A bit of nonsense for halloween
Archive for the tag 'fun'
Follow-up to my mash-up post
A friend told me that a Sydney church had already jumped on the bandwagon. I googled, I goggled, I gonquered:
I encourage them to go the whole hog and adopt my script (we can come to some arrangement) for a full-blown national media campaign. Mine has the distinct advantage of avoiding pointing the finger of blame and guilt for past demeanors, and suggesting a bit of head scratching and bemusement.
So where the bloody hell is the church mash-up?
There is a curious $150,000 church advertising campaign on in Canberra at the moment. With the tag line ‘I’m not into religion, but I reckon a lot of what Jesus taught is pretty amazing’, it really makes me feel as if the institutional church knows they are up against the wall. Some of the banners outside the participating churches give the main impression of the face of a pretty girl, and the word ‘Jesus’. I always look for the exclamation mark…
I propose they would have more success with a mash-up of our controversial tourist ads, which have been almost banned in Britain (because of the ‘bloody’), in Canada (because of the beer – huh?), and now in the US (because of the ‘bloody’ and the ‘hell’ disturb the ‘family values’ mob):
- We’ve brought you a wine (picture of chalice filled with wine)
- And we’ve had the camels shampooed (3 wise men and camels)
- We’ve saved you a spot on the pews (Lara Bingle in bikini smiles invitingly from pew)
- And we’ve got the rockspiders out of the pulpit (squeaky clean bishop in pulpit – perhaps a woman?)
- We’ve got the ghouls off the gravestones (ghosts exiting manicured graveyard)
- And Peter is on his way down to open the front gate (St Peter at Pearly Gates)
- The angel’s waiting (Gabriel)
- And supper’s about to be served (Last Supper)
- We’ve turned on The Light (flooding rays of holy light)
- And we’ve been rehearsing for over 40,000 years (?) (celestial choir)
- So where the bloody hell are you? (Lara again)
I’m fighting the temptation of making it into a flash movie myself, so if you want to do it and save me the trouble, go to it!
Artnatomy and life casts
Artnatomy is a fantastic anatomical facial expression learning tool by Victoria Contreras Flores. Play with
the actions, especially in naturalistic mode. The pout is wonderful. (via Drawn!)
This reminded me of a collection of life casts that I had seen a while ago. Life casts are plaster casts of actors’ faces, made so that makeup artists can develop prosthetics. The thing I find curious is that with no hair and eyes closed, the faces seem to lose much of what makes faces distinct and individually recognizable. (via Extreme Craft)
Excuse me, this is the yellow queue…
Four of us in turn in the queue at the supermarket last night had multiples of bright yellow things: a bottle of detergent and a stack of sponges, a bunch of soup packets, bottles of lemon juice, and my hand of bananas. I felt very colour co-ordinated! Wouldn’t it be funny if you had to queue by item colour?
To introduce the system you could have people swanning around in appropriately brightly-coloured body suits helping shoppers sort their shopping and find the right checkout lane. Banana Man, for instance, would show yellow. Should the aisles be stocked by item colour? And the checkouts and lanes be demarcated by item colour? I think so.
This Banana Man is by Hilda Boswell, taken from Enid Blyton’s Marigold Story, from the 50′s. In the story the golly decides to go to a fancy dress party in a real banana skin. He asks the baby doll to sew up the skin around him but after much giggling in a corner of the toy cupboard… she can’t do it because the cotton slips through the skin. So they call on the elf who puts zips in with a bit of magic. Golly wins the fancy dress prize, but then can’t undo the zip magic to get out. I always felt sorry for him.
I could do with a bit of zip magic making the big body suit I’m working on at present.
I don’t see no lettuce!
Last week my son and I cracked up when we happened across a video clip of Bud Light’s Real Men of Genius: Mr Giant Taco Salad Inventor (‘I don’t see no lettuce!’). I had no idea it was part of a series of Bud Light commercials but yesterday my friend Amy serendipitously blogged about a collection of Bud Light ‘Real American Hero” commercials being hosted on KsiTokyo-3. I just love them!
Month of Softies: June bug
You know you are either going loopy, or your new creation has charm, or possibly both, when you find yourself taking it from room to room with you around the house, or with you in the car while driving errands. Especially when its a computer bug. And we won’t mention talking to it.
There are a few other images in my softies gallery. This bug was made for loobylu’s June Month of Softies. My thanks once again, Claire.
Two new recycled creatures
After making a couple of recycled creatures a few months ago, I’ve become a bit obsessed with the idea, and have been haunting the local op shops and trash and treasure markets, looking for suitably interesting bags and belts. I’ve now got far more than I have had time to make up! One side effect of this obsession is eyeing-off bags that people are carrying in shops and on the street.
Recycled Monsters: Meet Patrick and Esmé
I had a lot of fun with April’s Month of Softies theme, recycled monsters; thanks, Claire. Firstly, please meet Patrick, who is channelling Patrick White:
And now Esmé (‘don’t mess with me… I play bowls’):
They were made from an old bag and belt apiece, and Esmé has half an old cricket ball for a nose. There are more detailed pictures here. And thanks to Belinda for helping me see some extra dimensions to their characters!
Hooray for two-dollar shops!
Tacky but interesting: this is a huge spider garden spike that I got at the $2 shop the other day. It’s a hand span across, and the connections between its legs and body are fine springs, so that when the spike is jolted the legs have an incidental movement. The best movement you can get out of it is a kind of drumming of the legs, where, on each side, legs 1 and 3 are in sync with each other, and legs 2 and 4 are doing the opposite. Then it has the right kind of action for a huntsman spider.
I have a couple of other insect garden spikes, a bee and a dragonfly (bought out of curiosity when I was working on making giant bees and dragonflies a few years ago). They are much smaller than the spider, with bodies about 7 cm long, and the wings are on double springs. The dragonfly has much lighter springs, and a much better incidental movement than the poor bee, whose springs and wings are way too heavy.
