Sixfinger
Sixfinger, Sixfinger, Man Alive! How Did I Ever Get along with Five?
Sheepish Walking Dog Toy
Evil Stick
A mother in Dayton, Ohio was shocked this week when she purchased a toy wand for her child at a dollar store only to find it ran not on unicorn hair but a picture of a child slicing her arm open. In fairness to the dollar store, the product was named ‘EVIL STICK’, though the pink lettering, fairies, swirls and snowflakes on the packaging ensured it would catch the eye of toddlers. The fact that the wand emits a cackling laugh when activated is probably permissible, the horrific hidden image less so. “It’s a picture of a girl slitting her wrists. I’m outraged over it,” mother Nicole Allen, who bought the toy for her two-year-old daughter. “I want to know how they think that that is suitable for a child. There was barbie dolls on one side and baby toys on the other side, and these were right in the middle.”
Mugen Peri Peri
Opening presents is a great feeling…why not replicate it forever? Mugen Peri Peri (Infinite tearing open) is the latest “infinite action” gadget that simulates the feeling of opening packages such as Fed-Ex envelopes, Pocky, and boxes. No money to buy packages to open? Have a shopaholic friend who just loves opening new boxes? Mugen Peri Peri is the solution to such addictions.
Classic Wrecks Beat Up Car Toy
Don’t give your child false hopes with a toy car in the form of a Porsche or Lamborghini. Be more realistic with this rusted 1984 Chevy Citation.
Slip ‘N Slide
The Slip ‘N Slide had a design that made people above a certain weight vulnerable to possible neck fractures. The original manufacturer, Wham-O, discontinued the product in the 1970s after three reports of broken necks. But after Wham-O was sold in 1982, the new owner brought back the Slip ‘N Slide, leading to additional deaths and injuries resulting in quadriplegia. Lawsuits brought the danger of the Slip ‘N Slide to public attention, and as a result the company stopped making the product, recalled products from retail shelves and issued a safety alert.
Capsule toys
… have been around for more than 40 years but the craze really took off in 2012 when Tokyo-based manufacturer Kitan Club launched its “Koppu no Fuchico” (“Fuchico at the edge of a glass”) product. This figurine of a woman wearing a typical office worker’s clothes, whose arms or legs were designed to hang over the edge of a glass, became an instant hit with adults. “We never thought of targeting children. Their numbers are dwindling and adults have more money,” said spokesman Seita Shiki.
Magic Monster
Up for sale is this bizarre “Magic Monster” toy. It takes two AA batteries. When you turn it on it rocks back and forth, the axe lights up and it plays “oh when the saints go marching in.” Best of all, the face moves around and becomes distorted which is absolutely mesmerizing (do yourself a favor and watch the video on the website mentioned later- I can’t paste the url on this listing) The box is a little beat up but it works great and is in great shape. I believe it was made in 1985 but I can’t confirm that.
_______________
Lego. Obóz Koncentracyjny
27876
The Strange Change Machine
This “electrical toy,” manufactured in 1967 is actually but a small hot plate or heating chamber of sorts. What this comes down to, essentially, is this: with a pair of blue plastic tongs (included), you would insert small red, yellow and green “capsules” into the heating chamber (and on top of the hot plate). As they heated up, the cubes would unfold in glorious slow-motion into, as the box copy reads, “Membrane Men, Fragments of Space Creatures… Crawlers… fliers… Skeletons of Human Types…. Mummies… Robots.” This Mattel invention also came complete with a “compressor” on the red heating unit so you could crush the 16 hidden wonders back into their original cube forms and start all over again. The box implored kids to: “CREATE ‘EM! CRUSH ‘EM! and CREATE ‘EM! AGAIN AND AGAIN In the STRANGE CHANGE MACHINE.
Toy Murderers
Fighting Ear of Corn
Harry Styles Toothpaste Topper
Brush the Watermelon Sugar off your teeth with this Harry Styles Toothpaste Topper! Comes with 4 caps to fit all major brands of toothpaste. Fits Crest, Colgate, Arm&Hammer, CloseUp, Aim, and more.
Marx Toy Soldier Casualties
I first remembered these toys during a conversation, some recent years back, with a friend of mine who was going through a seemingly inexplicable, plastic dinosaur freak-out. The discussion set my mind to ruminating over my own childhood’s crappy plastic dinosaurs, cowboys and Indians, and army men. I voiced having once had some WWII figures that included both American GI’s and Germans. Not only that but *dead* Germans and wounded Americans. My friend was dubious of this assertion, not daring to believe that a toy company of the time would have made anything as heinous as a wounded American GI – but my mental image remained – I knew it to be true. Were they a rarity, manufactured by some weird, little company? A few creative eBay searches later and I am rewarded. There they are and more than I had remembered: the stretcher bearers with patient, the crawling wounded Marine, the injured soldier slung over a compatriot’s shoulders, the shot soldier with his flapping helmet and dropping pistol.
Toy from feudal era Japan. This toy tiger is animated by placing it against a wall and fanning it, causing it to skip and jump.
Cinema of Fear
Cinema Of Fear was a toy line of action figures, plush dolls, “screen grab” dioramas, and limited edition toys based on New Line’s horror franchises: Friday the 13th, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Rob Zombie’s Halloween II remake.
Ryan Sheckler Omnitech Skateboard Figure
The Ryan Sheckler Omnitech Figure is the most realistic skateboarding action figure ever made! Instead of holding on to your action figure, the patented Omni Tech handle allows you to take your hands off the figure and flip, spin, and grind the board in any combination.
