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I finally got to "permanently" install this beautiful fixture after having it for 20+ years! I know...it's not so sleek-contemporary-retro-modern......but i'm more inclined to the "kitsch"....the affordable, every-day mass-produced stuff of the 50's and 60's. That's the stuff that is really hard to find anymore, as people used it up and threw it out.
Tsutenkaku is the home of Biliken, God-Of-Things-As-They-Ought-To-Be (Biliken was an American toy that appeared in 1908 and for whatever reason, while it has been totally forgotten in America, became a lasting cultural icon in Japan). A drunk guy bought my ticket to the observation deck, which allows an awesome view of the vast concrete sea that is Osaka.
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www.darkroastedblend.com/2011/10/glorious-retrofuture-fro...
I don't know if it's a great improvement on teleconferencing; I prefer to be able to roll my eyes without my superiors seeing. ;)
this particular SPAM Gun is named Gus. Gus isn't 100% finished, but he's done enough to show him off a bit ^ _ ^
Lady Porkshanks stood in the middle of the bleak tunnel, unsure what to do. The sounds that emanated from the distance seemed to be advancing quickly, and there could be no possible escape!
She was tired, she was dizzy, and aside from the pipes that ran down the length of the tunnel, there was nothing.
She inhaled deeply and clutched her weapon... steeling herself for yet another battle. But every detail about this situation signaled to her that this was no typical foe she would face!
As she stared into the blackness, she blew out the incense and immediately the most oppressive stench she had ever choked on pressed in thick like fetid soil into her lungs.
As the scrabbling drew near, she flicked on the Infinity Tap and the singularity window held within it began to shine with the constantly shifting light of pure trapped plasma as the powerful device on her belt gathered the Aether about it and twisted it into a new state. She sighed, as the tubes on the back of The Deuces Wild began to glow a dull red and hum. It was now or never!
The brighter light now cast forward and she could see strange figures tumbling toward her! They were vaguely human shaped, although a greater mockery of man she had never beheld. The arms were far too long and seemed to ribbed with fins or possibly a sail of flesh. Their skin was slick and pale and covered in tiny scales. Their necks were long and slender and were topped off with a head that looked almost too small and under-developed. Their faces were wider than tall and seemed only to accommodate great pouting lips ringed with stubby feelers or tentacles and a pair of unblinking white discs for eyes!
The creatures came at her at what she surmised must be their full speed and they had a terrible look in their inhuman movements! They were still intermittently screeching and whelping as they ran, so that her scream of shock at the sight was barely audible to even her as separate from the symphony of madness.
Losing her nerve as they overtook her, she panicked and dropped to her knees in fear. She shut her eyes up tightly and covered her head instinctively to await the first blow.
One of the creatures nearly ran directly into her, tripping over her long skirt splayed out around her. She yelped again as it turned its face to look at her, but the eyes didn't come to a rest on her, it turned and peered down the passage from whence it had come, bleating out a strange tone into the darkness.
More curious than afraid now, she swung her head to look at the others as they passed. They didn't even seem to pay her any mind at all, and in fact were continuing to scramble away with all their might.
Pushing itself up with its batlike arms, the one that had collided with Lady Porkshanks returned to an upright position and felt outward with quickly swinging hands. One of the hands slapped her chin loosely and the other immediately came to rest with its palm upon her face. The touch of the creature was not exactly gentle, but it yet again betrayed some sort of primal wit about it. The beast tilted its head with a look that reminded her of Nipper, the Victrola hound.
Her courage returning, she reached out her right hand and softly touched the side of the creature's face in return, as a show of trust and goodwill.
The creature barked out a short sound in her direction, and almost as if in reply, the ground trembling roar echoed again from far away.
With that, the creature grabbed her wrist and pulled on it as it began running again to follow the others. She fell forward, but yanked it away from its grip as it looked back one last time and screeched at her.
She stood there bewildered for a moment. It was clear that these were no monsters, simply... a different sort of beast. These were beasts with some kind of reason, perhaps simian level or even that of a child. This was a race unlike any other she had heard described in even the most obscure cryptozoological tomes!
What an astounding encounter! She couldn't wait to relay it to the others, however there remained one last issue to inspect... that horrid resounding wail.
She swept her hands down over her skirts and fussed with her collar for a moment. She let out a sigh and set her resolve once more. She could not forget that she had completely and utterly lost control; that terror had taken her composure from her, and even though there were only these strange blind witnesses, she had still failed.
Or was it better this way? They were not a threat to her! If she had fired who knows how they would have reacted?
She sucked a deep breath and coughed it back up almost immediately. The air still hung with putrid death, and her lungs revolted within her ribcage against the indignity of it all. Her old wound was throbbing now, and she absently massaged the spot as she began walking again toward the unknown.
Soon enough she could detect the dull light pinpoint of the end of the tunnel! Her pace quickened slightly and her senses sharpened to their fullest extent as adrenaline pumped through her veins wildly.
She could hear something organic moving, and the jangling of chains against stone. Then a low murmur of speech. A human voice!
She slowly crept now towards the opening only a few feet away. Outside the tunnel the cave opened up to become a large cavernous room, and there were ancient ruins of some kind scattered about the area.
In the center of it all her eyes came to rest on something beyond words. There was another impossible beast crouched before her; a heaving mass of flesh the size of a house was chained to small tent pegs pounded into the floor. It shimmered with a thousand scales under a single lamp strung up high above on the cave's ceiling. It had leathery wings that looked unable to lift the gluttonous mass into the sky, and staring yellow eyes the size of a wagon wheel set behind a mouth of a thousand writhing tentacles! The creature exuded a feeling of dread and terror from its very pores. Something in the violently twitchy way it moved set her on edge as never before. Even if ignoring the reaction of the blind ones to it, she could feel something terrifically malevolent was set before her.
