ThoughtSpurs

Mucking about with some crayons I got from the French Art Shop in Ponsonby . I managed to get away with spending just five bucks. It's no wonder artists starve - the raw materials are insanely expensive. Come to think of that's probably why they cut off their ears too - to hock them.

The Arctic Monkeys are a band - for those of you who don't know about these things. They came to fame via MySpace . Their latest album Your favourite worst nightmare has shot to number 1 on the UK album charts as soon as it was released. But the interesting thing is that each of the songs on the album have also charted. How? They are all available to be individually download from the web from sites like the Apple iTunes store . Changes to the way sales are accounted for by the music business mean that a physical CD single doesn't have to pass through a high street retailer in order to be counted for the chart. What is also interesting is that this very obvious example of the shift in buyer behaviour makes a mockery of the Record Industry Association's anxiety that downloads will kill their business. According to the BBC Radio 1 DJs interviewed in this story (video) the charts now have new acts that rise through the rankings, rather than meteorically arriving at the top - ...

Before - the sequel. This is the AFTER. Get this shirt here.

I have been pondering my navel. Or rather I would if it hadn't been consumed by my increasingly corpulent midriff. Nothing else for but to invent a T-shirt. Buy the shirt from my shop.

The rituals we observe surrounding death and dying are quite interesting. Never more so than in Hollywood. I heard on the weekend that the actor who played Scotty, the engineer in Star Trek has had some of his ashes sent into space. Hmmm. I won't ask why?; the answer seems blindingly obvious; in the words of PT Barnum "There's a sucker born every minute"...or, in this case dies every minute. Your job is to get your money out the their survivor's grief soaked wallets. Not that the rituals surrounding death have ever really made any sense. Why would Tutankhamen need to be buried with his riches (and hundreds of perfectly healthy retainers)-don't they take Egyptian Express in the afterlife? Ditto the buried army (nice blog images here ). Apparently Walt Disney was cryogenicly frozen. Uncle Walt had a checquered relationship with his animators - alternately locking them out when they struck for better pay and work conditions and dobbing them into to senator McCar...

A couple of random examples of hand-made graphics from mainstream brands that I came across this evening. I'm thinking it is more common than I at first thought.

I have noticed a trend toward hand-made artwork finding its way into advertising and design. It is an interesting trend. A rebellion against the slick, universal precision of computer graphics. I guess some of the influences are street art (graffiti, stenciling etc) and the rise of body art in recent years. I have heard a figure bandied about that 30% of North Americans have a tattoo. Major brands are getting in on the act. In the States Camel and Nike have hired the tattoo artist Scott Campbell to give their promotional material a unique character. In an odd way I wonder whether 'inking'onto the skin of a brand is anything more than stylised decoration or (in the case of Camel) being desperate to have something to 'say' in a category that has no real benefit - which reminds me of the UK campaign for a brand of cigarettes in the 80s as tough regulations began to bite: 'We can't tell you anything about Winstone cigarettes - so here's a tart leaning against a...