Coarse Toys
Mark Landwehr and Sven Waschk started Coarse, a company that creates resin and vinyl toys, both and small and life-size. Up until now their toys, like most toys on the market, have remained inanimate (and I don’t just mean battery-operated). Their latest release, however, breathes new life into the world of toys, literally. The project is called Oops, and it arrives on your doorstep as a seven-inch embryo. There’s a whole line-up of embryos to choose from, iconic Coarse characters in their most infantile state so fans can experience the birth, growth and eventual death of their favorites. The embryo starts out as a spore and then becomes a shoot, then a fruit and, finally, flesh. Once it has reached this stage it emerges from its protective pod and life begins.
Moon Shoes
Toy Piano
Shimajiro Toilet Training Tiger
The Shimajiro Toilet Training Tiger videos feature an animated tiger struggling with potty training and his animated personified waste. The accompanying toy attaches to the toilet paper roll holder and yells out encouraging phrases while you go.
Hpp&Lgg; Brand funny scary nausea alien model luminous large maggots toy
Remco Baby Laugh-a-Lot Doll
Remote-Control, Hopping, Yodeling Lederhosen
The Remote Control, Hopping, Yodeling Lederhosen is a pair of toy Bavarian trousers that stand 6.25 inches tall and are controlled by a plastic knockwurst remote. The trousers will hop around the room while yodeling. It runs on three AAA batteries and sells for $19.95.
Baby in a Mircowave
Tuttuki Bako Finger Game
Tuttuki Bako Finger Game is a small box with a screen that begs you to stick your finger in its hole and see what happens, and although that would normally be a terrible idea the Tuttuki Bako makes poking around fun again! Each stage features something you interact with by poking it. Stick your finger in the box and a digital representation appears on the screen mimicking your motions. From what we can tell the various stages of the game include terrorizing a tiny stick man, poking a girl in the face and flicking a tiny panda.
Remco Toy Drive-In Theater
We can all bewail the loss of drive-in movie theaters, but perhaps some of our more enterprising readers will invest in a theater of their own. This Remco toy might be a little smaller than you were thinking, but here’s a drive-in theater that’s ready to go… no messy dealings with movie distributors, and no cleaning up after your little plastic patrons. For just south of a thousand dollars you can pick up this mint boxed toy drive-in from 1959. It includes toy cars, changeable movie marquees, and most impressively it has a built-in projector for showing filmstrips taken from actual movies.
Piglet Weapon
A mother who killed her three-year-old daughter by suffocating her with a Piglet toy is facing life in jail. Mum-of-four Helen Caudwell, 42, murdered Bethany in October with the Winnie the Pooh character. She had led a double life, convincing two men they were the girl’s father. Caudwell, of Stockport, was convicted at Manchester Crown Court despite claiming she had been suffering an “abnormality of the mind”.
Statue of Liberty is Too Free
One of Japan’s newest toy lines features the Statue Of Liberty feeling all kinds of free, just like a real life lady! She lounges around looking at her tablet, bends over backwards in some sort of Yoga position and generally defies the stereotype that she’s a big stiff.
Space Shuttle Columbia Kit
(0-0) Toys Ltd.
New line of knitted, stuffed toys for Fall 2015
Jarts
Lawn Darts were a game from a simpler, more naive time. Sure, they could embed themselves in your little sister’s head just as easily as the lawn, but they were fun. Now they’re back. They’re back thanks to the unfortunately named Jarts In Your Heart web site, which sells the banned items thanks to a little bit of legal gymnastics. You see, since lawn darts (or “Jarts” as they’re known here) transform so easily from an innocent backyard game into deadly weapon depending on who’s holding them, Jarts In Your Heart has to sell the plastic fins and metal tips separately. Sad.
God Jesus Robot
This strange all knowing Japanese toy debuted in the 80’s and answered your questions in a magic 8-ball style.
Easy Out
Kaba Kick
Now children can reenact the famous Russian roulette scene in ‘The Deer Hunter,’ thanks to The Kaba Kick! How does The Kaba Kick work? Pull the trigger and find out! You earn points if nothing comes out. If a pair of pink hippo feet come out and kick you in the head, then you, my friend, have just lost.
DRAMAtical Murder Seragaki Aoba 1/7 Scale Character PVC Action Figure Collectible Model Toys 26cm
Potato Chips Tank Scary Prop Toy
Do you want to be the superstar during the party? If do, this toy will be your best choice. Carrying this, you will be the most horrible, insane, and the king/queen of scare. You can carry it on parties, masquerades, birthday parties and wedding occasions. Carry this and feel the fun. It is suitable for girls.
Dangerous Popsicles
Would you lick a popsicle if it was in the shape of a deadly virus or bacteria such as HIV, MRSA, E. coli or the chicken pox? Designer Wei Li created popsicle sticks, which she calls Dangerous Popsicles, in the shape of these viruses to see if a person’s preexisting knowledge of something would effect the way they perceive something else. “You look at the popsicle and you are intrigued by what it will taste like,” Li told the Daily News. “At the same time, your brain is bringing up all of these other associations.”
Pull Toy
by Monty Monty
Charles Ray ‘Firetruck’
Best known for his sculptures of almost imperceptibly altered, or wildly exaggerated, familiar objects, Charles Ray creates mesmerizing, disorienting works that challenge perception. With Firetruck (1993), for example, Ray enlarged a toy Tonka truck to the proportions of an actual fire truck and “parked” it in front of the Whitney Museum in New York. From afar, Firetruck looked real. It was only upon approach that viewers saw that it was not.
Murder Nova Slot Car
________
Swing Wing
KFC Chicken Keyboard & Mouse
Because fried chicken is the greatest thing in the history of the world, and considering Japan is from the future, it’s surprising they got their first KFC only 30 years ago. To celebrate that anniversary, the franchise is currently holding a contest on Facebook and Twitter with probably the most amazing prizes ever. The first prize is a KFC Original Keyboard – a specially-designed keyboard that looks like a KFC plastic tray with lots of chicken on it. Every single key has been designed to have a chicken drumstick, a thigh piece, or a chicken wing sticking out of the key. Although the actual definitions of the keys are in white next to the keys, for the most part, it’s a sea of chicken, with only the letters “K”, “F” and “C” as actual letter keys. The KFC logo replaces the Windows key and the keyboard also comes with a miniature Colonel Sanders standing by, as well as a KFC milkshake and a KFC bucket on the edges. If that’s not good enough, you could also hope to walk away with a signature KFC wired PC mouse, which is shaped like a chicken drumstick, or a USB memory stick, which has a USB connector hidden in the middle of the plastic chicken piece.