As she stood entranced by the thing, she noticed that it seemed to be struggling against the chains. With every tug and jerk upon them, they seemed to give off a faint green glow in the dark. Clearly, only some kind of unseen craft she could not possibly fathom was keeping this great beast at bay.
The unblinking eye came to a stop on her and for a brief time it felt as if all time had halted! The eye pierced into her like a sniper's bullet into a haystack, and she was filled a sensation of being everywhere and nowhere in unison. The eye was All. Visions of alien landscapes flashed across her mind and beautifully strange shapes burned within her. New colors and sounds of inhuman choruses moved her to tears.
And as the eye left her gaze, she felt all of the warmth of reality fade into a void of despair deep inside her. She caught herself against the wall of the tunnel and slid down to her knees to collapse.
Her heart pounded away as she lay and she realized she nearly fainted from beholding it all. Even her previous encounter had hardly prepared her for facing the existence of such an unholy thing! Such a powerful and ancient thing... a thing of perfect and awesome wonder! She felt a strange stirring now to be with it, but it was so subtle that she was hardly conscious of it.
She pondered silently, where had the human voice come from? Surely not the monster...
And almost as if to answer her, she heard the human voice speak again. A man had been standing on a ledge off to the left the whole time, and she simply hadn't noticed him with her attention so stolen by novelty.
She couldn't make out any words, as it sounded like yet another kind of gutteral gulping cant she had never heard before. And somehow, the sounds began to form into ideas and she caught traces of meanings and intonation. Which each syllable, her understanding blossomed of what was being communicated!
She peered around the corner of the tunnel entrance again to get a better look. The human seemed insignificant like a toy soldier standing before the poor child restrained by such improbable cunning. The man was reading from a small book, repeating a long chain of incantations to bind the Greatest Wonder of Ages to himself! The man was Emil Reynard, who preferred to be known as The Silver Talon.
"The nerve of that man!"
Lady Porkshanks began to reach for both of her pistols, but a whisper in the back of her mind halted her hands. She somehow understood that this was not the time or place for this confrontation, and that she needed to leave immediately before he discovered her intrusion. The Greatest Wonder of Ages was working an infathomable plan, and she realized that it was her honor and duty to play a key role, but this was not it!
So far, Reynard had been enraptured in his chanting and so she came and left without his being any the wiser.
The long tunnel seemed to nearly melt away as she strode through the comforting pitch blackness, and Lady Porkshanks found herself standing before the great brass portal before she even realized that she had been traveling long at all.
8/14 (Mothership Trouble: Part 3)
Meanwhile: Pink, Red, and Grey try to troubleshoot the problem.
Red: I Don’t have a reading.
Pink: It’s still in French.
Grey: How about Now?
Red: Still Nothing Here.
Pink: Still French.
Grey: Now?
Red: Nothing.
Grey: How about Now?
Pink: Still French.
Grey: Now?
Pink: No.
Grey: How about NOW?
-BZZZT!-
Red: What Happened?
Grey: Nothing! Don’t Worry! It was Nothing!
Alarm: BOO-WEEP BOO-WEEP
Red: SOMETHING happened! Reading multiple alarms! Emergency Power and Environmental Controls offline.
Grey: It’s FINE!
Pink: It’s still in French.
(( Catch up on the story from the beginning in the MothershipTrouble Album: flic.kr/s/aHsmTGKkdc ))
Finally finished this concept. Started out as a simple line (turned into the stylized one in the top left) and developed into a jet-powered retro-future racer. Inspired by classic formula 1 racers and art-deco cars.
12/14 (Mothership Trouble: Part 3)
Meanwhile: Pink, Red, and Grey try to troubleshoot the problem.
Grey: All better! See! Nothing to worry about!
Red: Still Reading a lot of Alarms.
Grey: All Fine!
Red: AWCS and HCM still offline.
Grey: Fine.
Pink: Still in French,
Grey: It’s Fine!
Pink: At least the lights are back on. Time for one of you to go tell Dania.
Red: Pink, it’s your JOB to tell her!
Pink: Um, no. You tell her.
Red: YOU work Hospitality.
Grey: I can tell Dania.
Pink: This is not My Fault!
Red: This is not about “fault” it is about Responsibility. Nobody is Blame-Storming around here. Yet.
Pink: What did you say, Grey?
Grey: I can tell Dania.
Pink: Yeah, that’s right. YOU go tell Dania!
Grey: Well, you talked about her so long she is standing right there.
(( Catch up on the story from the beginning in the MothershipTrouble Album: flic.kr/s/aHsmTGKkdc ))
Two man rocket for exploration.
Well it took long enough, but I finally finished it, I kept building it partially then deciding to destroy it and completely restart, but I finally got something I like done with it.
Again, I was inspired by the retrofuture, The Jetsons, Mid Century Modern, the ocean, upcoming summer, and the ongoing desire of being submerged in a tranquil, warm body of water.
12 x 24 inches- acrylics, painted vinyl, and paint chips cut, punched, and/or glued on MDF board.
The fine citizens of Paris were visted by a Great Aetheric Borne Creature. A defense was raised. We knew not if it brought Friend or Foe. Yet caution seemed the best approach. To warn them, as it were, that we were prepared to Secure the Safety of this Humble Village.