and switched to 25 items per page, update your operating system or flash player and you should see an improvement. 

Find Tiny Little Dinosaurs onsite  H E R E.  You can access it and the print out images via the sidebar >> any time you like, and if you'd really like a .PDF for home use, just hit us up via Contact and I can email you one.  

Yes, for free, because I'm a sucker like that.  

William wore a faint, unconscious grimace as he listened at his brother's door, then knocked, pushing it open slowly.  Lilian lay on her hip on one side of the bed in a low black bra and underwear, a cigarette between her lips, while Edward stood by the other.  Between them on the mattress lay a dozen piles of banknotes of varying denominations, a small battery-operated counting machine, a slab-like crystal ashtray and the two pistols that he had cleaned and reloaded.  They looked up from their reckoning, and William shook his head.

"Never mind." he told them, retreating back into the hallway.

"This is everything in cash." Edward affirmed, gathering up the currency and effecting a roughly equal division while she put out her cigarette.

"Lamb, what the fuck did I say?  You can't carry my ass like this." she sighed.  He dropped his own allocation into a briefcase and set the locks, sliding it under the bed without responding to her complaint, though she shook her head and muttered to it.  Returning her gun to her handbag, Edward walked out onto the balcony with a sheave of papers and bottle of wine.

Distant frogs and persistent invertebrates offered their songs to a moon that was a half-spent token waning between idling clouds.  In the mild, permissive calm the elms dropped twigs of dead wood and leaves into the grass as though some scrupulous hand moved through their boughs, thinning out the canopy.  He sat in the carver with the documents resting on his knees and studied the dense complex of judgements germane to his own legal situation.  In such silence his least sublunary elements could feel the slow tilt of the earth upon its axis, sweeping by indifferent stars, onward always toward the inexorable plights and obstacles that awaited only the renascent sun.  Lilian let herself down into the slung curve of an adjacent steamer chair, arms falling into the hollows alongside her body in an attitude of repose, if not serenity.

“If it fell out of a lawyer’s ass, I guess you should read it in the dark... fuck up your eyes to go with the rest of you.” she observed, her smirk widening as it was reciprocated.  The poignant colours of her naked face seemed all the more ingenuous when framing casual profanity, damask and lilac settled on her by the glowing ceiling in the room beyond.  She spoke again with her eyes closed.  "You can float me whatever you want, Lamb, but it's just dropping in a hole.  I have to work."
"Stay here until the weekend.  If no one can find you in town, they'll assume you've left."
"No, they'll assume I'm out here, and as much as it hurts to say this, you can't bury every fucking cop that shows up at the door."

They lapsed once more into silence, Lilian drawing closed his robe about herself and tying it at her waist.  The dark linen held nothing of the cedar-like smell of his skin, its absence always prompting her to wonder how such intimate effacement was possible in contrast with the impression he imposed elsewhere.  Her innards groaned, the sound curling upward.  

“Ice cream... fuck, I can't get it out of my head.  Hey, maybe I’m pregnant.  Guess we should just call child protective services and get them set up in the driveway.”
"I resent the implication that I would be an alternately punitive and absentee figure in our progeny’s deeply unhappy formative years.” he replied, without looking up.  
"Progeny... sounds like you're squirting toads into a freaking pail."
"I prefer offspring and its promise of rapid dissociation."  She smiled at him again.  "There is kulfi in the red kitchen."
“Who the fuck keeps buying green ice cream?” she complained, and rolled her head once more to stare at him.  He relented, setting down the papers, and rose from the chair.

Lilian listened to him descend, reaching down to find the cigarette lighter that had slipped between her leg and the stripes of the canvas, flicking its flint wheel in a habit gleaned from her erstwhile friend.  The flame expired beneath the brass lid several times before it was answered in two points of spectral, floating green behind the balustrade, the colour shifting toward silver as the glow died and her hand fell slowly to her lap.  She sat still, watching two pale shapes slide up and settle on the railing, a pair of polydactylous hands, their stained claws clicking on the wood.  They preceded endless arms that dragged a head and shoulders in their wake, birthing them out of the darkness, the skull crowned with a ragged, partial black thatch of hair and leaves.  Elliptical eyes burnt a single shade of swamp fire but for their pupils; Rana's stingray mouth opened and closed as though breathing water, her broken teeth meeting and parting.  Her shoulders flexed, their agonising elasticity pouring her over the rail in a movement so sinuous and ductile that she dropped onto the balcony like a python, hands splayed beneath her.  Bare feet caught the balustrade and pushed off, flipping her over into an inverted arc from which she righted herself, eyes roving back and forth before finally settling on Lilian.  On her hands and feet she came toward her, drawing her scent in hungry breaths when her eyes did not appear to satisfy her, then pausing to glare and emit a single guttural, the sound falling from her mouth like thick, dripping foam.

