A collection of toys that Boris killed

To honour the memory of the poor unfortunate animals who lost their happy little lives to Boris Yeltsin (our 9-month old Polish Lowland Sheepdog puppy), I decided to do project based around the idea of the Victorian death photograph. This form of death portraiture involved people taking photographs of the dearly departed in a way that made them look like they were alive — dead children were propped up on chairs, surrounded with members of the family or items they liked. Some even went so far as painting fake eyes on their faces. In a time when epidemics scarred Victorian England, these photographs were a way of celebrating the dead and coping with grief.

To the animals who suffered at the paws of The Evil Ball of Fluff,
May they have eternal rest,
May perpetual light shine upon them,
May they rest in peace.
Amen.

(And to the other animals who are not featured here but suffered none the less,
You may be gone, but you will never be forgotten.)

+++

The Evil Ball of Fluff

+++

The Dead

+++

Complete name: Mr Raccoon
Approximate age: 2 hours
Cause of death: Decapitation

+++

Complete name: Red Stripey Christmas Monkey
Approximate age: 3 months
Cause of death: Injury to the temporal lobe

+++

Complete name: Monsieur Elephant
Approximate age: 2.5 weeks
Cause of death: Profuse hemorrhaging from the foot and ear

+++

Complete name: Ducky
Approximate age: 4 months
Cause of death: Several breaks in the cervical and lumbar spine; sustained blow to the dorsal scapular artery

+++

Complete name: Orange Monkey
Approximate age: 1 week
Cause of death: Acute damage to the frontal and temporal lobes; brain hemorrhage

+++

Complete name: Norman from The Secret Lives of Pets
Approximate age: 2.5 months
Cause of death: Immense grief from loss of hearing

 

 

An Obsession with Dr Who Villains

Which Dr Who villains — classic and current — would get together to form a band?

+++

Renegade Time Lords

+++

Mutated robots

+++

Humanoids

+++

Servants/slaves

+++

Manifestations of the Great Intelligence

+++

Reptilians

+++

Sea creatures

+++

Bugs

+++

Telepaths

+++

The fucking scary

An obsession with 100% rye bread

When I took the “What nationality should you actually be?” quiz on Playbuzz and got “German”, I secretly believed it was true. Now anyone who knows me well knows that I am as un-German as one can get — not only do I have brown skin and dark eyes, I’m also perpetually late for everything. But every autumn in Melbourne, my fictional northern European roots emerge in the form of an intense craving for and obsession with dark rye bread. I’m not entirely sure how it all started, but when the weather drops below 20 degrees, I find myself in a bakery having a jovial conversation with the baker about the difference between a Schwarzbrot and a Borodinsky —  all while wolfing down a thick slice of malty, aniseed-y goodness smothered in salted butter.

This year I decided to document this obsession and as a result, I probably have enough bread to last me through to next autumn. (The Husband asked if Jesus had been in our kitchen because it looked like someone had miraculously multiplied loaves of rye to feed the masses.) Here’s where I found the top baker’s dozen and how much I liked each of them.

+++
Typeset in Axioforma by Galin Kastelov and Sabon Italic by Jan Tschichold

A year of shifting spaces

I often find it trite and a wee bit cringeable when people do a retrospective on “the year that was” or do a countdown of “the top” whatever for the year. Yet here I am at the beginning of 2017, struck down with food poisoning, bored out of my head without anything much to do except reflect on the year that was. But whether this bout of sentimentality is caused by salmonella or not, I think it was a year worth writing about anyway.

2016 was totally manic, hence this blog’s radio silence. It was the year where I found using the phrase “for the first time in my life” quite a lot. Whether it was as momentous as leaving my full-time job of 8 years to become a lecturer at design school or as small as discovering the joys of using the audio guide to explore the national gallery, the year that passed was a time of shifting places, spaces, experiences and perspectives. As each change came along, I took them on with the reckless bravado of Han Solo and the forward planning skills of a headless chicken. I pretended to know exactly what I was doing.

So how does one cope when an overwhelming amount of things happen in a seemingly short amount of time? By doing a visualisation, of course! Each section in this info graphic represents a shift in:

01: Physical space
02: Head space
03: Familiar people (occupying a different space in my life)
04: Familiar spaces (looking at them differently)
05: The body
06: Responsibilities

The biggest irony of it all is that despite all this change, I never left Victoria in 2016. Staying put has never been my forte and the husband summarised my lack of travel aptly as “Tragic.”

So as I feel my stomach churn and feel vomit number 498 come on, I purge the last bits of mania out of my system and say, “Let’s do this, 2017… let’s have a really boring year!”

***
Typeset in Circular by Lineto

Disco balls noticed on social media in the past two days

Is disco making a comeback?

(Clockwise from top left: Disco ball helmet on Cate’s Facebook page, watermelon on Jessica Walsh’s Instagram feed, avocado pit on Little Drill Creative’s Instagram feed, melting disco ball on Little Drill’s blog)