Incriminating Lego
Lucille Johnson, 78, was strangled and beaten to death in her Salt Lake City home in February 1991. The murder has been unsolved for the last 23 years. Last year it was reopened and investigators made a breakthrough with DNA found on some Lego toys taken as evidence from the house linked them to John Sansing, 47, a convicted murderer. Fingerprints on the toys matched that of Sansing’s juvenile son. Police believe the boy was playing with the Lego in the house when Sansing killed Mrs Johnson. Sansing is currently on death row in Arizona for the murder of a church worker who was delivering a charity food package to his family.
Pop it Pal
Everyone has their own unique obsession and this obsession is the pickers dream toy! The Pop It Pal™ is made of skin safe silicone with an all natural puss that simulates the popping of a huge pimple! Every Pop It Pal™ comes with 15 pimples ready to be picked the minute you receive it.
____________
Galton Board
The Galton Board is a 7.5” by 4.5” desktop probability machine toy. This delightful little device brings to life the statistical concept of normal distribution. As you rotate the Galton Board on its axis, you set into motion a flow of steel beads that bounce with equal probability to the left or right through several rows of pegs. As the beads accumulate in the bins, they approximate the bell curve, as shown by the yellow line on the front of the Galton board. This hands-on Galton Board allows you to visualize the order embedded in the chaos of randomness.
_______
Deer Ride
Rupert’s corpse
Last night, Rupert, joey of Rowena the toy kangaroo, was badly mauled and mutilated. By the time we found him, he had severe facial trauma and half an ear missing. My plastic surgery skills weren’t up to the task, so unfortunately, we had to pronounce Rupert dead.
Toy Tank
A visitor looks at artist Amy Cheung’s full size wooden ‘Toy Tank’, which visitors can climb into and operate, at the ‘Hong Kong Eye’ exhibition at Saatchi Gallery on December 4, 2012 in London, England.
Scary Car for Children
This toy car is not good for child as they may scared of it…. But this cool baby is so brave that he rides of that car…
Pachi Pachi Clappy
One handed clapping is now ridiculously easy thanks to the Pachi Pachi Clappy toy, the toy that does all the clapping for you! Pachi Pachi Clappy has two “big soft squishy hands” on top and a funny lil’ face in front, so you can carry your own private cheering section around with you wherever you go!
Marx Whistling Spooky Kooky Trees
1960s. 13″ tall tin litho with soft plastic simulated leaves on top. Wonderful design and actions including whistling sound, moving leaves, eyes move up and down, mouth opens and closes, arms move up and down and bump and go action. Works well. Dark brown variety. Scattered light wear with a few small scratches here and there. VF appearance. In the top ten of battery toys.
Monster Science Colossal Water Balls
This recall involves marble-sized toys that absorb water and grow up to 400 times their original size. They were sold as Monster Science Colossal Water Balls. Monster Science packages contain eight balls and “Growth Powder.” The balls were sold in an assortment of blue, green, orange, purple, red, yellow or clear colors. Many children ingested the delicious-looking toys, which their genius designers made capable of expanding within a child’s body. Woe be to those who also choked down the ominously labeled “Growth Powder.” From there they caused life-threatening episodes of vomiting and dehydration. To top it all off, these things were impossible to X-ray and required surgery to remove.
Junkie Jane
Ooze It
Here is one of the most obscure 1970s toys ever. It is made of latex and does get filled with a type of syrup. Ooze it was thought up and designed by a family in Metairie, Louisiana and produced overseas in Hong Kong. Oooze It Incorporated produced only this toy that has become its “one hit wonder”. Ooze It is so incredibly rare that only 5 are currently known to exist at the present time.
Lucky Dog Unchoken
If money is burning a hole in your pocket, then let it burn a hole in this pooch’s powerful digestive tract instead. Just pop a coin in his greedy gaping mouth and watch as he eagerly snaffles it up. His wide eyes dart about, his tail starts to wag and his hind legs begin quivering frantically as he spins round, squats and “deposits” your cherished coin into the box beneath him.
Am I Like Father
Supply the whole person pen inserted Funny Tricky Toy Toy murder the entire human voice Toys
___________
Pretty Death
This Chinese toy noose doesn’t just defy logic; it pummels it, leaving it doubled-over wondering what the hell happened. Hopefully the rationale with this bejewelled rope was inspiring kids to be cowboys. Lassoing an imaginary horse is something I could possibly get behind, although even then the risk of accidental choking seems pretty high. But if this toy’s point is for kids to make light of suicide then I no longer wish to live on this planet.
Aqua Dots
Aqua Dots would seem inadvisable for little kids even if the toy didn’t release a date-rape drug when ingested. The thing’s basic component is small beads. Using a smart-looking applicator, kids arrange the beads on a grid in little crafty patterns. Then you spray the beads with water and, voilà, they fuse together. The finished product looks something like three-dimensional beady works of needlepoint. Kids love Aqua Dots! In Australia, where they’re sold under the brand Bindeez, they were named the country’s Toy of the Year. Let me say this again: Aqua Dots are small beads that look like M&Ms.; It’s kind of like a toy involving candy cigarettes, except that the cigarettes aren’t made of candy but tobacco. And they’re made of a date-rape drug. In a fantastic piece today, the New York Times’ Keith Bradsher explains how doctors in Sydney, Australia, spent a couple weeks getting to the bottom of the menace posed by Aqua Dots — leading to international recalls of the product, including one in the United States this week by the Consumer Products Safety Commission.
