Created Equal: Mark Laita’s diptych photography

Dear Puffin

I found something cool today. It’s a series of paired photographs from Mark Laita’s collection Created Equal. What he’s done is juxtapose photos of polar opposites (the baptist minister and the Klansmen, for example) while also showing their similarities.

In America, the chasm between rich and poor is growing, the clash between conservatives and liberals is strengthening, and evil and good seem more polarized than ever before. At the heart of this collection of diptychs is my desire to remind us that we are all equal, until our environment, circumstances or fate molded and weathered us into whom we have become.

Some of the pairings are delightfully funny, like this one, titled Fur Trapper/Woman With Dog. (Frankly, while the trapper is totally BA, that lady scares the living daylights out of me. She looks predatory. I’ll bet she eats shredded credit cards for breakfast)

Or this one, Mariachi Band/Elvis Impersonators (I feel like if you just retitled it Mariachi Band vs Elvis Impersonators you’d have the makings of a really good comic strip)

Or how about Astronaut/Alien Abductee

Others are interesting and yet quite amusing, like Polygamist/Pimp.

And others are simply very very revealing of something, although I’m not exactly sure what.

Company President/Janitor

 Bank Robber/DeputiesHomeless Man/Real Estate Developer

Somehow I find these utterly fascinating Puffin.

Much love

MacGuffin (with a hat tip to Andy Sullivan, who originally found these)

Armchair travelogue: Iceland

Dear Puffin

These days some of us cannot jet off to foreign lands, so armchair traveling must suffice. Although urban exploration is also a good option. I make quite a habit of armchair traveling. In fact I may or may not actually purchase travel books for places I will never ever go.

Today’s armchair journey is to Iceland, and the Blue Lagoon spa and resort. I’ve been lusting over this place for ages. It’s technically a clinic for people with skin disorders, because the natural seawater and the silica in the stone do something beneficial to skin. Or something. But anyone can stay there and I mean….. look at it….

On the website they describe it thusly:

The heart of Blue Lagoon’s operation is at the Blue Lagoon, Iceland’s most unique and popular attraction. Guests enjoy bathing and relaxing in Blue Lagoon geothermal seawater, known for its positive effects on the skin. A visit to the spa promotes harmony between body, mind and spirit, and enables one to soak away the stresses of modern life. The spa’s guests rekindle their relationship with nature, soak up the scenic beauty and enjoy breathing the clean, fresh air.

I don’t give a damn about the wishy washy harmony of body and spirit stuff. I just want to go swimming in this thing.

See the rest behind the cut

Skeletal Archiporn

Dear Puffin

I have made a wonderful discovery! Shaun Usher, the man behind Letters of Note and Letterheady, has a new tumblr called Scaffoldage. He describes it as a “niche photo blog” about “skeletal archiporn” and frankly it’s amazing. I’ve poked around for a while and these are my faves:

There are tons and tons more. Such beautiful images from such mundane materials Puffin. I’m inspired, I really am.

Love

MacGuffin

Dalek Propaganda Posters and Doctor Who Miscellany

Dear Puffin

Despite rumors to the contrary, I am still alive! My brain, however, has not not yet recovered, so rather than launching into my new rant about reproductive rights or my collective bargaining health care conspiracy theory (I will fill you in later Puffin but spoiler alert: I’m pissed at everyone except Antony Weiner) I will instead drop an awesome-bomb on you in the form of assorted Doctor Who stuff. Am I excited about the new season, which starts on Saturday? You bet! Will I be able to watch it? Of course not.

This is an AMAZING Dalek propaganda poster, by the fantastic Francesco Francavilla.

This is another one which was actually produced by the BBC themselves. Of course, it was a tie in to my least favorite episode ever. Honestly, Victory of the Daleks was awful. But the poster is good, and can be downloaded in hi res here. You can also get it as a tee shirt from, sigh, Hot Topic, which I refuse to link to. 

Here is a Skaaro Institute of Extermination mug that I obviously need to own.

These are some minimalist Doctor Who posters from Etsyer Geekasms.

  

  

  

  

This one has a bit of a German/Weimar Republic feel to it. From deviantartist LycanLauren.

These are a series of Doctor Who travel posters, or the closest thing I can find to them. Follow the link to find a few more. With all the crazy worlds the Doctor visits you’d think there would be tons of awesome posters, like Steve Thomas’ wonderful Star Wars advertising posters and Middle Earth travel posters. But this seems to be pretty much it.

  

This is from the vault, and I may or may not already own the first one, but they’re still my favorite things ever so I will continue to blog them every couple of months until I grow up a bit and stop feeling the urge to show off. From Bill Mudron. Purchase info is here.

  

This is a fantastic French Tom Baker era poster. Unfortunately it’s a terrrrrrible quality pic. From flikr.

Next we have a mild riff off the Social Network’s extremely repurpose-able poster. From tumblr.

And this is just to settle an argument I’ve been having with certain truly stupid male relatives. Karen Gilliam is HOT, ok? End of story. Pics or it didn’t happen? Fine. From a photoshoot for Marie Claire. (I know at least 3 people who are going to need to change their trousers after looking at this.) Her legs alone warp the space time continuum.

This is a Tardis infographic. Click to embiggen and make it, you know, legible and stuff.

