Bah

Am I the only one who can't wait for 2008 to be over?

Deliver Me From Cooking

Good to see fashion photography has branched beyond 50 year old stereotypes. I know I always wear designer clothes when I'm baking little lovehearts for my hardworking husband. Who doesn't? And bras? Totally optional. Absent stares however, strictly mandatory.

Unfortunately for you, my dear, you may not eat any of the baked goods you are preparing.

Yes, baking is so very sexy. The oven gloves totally complete this look. I'm just disappointed I can't see the killer 8 inch heels she is no doubt wearing.

What the hell? Is this a joke, or is this actually meant to be cutting edge? Nuts to that, if I see one more cooking or cleaning based fashion photoshoot that DOESN'T feature men, I'm going to hit the fan. Seriously. It's going to get hit.

Sigh.

Some people have all the talent. All the luck. All the looks. And all the drive.


I must have slept in when they were giving out all the good attributes.

Battle Star

So I said I wasn't interested in the US elections. For the most part, that's true.

But then there's this.

Teehee

Sign of the Times

Some signs make you wonder what kind of hijinks had to occur to warrant their existence.



And some are just a little too good to be true...

Feel the Love

Sometimes, words can tell a thousand pictures.

But on a lighter note...

A Little Blog with a Big Heart

It's easy to get carried away by all things pretty and delicious, but there's a whole different world out there that many of us don't even see. Some of us choose not to see it, some of us just don't understand what we're looking at.

Next time you're walking through your city, take a look around. Are you walking past the same people every day? They may have signs, or they may just sit in silence, their story untold. These people who may have nothing, but they don't deserve to be treated like nothing. Stop. Talk to them. Hear what they have to say. If they're hungry, buy them a meal. If they're cold, buy them a jacket or a scarf. If it's raining, buy them a poncho. Or if they just want to talk, be the person that listens.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. The people you don't see are just as needy as those you do. Volunteer at a shelter or a soup kitchen. Donate care packages to your local charities and churches. And it's never been easier to make a difference in other corners of the world - be a micro-loan lender at Kiva and help entrepreneurs in the developing world in their quest to become self-sufficient.

Everyone has a story, but not everyone has someone who will listen.

Be that person, and make a difference to someone's life.

When Designers are Idiots

Well at least these guys can admit to it. Afke Golsteijn and Floris Bakker make up the bizarre design duo Idiots, and whilst I admire their modesty and self-deprecation, I'm not too sure about their actual designs.

According to their website...

Their art is characterized by the use of animal material that is carefully patched up and put into significant positions, combined with rich materials such as embroidery, pearls and gold. A contemporary touch is given to the classical memento mori concept, questioning the way the world nowadays seems to be determined by nothing else than just marketing. In a constantly twisting play between fantasy and reality Idiots emphasizes the borderline between life and death. The striking beauty and the vividness of the animals that figure in the works provoke an immediate attraction, but directly after the first glance one starts wondering what is going on exactly, thrilled by the perspective of transience that is brought forward. Animals are reborn to remind people of the life they lived, but also to suggest an alternative history, in which they rule the world. The resemblance to the archetypes known from fables and fairy tales is obvious. From a similar moral perspective Idiots criticizes the contemporary way of life, athough the representation of these famous stories is not the duo’s main aspiration. If one can speak of a certain objective in Idiots’ art it is to bring people closer to an honest perception of reality pictured through a lens of critical fantasy.

Kind of interesting, but incredibly self important. Frankly, I think they just enjoy playing with stuffed animals and precious gems.

Delicious Diagrams

As a non-American, I have only so much patience for an election that has little to do with me or my country. Don't get me wrong, I love politics and I'm not adverse to getting on my well-worn little soapbox, but there's only so many times I can hear Americans talking about how they're going to save the world, change the world, be the greatest nation in the world and so on and so forth. Ok, we get it, you love your country. Good for you.

So from the Hillary/Barack commotions onwards, I made a concerted effort to ignore anything even remotely related to the US elections.

And then Tina Fey ruined everything. How can I ignore completely flawless send-ups of one of the scariest women the world?

