Secret Still

A lot of you probably heard about the guy who purchased an acetate for $.75 and it turned out to be the only surviving copy of the Velvet Underground Scepter studio sessions. He then sold that bad mammajamma on ebay for a cool $25G’s. The American Dream in action. And when I heard about it I complained to those around me that I didn’t care who won it as long as I got to hear the songs. And so thanks to Matt for posting a link to the MP3’s of the acetate and then not telling me about it at all.

I won’t be so cruel. I found them today and I’m telling you about them today. Just scoot on over to WFMU’s blog to d-load ‘em straight into your soul.

Here is a direct link to the post.

This one won’t have a picture because they’re all in your head. Or they will be when you get done anyway.

Go here to learn.

That’s all. Burn your fucking brain out with learnin’.

The French have long been on my shit-list of peoples to despise and foil at every turn. That hasn’t changed a bit. I’m a xenophobic American who hates Americans. The only people I trust are those in the Netherlands region. And most of the time I think they are being secretly smug. Just my nature.

But I don’t hold being French against the dudes at Kanardo. Isn’t that nice of me? What I mean is that they do superb design and they run a fantastic blog (that has provided me with several links so far). In other words you should be visiting their sites.

My apologies go out to the French; I’m sorry you have to have a country. I guess that applies to all of us.

Kanardo’s Blog
Knardo’s design site

Take equal parts shiny, cool, and precocious and that equals Hello Color. From the icy heart of Poland come Pawel Norbert, a 22 year-old who knows his way around photoshop for sure. And it seems like there are more and more of them every day. It seems like any fool with Adobe Creative Suite can start their own graphic design firm and get a deal with Nike. It seems like the NBA.

But not everyone can sit down and bang out eye-catching, well designed graphics. Having seen some of the work of local “designers” who advertise on corkboards and telephone poles I can say that much is a fact. Some people have talent, most don’t. But the advantage of all the new technologies is that you don’t have to be quite as good to be a professional. You have to be damn good to be known and respected, but you just need some talent to make a living. Exactly like the NBA. Boosh.

Pawel Norbert has talent, more than enough of it to warrant notice. Get to noticing.

I don’t understand it, but I sure do love the shit out of it.

Ryan McLennan

You have missed the chance to buy a print of his here.

myspace

As the site says: Readymechs are free, flatpack toys for you to print and build. They are designed to fit on an 8.5″x11″ page and printed with any printer. You’ll need double-sided tape, thick matte paper, and 10-15 minutes for build time.

As I say: Ima build these muhfuckers and fight ‘em in the end-all, be-all paper battle royale of this or any other century.

Get the whole set here.

They were designed by these folks.

Time for some ass kickin’.

The Lifelong Friendship Society may not sound like a design firm but they are just that. Like a lo-fi Dali dream explosion with a lithium on top. They make commercials that seem like they were designed by C.H.U.D.s for the Lisa Frank sticker collection. You may not have seen any of their work but if you have you damn well remember it.

Give them a looksee.

I’m not going to go into all the various things that Philippe Starck has designed, or how they are beautiful, functional, and innovative. You can figure all of that out for yourself by looking at his website. There is nothing the man can’t design better than everyone else.

I still remember the day that B-Mac introduced me to the design of Mr. Starck. We were at Target and she was fawning over some of the kitchen utensils that he had designed for them. I think she in fact bought a dish drainer of his. After that it was like when you hear a word for the first time and then you hear it everywhere. I saw his design everywhere. And he was designing everything from the buildings and what could go in them to what the people living their could wear or use in their everyday lives. The scope of his work is pretty ridiculous and it gets better with each design.

I went into all the things I said I wouldn’t. I really just wanted to mention this watch designed by Starck for Fossil. It’s simple, clean, and represents the style that Starck has cultivated over the years. At $95 it’s well out of my price range, and I don’t wear watches anyway, but I always love to see a design that makes me stop and stare. Well done, Philippe. Now design some letters out of your name.

