the erotic coloring book

thought today i’d dip into my extremely sexy archives… ahhh yeah baby… and offer you a little somethin to heat up this cold dry sunday… o.k. so i’m no barry white but i did pick up this little gem at a local bookstore on a recommendation from the clerk (thanks nameless clerk) which i wanted to share. it’s a slim but large format volume called the erotic coloring book published in 1975 by berlin & associates out of l.a., illustrated by a guy named craig berlin. it’s high-larious and most assuredly nsfw. possibly nsfpptdhf as well (not safe for people prone to dangerous hallucinogenic flashbacks). you might consider it the companion piece to this earlier post i suppose. see a sampling of the self proclaimed erotic pages below.

posted by jmorrison on 10/30 | lost & found - wtf | | permalink
a cry for help from the spam factory

today’s topic: spam. the bad followed by the good. first the bad- the nonist’s url was spoofed by a spammer somewhere so if you have received any emails trying to sell you pharmaceuticals or raising the alarm over bird flu i apologize, but rest assured it was not from us. second the good- last week i received two bits of mail, undeniably spam, which never the less caught my eye. at the top of each message was the usual junk, but in each, after a short bit of blank space, the message continued with a large block of text which to my -highly- developed ear sounded uncannily like dada poetry. the first thing that sprung to mind was that fortune cookie which reads: “help me i’m trapped in a fortune cookie factory.” was this a creative cry for help?

posted by jmorrison on 10/29 | sights & sounds - art | | permalink
all is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night

what has happened in these last two weeks while i have been away from the site? in the world at large: i can’t say for sure, have not been paying much attention. most likely a few horrific natural disasters, maybe an unjustified invasion or two? Certainly Bodies were meticulously counted for one reason or another? “terror” was surely wrought and/or fought somewhere? a vapid very nearly brain-dead celebrity either murdered or married someone, was either pardoned or jilted, and any which way it received the same amount of media attention. Yes? our swine politicians lied to us, lined pockets, passed the buck, signed death warrants, and otherwise “defended” freedom and democracy? am i right? pretty much business as usual then?

posted by jmorrison on 10/25 | piss & vinegar | | permalink
More laptops needed?

At first I was excited by this project. Then, my wife, who is a teacher at an international school here in Penang, Malaysia, said, ‘does the world really need laptops? What about books? What about better educated teachers?’ She makes a great point. Are cheap and mass-produced laptops (no matter how cool they are for technophiles) really going to solve the world’s educational problems? Picture a classroom full of students paying no attention to one another and staring for hours at an illuminated screen… (I apologize for two sequential posts- I am a new and overly excited user.)

The Meaning of Words

Does the meaning of words become more or less clear when words are associated with image? A group of artists and designers have collaborated with me to explore this topic. One member of the group will choose a word, then each member creates an image for that word. The results are posted here. Are there any nonists that would like to participate? If so, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) your submissions or questions. The next word to ‘go live’ is lonesome.

yikes!

saw this photo over at happy pallace which both f and mr.b agreed was creepy. it is isn’t it? why is it if something this banal can creep people out that movie makers can’t slap together even a marginally scary film anymore? in my opinion there are two mistakes which are made again and again. 1- c.g. simple right? c.g. is almost never scary. latex and makeup will trump c.g. every time. 2- goofy, over-stylized, jump-cut direction. not scary. never was, never will be. anyhow, it just so happens that i also came across some images today which i thought were pretty gosh-danged creepy. i would crap myself if i opened a door and came unexpectedly upon any of these scenes: yikes, eek, god no, oh crap, shiiit, cripes!. yeesh. awful huh? so what say ye? what are the scare meisters in hollywood doing wrong?

posted by jmorrison on 10/06 | lost & found - wtf | | permalink
making friends with the natives

it’s an age old story: you find yourself in some thick rainforest a million miles from your cozy suburb. the call of nature strikes and while taking a crap behind a tree (wiping with some poisonous leaf of course) your surprised to be surrounded by naked blow-gun toting natives! in this all too common scenario the sensible thing is to make friends, quick-like. according to this little book i’ve got, originally published in 1934, titled string games for beginners representational pictures made with a length of string are one of the most common bits of cultural overlap going and for this reason are one of the best possible ways of making friends with natives! indeed.

posted by jmorrison on 10/06 | lost & found - wtf | | permalink
48 years ago today

quote: the first artificial satellite was launched October 4, 1957. and it wasn’t american. the soviet made sputnik, weighing about 183 lbs., took about 98 minutes to orbit the earth on its elliptical path, 500 miles up. traveling at 18,000 miles an hour, sputnik would “beep, beep, beep” it’s telemetry as it passed over. americans were mortified. this was scary stuff. people thought that the russkies were going to be dropping bombs from the sky. and the news just got worse. a month later, the soviets launched sputnik II, which weighed 1100 pounds and carried a live dog, laika. americans scientists were scrambling to catch up. in december they launched vanguard. which went between 2 and 4 feet up and promptly burst into a ball of fire. our satellite was thrown clear which was as close to travel as it got.

posted by jmorrison on 10/05 | tech & science - space | | permalink
cruel shoes

how does the song go? there’s a time for blah and a time for blay, a time to blub and a time to bluuh? something like that. well the way i see it there’s a time to knit your brow and a time to smirk and i’m almost positive 7:43 on this particular evening in october is a time to smirk. thing is i’ve got nothing smirk-worthy to say. so i turn to mr. steve martin. didja know that long before he was writing pieces for big snooty magazines and having his “droll and oh-so-witty” novels adapted to film he wrote an extremely silly book called cruel shoes? yup. this is back in the 70’s when he was still a drug addled standup laying down routines on vinyl. 77 to be exact. the sleeve describes it as “wild and zany.” haha. zany! that ought to be worth a smirk all by itself. anyway what follows are some short pieces from cruel shoes. enjoy.

posted by jmorrison on 10/04 | sights & sounds - books | | permalink
the paper architecture of brodsky & utkin

picked up a book yesterday from the princeton architectural press collecting some of the works by the russian architectural duo of alexander brodsky and ilya utkin and i’m very happy i did. got it for a song and it’s a really gorgeous book. or rather the 28 plates are. they’re an interesting duo, a bit like a visual rosencrantz and guildernstern in that they create etchings together and their styles are indistinguishable within the whole. the buildings and spaces they create are wildly poetic in no small part because they are by and large unbuildable. these are paper architects you see.

posted by jmorrison on 10/02 | sights & sounds - art | | permalink
gateway graphics

i am no longer a weed smoker so it’s been a long while since i held a little pack of rolling papers between my fingers. the brands i remember most (not counting the nefarious blunt period) are big bambu and lion of judah. the brands i remember seeing when i was a kid were joker and ez wider. but really these are only the tip of the iceberg are they not? there is a whole galaxy of papers out there and a whole galaxy of design to go along with them. in as much i’ve collected a bunch of images here for your viewing pleasure. the old hippies might consider this a stroll down memory lane, if they could remember anything. for the uninitiated this might be a gateway gallery to harder more dangerous graphics. enjoy.

posted by jmorrison on 10/01 | sights & sounds - art | | permalink