From this attitude of bestial suspicion she stood up slowly, that portion of her mind awoken by the posture replacing her grimace with a sneer of deep, wary distaste.  Something tattooed into her dirty skin ran from the base of her throat over her chest, disappearing beneath her ruined dress; its features had dissolved into blue-black blur, the ancient compositions hopelessly degraded.  Lilian’s gaze darkened as it climbed the creature, meeting her eyes and closing the revenant circuit, bending the current born of their conjunction into a circle.

"Speak." she told the dumb intruder, and the latter found she could obey.

“Was there ever a thing more certain than this, that you would wind around each others' flesh, like serpents?  If I had dragged you from the ditch and chained your legs together... entombed you in adamant... he would have worn away his fingers in clawing you from it to defile himself once more...”  Rana spat the words out as she would have done rotting flesh.  “Who but a panting dralna cunt thinks death merely an obstacle to lust?”  Lilian's waxing fugue appeared as defiance to her deranged accuser.  “Kala'amātya is not for you.  He was raised to burn your breed in your tents... he does abide me here, though you knot your cords and figure curses in your own foul blood, and beg him to dispatch me... look, Helaine... if you prevail, then so do I... all your art cannot put me away.”

Edward’s dark shape crossed the bedroom behind the drape, the reality of Rana's presence met by her own dismay at his.

“You are no more surprised than Sachiin...” she muttered, the sickened colour of her eyes burning with the strange and random cruelty of some neglected deity.  “It matters not... whatever I may have been before the ocean, I am endless now.”  Rana’s body shivered as though with the acquired might of her own fable, though her skin shed its dying surface from her arms and legs, falling into dust around her feet, the cold hue of the waves she had escaped bleeding from cracks clustered at her joints.  “Shall I tell this?” she chuckled.

With her judgement made, she gave herself over to the language that she shared with him, though their remaining companion lost nothing to her supposed exclusion.

“The yu-kiang and taninim do speak...” Rana began, looking up into the stars.  “But you hear only their whispering from shore, and I heard them roar beneath the waves.  The water shudders with their voices... they sing unto their lovers, cry out in their agonies... and be sure the waves burnt my own skin like a fire, and that terror overcame me as I swam out, not knowing why, save that you had cast me cruelly from the land that was more my own than yours... you cannot know such water as you come to, out of sight of land, or the devouring features of the moon, hung close enough to reach for, if I could have raised a hand.  Did you imagine it is tranquil to lie upon the sea and drift where it will take you?  It is not tranquil... beneath you fly fleet armies of fishes that rise and touch their cold flesh to yours as they pass upon their ways... and monstrous things, with great mouths filled with knives and black eyes, coming to gaze upon you, seeking the lost to feast upon... there was neither shore, nor boat, nor isle, and all around was night, stars meeting the water on all sides.”  She observed him as he was dragged after her into that unknown realm.  “It finds its own way... after a time, I could not rest, for when I ceased to move my legs became as stone, and I sank into this black and hidden river, the sea rushing all about me, lapping at my face... I grew frightened in this thing that you had done to me... I called out, but there was none to hear my voice, and after a time I began to fall away, thewless as I was, and the waves closed over my head.  I took my last breath, and my mouth filled with the accursed taste of death." 

"I fell, as you fall in dreams from a great bird’s back, and all around me changed, the colour at first the blue of morning, then green, and then a most terrible blackness.  And then I heard the sounds for the first time... there is singing, as I have said to you, passing through your bones, and the baying of other beasts, and stranger sounds with no earthly peer... sirens, weeping, the chatter of the fishes, like rain... but still I fell, with the ocean pressing in upon my mouth and eyes.  The water crushed my flesh onto my bones and filled my chest, colder than a winter corpse.”

“And though I fell, I was swept onward toward the east, and wondered... does this water wish me well?  Does it seek to cast me at the feet of my own mountains?  But when has fate embraced us?  I fell still further... into the dead water beneath, where it is as still as the air inside a grave, and the darkness I had known before was light beside this place that was Naraka... night, in the eyes of the damned..."

"All notions were lost to me, until a light appeared... so distant... but I fancied I had begun to rise and neared the blessed air once more... I kicked and swam toward this brightness, but was feeble, as though newborn, and could not hasten my passage.  I reached with both hands toward it, believing all the while the Mother had taken pity.  But it was this that I discovered... in the abyss, there is a light that is no sister to the sun, and when men say that the depths look back at you, they are wrong, for this place cares for nothing.  I found that my hands broke, not into air, but into a strange and hateful substance, a settled mist... and when I moved my arms to keep from being swallowed by it, it flew all about me.  You cannot know how slowly you must move under such a weight as all the waters of the sea, but when I had drawn free of this accursed filth, I lay still, while all the glowing beasts of the pit idled in the blackness overhead...”

Her own voice lulled her.  

