The healing power of charts.
April 17th, 2017Two artists I have been feeling lately.
April 5th, 2017The first one is Andreas Levers. He’s a German photographer who apparently controls the weather because all his pictures have this magical ethereal mist. I love the combination of the basic hard-lined structures that are often his subjects and the hazy light that emanates from the man-made light sources.
Here’s Levers’ latest collection.
http://www.96dpi.de/at-night-5
The second artist is Dina Brodsky. She predominantly paints tiny, exquisite landscapes with oil paints. The way she captures the essence of her subjects in the minimum of space is amazing. Dina also makes larger pieces but the small circular ones are my favorites.
Important things of importance.
April 3rd, 20171a. As I grow older fewer and fewer nature facts surprise me. Which is why when I saw this sassy weevil I assumed it was someone’s craft project:
But just to make sure I did a bit of searching and no, that might be a real weevil. I found a similar one called the Polka Dotted Clown Weevil and it is covered in iridescent scales that look like scattered glitter. Why was I not informed of this awesome weevil earlier???
1b. In keeping with the nature theme there is a man in Japan, Keita Kosoba, who breeds nudibranchs. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love nudibranchs. So many varieties of awesome! I wish I could have a tank of nudibranchs of my very own.
2. I love when people take mundane elements we see all the time and interpret them and make them cool. For example, this post that is now a cow being abducted by a UFO. Excellent work, street artist.
3. There’s a woman in the Ukraine, Yulia Kosata, who makes felted houses for cats and I think they are magnificent. Why all cats everywhere are not housed like this I do not know.
4. What steel droplets look like when they cool.
5. And a fun one-type-of-music to another-type-of-music site that you might enjoy.
Addendum: Here’s another nature thing: Look at these pictures of this fairy wren makin’ snuggles with other birds.
Why are they cuddling? I mean, I know why I would cuddle them (so cute!) but I’m sure they have a different reason. I couldn’t find the precise reason but I did find out these neat facts.
Non-breeding males, females and juveniles are predominantly grey-brown in color; this gave the early impression that males were polygamous, as all dull-colored birds were taken for females.
Like other fairy-wrens, the superb fairy-wren is notable for several peculiar behavioral characteristics; the birds are socially monogamous and sexually promiscuous, meaning that although they form pairs between one male and one female, each partner will mate with other individuals and even assist in raising the young from such pairings. Male wrens pluck yellow petals and display them to females as part of a courtship display.
Acorn necklace.
April 2nd, 2017Hi everyone, sorry about the delay. I went to Guatemala. Did I omit to mention that before I left? I think I did. My bad. Anyway, I’m back, I have pictures to sort, it’s a lot of work and we’ll get to it eventually. In the meantime, I made something and we should look at it.
Acorns! Who doesn’t like acorns? Communists and satanists, that’s who. Acorns are awesome. A few years back I was going to make something for my dad using beads and acorns but I never followed up on it.
https://design-newyork.com.fwtrading.x10host.com/wp/2013/03/18/the-elusive-beaded-acorn/
Well, recently I thought it would be nice to revisit the beaded acorn situation so I pulled them out of a drawer, unraveled the top part, incorporated gold beads and made it a pin for my sister.
Aaaaaaand she hated it. She said it looked like two boobs. I said that’s what acorns look like and what the hell do you want me to do about it. She said make it less boob-like. I figured the only way to resolve that was to break it apart and add a third acorn. That way only people who were familiar with the three-boobed lady from Total Recall would make that connection.
I ended up making what I thought was a lovely, non-boob-related necklace but she still didn’t like it. So guess who made herself a new necklace unintentionally? This gal! It’s a little bigger than I normally would like and it makes me feel like a prophet or soothsayer from a movie like The Fifth Element or Dune but whatever, I’ll wear it and make it work.
TV. I’ve been watching it.
March 4th, 2017We’ll start with the most recent and work backwards.
