Sunday, August 8, 2010

Skull Blogging: Lost in the Dollhouse Edition

Dear Blogger merchandising / "monetizing" department,
This is my idea for a range of merchandise that can be ordered by the blog's readers or indeed purchased at the gift-shop when people visit the palatial Riddled offices in person: Novelty Riddled dollhouses. It is an idea and it is mine.

Architecturally speaking, neither of these first two designs is an accurate portrayal of Riddled headquarters, on account of not showing the alleyway around the side with the interesting smells and the flies and the frequent visits from the police. For complete accuracy, though, the design would have to show an open-plan office with half the staff slacking off and playing Minesweeper or browsing pwrn on their terminals, and that's going to reduce the gift value.

One thing I have learned about dollhouses, by the way, is that you have to keep mice out. Otherwise they find their way into the little staff canteen, and when they find that all the food there is typical processed crap -- too tough to cut and almost devoid of nutritive value -- then they lose their tempers and trash the place.

The one on the left has its own animated version! Cool! I think the room-full of pencils in the right-hand one came from a John Brack painting.

This next design doesn't actually show the office. Instead it's based on the shed out the back where Another Kiwi keeps various tools hanging on a shadow-board and gets all silent and door-slammy if anyone uses them and hangs them back up in the wrong place. Now there's a machine in the shed that sends out a loud SCHLUESSEL if anyone sneaks in without telling him.

To show that I know about dollhouses, here's one I made for the Doktorling Sonja when she was young. She never played with it much.
See also
http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2006/08/industrial-anatomy.html
http://fritz-kahn.com/gallery.php?site=gallery&lang=en
http://www.notechmagazine.com/2009/06/the-body-is-a-machine.html

16 comments:

Unknown said...

Unusually MOR for you...

Smut Clyde said...

Just for that I will track down a few more examples of the brain-as-office genre and link them in a strobing animated GIF.

Buggrit, now there's one example from a 1970s science fiction paperback cover that's preying on my mind... I can remember the plot, and its location on the shelf of the bookshop, but a fat lot of help that is when I can't remember the title or author.

Unknown said...

Last time someone strobed merc there was accidental incidental wrath wreaking I recall. Laser eyes melted metal throbbing splodin scattered membrane awesomess.
Then it rained.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

So Zardoz II will be made in N.Z.?
~

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

not very nice of you to mention Debbie Schluessel without warning people.

And now you're copying Boorman. Sad, really.

Unknown said...

Tough crowd Smut.

thyperte, or thy life.

Another Kiwi said...

Top left is how Eagle magazine envisaged "Robots of the Future". I think having little guys in your head who were smoking pipes might get to be a tad annoysome.

Smut Clyde said...

The option of outsourcing has allowed me to downsize the Memory Department considerably.

Snag said...

The little guys in one's head are more likely to be caused by smoking pipes.

Unknown said...

Fear not the heads inhered.

Hamish Mack said...

let me assure you, folks, merc knows from heads.

mikey said...

I have leeches, Hadrosaurs and small, hairless creatures in my head. None of them know how to operate the equipment installed therein, but they have killed, incapacitated or otherwise eliminated the operations team and now they are pulling levers, flipping switches and flinging feces and leftover snack foods in a mad romp through the control room.

And people sometimes wonder why I do the things I do...

Unknown said...

Cut it off, the body needs it not...

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Since you already got leeches in your head, you are saving money on doktors and psychiatrists and such as.
~

Hamish Mack said...

As long as they are medicinal Leeches, Mikey should be OK. In a "mikeyworld" sense of OK

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Did someone say, leeches in the head?

I went looking for leeches while up north, but could not find a one.

Then again, I hadn't visited an apothecary.