“In folklore the tanuki is a bit like the plump, comical brother of the fox, equally prone to mischief and shape-changing and the deception of humans. It seems to have a hedonistic bent, constantly on the prowl for saké, food, and women, and is known to disguise worthless leaves as money to obtain those things. It also seems quite good at turning itself into inanimate objects.”.

The Tanuki.
From The Obakemono Project, “a Gaijin’s Guide to the Fantastic Folk Monsters of Japan.”.

And now, a cup of Diet Coke + Mentos: AudioBody.
Listen : You Gotta Tap, Not Easy, Going to Michigan, Bass Aquatic, Fireflys.

Techno / Rock / Electronica.

I sit on this wall and wait for you who ever you are where ever you may be I’ve been sitting on this wall since I was 17 years old just waiting for you just praying for you who ever you are where ever you may be to find me I shall sit on this wall for the rest of my life if need to be (Andre Jordan, And I wait for you)

A beautiful revolution. By Andre Jordan, illustrator.

Above: Astronaut boy.

“Not long ago, friends of mine came to me with their their nine-year old son. He couldn’t write. Again, I suggested zigzags. Take a pen in your hand. Move it up and down, as if you were waving goodbye. That’s the movement you need. How do you turn zigzags into letters? You depart slightly from a regular movement, just enough to make characters. A closed top becomes the letter a. An extended line makes an ascender.”. (Gunnlaugur SE Briem)

briem.net: type, handwriting, and lettering, by Gunnlaugur SE Briem.
Above: La Operina, (Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi, 1522), detail.
Meaning: “Enjoy life and health.”

“Necessity is the mother of invention. The father is unknown.”

“Each week there are thousands of new patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patents I pick are usually a) really weird, b) really cool, c) really scary.”.
Patently Silly: the humor of invention.
By Daniel Wright and Alex Eben Meyer.

Above : Nutcracker (David Aaron Powell, patent US D494820).

“I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe.”

(Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
42 : the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

“In the West we throw things away when they break. In the East people take the time to fix things, it doesn’t matter what things look like, as long as they work.”.

“When you enter through the font door of someone’s house you see what they want you to see: the best version.
The back door on the other hand tells a culture’s true story.”.
(Michael Wolf)
See: 100 x 100 and The Architecture of Density.
Above: The bastard chairs, from “Sitting in China” (Steidl, 2002) ©Michael Wolf.

And now a cup of Alphabeat. Listen and see: Fascination.
Pop, from Denmark.
Requires Flash Player

“It’s like that little girl can see us here in the future, but nobody is going to believe her, and she’ll forget all about it when she grows up.”.

Shorpy “is a blog about old photos and what life a hundred years ago was like.
The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a boy who worked in an Alabama coal mine near the turn of the century.”.
Above : “December 1936. Untitled photograph taken in rural Iowa by Russell Lee.”.

“Sounds like: bumping into a chair while humming.
Influences: musique concrete, film, everyday life, randomness, the artists on Anticipate and Microcosm.”.
Ezekiel Honig. Listen: Concrete and Plastic.