1. Legion on FX. Anyone else watching Legion? I started because British McHotSauce from Downton Abbey was the lead and I’ve always liked his weird risky acting choices and piercing blue eyes. Dan Stevens. I met him once. Stabbed him in one of his pretty eyes with my antler. Photographic proof at bottom of entry:
https://design-newyork.com.fwtrading.x10host.com/wp/2012/12/19/santacon-2012/
I want to like the show, I really do, but it’s a bit too trippy. I realize it’s about a man called David Haller who has been told his whole life he’s schizophrenic when it turns out he’s got superpowers like telekinesis so the show-people want to make it resemble the chaos that mental illness can wreak. HOWEVER, enough is enough. On top of David being crazy-wait-not-crazy-just-magical other people are trying to go through his memories and you know how the inside of your head looks like your grandma’s garage, with crap and thoughts and bits of dreams piled up all over the place? We the viewer are trekking through many minutes of that. It’s only up to episode 3 so I’m hoping in the next few episodes we stop with the demons chasing characters down hallways that lead to nowhere and the epilepsy-inducing strobe effects. On a positive note, the atypical relationship David has with his girlfriend is charming and interesting to see developing.
2. The Crown on Netflix. It’s the story of the early years of the Queen of England. While I am fully aware that like with every docu-style series everyone on the show is way more attractive with better teeth and above-par conversation skills it was still cool to see a relatively non-fiction retelling of the beginning of Elizabeth the Two’s reign. I think any time a little girl says, “When I grow up I want to be a princess!” we should show them this. “Yes, Bryleigh, being a princess may sound appealing but actually it ends up being not fun at all. There’s lots and lots of paperwork, like a big box a day with your name etched into the box so you can’t give it to someone else to do. And you can’t behead your enemies anymore, in fact you might even have to make small talk with them at parties and tamp down your hatred for the sake of international relations.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LukyMYp2noo
Anyway, back to the show. I learned a series of things I previously had no idea about. First of all in the beginning we see surgery being performed on Elizabeth’s father, King George VI. I assumed kings of empires in the 20th century had their surgeries in hospitals but no, they have them in ballrooms.
Do you see those chandeliers? How awesome are those? I can’t tell if it’s perspective but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were all twenty feet tall because why the hell not. I want all my surgeries in ballrooms from now on. Stained glass windows optional.
There were three things that I learned that blew my mind. One, there was a smog crisis in London in the 1950s where TWELVE THOUSAND people died. Not all immediately, about four thousand people died in the five days that the air was unbreathable, but the effects continued on for years and about twelve thousand people’s demises can be traced back to the smog. How… how have I never known about this? Why was this not taught to me in school in Social Studies as opposed to the gross national product of Belgium which has been of no use whatsoever in my life? (I don’t remember what it was. I assume it’s beer.)
Second, I had no idea that the next-in-line to the throne was not educated. I mean, there are shots of Elizabeth being homeschooled and learning about the Constitution of England but that’s kinda the length and breadth of what she’s taught. Later in the series Elizabeth bemoans the fact that she’s expected to speak to world leaders and she doesn’t know anything. She secretly hires a private tutor. I don’t know why but I assumed that she would be well-read and knowledgeable but it seems like they kept her ignant so they could keep control over her.
Third, okay, Philip, the Queen’s husband, he knew who he was marrying, right? Like, he knew she was going to be queen and the stuff the royal family did for the last bazillion years that hadn’t changed ever? Then why is one of the tropes of the series Philip being butthurt about being the second in the family? He knew he would have to bow to her. He knew he would have to walk two paces behind. I don’t understand where Philip gets off being all “oh no mah fragile masculinity be ouchy” when he clearly could see the future. Very few of us can anticipate what’s coming. He could. I don’t know if that’s true or amped up for the show but if it is true then dude, seriously. Maaaaaaybe don’t marry the future Queen of England, maybe? Yeah.
The main thing I liked about the series was the transition from Elizabeth being a person with thoughts and feelings to a masthead for a nation with no personal identity. There’s supposed to be a second season, I’m psyched to see her further development
Addendum: Dammit, Legion. I saw the fourth episode and not only were there tons of flashbacks and general craziness, now there’s a guy in an oldey-timey diving suit walking through a field of glowing grass and living in a hollowed-out ice cube. You keep this up you gonna lose me.
