The Royal County Arbiter

Lost Property Box Jury

2006-06-01T20:49:00.000+01:00

Another library find, this time a mix CD I discovered buried under all the gloves, pens and reading lists in the lost property box. I was so intrigued by the drawing on it of the bird's wings and paw print that I took it home to have a listen.

I spent a good hour identifying all the tracks and, boy, do I feel gypped! This is undoubtedly the worst mix CD that I have ever heard. No wonder it got left at the library.

The Beatles - I've Just Seen A Face
Sam Cooke - Wonderful World (Don't Know Much)
Bic Runga - Sway
Prince - The Most Beautiful Girl In The World
Lenny Kravitz - Stand By My Woman
Bill Withers - Lean On Me
Van Morrison - Have I Told You Lately
Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares To You
Katie Melua - Closest Thing To Crazy
Bob Dylan - To Make You Feel My Love
Bob Marley - I Know A Place (Where We Can Carry On)
Dire Straits - Romeo and Juliet
Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes - Up Where We Belong
Lionel Richie - Stuck On You
Bob Marley - Turn Your Lights Down Low
Billy Joel - And So It Goes
The Beach Boys - Disney Girls
Sting - Fields Of Gold
Eva Cassidy - Time After Time
Bob Dylan - Shelter From The Storm

I feel embarrassed every time I look at the readers in the library now, wondering who the recipient was and, more pertinently, who in god's name made this MOR slushfest. I mean, I feel mortified for this person who thinks Lenny Kravitz songs are a valid form of musical expression. They'll never pass their finals this way.

I'll give as much milk as possible

2006-04-20T20:52:00.000+01:00

I was handed this flyer yesterday by a middle-aged Chinese lady:

Any fool can tell you that a flyer with a drawing of a chicken saying "We Pray for You" on it is worth keeping.

Who is behind this campaign to convert people to vegetarianism? The links at the bottom of the flyer point to godsdirectcontact.org which, despite the spooky name, is a sort of Buddhist group led by The Supreme Master Ching Hai.

Being vegetarian is a major facet of traditional Buddhism but Supreme Master Ching Hai has some further explanations about why we mustn't eat eggs:

"We can drink milk, yes we could, no problem about milk because we don't have to kill the animal for milk. About the egg, even if it's no fertilized egg, it still contains a kind of symbol of life and death, born and reborn, and also the egg has the potential of attracting the negative energy. Perhaps you would read or know or heard that many of the magicians, they use the eggs to attract the negative entities from some of the possessed persons. Therefore we do not like to attract the negative force into ourselves, because now we try to reach the positive nature."

And:

"Because egg is a symbol of life and death. In it contains life, yeah. And many of the black magicians or white magicians they use eggs to withdraw some of the negative possessive spirit within some people, yeah. Therefore, if we eat eggs too much we tend to attract this negative force toward ourselves. Yeah, that's one of the reasons why we should not eat eggs, hm."

Here, have an egg-free fortune cookie. I can absolutely guarantee it will not attract any negative entities.

The Free Object

2006-04-04T20:39:00.000+01:00

My very favourite crafty arty internet person, Sarah Neuburger, has declared it a week of download fun at The Small Object. Huzzah! She'll be uploading a new free downloadable mystery item every day this week, all week.

So far we've had these great envelopes and labels:

I printed some out this morning at work and sat with the glue and scissors making them. I can confirm absolutely without reserve the radness of these designs. And I can't wait for the stationery that I ordered to arrive!

Download from the Small Object Steno Pad.

Dido Building Carthage, or An Unfinished Letter

2006-03-27T21:22:00.000+01:00

I found this card today, addressed to an Officer Cadet at Sandhurst, down in the dusty recesses of a library bookshelf:

September 12th 2005

Dear Jeremy,
I have just finished having my bath and speaking with you on the telephone. It occurred to me that the letter I had written you and was intending to send tomorrow was simply not appropriate for your first letter. I believed that your emotions were probably running high, being it your week, and therefore I decided to write in somewhat of a detached manner. Rather than follow my instincts, I wrote about... Scottish national identity and the British public's love of the secular magic of monarchy!

