Another original painting

This one depicts the missus diving into a wave at Indian River Inlet back in the summer of 1998 or 1999 (I forget). This hangs in my office at work, which is why I can't get it to photograph well. This phot doesn't do it justice. Acrylic on canvas.

It's Fish Knife Friday #15

Yup. It really is.

Rock head...

This 2" skull is carved from hard stone. I found it in a secret temple high in the Andes mountains, near an alien landing strip, not too far from where they built the pyramids and where people once rode dinosaurs.

No. Actually, I got this at the Delaware Museum of Natural History. I just liked it and thought it was cool.

Skull ring

Here's a chunky sterling silver winged skull ring. I wear it on occasion, but it's really too chunky for practical wearing. One of these days, I'm going to walk up to a random Hell's Angel and give it to him. It'll either be truly appreciated, or I'll get all of my teeth knocked out, or both.

Japa mala 2

More skull beads made out of bone. These are larger than the previous Jama mala, and may not even be prayer beads. These are all about 1 inch around, whereas the pervious mala were all about the size of an almond. This set (assuming they were made together) was almost certainly made somewhere in Asia for the tourist/export industry, and I frequently see them in little hippy/import/antique stores all over - or at least on the East Coast. Still, they are skulls, and make a nice addition to pirate/voodoo regalia.

Memento mori

This is another of my skulls. He's sterling silver, and weighs about 2 ounces. It is stamped on the back "PM" and "STERLING". I wear him almost constantly, on a string of net mending twine and some beads. The white beads are allegedly ostrich eggshell. I got him an an antique convention at the Baltimore Convention Center in August of 2001 when I was speaking at another conference in the same venue. The missus came along and we made a weekend of it. Someday, I might tell the story of how the wind around the World Trade Center in the Inner Harbor made her do a Marilyn Monroe skirt flip in front of every tourist in Harbor Place, forcing her to purchase shorts at a store in the nearby mall. Ooops. I guess I already did!

Noodles for all!

This is my homemade noodle bowl and chopsticks on bamboo stand, as featured on the famous Skull-a-day blog by Noah Scalin. It has been one of my favorite blogs since early in his project.

This piece has an unusual story regarding it's origin. Whilst on summer vacation at a rented beach house a few years ago, my (then) fiancee and I, and my parents, were big fans of that show Survivor. At the time, it was the first season, so we were kinda caught up in the hype. Anyway, we had these coconuts for whatever reason, and fueled by tropical adult beverages, we vowed to each make a drinking vessel from a coconut half to unveil at the final Survivor episode some weeks later. We made it a contest (albeit friendly), and each cup/vessel was to be judged after the final episode. The only rules were that the cup had to incorporate the coconut half, and it had to be functional.

I stayed with the tropical/voodoo theme seen above, with the added feature of skull-topped chopsticks in two of the three bamboo supports. Thus, when not used for drinking, one could use it for noodles.

The missus (IIRC) went with a fish theme, with tropical fish applique's on her coconut. Dad stuck his nut on top of a silver candelabra with cars and boats and such glued all over it (evidently, each addition represented a Survivor character). And I totally forget what Mom did...