Addendum to the addendum: I finished watching the season. You lost me.
I have charts in my heart for you.
March 1st, 2017
 
 
 
 
Nuggets of Interest.
February 26th, 20171. McMansions. A blight on the eyes. There is now a website that explains why the architecture is so not great.
http://www.mcmansionhell.com/
Some helpful diagrams of the crappityness:
http://68.media.tumblr.com/0a36042f20db6d53ded10b73f0d48c3e/tumblr_inline_ogsoncC0vE1sppt0x_1280.png
http://68.media.tumblr.com/47c1b1c183099c7aa256c926d9a0b4ce/tumblr_inline_og2wcdHpM91sppt0x_1280.png
http://68.media.tumblr.com/ca0eda2a8c26bf39c7f922079e282928/tumblr_inline_ofeenzGhCV1sppt0x_1280.png
http://68.media.tumblr.com/f8dff9e65f22b732fc345de5b01741c6/tumblr_inline_ofef73vsHi1sppt0x_1280.png
http://68.media.tumblr.com/4cf3ea1e5379c82eb1791506a9668e1f/tumblr_inline_oeqv95rWjN1sppt0x_1280.png
2. There’s a psychotic piece of music out there that is impossible to play because, well, see for yourself.
Yeah. Exactly. However, because human being love a challenge (stop climbing Mt. Everest! Seriously! You’re not supposed to be there!) someone figured out how to play it on a piano. And here it is. To me it sounds like the best video game music ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3Nc4iR7rGA
3. Google Maps was kind enough to find the saddest places on earth and collate them into helpful collages. Thanks, Google Maps.
4. I can’t stop watching these cookies being painted. Who has hands this steady? Who? Where do these people exist? So phenomenal.https://youtu.be/Cs600U6OJJo
5. The interwebs being amazing again. Someone posted this:
The internet appreciated the mangling of “bon appetit” so much they made it a meme and it’s descended into madness and I’m enjoying it immensely.
 
My personal favorite:
6. And finally, another architectural thing. Thomassons. Who knew.
http://www.messynessychic.com/2017/01/18/the-inexplicably-fascinating-secret-world-of-thomassons/
Warning: It’s gonna get disgusting.
February 23rd, 2017But not too much. We’re going to dance around the disgusting, hint at it, and then dart away quickly. You’ll be fine.
First, an inevitability has happened. I have found the only animal that grosses me so much I had to look away from the television. Let me explain what it is before I show it to you. It’s a plaque of barnacles that fell off of a pier or a boat and the living barnacles are opening and closing their front door which looks like a cat’s nictitating eyelid (already gross) and then instead of an eyeball being in there fingers come out. FINGERS COME OUT OF THE EYELID HOLES OF THINGS CLUSTERED ON A BLOB THAT LOOKS LIKE NEW YORK STREET GARBAGE. Nightmares for life. You ready? Here we go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmfohJ7wMZA
Second thing, I have a good old-fashioned stomach virus. I haven’t had one of these in twenty years! So exciting! They are pretty much how I remember from my youth. Someone I did not remember: vague hallucinating. Nothing drastic but juuuuuust enough to remind you of your unwell state, similar of how people describe pot (“Did you ever really look at your palm, man? I mean, really look?”). Two instances that happened today:
- When I was in the shower I realized I was doing that owl motion where your head moves back and forth, back and forth. Because I had just realized, guys, items in the foreground move more than items in the background! Trippy! And I probably should not have been showering without supervision! https://media.tenor.co/images/7f4af3eff9fe127d0bb3bdb41c08206c/raw
- I looked at the toilet paper roll packaging and it said “double roll” but I read it as “death roll” which made me think of crocodiles and how they kill their prey and then I might have dozed off on the can for ten or fifteen minutes. This has not been a day of peak excellence.
But I’m healing and soon I will be no longer infectious and that will be nice. Until then, Gatorade and Tums are my best buddies.
Iceland Part 9, Iceland and done.