We have only known each other a few weeks and there is so much for us to learn about each other. I will start, I think, by providing (not particularly interesting) facts about myself:

The remaining half of the card has been left tantalisingly blank. Why did this person stop writing at this point? What interrupted her (or him)? Did they use the unfinished letter as a bookmark then carelessly forget about it? I guess we'll never know.

This is why I love ephemera so much - that voyeuristic peek into other people's everyday lives, the open-ended mystery of these fragments, the imagined human dramas. The nosy, speculating, storytelling part of my brain explodes when I come across precious scraps like today's card.

I hope that I can sate your burning curiosities by providing some (not particularly interesting) facts about myself:

I have two brothers.
I don't like it in winter when I enter a room and my glasses fog up.
I have a scar on my knee from a childhood fall.

Over to you, dog.

Why not just shoot yourself in the fucking head?

2006-03-22T21:51:00.000+00:00

I was reading The Believer today in the bookshop while bunking off work and found a brilliant interview with Harold Ramis, of Ghostbusting fame. This bit I copied into my notebook:

Ramis: I can’t tell you how many people have told me, “When I go to the movies, I don’t want to think.”
Believer: Does that offend you as a filmmaker?
Ramis: It offends me as a human being. Why wouldn’t you want to think? What does that mean? Why not just shoot yourself in the fucking head?

Read the full text here, those generous so-and-sos.

Now You Know

2006-03-09T22:22:00.000+00:00

Train! Train! Traingrfgsflgsflkfsgsfklg!!!11

2006-02-28T22:56:00.000+00:00

Just when you thought it was safe, Japan drops another coquettish bomb.

Densha Otoko (Train Man) is the true story of a socially-retarded otaku (geek) who rescues a refined young woman from a train groper. The original book, released in November 2004, chronicles their burgeoning romance through the forum posts that he makes soliciting advice on the internet BBS 2ch. It has since spawned a film, a manga series and a TV series which ended this month; there has even been talk of an anime series being produced that is based on some of the animations from the TV series' opening credits.

Although it is being touted as a true story, there are those who have reason to believe it to be nothing but media-generated hokum - see Marxy here and here. It does seem rather too steki to be true: an otaku with a heart of gold, a beautiful unpretentious girl and the wild outpourings of Japan's largest internet community all working to remodel the geek/hero into a suitable suitor. Hollywood's probably already bought rights to the story.

Project Densha: the wonderful and hugely entertaining English translation of the original BBS posts (last chapter incomplete - gah!)
Densha Otoko: complete archived BBS posts in Japanese
Kaomoji: Japanese emoticons (see also Shift JIS art and East Asian emoticons)

Who cares if it's fake when we have this? (；ﾟДﾟ)

Hello I'm Latte!

2006-02-23T21:47:00.000+00:00

"Come on in! We're small enough to fit in your palm. But working together we'll make the best coffee you've ever had!"

Who could resist such a thing? Despite being only 4cm tall these Tenorikuma (bear on your palm) have opened a coffee shop and are working their little stripey raccoon tails off to bring you simply the best coffee experience you've ever had. It's the American dream.

My favourite character is Mr Steam, a ghost that lives in your drink. Get the low-down on Latte-kun, Maple-chan, Chai-kun, Frappe-kun, Macchiato-kun and, of course, Mr Steam here. Better still, watch short Tenorikuma stop-motion animations! Kyaaaaa!

Can't get enough of the Sanrio-Starbucks crossover? Check these:

Tenorikuma goods: peruse the latest merchandise
Cute Barista!: a fan-listing with lots of pretty link buttons for you
TENORI-ON: no raccoons here but light and sound from your finger! Rad.

The Boy Crosses Over The Rainbow

2006-02-14T21:25:00.000+00:00

Looking for a romantic, life-affirming film to watch on Valentine's Day that won't offend your hipster sensibilities? It is possible!

1971's Harold and Maude is certainly one of my favourite films of the moment - a love story that is neither saccharine and predictable nor gritty and dark. It's funny, warm and full of fantastic subtle touches. I feel sure that it must have played a large part in influencing the work of Wes Anderson, particularly Rushmore. Indeed, Bud Cort (who plays Harold in Harold and Maude) appears in The Life Aquatic, bringing the whole thing full circle.