Next there is this great design from the wonderful Krystin, who also made the image that we sort of stole for our blog header. Hope that’s ok Krystin…..

And to finish off I present you with possibly the most impressive thing I have ever seen. A Tardis cake that is a) incredibly pretty and accurate and b) is bigger on the inside!!!!! How is that possible???? Well, as far as I understand it, the cake-engineer (I don’t even know who this person is, but I want them to be my friend forever) did something clever with mirrors to make the inside seem bigger than the outside. Puffin I cannot even cope with awesomeness of this magnitude. 

  

That is a CAKE! WhatisthisIdonteven…..Look at the detail!  

  

I am flabbergasted Puffin. Flabbergasted. I hope the season premier is awesome enough to live up to all this crazy coolness. Watch it for me.

Love

MacGuffin

Other geek stuff roundups:

My obsession with Tron Legacy, including TRON CAKE,

More minimalist Doctor Who posters,

Thor roundup, because May 5 is way too far away,

Poster art roundup 1 (Ghostbusters, Naria, Tron etc)

Poster art roundup 2, movie posters as icons and some Formula One stuff

Poster art roundup 3, Back to the Future and more

Poster art roundup 4,

Vintage Star Wars posters by Steve Thomas

Check out the poster art tag or the category in the drop down menu to the left. Also, please submit stuff! I love nerd-phenalia, so drop stuff in comments, send it to tumblr, whatever. I’m always looking for more.

Thor Roundup: A compendium of all things Thor related to tide us over until May 6

Dear Puffin

As April drags interminably on, stubbornly resisting the transition to spring, and as my thesis drags similarly on, stubbornly failing to magically transition from draft to completed magnum opus (seriously, the damn conclusion simply refuses to materialize out of thin air. What is with that?) my thoughts turn not only to beer and television, but also to the amazing movie season that starts at the beginning of May. Pirates of the Caribbean 4, The Hangover 2, X-men First Class, The Green Lantern, Harry Potter, Captain America, and even the one about which I am most frightened, Tinker Tailor. Which is my favorite book/bbc mini series ever and if they screw it up I will kill them.

My friend Tim has a post on This or That claiming that Thor will “hammer home the suckage”. I’m sorry Tim, I love you, but you are so so so wrong.

These are the main US posters. The first one doesn’t work, I feel. The text clashes too much with the faces underneath, and the spacing is off. The second one may have many flaws, but I can’t articulate them because Chris Hemsworth.

This one, on the other hand, is pants-wettingly awesome:

Go behind the cut for production stills, all the trailers and general fangirliness, including a bonus Bender/Thor mashup poster.

One Win Hunting: The photostory of the Red Sox season thus far

Dea Puffin

I know you care nothing for sports, so I shall present this, with no comment, in the hope that you can ignore my brief forays into matters athletic. Via MidWestSportsFans.com.

See the rest of the story behind the cut

Food for thought

Dear Puffin

I just found the Value of a Dollar Project, a photojournal chronicling the amount of food you can get for a dollar, both healthy and otherwise.

Photography is used to deceive.  Millions, if not billions of advertising dollars are spent annually photographing food and obfuscating reality.  Fast food conglomerates are certainly the worst culprits, but everywhere we see glamorized versions of what we eat. [The value of food] is determined by the price of oil, its transnational transport contributes to Global Warming, its ingredients entice America into obesity, and its production processes animals into floss and mush.

The photographs in this project attempt to strip back the artifice; to depict food items as they were sold, (minus packaging,) without styling, retouching, or artificial lighting.  Each image represents a dollar’s worth of food purchased from various markets in New Mexico.  The subjects exist as equivalent amounts of commodity, and nothing more.

A MacDonald’s cheeseburger vs 10 organic blueberries

$1 of ramen vs $1 of rice

4 grapefruits from Supersave vs 1 organic grapefruit from WholeFoods

$1 of ‘potted meat product’ vs $1 of beef shank from Supersave

$1 of Shurfine flour vs $1 of Shurfine bread

$1 of tea biscuits vs $1 side salad from Burger King

Some food for thought.

Love

MacGuffin

 

 

Urban Exploration Photo Dump

MacGuffin,

It has come to my attention that you love travel blogs. But after the credit card company cancelled my reward miles, I’ve had to become more creative in the type of traveling I do. In my research I came across a wondrous phenomenon – Urban Exploration. This is somewhat like the old tours we used to take in the 19th century to see the city’s slums for ourselves.

This first picture comes from The Moebius, he claims this is from the old Donner Pass (hardly Urban Exploration, I daresay)

This one, from A Daily Dose of Arhitecture, reminds me of the flat we shared in Paris. I daresay our graffiti was on par with this.

This one, from fotopedia, is even closer to home for you, from the Rochester Subway.

I’m not even sure if this one from Telefunker is even in the country. But I would love to explore it.

Laundelles also has some excellent pictures.

I do hope you’ve enjoyed this pictures. I hope to begin such explorations here.

Yours,

Puffin

You might also like:

Trespassing in Time Capsules: The urban explorations of Ransom Riggs

Skeletal Archiporn

Bring me a dozen Bacon Roses!

Person-sized swinging hammock nest

Cold war nostalgia

Batman: Arkham city review