Upside-Down Vomiting Goo Will
Will from ‘Stranger Things’ goes from looking like a Mii to a Mii with a gaping wound where his mouth should be. Will apparently comes with a little Upside-Down goo accessory that can be jammed in his mouth. Note that Will’s hands look perfectly fine, thus ruining the effect.
Fantastic Gymnastics Game
This gymnastics toy is made by Hasbro and is known as the Fantastic Gymnastics Game, and features a guy that you spin around a high bar and then try to release him at just the right time for him to 1) land right side up on his feet, and 2) land within stripes within the landing pad for the most points. Assuming you’re with a group of people, this game will probably give you a lot of fun while you compete against each other for the highest amount of points.
Slashed Wrists
The Slashed Wrists are used as Halloween makeup, where you can stick the toy onto your wrists so they look like they were slashed. This toy only glorifies suicide and self-harming, and kids should not be exposed to those issues early on in their young lives. Suicide is a sensitive issue, which affects adults as well as young adults, even teens. It should not be made fun of or treated like it is just something that normally happens.
*
p.s. Hey. This weekend we have a solid treat in store, a guest-post created by a self-defined dedicated reader and non-commenter of this blog named Lucius Rex. They asked me to apologise for their not having gotten this post ready in time to have influenced your Xmas shopping. Please spend a portion of your weekend enjoying the catalog and wishing that such a discerning toy store existed, and thank you ever so much, Lucius. ** James, Hey. I owe a lot of my writing to what I learned from certain cinema, so I say your instincts in that regard seem correct. There was a time when you could safely guess that androgynous anime characters’ anuses smelled like ink, but now it’s anyone’s guess. Well, since when is gross a drawback? Btw, I did finally eat two custard donuts yesterday, one normal and one chocolate custard. The normal one was better. Well, a billion people would make the case that Taylor Swift’s songs are memorable, and we live in democracies where numbers rule, so fuck my opinion basically. Are there bands that are liked by gay people? I feel like most gay people only like solo artists. My mom would have disowned me and adopted you, which would have ruined your life, so it’s good she’s dead in that regard, I guess. You were indeed the first to comment. And the first to be responded to. So you got me fresh and still a little under-caffeinated. You’re welcome/sorry. ** Misanthrope, You’re a reliable pushover when it comes to The Doors. That I always keep in mind. Hm, I don’t think what Zuby said makes a lot of sense, but hey. Ah, Tex Mex, you bastard. Okay, no, was it good? ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks for paying attention, pal. Huh, I’ll step into a Sephora and see if they have a Blackpepper tester. Rei Kawakubo: what a beautiful name, no? I actually saw her in person on my very street. My street hosts a few fashion show rooms, and one day I was walking along, and there was Rei Kawakubo standing in the doorway of one of those showrooms waiting for her Uber and dressed insanely in this crazed, multi-level outfit and looking like she was a billion years old, like a barely living corpse, but amazing. ** Steeqhen, Right, gasoline that makes sense. Good one. I liked your poem a lot. It’s a beauty. Perfect ending too. Kudos, sir. There are worse ways to watch the year die around you, for sure. I would never have imagined that ‘Trap’ was worth watching, so that’s interesting. Huh. Did you manage to conk out at 9 pm? 10 pm is my conk out time unless I have something better to do. ** jay, Hi! Golden rule: never read the wall texts that accompany artworks in museums. Title, artist’s name, maybe date, and that’s it. They’re always trying to turn something wonderfully mysterious into something disappointingly didactic. No sex in ‘Death in Venice’, that’s for sure. In the heads of its readers, all bets are off. You and your beau look very sympathetic. I think I’m going to steal that one comment: ‘The champion hat is giving trade’. Awesome about your great day! Mario had a successful day, but now he has to fight a giant pair of scissors, and I’m a little worried about us. ** Bill, Very interesting work: Enard. Unfortunately very difficult to actually watch. Thanks, I’ll check the interview and probably the book/soundtrack soon thereafter. I hope you have a very wide awake and nostrils-unimpaired weekend. ** Lucas, Hi! I’m okay. New Years Eve is the worst holiday in my opinion. But I don’t like drinking, and I don’t like parties, so my judgement is impaired. I’ll either ignore NYE or walk down and watch the Eiffel Tower fireworks. Send that poem to SCAB! I’ve never read Duras’ ‘The Easy Life’. Huh. Is that an early one? I’ll go check. Yes, I do have certain books that are sacred things to me, I guess usually if they were gifts from someone who really mattered to me at the time. I have this copy of a Martin Amis novel that was given to me by this boy I was totally obsessed with in the early 80s — I wrote my first good fiction work, ‘My Mark’, about him. And I don’t even especially like Martin Amis, but that book turns wherever I put it into an altar nonetheless. I think I should be here in early March, yes. I’ll get more travel-y once the film gets born, but that won’t be until April. So, yeah, it would be awesome to see you, of course! ** Diesel Clementine, Hi. Rammstein has a perfume? Why not, I guess. Does it smell like its name? Happy 25th birthday one day early! Well, I guess it depends on when you read this, but you get the point. Me at 25 … that would have been 1978. I was going to a lot of punk shows and writing a lot of poetry and I think I had Acid Reflux. Seriously about the theme of your party? Holy moly. Take pix. If the guests do it right, there should be a lot of dazed looking wallflowers. Which sounds like an ideal party to me. Don’t forget to get your passport!!!!!!! You’re going to have a gorgeous weekend for absolutely sure. I’ll be happy if mine’s just pretty. ** Måns BT, Hey, Måns! You are back! I’m totally fine, thank you. And thanks about the premiere! At long, long last. We’re relieved. I’m going to go out on a limb and say ‘Room Temperature’ is by far our best film, but you can judge. Xmas was kind of just another day, I guess. Quiet. A few unusually warm texts