This charming educational diagram should help to explain the story:

Please do click for a large, readable version.

There's suicide, joyriding, philosophy, Vivian Pickles (cf. Robert Vinegar), love, satire and a banjo. What more could you ask for? I thoroughly recommend this film.

Bat-shit crazy link content rating level running from high to medium:

HAROLD AND MAUDE -- a hand-drawn map, pictures and some strange fanfic/comprehension exercises on this German site (in English) for possibly a school project about the film
Harold & Maude: the unofficial Homepage -- comprehensive
R-V Caps -- astounding archive of hundreds of screen captures from the film

beget a painful wonder

2006-02-03T21:33:00.001+00:00

A Tom Phillips micro-retrospective is coming up at the Ashmolean in Oxford, running from 9 February to 23 April. He's also giving a series of eight weekly lectures under the banner Making Art Work which will culminate in a musical performance of works by such luminaries as Brian Eno and Real Composers I Haven't Heard Of - see here for details.

Tom Phillips is perhaps best known as the creator of A Humument, an art book made from the painted-over pages of a forgotten nineteenth century novel called A Human Document. He describes it thus:

"I plundered, mined and undermined its text to make it yield the ghosts of other possible stories, scenes, poems, erotic incidents and surrealist catastrophes which seemed to lurk within its wall of words. As I worked on it, I replaced the text I'd stripped away with visual images of all kinds. I began to tell and depict, among other memories, dreams and reflections, the sad story of Bill Toge, one of love's casualties."

It is a genuinely beautiful, astounding and funny work of art. Come and see it at the Ashmolean, you leaf. Man-sized props to this dude for getting us hep to A Humument.

The Tom Phillips Web Site: writings, art and other kinds of good stuff
A HUMUMENT: online gallery of the first printed 1970 edition
Reincarnation - an altered book: someone else has a go

Clean your hands

2005-12-05T20:43:00.000+00:00

If there was one custom I could import from Japan, it would be the use of oshibori. Oshibori are Japanese moist hot towels provided in restaurants for cleaning one's hands before eating; this is the kind of thing we usually get on long-haul flights and self-consciously put on our faces.

The fancier eateries use real little terry hand towels which often come to your table sealed in plastic despite being all hot and steamy but the majority of cafes and restaurants provide disposable 'moist towelettes' (these, for example) called kamioshibori or paper oshibori. Even fast food joints will give you oshibori without fail. All apart from McDonalds, the dirty bastards.

The kamioshibori plastic wrappers usually feature relentlessly insipid 80s-style designs with pastel colours and brush-stroke fonts. These specimens, however, appeared on a towelette given to us at a hip little cafe in Kobe:

I can count about nine fingers on one of those crazy hands! And I can't even begin to understand the TOOTH TOOTH TOOTH.

You know, I'd always assumed that the hot oshibori I got when dining out were microwaved but it turns out that restaurants have special oshibori machines. I wonder how much it would cost to get one for my home...

For people who can't get enough of moist towelettes there are two (two!) online moist towelette collections to peruse: John French's museum and Michael Lewis' gallery.

Genki Sushi?

2005-11-29T20:56:00.001+00:00

One of my favourite places in Japan was a kaiten (revolving conveyor belt) sushi restaurant called Genki Sushi. I'm not the biggest fan of "real" sushi with the raw fish on, preferring novelty kid's sushi like the ones with tempura stuck in them or the little cups of jelly, but I am a huge fan of the Genki Sushi logo.

The image is bold, striking and crazily paradoxical. You see, genki means happy, healthy, cheerful or lively in Japanese. It doesn't mean furious.

I once asked a co-worker why the Genki Sushi man was so angry and she looked surprised because, to her, it looked really genki - "maybe he's so genki that he looks a bit angry, like when a little kid is really really genki". I suppose one could see how his expression represents a fierce kind of determination appropriate to the making and serving of fresh sushi but my foreigner's eyes can't help seeing a burning fury there.

What do you think?

Genki Sushi is now a global chain and there are branches across America and SE Asia (see here). Don't eat the Sushi Azarashi though.

