Of Small Wonders & Great Wanders

Steamy stuff

2009-05-15T17:54:00.011+02:00

The blog has been on stand-by those last weeks, so to keep it alive until more interesting articles come, I'll post some nice pictures of my recent wanderings, deep into the mysteries of old Europe and beyond, and through the mysts of time !

Some steampunk contraptions from the Deutsches Museum in Munchen, Germany :

Some more from the Science History Museum in Florence, Italy :

Some weird rusted industrial stuff in Cochin, India :

Various nicely steamy things encountered in Vienna, Austria :
- A huge clock mechanism, with what seems like little legs to go wander :

- The magnificent building in the Botanische Garten Schönbrunn :

- And those fabulous guns (the 1st one is certainly the most beautiful I've ever seen) that could equip the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, from a huge gallery of arms & armours :

Crazy Manuscript of the week

2009-03-14T19:44:00.003+01:00

He's blond, he's dressed in pink, he's surrounded by groovy lightning, he is... Medieval He-Man, the most powerful man in the universe !

Mummify yourself !

2009-03-14T13:28:00.013+01:00

In order to reach Nirvana and become bodhisattva, some ascetic monks of the Shingon sect, in northern Japan, followed a very special tradition, forbidden by law at the end of the XIXth century because considered suicide (how you can forbid suicide, I wonder...).

It was initiated by Kobo Daishi (774-835), who took the decision to end his days meditating in a cave. His disciples later found that his body was mummified, which was quite mystical ! The Sokushinbutsu tradition developped from there and consisted on willingly becoming a mummy by having a special diet to dry your body. Here are the steps to follow if you, too, want to become a mummy (which is always a funny thing to do) :

- Eat only nuts and seeds for 1,000 days and do some serious fitness to lose all that fat ! And no, a pizza can not be considered a seed.

- For 1,000 more days change your diet to bark and roots. And eat less and less of it (which is hard, I know, because roots are so delicious !).

- Approching the end of this diet, start drinking some "tea made from the sap of the urushi tree, a poisonous substance normally used to make Japanese lacquer bowls, which causes further loss of bodily fluid. The tea is made with water from a sacred spring at Mt. Yudono, which is now known to contain a high level of arsenic." [pinktentacle.com].Thanks to the tea drinking and therefore heavy peeing, the water contained in the body is reduced to a stict minimum, and the arsenic will help protect the body from decay.

- Find some cold cave or get yourself a specially prepared underground chamber, as a cool and dry place is necessary to prevent decay. Sit down and start meditating like crazy until you die from it ! Then your monk friends will keep the chamber sealed for 1,000 days (the magic number !), after what they shall remove your body.

Even with all this, mummification will most of the time fail (only approximately 20 monks were successful), and even the ones that are considered well preserved look quite skeletal to me...

But anyway, if you're one of the lucky few you shall gain a Buddha status and be placed in a temple, to meditate forever. Actually, "adherents of the Shingon Buddhist sect believe that Kobo Daishi, founder of the sect, is still in meditation at Gobyo mausoleum. Twice a day monks wearing protective masks bring him his meals and in certain rituals his garments are changed." [Corbis]

Some details on the most recent case of Sokushinbutsu can be found here.

Crazy Manuscript of the week

2009-03-06T13:32:00.001+01:00

"Shoot those freakin' Wookies, soldiers !
- at once, my dark Lord !
- Grrrrooowwwww..."

1338-1344 - Romance of Alexander, Jehan de Grise

Crazy Manuscript of the week

2009-02-28T15:28:00.003+01:00

Ce matin, un lapin a tué un chasseur...
C'était un lapin qui avait une arbalète !

Beware the killer rabbits !

1338-1344 - Romance of Alexander, Jehan de Grise

Crazy Manuscript of the week

2009-02-21T11:19:00.004+01:00

"I will not tolerate this attitude, young man !
- Well, then you can *beep* my *beep*, you old *beep* !"

Canon Medicinae

"Musée d'Histoire de la Médecine"

2009-02-20T11:31:00.009+01:00

Inside the majestic building of the "René Descartes" university in Paris is hidden this small but glorious Medical History Museum. Consisting of one long room, build in 1905 all in wood, glass and iron, it is a facinating exploration of medical tools through the ages (until early XXth century).

Most of them will give you the creeps, especially some crazy gynecologic or kidney stones removing apparatus, but others will facinate you with their aesthetics and ingenuity, like the wonderful articulated hand prosthetics. Suddenly, losing a hand looks pretty cool !