and emails and a phone call or two. Your aunt and grandma are awfully nice to give you my book. I had no idea Lukas Moodysson wrote a novel. Strange that it’s not in English. And very unfortunate. ’Gösta’, no, but I’ll see if I can stream it or something. Enjoy the partying aka the waning light of 2024. And slip some poem writing in there if the partying doesn’t make writing poetry seem like a hassle. Actually, poetry over party! That’s my advice. You’ll thank me for it. ** xoxo, Dennis. ** Darby𓃱𓃱, Darby with a ‘y’! And two giraffes or, wait, ‘giraffes’! I somehow think those perfumes you suggest must exist somewhere somehow. I remember ‘The Tin Drum’ being really good. And long. But good! The only normal movie I’m kind of interested in seeing in a theater is ‘The Brutalist’, but it’s almost 4 hours long so I’m almost sure I won’t. I hope ‘Nosferatu’ was fun. Everybody’s excited to see it, but I hated ‘The Lighthouse’ so much that I never want to see another one of that guy’s films. The custard did the trick. I want another one. What higher praise is there? Ooh, thank you for the gift! I’ll listen to it when I’m post-p.s. and need some personal interference. Have the best weekend! ** HaRpEr, We are of like-minds yet again. Yeah, I think the people recommending we exploit the ‘trans angle’ are thinking logistically about getting the film viral and not about what the film intends to be. It feels like most people these days are most interested in that kind of ‘success’ rather than artistic success. There’s very little longterm thinking. It’s a disappointing state. Or, yeah, even if they do actually think about a film, say, with particularity, it’s all about representation. But they mean well in their own way, I guess. I’m still a wannabe Rimbaud about things. Like you. Interesting: do you feel any loss at all in embracing writing over filmmaking? In the sense of giving up whatever ideas you might have had at one time about visualising your ideas? My dad wanted to be a writer when he was young, but he only ended up writing a few godawful rhyming poems before he became a businessman, and yet every time I saw him, he always told me how much greater a writer he would have been than I was. He was a trip. ** nat, Hi, nat. Wow, thanks for putting your considerable mind to the blog’s recent archive. Much appreciated. A lost writing year can end up seeming like a lost writing minute. No sweat. Been there, survived that. No, having a cover before the book’s content is written is not a problem, I can’t imagine. I’ve started with a title. Having a preset visual to work around is not really different, I don’t think? I’m happy you like Joseph’s novel, and I hope he saw that. ‘Pineapple Hole’, haha. I’ll ponder that. Everyone, nat has a present/puzzle for you that’s totally appropriate to the blog’s weekend theme. Take it away, nat: ‘saw another sex toy by the anus scent company today actually. I’ll let people here play roulette on what it is. here.‘** Okay. Be with Lucias’s curatorial gifts until I see you again on Monday.
Now available in North America 
* 
Hey Dennis,
Great post (thanks Lucias)! I think the Evil Stick was my favourite.
I’m writing from my parents’ house in Ireland, where I no longer have a bedroom so instead float from room to room living out of a suitcase. I’ve just finished “In Youth is Pleasure” and am about to start “Valmouth.” I’ve read a lot of books from your favourites list this year and it’s been a really productive and rewarding undertaking.
In January a friend and I are going to read Henry James'”Portrait of a Lady” in a sort of book club with just the 2 of us. I’m excited. Mr. James (or “Hattie Jacques” as James McCourt’s narrators would call him) is so freakish and funny in his own way.
I’m curious to know why you hated “The Lighthouse”? I haven’t seen it but I liked “The Witch” and I will be going to see “Nosferatu” when I’m back in London.
But before then I’ll be in Italy for a week. On Monday I leave for Milan where I’ll spend 3 days with friends. And then I go to Venice on my own for 4 days. The Milan portion will be more about eating, drinking and catching up. The Venice part will be me walking around and looking at things, occasionally stopping to read in a café. I can’t wait.
Glad to hear you had an ok Christmas. And I just wanna say that chatting with you and meeting you was one of the highlights of my year. Thank you for being so generous, friendly and open.
Xo
James
i only had the chance to give this wonderful toy day a quick looky, but it made me wish i had all the time in the world for it!
hi den! i’ve written you on messenger, some questions about me showing a gif work of yours in my show. just stopping by to say that, and hi, and how are you?? i’m in sweden with my friends at their family’s place out in the countryside. christmas has been pretty okay, i always struggle with family-related emotional shit during xmas, but having my exhibition to focus on has been really good. once i get home i have about 2 weeks to finish and install the show and that’s totally nerve-wracking, but it’s also fun. sending you swedish kisses aka puss (pussar plural) k
Hey Dennis,
Means a lot to me that you read and liked my poem 🙂 the ending was actually inspired by the day I started writing it, when I ended up sitting with this lost dog for an hour while she tried to jump on every bus, as she knew it led her home. Thankfully a woman eventually recognized the dog and took on the trouble of minding her from the little group of us that had built up, but I was incredibly heartbroken when I got home.
I didn’t go to bed at 9pm, however I was in bed by 8:30 and fell asleep around 12, which helped me wake up around 8am today and has fixed my sleep schedule, which is what I was hoping to accomplish. I got to the final boss of Metroid Dread, which is impossibly tough and kept me up an extra hour or so, but I think if I give it another hour today I will defeat him! Dread has been great for having troubling boss fights that you repeat 40 times, but it’s so rewarding when you finally get that death cutscene.
Trap was a fun romp, definitely not one of the best films of the year (or even the week it came out), but I love myself some over-the-top ideas that are portrayed as completely serious! Watched Casablanca for the first time this morning. It was enjoyable, I was not expecting it to be a stage-play film, with one or two locations, but I think I enjoyed it more than I would’ve enjoyed the action film I had imagined in my head.