February 22nd, 2017In addition to gawking over the landscape all the time I also ate Icelandic food. No, I did not try puffin or whale. Puffin was not in season and whale is supposed to be gross so it was not a difficult pass for me. I ended up making a reservation for Cricket and me at an extremely fancy restaurant called Dill. Dill serves cuisine using authentic local ingredients and you eat what they’re serving. Five courses or seven courses. That’s it. I liked the scariness of no control but I trusted them. I was right to do so.
Cricket and I ended up with the five-course meal because we were going to see the northern lights later and the seven-course took two and a half hours to serve (!). Here’s the menu.
We missed out on the dung-smoked trout (the table next to us had it and said it was fantastic, I felt epic FOMO) and the 99% Omnom (Icelandic brand of chocolate). The little appetizers that are listed as a clump at the top were okay, I did not care for the chicken skin with yeast but the shredded wolf-fish with brown butter was yummers.
Then there was the monkfish cheeks (known to be the softest part of the fish) cooked with artichokes and dulse which is red seaweed. I could have eaten a soup bowl full of that.
Followed by Cricket’s favorite: pickled tusk (a white fish similar to cod) served with seaweed, black garlic and a splash of yogurt. SO DELICIOUS. Pickling and fermentation plays a huge role in Icelandic cuisine since they only have fifteen minutes of daylight a year. In fact, Dill’s front window is made up of pickled items in jars.
Then my favorite: shredded fermented rutabaga, toasted rye bread crumbs and cod chunks. It had a faint vinegar flavor and in my photo some of it is missing because I forgot to take a photo first and immediately started snorfing it down.
The last savory dish we had was the pork belly with cracklins on top and parsnip with honey. It was okay. I mean, it was really good but the other dishes were kind of amazing so it was difficult to appreciate it.
And finally there was the dessert which was a fancy smore – cake made from rye, malted cream and prunes. I watched them make it (we were right next to the open kitchen) and the only concern I had was when the chef used the creme brulee torch on the cream. Please note the scorch marks on the wooden plates. Methinks maybe not wooden plates in the future, eh, chef?
This place was so Icelandic-themed they even gave us the check in a knitted pouch. Iceland is big on the knitting because of the sheepies.
The other place Cricket and I ate was magnificent, recommended by Snorth (thank you Snorth!). It was called Ostabudin and it’s kind of like a high-class delicatessen. We got the hot-smoked goose salad (may contain pellets) and the meat feast (also may contain pellets).
They were exquisite. And now I can say I have eaten horse! It tastes like bison. Red meat, very lean. If you’re down with cured meats (and I very much am) the meat feast was where it was at. You can also see they substituted the blue cheese for what they said translated literally to “ugly cheese” and they had built a little house of baguette slices over it to shield us from its ugliness (which I thought was overreacting, it looked like brie). I uncloaked the cheese for this photo.
On our last night in Iceland, Cricket and I decided to go to a performance at the Harpa. The Harpa is the large music hall similar to Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall. It was built to resemble the basalt columns and was covered in hexagons and lights. If you know me, you know my feelings about hexagons and lights (big big fan). So I adored the Harpa. I could not take an lame picture of it if I tried.
It had a huge empty main space with several concert halls and theater spaces branching off from the primary area. There was a gift shop that sold your typical gift shop items, as well as some stranger choices. Like these books by the famous Icelandic cartoonist Hugleikur Dagsson.
And then there were some Christmas ornaments and they were also pretty typical except for one. Listen to this description: it clearly was made from a model of Finding Nemo‘s Squirt the Turtle but painted as if it was a drag queen with a foil rainbow Christmas tree impaled into its head. Because that’s what the world needed.
Anyway, the show we saw. The only thing being performed during our stay in Reykjavik was a electronic dance band called… The Vagina Boys. I wish I was kidding. I am not. There were signs all over town.
So Cricket and I bought tickets and we went. It took place in an enormous black box theater and because we got there at 7:50 when the show was supposed to start at 8:00 (it didn’t start until 9:00, Cricket and I are extremely cool and “with it”) we got to claim a small patch of floor and camp out on it.
