Dug up on awesome blog I Wrote This For You: The Avoidance of Pain. I would never hurt you. Not even to kiss it better.
Archive for May, 2010
Something a tad creepy…
2010
05.23
05.23
The Last Rabbit - a painting from the Bunnies And Bees series.
More wonderfully dodgy art! It’s all muted cupcake colours and sugary little characters poured through a twisted lens… Alice Through The Looking Glass all over again.
LA-based artist Mark Ryden‘s world involves dresses made from meat, girly yet strangely erotic figures blowing bubbles from their, erm, vajajays (no, really) and Christina Ricci holding a bee. And other stuff that makes you wonder what he gets up to in his spare time, besides creating art…
There’s a lot of meat. And little weird-looking bunnies. And cute young girls. But not so much made out of sugar and spice and all things nice… See if you can spot all the references of cultural and religious significance… The safety of objects turned upside down. I like a lot.
The joy of being sad…
2010
05.19
05.19
“’cos I’d rather hurt than feel nothing at all…” – Lady Antebellum
This is me, quoting cheesy pop-country bands. Emo much? I’m all about the anatomy of being sad tonight. We all have these bundles of misery clutched close to us… And since misery loves company, indulge me.
We love our sadness. It’s like a scab that you can’t stop pick pick picking at, until you realize it’s healed and a vague disappointment fills you. And sometimes, you pick at the healed bits until the bleeding starts again. ‘Cos you can.
We cultivate sadness. Like imagining a life story for every single beggar at every single robot, every bleary-eyed old person sitting alone on a park bench. Reading all the reports on animal abuse. Refusing to accept your parents’ ageing and waking up from nightmares where you imagine they died.
We love being rejected, dissed, ignored. We love feeling slighted and shortchanged. So that we can complain and feel even worse off.
We love loving unsuitable people at unsuitable times… And then we love trying to get over them but not over them ‘cos, like, how is it even possible to not have this unsuitable person in your life to add to your misery?
We love thinking back to moments that were so absolutely joyful, but taken as a package just left you empty and longing for more.
We love tears and the headaches that follow and the confusion in the eyes of the people who love you and who’re trying to cheer you up. Doesn’t she want to feel better? No, actually, she doesn’t.
Our sadness defines us in ways much more real and visceral than being happy could ever do.
Tonight, I’m really sad. I choose to ignore all the good things in my life, all the people to be grateful for. And I choose to sob to emo music and be silly about it all. ‘Cos being sad is so… trivial, really. Tomorrow? We’ll see.
Ode to cats!
2010
05.16
05.16
Her most honourable highness Queen Peroni.
I’m addicted to cats. I’ve tried snorting them, but there were too many hairball complications. But I suspect if there were any way of intravenously ingesting the essence of cat, I’d probably do it. And promptly curl up in a sunny spot, preferably on my pink heart-bedecked dressing gown (pink!) – like my cat’s doing right now.
When I reincarnate one day, I’m coming back as my cat.
There have always been cats in my life. Big, small, black, ginger, white, indeterminate, deaf, skin-cancered, nasty, cuddly… Cats who moved to the neighbors’, cats who pitched up from the neighbors’. Cats who got hit by cars and survived, got stuck in trees and survived, got dumped next to the side of the road and ended up with us. Cats who left little corpses as gifts (have you ever stuck your hand into your beach bag looking for a tissue and come up with a mummified lizard?), cats who got cat flu – and promptly got dosed with Disprin by my mom. They actually survived…
And the one memorable ginger-and-white specimen who used to attack guests’ ankles from his lair amongst the shrubbery. One or two lawsuits were barely avoided back then…
That same cat used to snooze in the small of my back whenever I was lying down on my stomach, reading somewhere. And it would headbutt me and purr its little heart out whenever I was in tears. It hated when I played guitar – it probably had a point. That’s the cat that got heartsick after I left for Varsity, and disappeared soon after. I still miss him.
These days, my cat goes by the name of Peroni. She’s fat, incredibly lazy and the cutest thing on four legs. Favourite position: on your chest, purring into your face.
She’s also what’s keeping me from turning into a bona fide cat lady: if I weren’t so scared her cuddly temperament would go to hell in a handbasket upon encountering an intruder, I’d have ten other cats already. But she’s the lady of the house, and seems set to stay that way for some time still.
I could waffle on forever about the magic and charms of my favourite feline deities, but Peroni just jumped on my lap – demanding a cuddle and food. So I’ll leave you with some links that just prove my point…
• Lolcats – my non cat-inclined friends curse the day that these ill-spelled catrocities hit the Internet. I’ve been banned from a few e-mail addresses, I’m sure…
• Cat cafes in Tokyo. Where cats deign to be worshipped.
• Cat and girl webcomics – ‘cos cats are, like, way existential…
• Travelling cat – you spot the opportunity, you take it!
• Calvin and Hobbes – okay, technically Hobbes is a tiger. But a tiger is just an overgrown cat.
• Paul Gallico’s catty books – Jennie and Thomasina. Bring tissues.
Nothing tastes like…
2010
05.11
05.11
Let's talk...
If you ever find yourself lost in translation, these postcards from big-haired bass guitarist for the band Allan John and general design dude Morné Venter might serve as a roadmap.
Or not, who knows.
What I do know is that nothing is cooler than his series of ramblings on general nothingness.We have two things to thank for his profound sentiments: category #25 of the international D&AD awards: the open category. And Morne’s belief that nothing is a phrase that is too liberally tossed around these days.
Says my new favourite guru: “People don’t know what they mean when they say nothing anymore. For a species that does so much of nothing we really have no clue of what’s really going on. We apparently do it a lot, but explaining it is a different story. Instead of trying to solve the world’s energy problems or get a real idea, I took it upon myself to grapple with the metaphorical void and do a project about nothing. What I present to you now is a set of conceptual postcards meant to define, explain and explore “nothing” in search of universal knowledge and understanding.”
I don’t really care if we ever reach that pinnacle of knowledge and understanding… As long as random moments of brilliance like these litter the way.
Nothing. Coming soon to a corner cafe near you.
Contact Morné on Facebook or at mornventer@yahoo.com to see and find out more…