Monthly Archives: August 2009

08/21/09

Old Japanese toy paintings

The Ningyo-do Bunko Database is an online collection of over 5000 watercolour paintings by Kawasaki Kyosen (1877-1942) of antique Japanese toys and folk craft items. (Via Pink Tentacle, which naturally enough focuses on octopus-themed works.) Click on kyosen gangucho and gangucho to go to the indexes. Each link in the indexes takes you to a book’s worth of images.

A few pictures from the collection:

japtoy01

japtoy02

octo_toy_5

japtoy03

Also from Pink Tentacle, tangible holograms using focused ultrasonic waves, and translucent CG flowers by illustrator Macoto Murayama. Murayama’s translucent images highlight the geometrical structure in the beauty of flowers.

murayama_1

And while I’m linking, from the BBC, do seals navigate by the stars?

08/17/09

Walk on water ball

No, not a grand dance where everyone walks on water… Has anyone ever seen one of these?

http://www.ballertoys.com/outdoor-recreation/walk-on-water-inflatable-ball.html

I swear I used to dream about something like this as a kid. I wonder how long you can stay in it before you run out of oxygen? O.o

08/14/09

Takoyaoi

All this talk of moral degeneracy and perversion has got me quite excited, so much that I was hardly able to settle down to work today. Instead, I spent most of the day drawing properly porny cartoons. I’ve never gone this far on paper before!

Every year, the internet helps me to become just that little bit more of a hentai. Verily, the tentacle god (that would be the flying spaghetti monster?) moves in mysterious ways.

08/11/09

Hearts & Guns 4

Well, of the four stories I’d given myself to the end of the year to tidy up, I’ve done two already, more or less. I don’t know if one of them’s going to make the cut, but right now I need it for the word count, so it’s staying. The Love of Beauty shouldn’t take too long, since I can’t really muck around with its storyline, only cosmetic things. The Art of Dying is a different kettle of fish, so obviously I’m leaving that till last.

I definitely want at least one new story, and I’m working on two, so hopefully at least one of them will come through. But I do suck at coming up with ideas — just about every story I’ve written has been in response to a prompt. (Yes, I need a fluffer.)

So, I’m shamelessly soliciting prompts! If I use your prompt and the story gets written and ends up in the book, you’ll get a free copy, signed and personalised with an illustration. And my undying gratitude. And I’ll throw in some chocolate if you want, too.

08/5/09

South Ashamoil

This morning I was working on a tricky part of The Floating World (please like it, Preston, please!). Feeling feeble and dizzy as I tried to marshal lazy, knockabout thoughts into some semblance of order, I had to slack off frequently to recharge the old mental batteries.

This is what I did when I was slacking:

spgwynn2

spraule

spbeth

Pictures created with SP Studio (http://www.sp-studio.de/), by Janina Köppel.  Such fun…

Now I have to write a 500-word not-a-bio for Baggage, which has to sound intelligent but unpretentious. Or I could go play with plasticine…

08/5/09

Architecture glossaries & Hakim Bey on Imagination

I love resources like this. Did you ever want to know the proper word for a decorated arch keystone, or those little brackets that run around under cornices, or the water-collection box that discharges into a downpipe? Here they be, at Roberta Barresi’s illustrated architecture glossary. For a more in-depth coverage of medieval art and architecture, there’s a dedicated glossary here.

While I’m linking, some of you might enjoy this short essay by Hakim Bey on Imagination. Bey makes the point that in modern culture, imagination is mediated through “specialists” such as actors and writers, and is not democratically shared. On books, Bey says:

Books appeal to “imaginative” people, perhaps, but all their imaginal activity really amounts to passivity, sitting alone with a book, letting someone else tell the story. The magic of books has something sinister about it, as in Borges’s Library. The Church’s idea of a list of damnable books probably didn’t go far enough–for in a sense, all books are damned. The eros of the text is a perversion–albeit, nevertheless, one to which we are addicted, & in no hurry to kick.

If the eros of reading (as I take Bey to mean) is a perversion, I wonder what the eros of writing is?

08/3/09

Hearts & Guns 3

Or maybe I’ll call it Made in Malkuth.

Well, I’ve basically tidied up We the Enclosed, and I’ve been through all the surreal stuff like Maldoror Abroad and other bits and bobs, including some poems that I want to include, and there isn’t much left to do on all of those. Heart of a Mouse and Saving the Gleeful Horse are too new for me to see what might need doing to them, ditto the story for Baggage, Vision Splendid. I’ll probably wait for an editor’s opinion on those three.

Which means I have four stories to really work on: The Art of Dying, The Love of Beauty, Beach Rubble, and Between the Covers. I want to get them fixed by the end of the year. Yeah, I know that’s a lot of time for four stories, but I know my own sluglike pace, and Preston and I are still working on Book#2, which, I can now reveal, is called The Floating World.

I’d also like to get a couple more new stories down. I’ve only got 73k words, which doesn’t leave much room to cut material, and I think a couple of fresh, not-published-elsewhere stories would be very good to have in the mix. So I could fiddle with them this year and work properly on them next year, and hopefully have 80-90k by mid-year.

In other news, I have plants! Someone was moving house, and I acquired a whole lotta greenery at a bargain-basement 1000 baht the lot, plus ceramic pots. Some of the greenery is rather large; the biggest, a golden cane palm, reaches the ceiling and bends down to overhang the coffee table. We’ve put little paper-lantern party lights in it, which gives a bit of a tiki bar effect at night. There’s also a giant spider lily and an exuberant lady palm, and sundry smaller plants, including a badly sunburnt bird’s nest plant that I’ve put in the bathroom to convalesce (apparently it likes moisture much).