We were waaaaay older than all the other people there. It was mostly high school kids. And I do love me some electronic dance music but this sounded like 21 Pilots sung in Icelandic. The Vagina Boys were predominantly mixing behind a musician named Kef Lavik. I found some of the music to give you a taste of the experience.
https://soundcloud.com/vaginaboys
Cricket and I lasted about an hour and then we were both like, “This is very nice mellow uninspiring music and we’re good.” The next day we packed up and headed back to the U.S. A few things in the airport I noticed:
In addition to the giant dragon’s egg sculpture there is also a sculpture of the end of the rainbow. I thought that was pretty cool.
And two massive beautiful stained glass windows at either end of the interior space. Very Chagall / Picasso-esque.
That’s my trip to Iceland. I would love to go back, possibly in the summer when the sun is out all the time and the wildflowers are blooming. We shall see if that comes to pass.
Iceland Part 8, More Reykjavik. NSFW.
February 15th, 2017You wanted to learn about a dick museum? Well, it’s your lucky day!
But first, a dick-free portion.
The Icelandic language looks like old, old, old, OLD English. Like Very First English. But you can see the similarities between the two languages.
Look at this fun poster encouraging Icelanders to learn French! I took this mainly for the sheep’s face.
Palate cleanser over. You prepared? Here we go.
The Phallological Museum of Iceland is very small; It’s one room and it very clearly was started by one exceptionally creepy man who loved man junk and collected all the options. One day he said to himself, “Hey, Creepy Guy, I should make money by sharing this with the world,” and so he has. The first thought that comes to mind is “variety”. The second thought is “pickled naked mole rat” because dismembered genitals sitting in jars do not look their best. Let’s visit, shall we?
We got some horse dick:
Elephant and whale dick:
Big dicks, small dicks:
Super teeny tiny dicks:
Edible cured dick:
Tired of side dick? How about straight-on dick?
A goat head with no dicks in proximity and all the explanations were in Icelandic so no clue what’s going on here:
Dicks as planters and scrotums as light fixtures because why should these dead animals have any dignity:
Dick bones (most mammals have them):
And then people stuff. The people stuff bothered me a bunch. It felt very, “Heheheh, people are gonna be looking at my twigs n’ berries, look at ’em, yeah.” I felt like I was an unwilling participant in someone’s fetish. Therefore I will spare you a picture of the 95-year-old-man to donated his genitals and they are on display. If you want to know what they looked like, think of whatever you think a 95-year-old man’s genitals would look like. There you go. I did like the metal casts of the entire Icelandic handball team.
You get the gist. Are we good? Do we feel like I covered this? Excellent. Moving on.
The docks! Cricket and I went to the docks. Not surprisingly as Iceland is a seafaring nation. At the Maritime Museum we got to take a tour of a boat used in the Cod Wars. I did not mistype. The Cod Wars was about fishing rights around England and Iceland. No one died but many boats smashed into other boats and several people needed to be rescued. The boat we were on was a Coast Guard boat and only recently retired. Contact a modular floating dock system builder if you purchased a boat that you would like to have access to from your home.
The item I thought was the coolest on board was the mine. Everybody see Finding Nemo? Remember the scene with the sharks and the pokey metal balls on chains that blew up? I got to see one up close and in person. It was left over from WWII and one of this boat’s jobs was to sniff these guys out.
The museum itself explained the history of fishing in Iceland and they had real dead desiccated fish in their display.
A lot of dead fish.
And this jaunty poem.
To end this post on a classy note the primary reason Cricket and Mishi wanted to go to Iceland in the winter was the see the northern lights. We expected to see them all week but there were clouds. Finally, on the last night, there they were.
I probably would have enjoyed them more if I hadn’t been sitting in the car yelling about the Communists and the Illuminati. Let me explain. We were sitting on a mountain and all of a sudden there was a faint green glow. We all asked each other, “Is that it? Do you think that’s it?” and five minutes later the green glow had built into a giant stripe across the sky and bits of the stripes were dancing, DANCING, I tell you. Look:
Not right. Green lights dancing through the sky is un-right. Ergo me sitting in the car reacting like a flat-earth enthusiast. It’s beautiful, don’t get me wrong, it’s just… I can understand why ancient civilizations might be freaked out.
Next post: Food. And Harpa. Then done.