The most gruesome piece is definitely an "artistic" table, made with petrified bits of brains, bile, liver, lungs, and glands, on top of wich are placed an also petrified foot, four ears and cut vertebrae. It was made by the completely insane Italian doctor Efisio Marini and offered as a gift (!!!) to the poor Napoleon III, who I suppose was quick to offer it to a museum, just to get rid of the sight.

Crazy Manuscript of the week

2009-02-11T17:51:00.006+01:00

"Look stupid bastard, you've got no legs left !
- Just a flesh wound.
- What are you going to do, bleed on me ?
- I'm invincible !
- You're a looney. Look, I'm stabbing you !
- Oh? All right, we'll call it a draw."

Herpin, 1470.

Musée Fragonard

2009-02-10T16:02:00.010+01:00

Since it reopened recently, it seemed a necessity to return to the very special "Musée Fragonard" in Paris (well, in Maison-Alfort to be precise). Originaly intended for veterinary students, it features an extensive and facinating collection of animal (including human) diseases and anatomy moldings as well as freak specimen (skeletons, taxidermies or preserved in jars). And, of course, as an artistic bonus it shows some of Fragonard's Ecorchés, about which you can learn here. This guy was definitely crazy in the coconut !
Some samples of this must-see collection :

Janus calf :

Siren baby and an egg in an egg :

Amulets to be put in the ears and the thousand mouths of Hell :

Weirdness aplenty and Chaos made flesh :

Crazy Manuscript of the week

2009-02-05T13:31:00.007+01:00

"Thanks to my "War Buoy", I look clever AND handsome !
And I can finally go surfing with my armour on, which is totally awesome, dudes !!!"

Kriegsbuch, 1496.

Khímaira

2009-01-11T23:46:00.024+01:00

The chimera, this monstrous creature made of various animal parts, has been haunting the twisted spirits of men for more than 32.000 years.

She appeared in Homo Sapiens' dreams as a mix of himself and the animals surrounding him, and took shape from his hands as the sculpture of a "lion-man" (the "Löwenmensch" - Naturhistorishes Museum, Vienna, Austria).

She would later make her way in the minds of Summerians, with for example the first appearance of griffins (body of a lion, head and wings of an eagle) in 2.000 BC.
She will find a place in the rich bestiary of Greeks, bearing for the first time the name of Chimera. She then takes the head of a lion, the body (or sometimes just the head growing out of her body) of a goat, and the tail of a snake. She is said to have given birth to the Sphynx, itself a composite creature.

Chimeric creatures were quite popular in the Middle-Ages. Their grotesque personalities facinated the monks (whose whole existence was dedicated to the invisible and supernatural, making them very fit to enjoy fantasy !) who would create an infinity of funny chimeras in the borders of their manuscripts, and other much darker and sinister in their visions of Hell. The gargoyles and columns of churches are of course packed with them too.

In a time when a large part of the world was still Terra Incognita, a large part of its population was logicaly Gens Incognita. Imagination ignites and men start to populate unexplored territories with chimeras, monstrous creatures sometimes based on mythologies, described with enthusiasm and details in the most serious of books.

But chimeras also lived among us. With Renaissance, any physical abnormality would transform you into an hybrid creature which would be avidly listed and depicted in a medicine or zoology book : the frog-boy, the bear-boy, the duck-boy, the cat-woman... and those living chimeras will continue to facinate the curious audience of freak-shows until XXth century.

In early XIXth century, the taxidermy techniques are fully mastered and specialists start to play with them to make all those fantasies of exotic composite creatures real. These chimeras would sometime fool scientists, curiosities collectors, and often the public, and will travel along freaks in lucrative sideshows like P.T. Barnum's.

The most (in)famous is still the Feejee Mermaid, "half-mammal, half-fish", created in the 1840's and composed of a fish tail, a baby orang-outan's body and a small monkey's head. She would be endlessly imitated, just like the jackalope, a rabbit with antlers that appeared in XVIth century drawings and can now be easily purchased in taxidermy form on ebay...

Just like H.G. Wells' Dr Moreau, modern science is giving a brand new dimension to that 32.000 years old concept of chimera. It had to happen sometimes, and the time is now : the in-vitro creation of man-beast living creatures has become legal in the U.K. since May 2007. The embryos are for study only and should not be kept to grow further than 14 days, but that's a huge step indeed towards the absolute monster apocalypse video games have been warning us about for years ! (hopefully they also taught us how to kill the bastards. Geeks shall save the world !)

