#the novelty ?

[thelaurenshippen]

*me, an idiot, listening to a playlist made for me by a music streaming service of all the songs I listened to most this year* oh wow this really is just banger after banger, how nice to have a no skips playlist--

[demcnsinmymind]

Just got back home from my vacay and I have fiber internet in my new flat now my dudes. It's over for y'all

[mourningcape]

[imodelsgood]

novelty

me and my boy going to steal your cream cheese

i made it with a postage stamp as reference

[deadmotelsusa]

Novelty architecture: a type of building in which structures are designed as familiar shapes such as characters, animals, food, clothing items or household objects. Each one is usually kitschy, gaudy, and eye-catching. This style is also known as ‘mimetic,’ ‘programmatic’ or 'duck' architecture.

Leamington, Ontario's big tomato, circa 1961, is a classic example of this type of building. While it served as a tourist information booth for six decades, water damage and mold forced it to close in 2019. For 5 years, it sat deteriorating. In 2024, the Leamington council approved a restoration project, stating that the tomato is “representation of the area’s rich history and culture." The tomato's days are not over yet.

I've included a few more then + now views of novelty architecture: An owl cafe in New Mexico, a sombrero restaurant in South Carolina, a shoe house in Pennsylvania, an elephant in New Jersey, a big orange in Florida and an airplane-gas-station in Tennessee. Each of these buildings are alive, well and open for business. Most, if not all, have had ongoing restoration efforts and have all been lovingly cared for over the years.

[foldingfittedsheets]

When I was in third grade I got Weird with writing. It makes sense in hindsight. Oppressed people find their own ways of carving out space for themselves.

The first bit I did landed me in trouble more immediately. I was given, god knows by who, one of those enormous giant pencils. I loved it. My tiny nine year old body was consumed with love of this pencil that was roughly 1/3 of my height. I insisted that I would only use this pencil in school.

It was an unlucky year to be stricken with whimsy. My third grade teacher was a tyrannical Japanese woman fueled by her dislike of children. I suspect the cultural divide between how she expected children to behave and the reality of American children broke her.

She was three foot nothing and getting berated by her was the first time I’d ever looked down at an adult. I also saw her once standing next to her white 6’ behemoth of a husband and tried to conceptualize how two such disparate people had sex. I never could.

If you think I’m exaggerating her wrath it’s worth noting that my best friend at the time developed a stress disorder from this woman and I fell into a bizarre stutter that cleared up the moment I was out of class. In her classroom breaking down crying was a weekly occurrence.

But despite the frigid conditions, I persevered. I stayed silly. I brought my enormous novelty pencil to class every day. It was an act of rebellion that I sank my teeth into and refused to let go. I could barely sharpen it because its girth defied standard sharpeners the way I defied my teacher. This was my pencil.

When she attempted to confiscate my giant pencil I rose an unholy ruckus. This would not turn into the confiscated holographic Charizard, my tamagotchi, or my little pop frogs that she never returned to me. No. This was my goddamn pencil. There was no rules against enormous novelty pencils and after a heated week of debate she finally conceded I could use the hated thing.

It was stolen by my kleptomaniac friend a week or so after that a fact I’d only discover at the end of the year. But my tiny mind was convinced the evil teacher had stolen it.

In retaliation, instead of resuming normal behavior I decided that I would do all my writing upside down and backwards. No one, least of all myself, could explain why I felt this was necessary. Maybe I felt I’d be cool like a spy, maybe I just needed to buck the teachers hateful authority, or maybe I was just a little autistic kid.

When taking notes or writing essays I’d arrange the paper to be upside down. It may surprise you to know that my penmanship was actually quite decent, albeit I wrote a little more slowly than my classmates. That’s why it took the teacher a while to realize what was going on. There wasn’t a drop in the quality of my writing.

Unsurprisingly she hated it when she found out. She lambasted me both privately and in front of the class to write normally. I asked if my writing was illegible. She had to admit that no, it was not. I shrugged. I did not see a problem.

Like the pencil my new writing fixation was cited as being a distraction to the other children. But similarly she didn’t have an easy way to make me stop. She marked me down, gave me several talking tos, and generally bullied me into writing like everyone else.

All attempts at correcting me simply ran off my back. I had found a way to cope with how miserable she made all of us, by inflicting misery back upon her. I was unswayed for the rest of the year.

When I graduated up into fourth grade and had a teacher I adored it suddenly stopped. I looked at the paper and thought, Well that’s silly, and flipped it the right way round.

I can still write upside down, though, a testament to my worst year in public school.

[rocketbirdie]

i can't believe your tits are one polygon

[heavensickness]

Receiving this die right after the tribunal really hits different

[addamii]

Harrow and Nona my girls forever. Close ups and notes under the cut

[witchrealms]

cat shaped landline phones, 1980s/90s

x x x x

[corantus]

ROCKTOBER #5 - ESP WM-1 (Custom) 🍉

ok i'm sooo enamored with this guitar i just had to draw it. but info and photos are scarce so i had to fill in the blanks a lot here..anyway i thought seed shaped inlays would be fun

[ukegenius]

BLOOD WARNING ⚠️

I FINISHED IT WEREWOLF LADY AND HER VAMPIRE "LAB PARTNER"

fun progress shot

just wanted to show this rendering off have a nice day drink some water take ur meds eat a nice snack bye gold byee !!

[fitsofgloom]

You'll Never Lose Your Novelty

[lazycranberrydoodles]

everybody go home. this is my magnum opus

[not-terezi-pyrope]

I don't think that making or using AI art/image generation is morally wrong, as you guys know, but I have to admit that slotting a wibbly-lined low effort image selected from the first result set from Midjourney in your content is incredibly tacky. At least select something that looks good. Maybe something without the boring AI "sheen" look either.

You see this a lot in clickbaity content like web spam and youtube shorts attempting to algorithm game.

[arttuff]

check out my cool hamster