Overheard at Dinner

"I took it late at night in a fountain in winter
The texture are the pennies that people threw in."

Action Jeans


What if we had institutionalized Jean styles to match every job description?
For my part, I'd like to propose that the Copywriter Jean would have the bum region reinforced with extra elasticity for all that sitting around, and a side pocket for the hip flask.

Cattitude: One Saucy Feline's Public Transit Story


I love this story. And I sneakingly suspect that she takes the bus because she's so white, and is afraid of getting dirty.

Bus drivers have nicknamed a white cat Macavity after it has started using the No 331 several mornings a week.

The feline, which has a purple collar, gets onto the busy Walsall to Wolverhampton bus at the same stop most mornings - he then jumps off at the next stop 400m down the road, near a fish and chip shop.

Read about her feline exploits here

The Fate of the Unicorn

Thanks to Threadless and a little deductive reasoning, I would like to propose a theory on the fate of the unicorn.
Threadless has a t shirt design (see above) that implies that unicorns once roamed the earth, but were obliterated through biblical misadventure. My friend Jess, in her delicious optimism, hoped that evolution rescued the unicorn from extinction by transforming it into a seahorse.

The alternative is too heartbreaking to even consider.

My mind wandered away from copywriting at hand. It dawned on me that this could provide resolution to my longstanding curosity about the Narwhale. For those who don't know, the Narwale is a sea creature with a massive unihorn. I've included an image (below). See it, and you'll realize where this is all going.


In my opinion, this is too tight a theory for easy dismissal. I would encourage the scientific community to consider the following likelihood: creatures from the swamp learned to survive on land. Is it not then possible that, when faced with extinction, land animals like the unicorn could evolve into a sea-faring animal - viz. the Narwhale?

Clearly it is.

How Nature Surprises Us, and How We Surprise Nature


Nature holds all sorts of wonders in her oversized pockets. And we can't get enough. Who doesn't love a good story about the giant squid wrapping its tenticular self around a hapless fishing vessel? Or a documentary on the alien behaviours of pandas. Or a snapshot of a toad the size of a small dog?
Just look at him. He needs a name. Let's call him Johann.
Read about him here.

Johann was discovered in a place called Darwin, Australia. The name conjures images of the natural imperative, and evolution, and the survival of the fittest. Which made me reflect.

We fool with things. Cross this, pluck that, design our natural environments at increasingly dizzying rates, for increasingly incredible results. Three years ago, the world began to wake up to the clear and present possibility of xenotransplantation - a branch of biotechnology that seeks to grow transgenic organs in host animals (like pigs) for use as human donor organs. And now we have sheep that are 15% related to us.

We've created chimera before. It's more than theoretically possible, it's only a question of the theoretical outcomes of doing it. And through the morass of bioethical questions, I have to wonder - is our natural aptitude to do this simply another form of evolution? Is Sheepperson any less a natural curiosity than Johann? When does it cease to be a natural statement?

Read about the sheepsis here.

Phantom Objects

For those stricken with Charles Bonnet Syndrome, the world is occasionally adorned with vivid yet unreal images. Some see surfaces covered in non-existent patterns such as brickwork or tiles, while others see phantom objects in astonishing detail, including people, animals, buildings, or whatever else their minds may conjure. These images linger for as little as several seconds or for as much as several hours, appearing and vanishing abruptly. They may consist of commonplace items such as bottles or hats, or brain-bending nonsense such as dancing children with giant flowers for heads.

I came upon this article, and looked it up on wikipedia for a little more background on the perpetual acid trip. I've provided it alongside the Damn Interesting article for additional surrealism. I wonder what sort of storytellers these patients must be.

Original link here

Wiki link here

Lisp

This is a cruel word.

"I have a disorder, but it prevents me from pronouncing my disorder."

Pause for Beauty

What impresses us, nowadays?
Mass reproduction and accessibility has altered the way we perceive the extraordinary. If we can download that gut wrenching solo instantly, if we can buy that t shirt with the Botticelli angels on it, how do we approach the real thing - played live, seen two feet away? Is the nature of our appreciation altered by context? Are we too rushed to care?

The Washington Post ran an experiment.

They got violin virtuoso Joshua Bell to stand in a Washington terminal, busker-style. He played a series of technically difficult, incredibly moving works on one of the finest instruments in the world.
Typically he commands $100 for an adequate seat in the finest venues on the planet.
This day, he played for free to whoever cared to pause their day, and just listen.

The results provide a fascinating glimpse into what happens when we hurry through the day, disregarding the rare, the fantastic and the surprising.

Read it here.

Delerium of Options


I came across this image while I was Stumbling through the web. There's a certain irony to the fact that I found it on Good Friday, which is a time of reflection for the Judeo-Christian family of faiths - and, more specifically, on Easter, the end of the Lenten time of abstinence.

Just look at it.

It's beautiful. It's terrifying. It explains why going to the grocery store is never a 3 min affair. You have to flirt with your options, investigate the colours, the proffered toy in the box, the ingredients. The price.

This is as much a manufactured landscape as a Burtynsky photograph.

You realize that this madcap montage really only centres around the same family clusters of flavour and nature, regardless of the aisle. There are Corn Flakes, and Corn Flake knockoffs. There are yellow breakfast cereals with Captains on the box. There are yellow breakfast cereals with a bear on the box. There used to be yellow breakfast cereals with Mr T on the box, but he's no longer a viable breakfast cereal spokesman.
There are 65 different takes on the fruit cup.
There are 2134223 rice cake brands.
Would we notice if our catalogue of food options diminished? What do we do with all this choice? And, the $100,000 question - how much of this is actually bought and consumed. Where does it all go? Likely, the place where all superfluousness goes to die, an Everest of breakfast rejects, guarded by the empty calls of overfed seagulls.

My brilliant friend Jason has an image like this one on his blog, as well as a reflective response to this kind of vivid consumerism.

His image lives here

His design solution lives here

Happy Passover, Jewish Peepstars


I tried to explain the Passover Seder to my colleagues the other day. One of them had a meeting, so I had to deliver the Coles Notes version. I'm glad I did. Suddenly, there's a new aura, a Twilight Zone dimension, to a holiday I always just, well, did.
I took for granted the craftsmanship involved in each step of the tradition.
Do yourself a favour. Take any ritual you take for granted, and strip it down to brass tacks.

For example. The Passover Seder in thirty seconds.
The purpose of the Seder is to commemorate the deliverance of Hebrews from Egypt. The same story immortalized through Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner's epic landmark 'The Ten Commandments'.
To kick things off, we draw attention to a platter of things on the table that represent aspects of slavery. Like parsley, horseradish, and a baked egg.
To further enunciate the Hebrew experience, we dip our fingers into our wine and shout out each of the ten biblical plagues -. from locusts and blood to beasts and slaying of the first born. Etc.
At this point, the family shares a glass of wine with an invisible man who's shown up in a flaming chariot (also invisible).
Then we eat lots because the first bits took a couple hours.
Post-feast, the children flee the table to find the matzoh cracker hidden somewhere in the house.
...for cash prizes!

I've included a picture of an ad I found on the inside cover of the Passover Haggadah (kind of a Seder manual) I was handed this year. It was published by Maxwell House in the 70s.

I have a new appreciation for my heritage.