Aden Nak summed up quite nicely why the rest of the world is holding their breath. Better yet, he summed it up in flow chart form.

Will the rest of the world lose any remaining respect for the US if Sarah Palin (and that old guy) are voted into office? You betcha!

And while we're on the topic of helpful and concise diagrams, I can't help but admire this little gem care of GirlOnGauche.

I'm not sure what ranks higher on this scale - Tina Fey's Palin impersonation, or the fact that millions of Americans are actually considering voting for a person with no legitimate experience, expertise, charisma, talent or political savvy, simply because she's female and white.

Please America, prove the rest of the world wrong. For once.

With Friends Like These

A good friend suggested I should watch Paris Hilton's New BFF. So I did. It was truly the most terrible show I have EVER watched.

I now have one less friend, and it's not Paris.

Concealment is No Place to Hide

I first stumbled across the work of Liu Bolin around a year ago, but it's great to finally see this talented artists works cropping on and garnering the acclaim it clearly deserves.

The image above is from the series 'Camouflage', part of a compelling body of work in which the Chinese artist explores notions of instinct and survival.

Post-Olympics, it will be interesting to see if the 'rest' of the world continues its interesting in the notion of survival in modern China, or if we'll simply turn the other cheek to a problem that is intimidatingly vast. These beautiful images however, urge us to seek the unseen and forgotten, and hear their silenced cries.

Hungry?

Why spend your money on food when Prada's offcuts are up for grabs this Spring 09 season?

I can't understand why agencies are still representing girls like this, let alone why are designers still hiring them. They need to be in hospital.

Please, enough with the fanorexia.

DIY Diatribe

I have a problem with DIY. A love/hate relationship. I love the countless television shows that cover overnight transformations and entire house renovations compressed into 24 minutes complete with innocuous music, time lapse cameras and chirpy voiceovers. I love the magazines that compare the painfully bland origins of a project with the miraculously fabulous final result. Who doesn't love a before and after?

So what's to hate? The net result...Instant Experts. The ones who have seen a 3 minute segment on how to build a deck and are suddenly equipped with all they need to know to convert their 2 bedroom cottage into a 16 bedroom palace. They're usually the ones who also draw up all the plans themselves and forget to include a bathroom. Or stairs. Or windows.

My dear former neighbour was an Instant Expert. He renovated a house with no prior experience and no professional advice. He took all the worst aspects of his first house with all the worst aspects of my parents house and combined them together. He didn't realise he was doing this of course, but humans are cursed with not only being incredibly adaptable, but also as creatures of habit. We're much more likely to notice poor design than good design, but we adapt so quickly that soon it doesn't matter either way. Until of course a snob like me walks in and is completely aghast that the bathroom connects directly to the kitchen.

The most frustrating trait of an Instant Expert is their incessant assertions that their DIY work is somehow an extension of them, some kind of physical manifestation of their soul. They're so passionate about this that they'll likely send themselves to the glue factory if you ask why laundry is in the bedroom cupboard.

This unrelenting passion doesn't align with the fact that the Instant Expert is an obsessive collector of images of other peoples homes and other peoples styles. In attempting to express themselves through the supposed personal process of DIY, they are in fact just expressing their complete lack of self, or their desire to be someone else. There is nothing unique or individual about the Instant Expert, they just want what someone else has in order to express themselves.

Poor Robots

Who in their right mind would put this shoe “design” into production? Better yet, who would BUY these shoes and be seen in public wearing them? I don’t care if they’re designed by a Pritzker Prize-winning architect, they look like robot excrement (if such a thing could exist).

Zaha dearest, stick to buildings.

On second thoughts, maybe just keep it on canvas.

Best Served Cold

Dispassionate, cynical, and cold, Dominique nurses a masochistic streak. An ardent idealist, she observes Greek sculpture, the music of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and she understands the human potential. Dominique recognizes man’s capacity for achievement, and this is the only thing she loves. Because she reveres man at his highest and best, she necessarily loathes most members of the human race, who fall below man’s potential.