Saturday, January 24, 2009

Life in Technicolour (nightmares)



I don't get around to watching a lot of music videos, but this just appeared on my tv screen for a few minutes, and now I feel like Chris Martin is going to haunt my nightmares forever. Or a Chris Martin puppet, specifically. I have no issue with puppets, cute puppetty music videos, or puppets in rock star likenesses even. I once saw Beck play an entire set behind a small stage of Jim Henson Studio puppets, and that was bloody brilliant. The main problem I had with it was, aside from the general creepiness of the puppets (possibly a deliberate attempt to avoid being too cutesy, but really, who can tell?) is that it's SO bizarre, SO disturbing, (eerie, frightening, ghoulish, gruesome, hair-raising, horrible, menacing, nightmarish, ominous, shuddersome, sinister, terrifying, threatening, unpleasant, weird, etc...) that not only does it sit very uncomfortably with the song - Life in Technicolour, quite a classic Coldplay-being-amthemic, optimistic type of song - it actually completely distracts you from it. It insists that you don't listen to the song at all.

So, to sum up... it's rubbish.

Thank you. That is all.

Beck puppets = good. Just for your own reference.

Beck's Puppets, originally uploaded by Samuel Stroube.

Monday, January 19, 2009

The Most Depressing Day of the Year...

...apparently.

Rainy Monday Morning

Particularly so, now the world is without Tony Hart.

Boo, world. Boooo.

Colourful & Wintery Shopping

Snuggly Winter Shopping

Uniqlo

Uniqlo Sock Stripes

IMG_5766

Sock Fuzz

Yum - Lunch at Paul

Lunch-time multi-cheese sustenance from Paul, possibly my new favourite Saturday lunchy type place. Good cuppa too.

IMG_5773

Shopping

Uniqlo

Some shops are just really nice to be in aren't they? Take Uniqlo - their clothes are, well, ok. I don't buy them often because they never seem to fit me very well. But I still love to be in there, which means even though I know their clothes aren't normally the best for me, I still find something good occasionally. Whereas most shops I I have that experience with may as well not exist to me - they're just not on my radar. A lot of shops in my price range turn into something very very depressing not unlike a jumble sale at this time of year, and Uniqlo feels even more like an oasis. A very organised, colourful oasis. I wish more of them paid this much attention to the actual experience of shopping, rather than swinging manically between TRENDY and CHEAP. And yes, they do shout.

That is all.

Uniqlo Sock Stripes

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Topographic Ice


topographic ice, originally uploaded by Camilla Engman.

How weird is this?!

Monday, January 05, 2009

Reading List

Books

Lots of exciting reading to do after my big pile of similarly shaped Christmas presents. New year's resolution number 1: actually read all of these. Even the ones with lots of pictures. I will let you know how they are (if I'm not the last person in the entire world to have read the 79 essays that is).

79 Short Essays on Design - Michael Beirut
The Undercover Economist - Tim Harford
The Olivetti Chronicles - John Peel
Print Liberation: The Screen Printing Primer - Nick Paparone & Jamie Dillon
Reasons to be Cheerful: The Life and Work of Barney Bubbles - Paul Gorman
The Invisible Man - HG Wells (Invisible: apparently I have to wait til the boyfriend's finished it before I can borrow it.)

Polaroid Pogo Printer

Pogo

My new toy. Nice prints, not fantastic quality but then that's never what Polaroid things are for really. You can peel the back off them and they're sticky so I think they'll be good for sketchbooks and things too. The prints are 3x5" to give you an idea of scale.

The printer would be so much better if it came with some kind of very short cable, or even better, some card readers built in. As neither of my cameras have bluetooth I have to rely on this cable, which kind of ruins the gadget-prettiness.

Pogo + annoying USB cable