Museum of Childhood - pt.4

2005-11-25T22:27:00.000+00:00

One of the best things in the section of the museum devoted to doll's houses were these model butcher's shops from the 1850s.

I love all these cuts of realistic-looking meat. Why, it's almost like seeing into meat/Lincoln-lovin' Mark Ryden's brain! Of course, until about 50 years ago, in pre-supermarket days, everyone bought their meat from butcher's shops like these (disembowelled wooden cow optional) and one could get parts with names like brisket and hock.

When I was a kid my favourite toy was a model post office so who am I to mock the nineteenth century child-butcher (pictured far right)? Perhaps the reason why we find these playthings so creepy now is that we no longer have a healthy relationship with meat; namely, most people do not want to remember that the meat they eat comes from animals.

But it definitely doesn't come from that snooty cat, though.

More from the Museum: pt.1 | pt.2 | pt.3 | pt.5

Museum of Childhood - pt.1

2005-11-21T21:50:00.000+00:00

On Sunday 30 October the Arbiter (plus guest) visited the Museum of Childhood in London's Bethnal Green. We were exceptionally lucky to catch this chance as the museum was closing for a year of refurbishment work from 31 October.

A Bon Voyage mural showing visitors' favourite toys travelling around the world was in full-swing by the time we reached the museum and a series of special events, including some highly energetic and slightly creepy performance art, happened throughout the day. There was a feeling of melancholy celebration and one can't help but remember what happened to the Museum of Moving Image, another fantastic London museum, which closed for refurbishment and relocation in 1999 and never opened again.

With so many amazing things to see in the museum, we barely had time to take a proper look at all of the many incredible antique toys but, of course, we did manage to get some killer snaps of some of our favourite items. Look out for upcoming RCA entries on such wonders as double-faced dolls, Pete Doherty and the Great Galumphus.

We sincerely hope that the museum will reopen as planned in autumn 2006 because it would be a true tragedy to lose such a collection and one that was open to the public for free. A selection of 20th century toys from the museum is now doing the rounds of the country in a travelling exhibition entitled "Must-Have Toys" (details here).

More from the Museum: pt.2 | pt.3 | pt.4 | pt.5

$3,387.24 please

2005-11-08T20:57:00.000+00:00

My blog is worth $3,387.24.
How much is your blog worth?

Hot on the heels of news that AOL has bought Weblogs Inc for an estimated $25 million, Dane Carlson has produced a nifty applet that calculates how much any given blog is worth. The sum is based on figures extrapolated by Tristan Louis from the monetary value of the Weblogs Inc sale against the linkage and internet network value of individual blogs in the Weblogs stable. This non-monetary value comes from Technorati, a company that indexes and tracks the content of blogs; it ranks every blog not by traffic but by the number of links it has tracking back to it. Put simply, there are now $$$ attached to the Technorati ranking chart. For those who are curious, the Arbiter stands at 350, 359 out of all the blogs in the whole world.

Come on and buy us, AOL! We're cheap! The RCA is the internet's foremost purveyor of unfiltered content about old boxes, church posters and things found in/that should be taken to charity shops. Inc.

What you can buy for $3,387.24:

a Dior Park Lane trench coat
113 Furbies
338 single use Lomo cameras for the ensuing art project

Small Objects

2005-10-14T22:00:00.000+01:00

I've been admiring the little faces and lovely items of Sarah Neuburger's online shop, The Small Object, for some time. Her new Loop Troupe collection of wooden guys and gals are simply adorable for their organic, tactile cuteness. How wabi sabi.

"Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional. ... The closest English word to wabi-sabi is probably 'rustic'. ... Things wabi-sabi are unstudied and inevitable looking. .. unpretentious. .. Their craftsmanship may be impossible to discern."

-- Leonard Koren

There's a whole network of crafty folk out there making stuff and selling online. Check out boygirlparty.com or If'n Books + Marks for owls, boats and cats. Now to the workshop!

The Revolution Will Be Knitted

2005-06-30T14:06:00.000+01:00

mircoRevolt are sending a petition to Nike in the form of a huge knit and crocheted blanket to bring attention to sweatshop labour and the campaign for fair employment conditions. It's a beautiful object and a fantastic idea. Each square someone makes to join this political afghan is a signature on the petition.