I’m gearing up for one last venture outside before the New Year, either tomorrow or Monday. I’ll go to the gym, meet up with someone, and spend a couple of hours reading in the library and taking notes. I got some new headphones over Christmas and they’re a dream; they can switch between being bluetooth and wired, and have both noise cancelling and an “ambient aware” mode. I’m in headphone bliss these past few days!
OMG, great stuff today, thank you Lucias! The Dramatical Murder figurine is so crazy, it always blows me away how large they are. There’s another NITRO+CHIRAL game that I really, really love – called Slow Damage, that has some great figurines in various states of abjection – here’s the main guy , more of him, , and the stand the figurine lives on. So, so fun. I realise I technically should have a bit of a distaste for yaoi as a “gay guy”, but it’s such an amazing subculture.
You’re so right about artwork wall text. It was all just so… “he uses form to express emotion” like, okay…? It also just had this really sentimental view of everything, which is crazy for such a personally unpleasant artist. I guess I’d maybe say a lot of it was trying to distance really relatable but disturbing emotion from people visiting the exhibition using specificity about the artists life? Like, “He did this painterly thing because of his Traumatic Childhood. He felt isolated during sex because of this Diagnosis”. It really was all the worst parts of the fixation on artist’s biographies that we’ve had recently. The exhibition was cool though, they had!
I’m glad you like Death in Venice too – I’m a bit of a “Confessions of Felix Krull” obsessive, I think I’m just not a person who feels stuff intensely enough to really “get” some of his more sex-based writing. I sometimes feel the same for Bataille, I intellectually love it, but I don’t have the sexual interest that’s needed to really make the text function flawlessly. Anyway, please, please steal that comment! That’s from my friend Horatio – who I’m sure I’ve mentioned a ton at this point – so I’m sure he’d be honoured. Anyway, thank you so much Lucias, and best of luck to the Dennis/Mario duo in your adventures. See you!!!!!!
What a gallery today! Those Magic Monsters, wow. And I could totally use a Strange Change Machine.
In the 90s, the late lamented Toys ‘R’ Us stores were frequent stops for me and my friends. I believe I’ve seen the Scary Car there. My favorite purchase was a scary little girl figure that you would fill with an orange liquid. When it’s wound up, the head would spin around and orange foam would spew from the mouth. I wish they still made these things.
Not feeling great, so will most likely be home most of the weekend. Which is fine, since a bunch of my library holds came in. It’s like Christmas or something! Oh wait.
Bill
Hey. Happy weekend. Yay at the film being so close to us. Agreed about artistic success VS success success. My vision is to follow the artistic vision (witchy double use of word) and not care about popular until it finds its natural way even if unpopular. But maybe think of more out there success if I do something else or in super creative ways if it needs to… But has to be true
Did you have any other books given to you by beautiful guys you did admire? Maybe some closer to your tastes that you remember than Martin Amis?
In high school a cute guy was sitting in the opposite line of desks and I was staring at him because hormones and tried to be friends but could not happen… All I did was circles around myself and going up and down in Charalampos fashion…
So one day he came up to me and gave me the Boris Vian novel To hell with the ugly (In Greek is called Και να καθαρίσουμε τους κακομούτσουνους) so I was smiling until I turned the back cover and read the synopsis which opens with the line: “I realise that he mistakes me for a faggot and burst into laughter”
I read the book at the time and liked it but was always haunted by that. Needless to say not only I did not discuss the book after with him but I never did return it also, I have it still
I like the idea of having title only in the beginning. In which one of your books that happened?
My poem Stars Brawl you are going to see in the Dunce codex magazine soon happened this way. I had the title only inside me and then one day months after I went out and started pretending I am on the long Athens highways that have the huge marquees all over of music stars Live shows and did experiments around that for long time. It was very trippy and beautiful and came up with the poem in writing the lines one by one consisting of many ideas each and then glueing them by rhythm and flow
Love from Crete
Hello if it helps our friends here I was able to publish my comment above from the Facebook on mobile when I did press to see the post from Dennis Facebook page and was NOT able to publish from the Chrome on mobile
Dennis, Yeah, I guess what Zuby is saying is that once you get a certain amount of money, it’s easier to make more. I guess the making of it, depending on what you do with it, becomes more exponential. I’m assuming the more you have to work with, the more you can do with it? I don’t know. I’ve never made any of that, hahaha.
I am a pushover when it comes to The Doors, no? But you know I’m critical of some of their/his stuff. Same with Suede. But I still love em.
Oh, this place was really good. They make their own queso. The flavorings were ace. I really liked it. Alex was skeptical at first but then came around. They don’t have the selection that other places have, those huge menus with hundreds of items, but what they do, they do very well.
I’ll be chilling today. Alex is hanging out with friends and drinking and stuff, so I probably won’t see him until tomorrow. Depends on how things go.
Oh, and Lucius Rex, thanks for this. It was really fun.
In assent with others that this is a banging post. If I had to own one obviously I’d choose the Aoba fig, Dramatical Murder played a not insignificant role in my anagnorisis. So man toy out there are just like, gross, and yucky. Some of these have a solid sense of dark humor behind them. But the toy tank and Galton board are just really cool.
Heyhey D-Dawg, I type this suffering from postnasal drip for the umpteenth time in my life. Ugh.
Just how has cinema fuelled your writing (I sound like an interviewer ugh sorry) – is it just a matter of what content you consider? Or does it have stylistic impact? Etc. As always, I’m curious.
Cool that a hunch of mine wins. Wonder how often trusting one’s instincts is a valid plan.
What a world we live in, man. Where even the scent of androgynous anime asses is ambiguous. Things used to make sense…!
Some gross is okay. I have a tendency to say gross things out of a contrarian distaste for my family’s preoccupation with manners.
