Every year as Halloween approaches, I invariably come up with some outlandish costume ideas, and some incredibly minimalist cheesy cop outs. Here we have the latter…the best useless product I’ve seen in a while:
I think I could parlay these babies into a Halloween costume. What special powers do they endow me with? Wouldn’t you like to know?
I have to get my hands on some Party Rats (no pun intended).
From Nerd Aprroved
When I was a child, I wrote a story in which a group of moths kept a collection of humans pinned to trees in a remote part of the forest. It seemed like poetic justice, given the human penchant for displaying collections of dead things.
I had a pang of nostalgic thrill when I saw the new animation by Rotofugi, the wonderful toy store and gallery.
I can’t embed the clip, but watch it on NOTCOT (which is, incidentally, a great site).
I wrote about my lowbrow Halloween favorites in this post not long ago. Now it’s time to class it up a bit, with Pottery Barn’s Halloween collection.
I’m not surprised that the Skeleton Appetizer Plates sold out.
(That one in the middle blows me away!)
This wall mural transports you right into a Hitchcock film:
Of course, there are always a few things I’d like to display year round. These would go nicely in my library:
The arrival of my Azure Green catalog inspired me to do a *POTION WEEK* here at SheWalksSoftly. Each day next week I’ll feature bizarre and curious formulations with a note on their origins and use.
We’ll start with these:
Use in rituals to destroy curses, hatred, resentments, envy & any evil intention towards you or your home.
My favorite thing about Black Destroyer is the description on the bottle: “Alleged Powerful Oil.” Never underestimate the energy we bring to the products we use.
A formula developed during the time of the Black Plague, Four Thieves Vinegar is used to make your enemies go away (or any other person you wish out of your life).
It can also be used as a body wash…which is most likely responsible for its repellent effects. Tempting for those anti-social moods.
Forget beer and automotive technology, Germany needs to start exporting massive amounts of TYPOLADE, the chocolate text.
Some wonderful inventor decided to combine two of my favorite things: words and chocolate. I can only sit back, awestruck and salivating.
There’s a little gallery of various TYPOLADE uses on the main page.
Reading the news is never a pleasant experience these days, and I tend to dislike the “human interest” stories designed to be uplifting. But this story made my day.
A mystery artist has been taking empty milk bottles from the doorsteps of suburbia and returning them with elaborate glass etchings. The bottles clearly take time and effort, and idea that someone is willing to leave them anonymously gives me some hope for the beautiful gestures of which mankind is capable.
Of course, the response of one recipient shot that hope down instantly:
“Who knows, it might be worth something one day.”
Typical.
Still, I’ve left anonymous little gifts for people to find, Amelie style, and I just may do it again.
Roman Sock just posted quite an accomplishment: Falstaff the robot.
This tiny crocheted creature has the most impressive range of emotion I’ve ever seen in a robot creation. Look!
Falstaff is joyful…all is right with the world.
But a simple turn of the head makes him pensive, perhaps nostalgic.
Turn him a little more and he’s positively dejected.
I just want to take him home and make sure he’s never sad again.
I definitely need to keep up with Roman Sock’s posts.
Barry X Ball has a way with melting and menacing faces.
I could comment further, but instead I direct you to the Salon 94 site. It’s rare that I insult anyone’s writing, but these descriptions have a severe verbosity problem. It’s like a thesaurus exploded all over the page. Seriously, see for yourself. For a moment I thought the commentary was a satirical part of the exhibit.
When the words get tiring (almost instantaneously), I do recommend clicking through the pictures.
What a great project concept. Invent a creature, give it a name, gather a group of talented folks to bring it to life.
“The International Fauna Dossier describes a schaffas (Marcum-Schaffidius) as a gentle and un-aspiring creature of great mystery…SCREAMDANCE have hand-picked art-friends from all over the world to customize their own breed of schaffas. They were each sent a similar blank shape and given free reign to add, subtract, paint or destroy these objects.”
Here is the template:
And a couple of examples of what people have done with it:
You can see the whole collection here, and it’s quite entertaining.
I love the emerging trend of DIY toys. Mildly anthropomorphic shapes have become a new canvas, and it’s lovely to see the variety of what people project upon them.
Igor Siwanowicz has a collection of beautiful wild life photographs. Some of his subjects take on an almost human expression, like this sly fellow:
I particularly like “Mantis .v. Mealworm,” which begs the question “Is ignorance really bliss?”
SheWalksSoftly 