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Every Day is a Gif(t): Mr. Kipling’s Orgy of Cake

fústar — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:30:45 +0000

A companion piece to my Werther's reimagining.

This is why ad agencies should be paying me the big massive bucks. But they're afraid. Too afraid…

The damn spineless & hidebound fools!

No more gif(t)s for you tomorrow. You've had enough.

Every Day is a Gif(t): Thomas Magnum Sleepy Time

fústar — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:58:15 +0000

Final gif(t) tomorrow.

Every Day is a Gif(t): Creamy Werther’s Goodness in a Universe that Doesn’t Care

fústar — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:05:25 +0000

The universe may be little more than a chaotic and unfeeling soup of neutrinos, quarks, gluons and dark matter that's barely (if at all) aware of our fleeting existences, but (even in this flux & emptiness & horror) there are oases of stability, reassurance, and constancy.

Or so August Storck KG, makers of Werther's Original(s), would have us believe. Their sweets are the sugary glue that bind the myriad fabrics of reality together. They existed before the big bang. Before God (who based his whole shtick on the company's trademark chuckly and benign Grandfather).

They incongruously (and thrillingly) combine raw elemental power, with saccharine tweeness. They are steadfast. Changeless. Ageless. Beloved by viewers of Countdown. Yet eternal. Universal. Stare at a Werther's Original under an electron microscope and what do you see? Millions of smaller Werther's Originals. Each one of which contains a trillion even more tiny Wether's Originals. And so on and on and on forever. And ever. And ever.

What follows is a humble (Flipnote) attempt to capture this omnipresent and cosmically head-fucking essence.

More tomorrow.

Every Day is a Gif(t): Shitty Cloud Munch

fústar — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:48:58 +0000

Clouds – though occasionally cute, fluffy and given to floating on high o'er vales and hills – are, generally, a bit of a nuisance. They enshroud the earth in suffocating blankets of grey. They empty their contents onto miserable wage-slaves as they shuffle work-ward. They form themselves into scarifying mushroom shapes and strip you of your skin and hair. Oh, and God – whose giant lidless eyes gaze with blank indifference on humankind's many sufferings – lives on one.

Clouds are nasty and evil. See here:

More tomorrow.

Every Day is a Gif(t): Tumbley Hole Man

fústar — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:45:38 +0000

Formative experience recollection time.

It's a summer evening in, oh, 1979 (or thenabouts), and I'm standing – gob-smacked and wonder-filled – in the lobby of the (no-longer-existent) prom-side cinema in Lahinch, Co. Clare. I've just seen Disney's Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs for the first time, and its 83 minutes of Technicolor gorgeousness have rocked my little world.

I'm not the only one thus affected. A (presumably awed & dazed) teenage boy emerges from the theatre, ambles across the lobby, and walks up to, into, and straight through the cinema's floor-to-ceiling glass window/door. Miraculously he is (in my memory at least) unhurt. Such is the power of animation. It not only fires and fuels your imagination – it throws a protective aura of invincibility around you as well.

For the majority of the rest of my childhood all I wanted to be was a "cartoonist" (the proper term, I assumed, for someone who produces animated cartoons). I sketched. I doodled (a lot). I drew cariacatures of teachers on classmates' copy-books. I was utterly dedicated to my craft.

Then – as happens with about 99.99999% of humankind – I hit my teens, thought "Ah, fuck it", and went off drinking cider and listening to The Doors. Such (as the platitudinous fella no doubt says) is life.

Skip forward 30 years and I'm buying a Nintendo DSi for my birthday. Skip forward another day or two and I'm downloading Flipnote Studio. Skip forward ten minutes more and I'm giving life to crude stick figures. Here's an early effort – combining the simple joys of (falling flat on one's arse) slapstick with the grim tragedy of (Sisyphean) eternal recurrence.

Bwaa ha ha! Look at him fall! Right in the hole. Over and Over! There he goes again. And again! Ah ha ha ha! The poor doomed bastard…*sniff*

More tomorrow.