Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Consumption as Identity

I keep thinking about how ridiculous it is that in a society like this, where my life (however inadequate it might be) is actually very wasteful and privileged, one is still expected to consume more just in order to get by and be 'normal.' Sure I can't afford to go to the doctor when I get sick, or fix my car if it breaks, or go to the dentist to repair my multiple cavities, but I still have more useless things and excessive dwellings and plentiful food sources than most people on the planet.

I'm a pretty simple person, but after entering the 'real world' it became obvious I was supposed to be doing and buying more. More and nicer clothing, even makeup that I didn't want to wear, so others won't think I'm dirty or weird, for example. Well, that's what I was told all my life, so when I actually had my own money, I started to buy different things than I was used to buying.

What sort of objects make you look normal and grown-up? Well, you have to have a 'place' of your own. When you get it, it needs things, right? So when someone comes over they see that you have things, and by extension, the wherewithal to purchase them; but most of all, the desire to do so.

I feel like a better citizen when I buy matching towels and cloths for my bathroom, and a rug that coordinates with them. Stuff to put in my kitchen so it looks like I do things in there, like people do in kitchens when they have families. Shoes I wouldn't normal think of wearing, because you have to have some impractical shoes to let people know you will occasionally sacrifice comfort. A few items of clothing that are in style, even if you can't afford more than a couple at a time and they're all from discount stores, and you don't even know when you'll need to wear them -- but you don't want to be caught off guard and make an awful impression.

A bunk bed would be really nice; I like the idea of putting things on the top, and having an extra bed if the need appears, but also the feeling of sleeping on the bottom mattress and feeling like an animal in a nice quiet cave. but I have a big person bed that I sleep in alone anyway. Someone would laugh at me if I had a bunk bed.

I feel better about myself when I buy things, because what would people think otherwise? I try really hard, but I don't think I actually know much about dressing myself or being normal, so maybe it looks really 'off' to everyone else, but at least they can see I try to be a normal American with a job, a car, and a place to live? If you don't have these things, or don't want them, you're a failure.

Well, this is what I
really want to consume: things that were pre-consumed as many years ago as possible. Fundamentally, I'm terrible about being an American.

I found a new Goodwill when I was job-hunting.
Nice dino book I'll show off later. Bag of plastic animals, which I bought b/c it had dinosaurs in it. A giant stuffed theropod. A plate 'famous bristol seaport' or something, with english sailing ships on it. A rather hefty resin tiger sculpture. A Great Wall of China paperweight. Two national park souvenir mugs. A glass with mystery city on it which I'll ask about later. a silver-plated duck bank, which is identical to one I was given when i was a baby, scarf and all. (mine lost an eye, and the scarf.) A collection of weird chalkware coin banks. I love the pig, he's dressed in Chinese style clothing, I think.




All dinos from the bag. Some from Toobs I think, some of unknown provenance, one Schleich raptor. The little silly ones in front are kind of cute, but blue mystery guy is missing a head, and the cute Styrac is missing his front legs T_T



Nice Aussie animals, and two random Pokeymanz.
EDIT: Found the Aussies Missing the croc :( But I think the snake is actually in with the other animals I didn't photograph. Pretty amazing really. And you don't see a cassowary figure every day.




Closer up on the random objects.




____

C-CLAYS - 螺鈿 (Mother of Pearl)

Prepare yourself for shock and awe:




**I really, REALLY want to know why this editor does not work. Sometimes I can't backspace for no apparent reason, things I type randomly show up as hyperlinks, sometimes I can c/p images and sometimes not, and I've tried to resize that text up there about 4 times and it still appears wrong in the finished post.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Drowsy cats, Syrufit and a thing

You are getting very sleepy.




Help: I wanted to buy this thing, but Goodwill had it priced unreasonably high considering that I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE **** IT IS. Do you know what it is? Comment if you do! Whatever it is, it looks amazing (but not $4 worth of amazing):






Bargain Books, dinosaurs, etc

The clearance and thrift books I got int he past couple of weeks:

Bonus: book-loving kitty

Opened book in the middle is Wildlife of the Oceans, 1979 Chanticleer Press. The scientific illustrations at the end were what really sold me, but it's full of very nice photos and paintings.

Also found Volume 1 of that NMNH Illustrated Library of Nature, with bonus table of contents for the entire set. I found out that 13 and 14 contain the section on Prehistoric Life, so I trolled Amazon to see if I can find cheap copies of them. I've kinda started to get attached to this series.



A Family of Dinosaurs, Troll Associates 1989. The cover looks totally unremarkable but it turns out to have been illustrated by John Bindon, who's done a lot of widely published and recognizable dinosaur images. I rather like the loose pen and ink drawings in this book, glad I found it in the pile of lame childrens' books at Goodwill.



Below: fold-out page from the Spiderwick book. I don't know anything about the actual fiction series, but it has REALLY nice illustrations, and if you obsess over animals and morphology you'll probably find a lot of interesting zoological references by picking over some of the designs. I'm not really a big fan of anthropoid creatures in general, but the artist (Tony deTerlizzi) makes pixies, nixies, goblins and giants appealling even to me by throwing in all those strange bestial details.



Did proper Equids have such even toes? I thought Hyraco- was more a proto-equid...

(I could jump off from this image to the post on Walton Ford I was planning on making, but I think I'll save that for when I have time to also get into Gould, etc. and antique zoological illustration in general)


____

Remember this post I made last month?
I found a fully-developed takedown of the entire book, on a site I've actually read before (but lost the bookmark for when my last computer died.)

