Month: February 2020

Didn’t stop for the stoplight and the brake light got broke

February 29, 2020

The Roads and Traffic Authority installed traffic lights on the intersection of a six lane highway … after I was in a horror car crash there.  They installed a roundabout on a blind corner in Coogee … after I wrote my car off there.  My superpower is demonstrating the need for traffic controls at dangerous intersections.

I have mentioned before my love of road produce, when bits come flying off cars and trucks, here and here and here.  There is an intersection at the end McArthur Road that provides particularly rich pickings.  The intersecting roads are a little offset and people forget to give way.  Produces lots of sparkly, glittery gems: broken brake lights, smashed blinkers, mangled chrome.  It is delightful.

Here is the red light (that everyone ignores) in the setting sun, and some brake light fragments glittering on the footpath.

Red lightBroke light

The cultural significance of condiments

February 9, 2020

If culture is the series of gestures a society’s members engage in, then cooking is a peculiarly intense form of culture.  How they slice and dice can tell you a lot about people.  Example: an acquaintance’s dad was in the Russian army, and his technique for chopping vegetables is as effective as it is alarming.

Ekuan Kenji returned to the blasted ruin of Hiroshima to find a dead sister and terminally ill father.  He was determined to remind the world of Japan’s gentleness.  He designed the Kikkoman soy sauce bottle: a perfect work of art available to anyone with a few dollars to spare.  Here it is next to a bottle that combines mustard and tomato ketchup into a single viscous gel, for people who want to be spared the ordeal of having to squeeze two plastic condiment bottles onto their hot dog.

Sauce final

Transparent objects casting shadows

February 2, 2020

Through the wonders of refraction, this lightbulb makes the sunlight passing through it brighter but also manages to cast a shadow at the same time.  A simple gift from nature to enjoy on a sunny afternoon.

Mixed up the left over paint on my palette rather than cleaning it, and the mixture of colour theory and my laziness created a suprisingly lively grey.  Just the colour for a 15 minute sketch of marbles casting yet more shadows (and yet more refraction in action).  Done on a cheap canvas from a $2 shop that was like painting on carpet.

LightbulbMarbles