WOO custard doughnuts, this is good news. Thinking if I’ll make hot chocolate tonight… I think I will… this use of ellipsis hopefully conveys contemplation… hmmm…
Chocolate custard isn’t my thing. Chocolate, good. Custard, good. Chocolate custard? Disappointing, always. Never works, in my experience.
Ach, the tragedy of hoi polloi and populist music pushed by The Man (capitalism). Swift is the kind of pop artist who I really don’t, like, like I don’t understand her popularity. She can do catchy songs but. She’s not very good. Britney rocks, though. Meh. Pop music. What a Thing To Consider it is. This line of thought has reminded me of David from Closer. I like(d) him.
Car Seat Headrest are *the* band to like if you’re gay and hip, these days. Quite unanimous. A lot of pop punk/’emo’ bands from the 2000s/2010s have a bunch of queer teen fans (I too belong to this camp).
But yeah, it’s still more common I think to see The Gays flock around one popstar. Charli XCX and Chappell Roan seem the it girls at the moment.
I imagine if your mother had adopted me that quite possibly might have ruined *her* life too. But, glad that she has not ruined my life. Dunno why’d you get rid of your son if he were the one and only Dennis Cooper, blogmaster extraordinaire who writes stuff sometimes. We cannot all have good taste, alas.
Woopwoop. Definitely *not* the first to comment today, I’ve been finishing Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Gonna read and write some more.
And in return, you get me, streaming mucus and sore-throated. Ugh, it sucks. Hopefully Sunday is nicer to me. Tschuss tschuss.
P.S. jay, you mean to tell me there’s OTHER games by the Dramatical Murder guys that AREN’T Dramatical Murder? Whaaat? I MUST check them out. Thanks for enlightening me once more. I kind of am a yaoi fiend, but I *will* take the ‘don’t fetishize my people!’ stance when I’m annoyed by how many irritating straight girls consume it. Might just be my heterophobia, teehee.
Re: Mann, I like Tonio Kruger, the eponymous dude as a schoolboy falling for another schoolboy who’s straight but leads him on and makes him simultaneously happy and miserable was crushingly accurate and relatable to my own adolescence, I was damn impressed and a little depressed, that, such torturous gay experiences have been a thing for aaaaages. Gayges.
I still haven’t finished Portal 2. I’ve been reading more stuff on ROM. Hope your Christmas was a good one! :]
Lucas, dunno if you’ve got my email. But I’ve sent it. Best wishes :]
Also, re: nat’s Japanese sex toy, I am totally unsurprised that my guess ‘is it a fleshlight?’ was correct. That sent me down a rabbit hole this morning, reading about Japanese sex toys. Found a page reviewing the very same thing: https://infernalmonkey.com/2015/06/28/pineapple-hole/
Reading that amused me.
yap yup, had some suspicions that androgynous anime ass scent was a sex toy thing. hilarious that i literally saw another wild sex toy by the same company at the same time. glad the reviewer is making sure to call out the size of this fleshlight.
also making me realize how many scents they do, ‘The Smell of the Sweaty Uniform Athletic Club Girl’, ‘The Smell of a School Girl’s Freshly Taken Off Underwear’, ‘The Office Lady’s Stuffy High-heeled Smell’. i wonder what changes to their formula they do between each one.
Hi! Yeah, there are a few other games by the Dramatical Murder people that are LEAGUES better – particularly Slow Damage. It’s got some quite delibarate writing, way more than DMMD. It does go a little further, though – a few of the semes (including one you need to date to progress) are very into gore, and its all pretty explicit.
Hmm, I kinda agree with you about yaoi, but I tend to have a begrudging respect for fujoshis – I think that if the only people you find attractive are gay cartoon men, you’ve got enough on your plate that I’m loath to pile more onm Yeah, I agree about gay experiences being unchanging, theres always something quite validating about seeing that a particular issue I have is repeated throughout history. My Christmas was excellent – it sounds like yours was okay-ish, right?
Hey, I wrote you back but I just wanted to say sorry for not responding for so long 😓😓😓
Want to say what an amazing funny interesting and fantastic post today. I wish I had a sixth finger. Also, the guy’s voice is a little odd in the Audible version of “I Wished” but I still loved it. My next read on audible is God Jr. While I’m waiting to get another credit point I’m reading/listening to War and Peace though. It’s pretty good so far and is roughly 60 hours long so I’ll be set for a while which is cool. I’m really excited about my next chapbook lately. I’m excited to share it with you when it is ready if that’s okay with you. Hope you and everyone else here is doing well. I’m having some post holiday blues, but hanging in there.
Hey. Yeah totally, it was certainly a big decision to make writing my main thing but I don’t regret it. What I like about film is that you can depict through images what is more difficult to do with words, things that language fails at. However, I really like the kind of manipulations you can do with writing, and grew to love the challenge of creating certain atmospheres and setting myself constraints. Also, I am a bit of a control freak, so I feel more confident in really putting down all of the things in my head if I don’t have people around me judging it. And writing is an architecture that you build yourself, if you know what I mean? You construct all of this space yourself, and perhaps since it’s just language (whereas film is mostly visuals + sound) and is one of the most basic arts to construct, within the limits there are a lot of possibilities. To be honest, I don’t want to be someone who’s married to a particular format for life, but I kind of realized that my want to go into film was that I wanted to work in a fairly modern format which there is potentially more new ground to cover. I worried that writing was dying and stuff like that. But here’s the thing, every day I was reading a crazy amount and staying up all night writing, and realized that I had to follow what in that moment really excited me and that there is certainly new ground to cover. I would love to explore film one day, because there’s nothing like the really consuming effect of it, and I still study film, music, and other arts for inspiration, because if writing is dying, it’s just because it’s eating itself and won’t play around with all the fascinating forms in other mediums. How about you, was it scary to take the plunge into film?