“Stilled as I was, I felt this dust fall onto my face, raining down like ash cast from some flaming mountain... it settled on my body, and then I knew... as the mountains are our life, so this sunken hell becomes our end... that after a time I should become as one with it...”  Her unblinking gaze moved again to Lilian.  “That is where you will know your last thoughts, Kala'amātya... where your evil will pass away into the water.  And for what have you lived on, beyond me?  Look at your witch...”  Lilian sat with her blackened gaze, as though she no longer heard.  “Already rueing you.  Do you not remember him, Helaine?  He is ever as you knew him... in him you will drown again, as surely as the ocean swallowed me.”  

Her voice was choked off by the death of the permission she was granted, withdrawn with a glance by the victim of her scorn; Rana's attention had barely escaped Lilian before Edward fell on her, seizing her face with one hand and striking the stout blade of a tanto across the width of her stained throat, punching it with the same grasp through her dress, between the broad, sleek swathes of armoured bone inside her flank.  He felt the guard strike her side and wrenched the handle back toward himself, snapping it through and leaving the steel embedded beyond her reach.  Rana staggered back as he released her, clutching her riven throat, her retreat halted against the balustrade; staring wildly as she slid over the rail, she let go and fell away toward the grass.  

As her view began to flicker Lilian saw him standing with the orphaned handle in his grasp, then darkly fire-lit and framed by trailing ribbons of palest green, their aimless lengths resolving into willow boughs that dragged their fingers through the river sliding by them, its dark face full of mirrored stars, reeds nodding in the current.  The great tree enclosed them both; she heard the creak of something depending from its branches as the black harmonic drew her vision suddenly into the round.  They stood divided by an altar stone of graven basalt, long and low, its honed face dressed with a bloody libation that crawled across the polish like something mazed, their bodies naked but for the black cloth knotted at their waists.  She looked down on flesh that had become her own, the apparition revealed as but a memory recalled.

Lilian shook as she climbed out of her chair, caught with him between the flightless spiral and the breathless weight of revelation, their violence burning out her eyes.  She could feel him staring back at her, but for all his cardinal volition Edward could do nothing as her legs failed, the glassed door swinging backward as she slid against it, crashing her senseless head onto the floorboards.

C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe   do not reproduce

I'm happy enough with the above effort.  I shot the bones in passing as they were seated on a paper towel in the last rays of a winter afternoon in the hallway.  So there was no great compositional master plan but decent images are often completely accidental, in all honesty.  I love the shadows, the luminous delicacy of the keel bone to the left there and the highlight on the eye socket, but I don't much care for the baldness of the skull.

In the pic below right you might be able to see the faint matte banding in the butt-end section of the second largest bead, demonstrating where it was machined.  New beads don't have this tell-tale, buffed-then-worn texture.  Nor do they have the unfakable compliment of nicks, dings, scratches and scuffs that tell of genuine usage.  The colours tend to be too bright and clean, possibly because the murky, almost sinister oxblood red you see here is partly the product of chemical change in the ageing material.  And because they're rarely hand-finished, Chinese resin tends to be too-perfectly symmetrical as per modern mass production techniques and often carries moulding seams that haven't been buffed back.  Valuable and genuinely old strings are sometimes polished to a smoother finish by well-meaning traders, but this eliminates often-beautiful patina and causes confusion, so it's not a practise I support personally.  

Most early plastics have their own distinctive smell when rubbed and warmed between your hands (except lucite- that's plexiglas/acrylic which doesn't have a pronounced odour) so unless you're seriously olfactorily declined, there's no need to stick hot pins in the stuff or carry around testing chemicals etc.  Bakelite/catalin smells of formaldehyde when warmed thusly; like a dentist's clinic or old paint solvents- vaguely sinister, sickly and old.  (Don't let this put you off.  It only arises with vigorous rubbing and not in the course of normal wear.)  You shouldn't have to try too hard to raise it, though; if you're not getting the smell in less than say, ten seconds of rubbing and warming, be suspicious.

Anything aerosol is highly likely to be antagonistic to your precious plastic (and amber); I make putting on my jewellery the last step in the lengthy process of achieving maximum beauté, and never wear perfume on my neck.  Abusing bakelite with solvents and sunlight will eventually result in chemical decomposition.  You'll see surface crazing first, and if you catch that quickly you might be able to have it polished off, but once the internal cracks set in, it's dunzo, unfortunately.  It's important to quarantine all 'sick' bakelite and celluloid so the fumes they release as they break down don't go on to make neighbouring pieces unstable... apparently.  I've never observed this process but I've seen a few fried beads in my time; they're ugly, manky suckers, to be sure, and I wouldn't dream of exposing them to my healthier lovelies.  You're not supposed to store vintage plastics in a container made from modern plastics either, though this sounds a bit apocryphal to moi.

One of the most pleasing physical aspects of bakelite in my opinion is the distinctive sound the beads make as they clack against one another.  They have a voice all their own and say kunk instead of the pissy little kink of lesser materials impacting each other.  Bakelite is the bear of the vintage plastic kingdom.  I wear it with pride.