Here’s where to buy the watch
Here’s where you can see Starck’s work
And here’s where you can learn too much about him

Found via

This morning I was taking part in a daily ritual that usually occurs after I brush my teeth but before I put in my contact lenses and it struck my just how odd it was for me to be doing it at all. Not the act, that would happen whether I wanted it to or not, eventually. It was the manner of it.

I’m talking about using a toilet. I think it was my dog’s presence in the room that made me think about just exactly what I was doing. He had just been outside where he just let’s it go on whatever he sees that needs some marking. And then we come inside and I waste all that good pee by aiming it directly into a small water-filled bowl that leads to a large water-filled (some of it is water anyway) pipe underground. I wondered how crazy he thought I was. Not crazy enough to avoid licking my eyes whenever I get within range. But seriously why is it that we all do this?

Sanitation is the first and most obvious reason. The first modern toilet that wasn’t ridiculed out of existence was created by Alexander Cummings in the 18th Century, it was an s-bend toilet so I will consider it the first modern toilet. There are several variations of a flush toilet that date back as far as 2600 BC. Don’t even ask how hilarious I find it that Jews fleeing Egypt might have stopped somewhere to have a nice movement on an early flush toilet. That’s just my sense of humor. But even before the modern toilet a lot of people were just going in chamber pots or, lacking one of those, on someone else’s shoes if that person was unfortunately close. You can imagine that this led to pretty serious sanitation problems and that whole plague thing probably wouldn’t have been so bad otherwise. It’s hard to heal people who have shit on them.

But our actions are even more strange when you consider that after we place our waste in this nice little bowl for delivery to the underworld we then pull sheets of various textured paper off of a roll and use it to rub off any remnants of excrement. I’m surprised my dog will come anywhere near my crazy ass. No other animal that I know of has ever used some bit of something to remove any dingleberries. It’s never been a problem for my dog as far as I can tell. In some Asian countries they use water rather than paper and generally apply it with their left hand, which is why they don’t shake with that hand if they like you. Taken out of context of our species something like this seems like the most amazingly strange thing to do. My dog uses the water he has readily available on his tongue.

I’m certainly not saying that I would rather lick my ass clean. I love the toilet. If I could I would tuck the load in with a nice little blanket before I let it join with the muck of the whole city. It’s just that there must be some reason beyond sanitation. If we were just trying to be sanitary we would have invented a laser to carbonize it by now.

“Yeah, man, hang on, I just need to put my dook in the vaporizer.”

So why is our bodily waste so terrifying and hilarious to us? Why does it seem like such an foreign substance? There are more euphamisms for waste, it’s egestion, and the device utilized for it’s removal than there are disesase that you could get if you were covered in it. Why? I don’t pretend to have the answer to such a large question. I’m sure that several mores and taboos have built up over time in our society.

I’ll leave you with this idea. Waste and the toilet are one divider of socioeconomic class. Low-brow humor is known as toilet humor. And as the price of the toilet goes up it’s name gets change to a commode. Which word do you use? And where do you live? Notice any correlation?

For more information you can read the exciting Wiki Article on ‘toilet’.

In the words of Tksh:

“Self made designer, I’ve been practicing design in an intensive way since 2006 and have already been involved in many project such as webdesign, flyers, posters, cd design or visual identity for a number of organisations.
Co-founder of the Beneath A Steel Sky nation, I got myself surrounded by a network of skilled people dedicated to design, DJ-ing, drum&bass and nu-roots music production… This “pack” of talents allowed me an extensive number of collaborations and opened the gates to a perpetual renewing of my creative field of expression.
Beneath the threats of a steel sky, I’m now evolving among the twists and curves of a urban decay graphic style. My commitment and need for expression have set graphic design at the heart of my current priorities and nothing on earth might change my mind.”

In ten words or less: Subtle schizophrenia, a Wacom tablet, and an eye for Joy.

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Beneath A Steel Sky