Today, as a tribute to XIXth century taxidermists, an impressive number of talented artists are playing Frankenstein by creating fabulous stuffed creatures. Here is a selection of their works :

Sarina Brewer : Custom Creature

Thomas Grunfeld :

Takeshi Yamada :

Jacques Gilbert :

And finally, all hail the greatest living chimera, king of impossible creatures : the mighty platypus !

The Wound Man

2009-01-04T16:49:00.009+01:00

When you face problems in life, always think it could be worse. You could be the Wound Man, for example.

The poor buddy seems to appear in early XVth century medical books, and disappears in late XVIIth century. During his long lifetime, people have throwned at him knives, swords, arrows, cannon balls, hammers, wooden sticks, spears, and everything imaginable that can hurt really bad.

This facinating character was not at all created to make us laugh in a very cartoonish kind of way (though he totally does). His purpose was of course to teach medicine students how to deal with the most common wounds and injuries of the time, and he was always illustrating a text about the matter.

The Wellcome Library in London has a huge collection of Wound Men, and it seems (but I haven't seen it yet, shame on me) that our poor fellow appears in the story of "Red Dragon", featuring Hannibal Lecter (if you're reading this, Hanni : japanese tastes the best !).

Here's a small chronological gallery of Wound Man's misfortunes.

And finally a modern tribute from artist Owen Cunningham, depicting the gruesomeness of medieval warfare :

The real face(s) of Rome

2008-12-29T20:42:00.013+01:00

I recently stumbled upon nice stone busts of roman characters in a museum , some of which appear in the glorious "Rome" tv series, and it was funny to see the "real" faces of those people. Some were quite different, but a few seemed so close to the actors that it suddenly made the tv series an even richer and authentic experience into that troubled moment of History. I thought then that it could be funny to find more of these busts, and make a comparison with the actors. What were those facinating characters really like ? Here's the answer :

Julius Caesar :

Pompey Magnus :

Mark Antony :

Marcus Junius Brutus :

Gaius Octavian :

Quintus Pompey :

Porcius Cato :

Marcus Tullius Cicero :

Cleopatra :

Marcus Agrippa :

Livia :

The "Adder Tongues"

2008-12-17T23:22:00.008+01:00

I recently visited the "Treasures of the Order of Teutonic Knights" in the order's building (yup, the knights are still active today ! Though, sadly, not very actively sword-fighting on horseback anymore) located in Vienna, Austria, and among all the priceless artefacts, one caught my attention as being weirder than all others. And that means a lot. I present you the curious object of the day : A huge coral with gold plated silver fittings, from wich are hanging a load of shark teeth. If that's not weird, I'm ok to change my name to Wiener Schnitzel right now. And here is what they had to say about what might (or not) be my christmas present this year :

Adder tongues centrepiece for a dinner table. Circa 1400.

Apart from being used as a salt cellar, the suspended shark teeth were thought to be tongues of poisonous snakes with the power to detect poisoned food and drinks. In medieval times, it was believed that these "adder or dragon tongues" exuded moisture when brought near a poisonous substance. This piece is one of only three existing today worldwide : the two others are to be found in the Vienna Kunsthistorische Museum (from the 15th century) and in Dresden (from c. 1500).

Bons Points

2008-11-25T09:20:00.006+01:00

My great grandfather was the head of a school in the beginning of the XXth century, and we recently found boxes containing his collection of "bons points", illustrated cards that used to be given to pupils as a reward for good results. When I was very young, in the 80's, this tradition was still alive and I received some of these nice instructive cards, but I'm pretty sure kids today don't know this.

Anyway, I had an amused and nostalgic look at his collection, and found several curious stories on some of them. This one for example is quite memorable :

The plates of Augustus of Saxe

Augustus, king of Poland and elector of Saxony, was often spending huge amounts of money to satisfy his curious tastes. On June 26th of 1730, at the Zeithain camp, on the shores of the Elbe, he had a splendid dinner served for all his army, composed of 30.000 men. Polish and Saxon chroniclers have written several chapters to the depiction of that strange meal for which whole beefs had been roasted, the dessert had been design by the kingdom's general architect and the monstrous cakes where cut with axes by carpenters. For this occasion, 30.000 wooden plates where sculpted, each one showing a scene of the feast with the date of the day. As soon as the diner was over, the army aligned on the shores of the river and, at the command of the chiefs, the 30.000 plates were throwned into the Elbe, to send the news of king Augustus' magnificence to all towns and villages on the shores of the river and the ocean. This weird act of advertisement didn't miss its goal. Today still, families living on the river bank of the Elbe keep and show these wooden plates bearing the date of June 26th of 1730.

