trees are people too

The japanese are the best purveyors of quirkiness. And frustration. I bought a birthday present for madcaow, but it wasn’t until we got it home that we realised you had to assemble it yourself… And thus, our friday night was made. Felt rav tbh. I think we did ok, for a first attempt. (No bloggers were harmed in the making of this series).

The production line had it all – disgruntled and embattled workers, harsh employment conditions and even some bloodshed. I am surprised there wasn’t calls for a union to be formed (must have been the ready supply of wine), but to our astonishment the final product somewhat resembled that which appeared on the box. It was a short moment of great pride. And then we found this:

Yes. It is true. Thank you for raising the bar, little brown bird’s dreams. I bow down to your felty goodness. (In our defense, she is from Singapore, which is closer to Japan than here). I feel there may be more inspired felty treats to come…

Pardon me, but this is so fucking cool.

Yes, as indicated it is a Wes Anderson Film Festival. Currently only in conceptual stages, but I see no reason why it couldn’t be.

Props to you Alex Cornell. I only wish (like with so many things in my life) that it wasn’t hypothetical. Take over the world with well designed words.

Not particularly long ago very dear friends of mine bought me a book called Face Food, Christopher D Salyers book on child-like naivete. My favourite type of naivete.

The book documents the visual creativity of Japanese bento boxes, beautifully crafted artistic masterpieces composed of rice, nori, bread, vegetables… absolutely anything edible, really. While the artistry is certainly outstanding, what touched me most about these bentos was the stories behind them. Mothers arising at 4.30am in order to prepare these boxes for their children. Children who could not eat their food were it not shaped into their favourite anime character. And the desperate yearning I felt for the sort of joy that one might get receiving your lunch packed liked this, carefully assembled with the sticky glue of affection and devotion. I have since endeavored to pack my lunches in this fashion, but have miserably failed. It truly is a form of art. So beautiful.

Also looks alarmingly appetising. nom. I miss you :(

In an earlier life when I still believed in the magic of words, I wanted to be Carol Ann Duffy, I just didn’t know who she was yet. Years later I was introduced to her via her poem Valentine, and I am yet to find anyone else who quite compares to her. Well known in the UK, she is something of a celebrity over there, and I despair of not having the opportunity to savour her work in school when I was far more innocent and thus receptive to the power of lyricism. Still, her poetry brought back dizzying memories of why writing and words mean so much to me.

This week Duffy has been confirmed as the next poet laureate, the first ever woman to hold this position. But I like to think if it as less a celebration of women than a celebration of her incredible talents. Let’s hope such stardom doesn’t go to her head and aleviate any inspirational agony.

Nowhere near as exciting, but I too wrote something more than an sms this week. Australia’s highest circulating marketing and advertising magazine B&T (pfft) recruited my services as AFA graduate and rookie reporter to contribute an analysis on current ads.

The objective was to apply my own ‘critical opinion’ to different ads, stating why I liked or disliked different campaigns, backed up with ‘sound reasoning’. And this is where it started to fall down. See, opinion sounds a bit like onion and reasoning sounds like seasoning, and before I knew it I was completely distracted by the thought of food and couldn’t concentrate at all on the ads. Needless to say, I submitted my article this morning and eagerly await their feedback (aka brutal editing or complete failure to include). We’ll see. Perhaps they will be forgiving. I am just a novice after all. I shall post scans here when published, but don’t get too excited.

And now for something nicer. This is new math. Much better than old math.

Created by Craig Damrauer. This one is dedicated to nicholas.

For easter we went on a magical tour of tasmania, where we ate and drank like kings. I’ll post some pics soon, and I send many many loves to our hosts. It was beautiful and oh so decadent. And coming back to work was oh so hard.

But then I found these. It’s just packaging, but I am hoping a handbag might be the natural progression. How wonderfully fruity and fabulous. Please, I want. I would be the finest fruit in all the land.

Via the insatiable nicefuckinggraphics, and (of course) originating in japan.

(More fab coming soon. Sorry about the silence, very busy at work fighting off the GFC and saving the world :sigh:)

How I wish I could say I had been frantically busy, thus excusing myself from the lack of posts, but to be perfectly honest I have been whiling away the hours before I begin my new job/career at GPYR with a mixture of boredom, excitement and pure terror.

This has, however, allowed me plenty of time to catch up on cleaning, reading and web browsing. Today’s treats are brought to you by the letter C. Keeping me entertained has been:

The beautiful creations of Heidi Kenney, as found on her My Paper Crane blog, have given me endless hours of giddiness. Discovered after I purchased some new kidrobot toys (a dire addiction, with no known cure).

Slightly sillier but just as giddy-inducing are the adventures of the Middleman by Bayat. Ejecting matter from the stomach thru the mouth (previewed below) has to be my personal fav.