The group are currently seeking squares to make up a border for the swoosh; any colour, any gauge, knit or crochet - it's up to you as long as the finished piece is 4" x 4". Send squares to:

microRevolt
PO Box 1659
Troy
NY 12180
USA

Maybe I could make mine out of unravelled Gap jumpers...

Notorious KIP

2005-06-10T13:29:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow is Worldwide Knit In Public Day! People will be taking back the knit in a variety of locations across the globe (in church hall if wet) and there will no doubt be arty hipsters in hot KIP action on the tube in London. If you do see any knitters out on your travels on Saturday be sure to give them a high-five to show that you too know about the magic greatness of crafts.

Daydream Nation

2005-05-29T01:17:00.000+01:00

My life came like dew,
disappears like dew.
All of Naniwa
is dream after dream.

-- Toyotomi Hideyoshi

The original Generation X

2005-05-19T15:36:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I heard a most interesting programme on BBC Radio 4 called The Real Generation X. The programme, for which unfortunately I can now find no streaming archive, talked about Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson's 1964 book Generation X and followed up several of the book's original participants - an Observer article. How serendipitous then that I found a copy of this very work for sale yesterday at the local hospital when I took my mother in for a nasal probe!

The purpose of Hamblett and Deverson's book is a kind of Mass Observations study of Britain's youth, a window into the world of the under-25s, carried out entirely by interviews. The blurb on the back perhaps sums it up best: 'TODAY'S GENERATION TALKING ABOUT ITSELF... talking about Education, Marriage, Money, Pops, Politics, Parents, Drugs, Drink, God, Sex, Class, Colour, Kinks, and Living for Kicks.'

A brief flick through brings up some interesting tidbits:

"Okay, so I'm a girl Rocker. My boy's a Rocker and I'm proud of him. He's got guts, he'll fight anyone in sight... I'll be seventeen in September ('64) but I'd marry anyone just to spite my parents... I'd hate to marry a Mod, they're not men at all really. When there's a punch-up they fight like girls... They say the Rockers are scruffy, that we don't wash. I'd rather not wash than be mistook for a prissy little Mod girl."
"Being middle class is the most degrading thing in youth."
"Your mind is geared to fantasy rather than fact. I knew a young teenage boy who loved the Romans in a purely subjective way. He saw himself as a Roman. His great dream was to buy a Roman castle... and to live as the Romans did - eating meat with his hands, wearing Roman clothes, holding great Roman feasts and orgies. This was not a vague dream. To him it was real - an ambition to be achieved. Teenagers are surrealistic... They have a wonderful real imagination which is lost only too quickly. It's beaten out of you... Last month I celebrated... my twentieth birthday. I'm still sad about it."
"I went abroad once, working on a banana boat to California. My mate and I met two American youngsters who taught us this game with razors on the end of a stick. You strip to the waist and fight with them, and the first one to give in is called chicken. You get a bit cut about."
"I go to church nearly every Sunday. And I try to listen to the sermon and concentrate but it's awfully hard sometimes... I definitely believe in God, though, and I pray like billy-o when I want something."
"So we shall have to accept some type of conformity. But it must be rational, elastic, civilized, within the needs of present civilisation rather than pipedreams about 'golden ages' of Greece and other donnish, quasi-homosexual wish-fantasties... Our generation will have to fight hard to beat our animal heritage. The rational, sensitive, clever ones may be destroyed by the mob, by mass hysteria. It will be a struggle."
"Generation X? I don't understand. All this nonsense about teenagers is just newspaper publicity."
"You have to carry a knife in Arab countries, the Arabs are fascinating but evil. If you trust them you're done for. But I love them. I love going to their bars, listening to their music and smoking hashish - it gives you a wonderful feeling, you feel fantastically happy... I expect I shall be killed sooner or later... But it doesn't worry me. I'd rather live for a short time than exist in England."
"Every new Generation X has the same problems and they can only be solved by growing up."

It's a wonderful document of social change, of life in the 1960s, of youth culture and certainly of adolescent posturing.

Remember, these people are your parents.

Mama, I'm having the dream again!

2005-05-12T12:16:00.000+01:00

A SuperDollfie figure created by one bob_deluxe. Check the Volks website for more alluring terror.