Fighting in the dark

2008-10-21T13:38:00.009+02:00

Some people are remembered through the centuries for their actions in life, others by the way they ended.

In XIVth century lived King John of Bohemia, count of Luxembourg. He had the reputation of a man of action, who would not hesitate to travel Europe and take part in campaigns. It so happened that during a crusading trip to Lithuania the King caught an inflammation of the eyes that progressively made him blind, which didn't prevent him from fulfilling his royal duties.

Several years later, in 1346, the brave fifty years old John stands, with one of his sons, on the battlefield of Crécy, on the side of the French. The battle turns awfully bad, and the French army, although considered the best of the time, is getting crushed by the English and their mighty longbows.

Poor King John, who couldn't see the bloody mess, is all battle-ready in his suit of armor, and pretty enthusiastic about going down there with the guys and giving those English bastards a taste of his sword. As soon as he hears the French King (Philip VI) ordering the charge, John draws his sword, turns to his knights and asks them to guide him to the English line, close enough for him to be able to strike one of those pudding-eaters with his blade. The faithful soldiers agreed and tied his horse to theirs. That way they bravely rode into the fury of battle together, and were actually quite successful as they went pretty far into the English side. One can imagine the poor guys being unable to properly move their horses and trying to fight as best as they could while their blind king went berserk on his horse, slashing his sword in any direction around him...

They were, of course, found all dead on the battlefield the next day, their horses still tied together.

John's death can be seen as totaly ridiculous and stupid, or on the contrary powerful, moving and epic... It was, anyway, true to his chivalrous ideals and would mark King John's name into History.

African fetish markets

2008-10-18T20:05:00.009+02:00

Under the heat of the african sun, in Lomé, Togo, stands one of the weirdest, most fascinating and disturbing places in the world : the Akodésséwa fetish market.

Sellers come from far to offer ritual sculptures, animal bones and body parts, potions and powders to both locals in need of the remedies advised by their healer and tourists in search of curiosities. They can allegedly get anything you want... even human remains, illegally dug out of graves. They will always find something to sell to cure any illness you might have, to make your wife/ves or dog come back, or transform your flacid tralala into a mighty dingdingdong of steel.

It is believed by locals that these sellers make a heavy use of magic to attract customers to their stands, by pronouncing incantations or throwing powders in the air (I have to take a course with these guys !). It is therefore advised to visit a sorcerer before going there, to get protecting potions and not get fooled ! Honestly, don't you think you'd look sooo stupid trying to cure that cancer with a hyenna's leg, when everyone knows it's a girafe's nose you should use ? Hahaha *wipes a tear* !

It is the world's largest place for all your voodoo and african magic needs, but similar ones can also be found in Mali, Benin, Congo, and probably most african countries. Of all the foul-smelling rotting body parts, the most popular are of course the various animal heads (hence the nickname "heads market") and the famous monkey hands. Due to the poverty of people in this region, many have seen those markets as opportunities and became hunters, tragically endangering some species like that crazy little buddy, the Bonobo monkey (98% human, 100% sex machine).

Tourists should not be blamed for this, as most customers are locals buying this as medicine. Actually, it seems that the number of visiting tourists has been decreasing those last years and many tour companies have stopped organising visits of this markets because of the strong reactions of people too sensitive to stand the view of a dead cat's or dog's head for sell...

Vintage Japan

2008-10-12T16:57:00.014+02:00

It's been one year since my last post, and I really feel like writing and sharing things again, so here I go !

Ever since I've been watching japanese anime on tv as a kid, I've been struck by the amazing contrast in that country between strong medieval traditions and over-the-top technological development.

One of the movies that managed to best capture and explain this phenomenon is certainly "The Last Samurai". The character of photographer/reporter Simon Graham, doing his best to catch with his camera a testimony of the last moments of a dying medieval Japan, while at the same time taking pictures that would amaze people in industrialised countries, is a great archetype of "exotic" photographers of this era, like Michael Maslan or Felice Beato.

This fascinating time of change is called the Meiji period (1868-1912), the "Enlightened Rule", and this name would also be given after his death to Emperor Mutsuhito who has been the great bringer of this transformation (more on this guy in a future post).

Here are some of my favorite photographs of the time. There's such a beautiful sense of nostalgia in them... And if you want more, go there for a huge (I mean it!) database. I'm a big fan of the kimono guys wearing bowler hats to follow the latest trend ;) Enjoy !