Jewellery that looks like tasty tasty food (yes, it is an ongoing theme. Food + cute = smitten)

Fresh and beautiful music by new russian producer Oak. His lush tune Mongoose has him being compared to the likes of ASC, Electrosoul System and Mav, all regular features on my personal soundtrack.

http://treesarepeopletoo.com/media/Oak_-_Mongoose.mp3

Thank you to Science and Progress for bringing this track (released free of charge and hosted by etiket) to my attention. I have thoroughly rinsed and can also recommend this fine mix by Electrosoul System.

(Interesting also to me that all of these artists are using Myspace as their main websites. I thought myspace was so yesterday. I should really pay more attention.)

And finally, just for lols, the official ranking of offensive words. As the friend who directed me to it said, it’s science. So it must be real.

Happy xmas and merry new year, suckers. Collective decision has dictated that this will be a far superior year to 08 (do we not say that every year, however??), beginning with the fact that oh-nine rhymes with wine and thus my favourite drink shall be celebrated with the slogan “drink more wine in 09″ (TM Fickuss inc.)

From xmas through to now it has been a heady spiral downwards until we were barely crawling, and tbh I am so glad it’s over again for another year. From santa I got a nice pocket knife (for ghetto fights), some socks, a calender, some soap, an optical illusion and a mean hangover and cheeseover. Do you think that Santa speaks Scandinavian of some sort?? That would explain what part of ‘Please, no more presents this year, I am drowning in shit’ that fattie didn’t understand. Next year I shall rehearse it in Norwegian and try again.

I thought the best part of xmas and new years revelry was this:

Yes. Epic punch (in all manner of the word) and the endless emptying of vodka bottles. Ignore the water, that was a mistake.

But then I found this, and xmas got just a little sweeter. Have a fine 09, y’all.

Courtesy of It’s Nice That.

It has been an unseasonably cold and grey december in Melbourne, but I have busied myself by alternating my attention between the insatiatable experience that is centrelink, updating my knowledge of the top 40 charts and searching for the wagon (perhaps in direct correlation to those first two activities).

But! Having finally migrated my blog to its new domain and thus being able to install a new and improved version of wordpress (about 80 editions onwards and upwards), I thought I might celebrate by sharing a list of my current favourite things, aka things I am digging in december.

In no special order:

• Favourite book: The Boat, Nam Le…. achingly beautiful.

• Favourite new series: 30 Rock. A little slow on the uptake, but it means we can indulge in literally hours at a time.

• Favourite continuing series: IT Crowd. It.just.gets.better.

• Favourite tune I shall admit to: Blaze and Fade Out, Seba (feat. Krister Linder)

• Favourite tune I shall not: The Fear, Lily Allen. Because I too want fuckloads of diamonds.

• Favourite supermarket: Aldi.

• Favourite chocolate: Lindt Dark Mint Chocolate.

• Favourite cocktail: Pina Colada (but only if made by tree).

• Favourite new smell: Prada Tendre.

• Favourite new blog: nicefuckinggraphics. Not being able to understand a word of it does not detract from the experience at all.

A little self indulgent, but I am so fickle and like to be reminded of things that possess a certain kind of wonderful before they flee my ailing, alcohol sodden brain. And I apologise for the lack of films or artists -- I’ve had a real dud of a month on movies (yes, it’s true), and haven’t met anything to surpass sheone in the last month. But there will be more soon. You know it.

And in the meantime, let me leave you with this fabulous piece of CG alchemy by Vincent Chai and courtesy of dansdata. Enjoy.

As I have mentioned on here before, Stephen Colbert is my hero.

Kanye West, on the other hand is not. Anyone who truly believes he has invented and innovated a completely new style of music (because he sings???), and then chooses to call it ‘Pop Art’ (not to be confused with the visual arts movement….!!!….??!!!) just seems to me to have lost the plot completely.

This guy’s arrogance knows no bounds, and to add salt to the wound, he arrives in Melbourne this Friday with NAS as his ‘special guest’ (read>support).
NAS!!! A don of hip hop and purveyor of my childhood soundtrack! Supporting this whatshisname West!!! Has the world gone mad??!! Have I completely exploited the exclamation mark beyond all redemption??!

Thus, Operation Humble Kanye has brought me much pleasure. This battle of the egomaniacs can have only one winner, and that of course will be Stephen. But I will watch with bated breath (and coy sighs of crush. I love you Stephen! *sexywink*)

As the prospect of having complete creative freedom over my blog looms, it seems ironic that she who could never shut up is somewhat lost for something to write about. Lots has been happening, but my head hurts from too much sauce, so today it’s just about gentle yet fabulous visual and aural stimulation.

This is beautiful, and exciting to watch further integration of film techniques into advertising. In fact, watching how it is made (here) is almost more exciting than the ad itself.

And then there is this. I can’t get enough of this tbh. bwahahhwaahahahaha. Rap genius. I am gonna learn all the words and wax lyrical to my dad. He will be so impressed!

Meanwhile, I am off to find a burger to cure this hangover. Alternatively, please email me your tried and tested hangover remedies to wtfwhyohwhydididoitagain@regretfuldrunk.com. There is a prize for the best one, and yes, it will be booze.