I heart Playmobil

2005-05-10T00:27:00.000+01:00

How I love the shiny plastic colourfulness of Playmobil! The uniformity, the sturdily-built fun!

The toy is designed completely with children in mind, from the size of the figures (ideal for a grabby child's paw) to the design of the faces which omit the nose that children themselves often do not bother with in their own drawings. Playmobil represents, for me, a special kind of healthy, decidedly European, utopian play-vision with the emphasis on civic duty and, er, pirates. Everything is clean, in super-flat colours and simple.

Expo fans may be interested to note that the creator of Playmobil, Hans Beck, was honoured with a statue at World Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany.

Playmobil has a huge global following amongst adult fans and talented so-and-sos like Sven van der Hart have made stop-motion animation films with their Playmo collections. The Viking Five is particularly brilliant.

Official Playmobil site
Collectobil: unofficial site for fans and collectors

Now to retire to my boudoir with my Playmobil biohazard clean-up crew.

Salted Boy & Daikon Bird

2005-04-29T00:10:00.000+01:00

San-X, Sanrio's new character division, seems to positively relish giving the world food with a face. That'll show them vegetarians.

Which is your favourite Omusubiya-san?

Warship Island and ruined Japan

2005-04-25T01:22:00.000+01:00

Photographer Shibakoen Koutarou is a fearless explorer of Japanese ruins. When Japan's economic bubble burst, a large number of buildings, leisure parks and amenities – built during the boom years – were forced into closure. Many were not demolished, but simply deserted. People walked away from fully operational amusement parks, resorts and schools, never to return. Ruins Deflation Spiral (or Haikyo Defure Supairaru) charts Shibakoen’s explorations of what Japan has abandoned.

Most fascinating is the case of Hashima.

The island of Hashima – also known as "Warship Island" because of the striking resemblance – lies off the coast of Nagasaki prefecture. In its day, the island was home to over 5,300 residents, employees of Mitsubishi Mining and their families. Mining stopped in 1974, and the island was abruptly abandoned. Houses, apartments, shops, restaurants, and schools were all left behind, along with the mines and factories.

Shibakoen is not alone in his interest in Hashima:

A former resident of the island is campaigning for it to be designated a World Heritage site. His homepage features photos of the island in former times.
Blogger Kurt Easterwood presents a thought-provoking article about Hashima and its history: Gunkanshima and ruined lives.
Brian Burke-Gaffney’s Hashima: The Ghost Island is a detailed essay on the story of the island.

Access to the island is strictly limited, so don't expect to be able to hop over and snoop around next time you're in Nagasaki. However, as Shibakoen proves, other ruins abound if you look hard enough.

Oranges are not the only etc.

2005-04-20T23:16:00.000+01:00

We met at my local shopping supermarket; he was on the side of a box of citrus fruits and I was pushing a small trolley.

It must get lonely on your abandoned island with your avian delusions, making a cape to simulate wings and strapping a huge beak structure to your face. You have these nutty hallucinations sometimes. The craziest things. Like giant oranges. So big you can stand on them. They’re the fruit of this island, your island, and you must protect them from the evil men who come in boats once a week. They want your oranges.

You run on the beach, in your Converse high-tops, cape-wings flapping, squawking at the men. Monsters! Fiends! It's no wonder they speed away in their boat and just fling your provisions onto the rocks. They have tried to help you before but now they are just afraid. You shake your fist/wing at the receding lines of surf and lug the parcels back to your lighthouse home in the fading light. You don’t feel lonely on your island though, as long as you have your oranges.

The serious business of collecting fruit box and crate packaging has been around since the 1970s and it is heartening to see such wonderful examples of bold graphic design being preserved. And, indeed, to see it still in our shops and markets. Long live glorious ephemera!

The following pages show some beautiful collections. However, I cannot guarantee that there will be fanciful ridiculous made-up back-stories attached.

Paperstuff.com - browse their excellent catalogue
A small collection of gambling-themed labels
The Ephemera Society [UK] [USA]

Note: The above links do not necessarily represent an RCA endorsement of the services or items offered therein. Who knows what kind of racket they may be running? They just want your giant oranges!