Beheading the world

2007-09-13T14:40:00.000+02:00

Found this morning on the "Next Nature" blog : a chinese artist, Xu Zhen, has climbed Mount Everest with a team, cut out the top of it on a height of 1,86 m (or 73,2 inches, which is actually the artist's height), and is now showing it as an art piece in his exhibitions.

I think it's a hoax, for an obvious reason : a chinese guy measuring 1,86 m ? Come on !

More seriously, I don't know what to think about it... I'm shocked, because this guy has just decided to take for himself something that belongs to the whole humanity, and to damage something of significance. I wonder what the guys who gave their lives trying to reached that summit, like the 1924 British expedition, would think about this. It also raises some questions... Was he legally authorised to do this ? Ok, it's just rock, it's public, you can't be arrested for bringing back a stone you found in nature. But he has reduced the size of the highest mountain in the world ! Is there anything for this in the law ? I guess not, you lucky bastard Xu ! Also, what's the value of this when it's separated from its mountain ? There's a new, lower, top of the Everest now, and this rock pile is nothing but stone, it's not the summit of anything anymore...

But on the other hand, isn't it fun to be able to say that you've reached the top of Mount Everest... by just visiting an exhibition ? Also, it's an incredible expedition trophy ! It makes me imagine an alpinist that would keep, as trophies, the top of every mountain he climbed, under glass in his home. Isn't it a nice surealistic and oneiric idea ?

Anyway, it's an art piece that surely brings strong reactions, positive or negative, and reflexions, which was of course the goal of the artist. And it makes me think of this superb and really moving music video by Rammstein, "Ohne Dich"...

Kutná Hora Ossuary

2007-09-07T11:32:00.000+02:00

Near Prague, Czech Republic, in the city of Kutná Hora, is one of the strangest and most macabre building I have ever visited, and heard of. It takes a long bus ride to go there, and the whole trip will take you half a day, but it's worth it.

In 1278, a local priest travelled to Holy Land and came back with some holy earth from Golgotha that he threw on the ground of Sedlec cemetery, therefore making it... a holy cemetary ! So when Black Death stroke, thirty years later, this was a place of choice to bury the masses of victims. Thirty thousand people, actually. One century later, after the bloody Hussite Wars, many new occupants would come to seek rest in the already crowded holy place.

What do you do when your cemetary is so full of corpses that there's not enough ground left to bury more ? Well, you just dig out the thousands of bones, and you build an ossuary out of them. That's at least what an half-blind monk of Kutná Hora did, according to the legend. It's later, in 1870, that these human bones would be artisticaly rearanged to create the absolutely amazing place you can visit today.

Four piles of skulls were made, huge beyond imagination, along with several pieces of twisted art, so beautifully macabre. The most famous is the great chandelier, made with at least one of every bone of the human body. There is also an incredible coat-of-arms, words on the wall written in bones, and several other impressive ornamentations. If you start to think of all these skulls not as objects, but as people, their number just gives dizziness...

Recently, some skulls showing signs of violent death (victims of the Hussite Wars) are also presented.

This astonishing place is a glorious example of Memento Mori, and gives good ideas of things to do if you find out someday that your garden used to be a medieval graveyard.

Peter Callesen

2007-08-17T19:53:00.000+02:00

At first sight, Peter Callesen's art might seem insignificant, albeit nice to look at. It's just paper, you know. It reminds of origami, or of the small cardboard miniature buildings we all used to assemble as children : you cut, you fold, you glue, you have a castle - so what ? And then, if you take a closer look, you might be astonished, just as I have.

On a pure technical point of view, his works are brilliant. They're always made of a single paper sheet, in which a shape is cut and folded. No parts of the paper are ever removed, and the constructions always stay linked to the sheet by some part, so that if you unfolded it, you would just get your plain paper sheet back. And surprisingly enough, this technical choice brings a lot of sense to his artworks...

The whole meaning often comes from the fact that the construction is still linked to the empty shape in the paper, where it comes from. It feels, in some way, prisoner of the sheet, and sometimes seem to suffer greatly from this tragedy. In "Distant Wish", the poor paradise bird will never reach his flower, while in "The Impossible Meeting", the man will never be able to cross the distance to the lovely dancer. But the unbreakable link might also be a blessing in some cases !

With the simplest of effects and a disconcerting ease, Callesen creates great feelings of suspens and impending doom. A tsunami-like wave will have destroyed the poor castle made of sand in a second, and the canoe is tragicaly sailing towards the deadly waterfall. You just want to help the poor paper guys !