Anyway, being modern isn’t a major concern of mine, or it’s not something that I tax myself with anymore. It seems to me that a lot of great figures in various creative disciplines are great partly because they seem to contradict all of the mindless noise and trends that they were in proximity to during their time. I also have a suspicion that at any given point in human history, artists are thinking that they are living in the worst possible time to be an artist. I think it’s just that a lot of the really enduring stuff is discovered posthumously, so an era is only ever really defined in retrospect.
Yes! Don’t read gallery descriptions! I’m always saying that. Maybe I have a superiority complex about being instructed how to understand something, but still… At the TATE modern recently I saw the Mike Kelley retrospective and in the last room they had some work and it said beside it something to the effect of ‘Towards the end of his life, here Kelley examines his position as an ostensibly heterosexual white male in the art landscape’. That’s quite typical of the kind of descriptions you see, I think a lot of the bigger galleries in particular have this kind of thing for middle class occasional gallery visitors who want to feel that they are seeing something culturally important and ‘non-frivolous’.
Hey, hope anyone reading this has had a good week.
I’ve been enjoying this blog for a while and never commented but am finally deciding to give it a go. writing from my parents place, and from a bout of insomnia that’s really starting to drive me nuts so maybe that’s why I’m choosing today to say anything.
I never really got that interested in toys as a kid, me and my sister always used to fight with the hobby horses our gran got us so I’m not sure we were trusted with more interesting ones. We spent a lot of time playing out so i guess most toys didn’t compare running wild and the rest of the time we read a lot or just annoyed each other. the one toy I always loved was jigsaw puzzles, still do tbh I’ve been doing one today to make the most of my time off for christmas.
Anyhow, thanks for all the blog posts this year, have enjoyed the recent posts on filmmakers. I love reading about people/things i don’t really know anything about. End of years wishes from the UK
oh hey, ‘evilstick’. i remember that was a whole internet mystery when it went viral, like eight years ago i think? like if i recall correct, — i could just look this up but it is funnier to go by memory. — it was a big hub hub, this was genuinelly appearing all over one dollar and or cheap toy stores. so it was like, who would make something like this?
and like, the stick didn’t have just that image, there was others with like pics of zombies, or other evil things. BUT, also you would have a chance to get one that was not evil, with pictures of angels or anime people or other not evil(?) things. so there was some sort of idea of either you would get the bad one, or you would get the good one. probably.
i think one guy made a whole youtube series on trying to find out the origin on it, but he literally stopped making videos right when he was about to find the answer. though, writing that out makes me think he could have been bullshitting. anywho, gotta assume the answer is just some chinese company who had a guy run it with a macabre or dark humour.
also i think the evilstick with girl cutting herself went for three hundred dollars or something on ebay when it was viral. this store could have made a killing back then.
—
i’ll add to the chorus of people affected by DRAMAtical Murder, i think it was my first full ‘yaoi’ thing. i’m sure if i read it again, i’ll be less then impressed. but i remember being affected by it a lot. also i guess due to all of the wild sex that a young mind didn’t understand the context to entirely. i will never see tigers the same.
—
pretty death is actually korean, friend says the lines says something akin to ‘look pretty and sharp at your last moment’ — ‘die pretty’, according to my korean friend. i guess it’s some art project.
—
phew, good toy store. thank you rex for the curation. feels very in aligned in my own aesthetics, both in what toys are on presentation but also the lack of scale. a cheap toy, an expensive figurine, art projects, the weird and macabre, and murder weapons, can all co-exist together. gonna stay with me.
monday me is gonna need to take care of any personal stuff. blep
Regarding your question last time, no I’m way to vanilla when it comes to smells. Anything in scatological territory is as gross to me as it would be to someone “normal”. Though I agree with that perfume designer that there is definitely a “good” “ass smell” that is not fart/shit related but some pheromone or something.
Big fan of Shintaro Kago (the guro artist who designed that microwave baby).
Taylor Swift does really get up my ass these days, just because everything about her falls so far into that “fine I guess” territory that I’m kind of bewildered about the fanaticism around it coupled with her fans being oddly humorless. Like not even bad enough to be funny or camp. It’s like okay enough adult contemporary wedding pop that is taken bizarrely serious by a group of fans with an odd persecution complex. Like it’s very hard to imagine a Faith Hill or Celine Dion fan getting mad that people don’t take them all that seriously.
I don’t really care for The Lighthouse either. It falls into a lot of the more generic tropes that a stagey Beckett pastiche would, pretty standard tropes of a theater of the absurd type situation, really does not break the mold of that type of thing, and not that interesting to look at visually. And I did really want to like it! I will still see Nosferatu, though, just out of genre loyalty. I just need to see monster things in period settings.
@ Lucius, thank you for this toytime treat! I dearly wish Santa could have stumped up the goods for some of this booty.
Cool story about your encountering Ms Kawakubo! The streets of Paris seem to have served you well in terms of celeb sightings over the years. I now have a hat stand here proferring a few of the great lady’s wares.
Hey! Yeah, I agree with you about NYE, but I’m probably going to drag myself to a friend’s place since I feel bad about not hanging out with anyone recently. Yeah, ‘The Easy Life’ is Duras’ second novel. It’s a little denser than her later style but it’s still got a very recognizable Duras quality to it, I think. Aw, that’s sweet about the Amis novel. I haven’t had that yet since people don’t really gift me books but I’ll make sure that happens, haha. Nice, I hope we can hang out in March then:). How was your weekend? Mine sort of sucked, I got sick and I was supposed to go to a flea market organized by friends today but I had to cancel. I’ll have to see if I can even go out on NYE. But I’m pretty sure I’ll recover soon. Hope you had a pleasantly chilly two days.
Hey! Back after a long break. Been having a bit of a rough time but that’s all over now. Been preparing the Bartleby post and was wondering how you wanted me to submit it. Love the toys Lucian, if you’re reading this. Re: gay people liking bands I can think of a fair few (Queen, ABBA, Blondie) but yeah solo artists do generally tend to rule the scene. What have you been up to?