Stupid Dinosaur Lies: The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible

I still have to sit down and read the whole thing, along with other stuff on that site that I haven't read, but it's fun.





Sunday, August 22, 2010

Teach The Controversy

Can you find the Scientology one?

Personally I'd go with the Invisible Pink Unicorn, but Chthulhu is good too...







Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Sometimes it's the little things

...that put a smile on your face:
what a thoroughly unpleasant woman

That's a good start, but there are still more media figures to be publicly shamed for being terrible human beings-- so let's get on that right away.












Copyright 1952, 1971 printing


Instead of Touhou remix, today it's Vocaloids:



In case you don't know about it, Vocaloid is a computer program that simulates voices and can be programmed to sing whatever words you want. People obsess over them, draw them, make them sing bajillions of popular songs, and even write and produce original songs for them. This is an original song and I think it's really pretty.

I don't know if all the vocaloid models are like this, but I was informed that Megurine Luka (the pink haired character) was programmed from a sample of a voice actress (I forget her name but she was Sakaki in Azumanga Daioh, and I always thought she had a pretty voice.) The blue haired character is Hatsune Miku. She sounds a little high pitched and girly for my preference, but sounds alright when she's put in with Luka. Luka is the best sounding one. There are guy vocaloids too, but I don't really care about guy singers that much.

Interestingly all of their names contain a kanji for 'sound', which is the 'ne'

It probably sounds weird, but I've heard at least a couple of Luka ones that I wouldn't have been able to recognize as a simulator if I didn't already know what it was. YMMV though, and some are programmed better than others although I have no idea how that works.

That's your daily nerd information that no one really needed to know, and I'm ashamed of being able to retain that many facts about something so irrelevant, but my brain just works that way.


Friday, August 13, 2010

I Know What I'm Naming My Rock Band

OMG TERROR BABIES!

Look out for their sleeper hit "Gaping Hole"



This Is Why I'll Never Grow Up
I think many of us can relate to this


Bratz Babyz: Now In Real Life
Pole dancing for toddlers: the new big thing?




Ah, ridiculously beautiful Touhou remix time





Some of their tracks me of shoegazey-type stuff from a few years back... Well, not shoegaze precisely, but trancey shoegaze-influenced with electro elements dreamcore post-somethingsomething. I've become an idiot since I stopped caring about hipster music, so I can't remember anything right now, but I'm sure someone out there knows what i'm talking about.

Maybe.



Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Before anyone else asks,


...no, I've never done 'shrooms.

I'm probably outing myself a little much since this is fan art, but the subject matter is good opportunity to make myself use a bunch of obnoxious colors and still try to make it tolerable. Well, I have no idea how someone else would see it but the colors manage not to make my eyes bleed somehow so I feel successful in that.


Practice with pigment liner and copic markers on bristol, for a change.


Before you ask the other question, no I'm not ashamed. Marisa (the witch) is the most adorable little character in the history of ever and I want her image stuck all over my trapper keeper. Shut up that's why. (It's weird, trying to write as if people who don't already know me are reading this.)

I should note here that Alice, Marisa and Shanghai-doll belong to the one-man Team Shanghai Alice(aka ZUN) and not to me. But if you look even slightly into the Touhou fandom you'd be surprised it wasn't some massive public hallucination that gave birth to these characters... I was, since the creator has no problem with the billions of fan works dedicated to it




Thursday, August 5, 2010

Holy.

Craziest f***ing thing I've ever seen*

My God. There are no words for this level of crazy.



WOW!!

Imagine being the sort of person who would like this. Sweet dreams!


UMM
What on God's green earth is wrong with this guy. Every single clip I've ever seen is like a chronicle of some paranoid/histronic's nervous breakdown.


To recover from the crazy, a good song recommended to me

Yano Junko - Terotero (note: another person tagged her name as Akiko, so I can't say I'm 100% sure of the proper on-reading in her given name)
I'm not into this sort of music lately, in a general sense, but I like this one. It's very organic sounding, simple, and spontaneous, and her voice has a lovely rawness on the edges.




*at least since Orly Taitz

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Shoppin

I don't have much money to spare, so my shopping is limited to thrift stores. More books. There were at least 5 or 6 paleo/dino books in the kid section I would have liked to collect, but they weren't really worth how much they were charging. I have no idea where they pulled those prices out of their ass honestly. Maybe if they were like 2 or 3 dollars, but not 8...


Two shirts because lately I dress like a scrub and need clothing.
The Illustrated Outline History of Mankind, (c) 1951, 1965 printing
A cheap Japanese book with general weird usage notes and common mistakes in speech.
ABC's of Nature, 1984 Reader's Digest, it's one of those nice type of nature books I collect.
Two volumes of The Story of Civilization by Will Durant: The Life of Greece, and Our Oriental Heritage (spanning the Near East/Mesopotamia/Asia/Egypt) Copyrighted 1935, 19th printing 1954. The Greece one is a gift for my lil sis.
Cheap Houji-cha, the tea of champions
Asian pears given to me by the Japanese lady who runs Asahi grocery, she said they're from her tree. UWWAAAAA so sweet.

Below some pictures of the History of Mankind. It's a cute book.







Your Touhou Arrange:

EastNewSound - 緋色月下、狂咲ノ絶 -1st Anniversary Remix-



This link doesn't have the English translation, but the lyrics are quite interesting.

I haven't had the time to devote to a couple of very involved posts I want to make, so this is for now.