Some of his works are funny, like his ghosts hidden in the closet, and sometimes macabre and philosophical, like the skeleton looking back at his lost living shape, or the poor bird's carcass being eaten by flies. But I've talked to much, up to you now to have a closer look if you feel so inclined, there's a lot more to discover.

Peter Callesen manages a double magic trick : creating 3-D from 2-D, and bringing emotions with the simplest and cheapest of materials : a blank paper sheet. It's pure paper poetry...

Thanks to Cabinet of Wonder for making me aware of this artist.

Viking village of Eu

2007-08-15T16:57:00.005+02:00

Medieval fairs have become quite popular in France now (more than 600 this year in the country !), but few are really exciting.

A very interesting one, though, is happening right now in Normandie : the Viking Village of Eu. With a huge number of craftsmen and merchants from all over Europe, this 10 days fair offers a time travel of high quality. The pictures speak for themselves !

Thanks to the Frankland reenactment group for the invitation and the good time, and hail to Horst's legendary sparkling mead !

Royal de Luxe

2007-08-15T11:54:00.000+02:00

"Royal de Luxe" isn't only a burger (damned, thinking about it makes me hungry right now...), but also, as I just discovered, the name of an incredible French "street performances" group. This guys have been creating street shows since 1979, but what really blew me away is their more recent work. It's just dreams come true : creatures of epic proportions suddenly appear wandering in the streets, and just live their lives among us, small humans feeling shrinked to the size of insects in comparison... It's Gulliver and the Liliputians, for real.

"Visit of the Sultan of India on his time-travelling elephant"

Created for a Jules Vernes celebration in 2005, this is a steampunk dream ! A gigantic elephant-robot : all the exoticism of the Indian colonies in one huge piece of machinery ! I want one for christmas.
Youtube video of the great beast.

"The Little Girl Giant"

These guys are not only genius craftsmen but also puppetiers extraordinaire ! There's so much life in this "little" girl that you forget about the huge and apparent machinery all around her, and that's a real challenge ! I hope I'll be able to witness that some day...
Watch the every day life of a giant little girl.

The Remington keyboard

2007-08-15T02:01:00.000+02:00

I've been interested in the "victorian" era for a long time now : the movies of Méliès, the crazy flying machines prototypes, the magic tricks of Houdini, the "universal expositions", the exoticism of the colonies, the Art Nouveau drawings of Alfons Mucha, the electricity experiments of Tesla, and so on... it's just an incredibly rich period, so creative, dynamic, and full of cool clothing, too ;) ! The new technologies of the time (cars, steam machines, electricity...) were the promise of a bright future, where everything would become possible (for those interested in studying the future as it was imagined in the past, often very different from what it actually became, I recommend reading the great blog "Paleo-Future").

Anyway, I just loved that "future that never was", when I encountered it in a few movies or books, a science-fiction grounded in a low-tech era, full of steam machineries and victorian aesthetics, but not knowing any proper word for this I used to call it "retro-futurism". It's only recently that I discovered it was actually a concept called "steampunk", and there was a fast-growing community of enthusiasts around it.

That's how I discovered Mr. Von Slatt's creations and especially his "steampunk keyboard", a brilliant idea with great appeal to the geek living inside of me (I hear him sometimes at night, screaming insults to me in php language... it's hard you know). Inspired by his work I decided to try it, but of course without copying his original (first because I don't have any workshop and any of Von Slatt's tools, second because imitation is pointless, you always have to, at least, add your own touch !). So, after destroying a poor defenseless Remington typewriter with my berserker's fury, creating some fake keys with buttons, painting the structure with bronze paint, dyeing and cutting some leather, and adding various small elements, I had created my very own steampunk typewriter, fully working ! It's a totally absurd artefact, but who cares ?

Hail, Glorious Web !

2007-08-14T20:05:00.001+02:00

I realised I was quite often sharing pictures, links, ideas, with my buddies, and the thought of putting it all on a web page to make it easier suddenly came this morning. As a bonus, not only them but the whole wide world would be able to have a look at this, and will eventualy exchange some ideas about it. So, english seemed to be the best way to express myself here. There will be no main theme except my own interests, things I find funny or truly interesting, places I might visit and want to talk about, or stuff I shall create with my own two hands of doom and their legion of mad and vicious fingers. Like any blog, I guess, but in much better, of course ! ;)
So welcome to this small cabinet of mine, I hope you'll enjoy it and comment on all the crazy stuff !