Unscratched Lottery Cards: I Love My Life The Way It Is

Israeli lottery cards.
Eight years ago Ali Alvarez of the UK committed a willful act of defiant anticapitalism--she did not scratch a scratch-off lottery card. And she’s been not scratching ever since.

In her own words ...

There's something about the whole lottery thing that doesn't feel right to me - getting your hopes high, dreaming, escaping, and then usually being let down.

This happens to me on a daily basis WITHOUT the lottery's help, muchas gracias. So as an experiment, I started buying scratch cards and not scratching them.

It felt funny.

Then I showed it to a few people. It made them feel funny.

It made me think... "I think I'm onto something here."

I couldn't agree more. Such a simple concept—she doesn’t even do anything—and yet, so subversive.

Ali hopes to amass 8,000 tickets—enough to fill a 12 x12 foot space, floor to ceiling, as an art installation. Folks have been sending her scratch-off lottery cards from all over the world, and wouldn't you know, cheesy lottery design is, for the most part, universal. There are a few standouts, however, that have a bit of regional differentiation …


Lithuania

Australia

New York

Canada

Switzerland

Stockholm

UK

Barcelona

Zurich

Oslo

Lisbon

UK

Louisiana

Texas

Check out 'I Love My Life the Way it is'to see where you can send Ali cool lottery cards for her to leave unscratched.

Cartridge Display Boards

Be it a pyramid of oranges at the greengrocer’s, a Whitman Sampler, a strand of graduated pearls, or even data on a spreadsheet, there is something supremely satisfying and comforting about an orderly arrangement. Its appeal is so primal and basic, that even ammo, when carefully mounted and displayed, is quite beautiful.

UK companies Eley, founded in 1820, and Kynoch, established in 1862, eventually became part of Nobel Industries. This board is c. 1910



Kynoch Ammunition


Nobel Cartridge Display Board


Nobel Industries, Eley cartridge display board


Gevelot cartridge display board


Winchester display board


U.S. Cartridge Co. cartridge board, c. 1886. Great frame!


Eley's Sporting ammunition board


Eley ammunition cartridge display board


Nobel Industries, comprehensive arrangement illustrating every stage in the 'Manufacture Of A 5/8in. Lined Cartridge' from blank and plain tube components to the finished 'Zenith' Gastight cartridge in both complete and cut-away form.


This silk-scarf design is taken from a 1935 Purdey cartridge display. 35” x 36”, $351

Just My Type 2

These three images ended up somehow in the same folder. I kind of like them together!
POULTRY: Serving dish from the Etsy site Blue Bell Bazaar. It's from a while back and seems to have been sold.

COTE D'AZUR: Book of views from a German bookseller. Also from a while back and gone now.

STOP: Jersey Street, behind the Puck Building in NYC. I believe the street is only two blocks long. It goes from Crosby St., across Lafayette, and ends at Mulberry St. It really is more like an alley than a full fledged street.


The first Just My Type post

The Art of Spilling Wine

Let’s hear it for Restaurant Week! For those of us stuck in the city during the summer, it’s a great opportunity to eat a three-course meal at a normally unaffordable restaurant, for a reasonable fixed price. Bar Boulud was especially delightful yesterday, as it also provided meat-locker like temps on what was a sweltering day in NYC.

Now, about those wine stains hanging on the wall. No, your waiter doesn’t cut up the tablecloth and hang it on the wall after each accident, to humiliate whoever knocked over the glass. The framed pieces are actually “art” by the brilliantly inventive Vik Muniz. The Brazilian-born artist explores perception, representation, and convention by using such unconventional materials as chocolate syrup, thread, and granulated sugar. Food & Wine describes the Muniz-Boulud collaboration and the "costly spills" here. For fun I've included the average per-bottle prices of the spills I have. And here I thought oil painting was expensive!

Watch Muniz talk about his work at TED from 2003, at the end of this post. I am especially partial to the cloud rendered in skywriting.

Gaja, Sori San Lorenzo 1989
$432 per bottle

Domaine De La Romanée-Conti, Romanée-Conti 1964
$8542 per bottle

Dugat-Py, Charmes-Chambertin 1999
$436 per bottle

Domaine René Engel, Clos-Vougeot 1985
$380 per bottle

E. Guigal, Côte-Rôtie “La Turque” 1991
$640 per bottle

All prices are averages from wine-searcher.com

Animal Mummies

Mummified hawk

While just about everyone is having a tough time in this economy, the estimated $47.7 billion pet industry, according to the American Pet Products Association, manages to defy the recession year after year. Upscale grooming spas and luxury resorts abound, not to mention full-fledged lines of designer clothing and accessories. And everyone is getting in on the action. Pets can now have Omaha Steak treats, Harley Davidson toys and Paul Mitchell grooming products.

As outrageous as some of the pampering and spoiling might seem, this kind of pet-centric extravagance, is nothing new. The British Museum is home to a veritable menagerie of ancient Egyptian animal mummies. Many were beloved pets given elaborate burials upon death, or upon the death of their owner. Sacred animals were mummified as deities in their own right. Then there were the vast quantities of “votive mummies” offered by pilgrims as gifts to please the gods. Mass catacombs have been found containing mummified cats buried ten to twenty deep. National Geographic interviewed Egyptologist Salima Ikram, director of the Animal Mummy Project at the Cairo Museum, about the votive mummy fad, and the scams it spawned.

The mummy business boomed, employing legions of specialized workers. Animals had to be bred, cared for, dispatched, and mummified. Resins had to be imported, wrappings prepared, tombs dug.

Despite the lofty purpose of the product, corruption crept into the assembly line, and the occasional pilgrim ended up with something dodgy. "A fakery, a jiggery-pokery," Ikram says. Her x-rays have revealed a variety of ancient consumer rip-offs: a cheaper animal substituted for a rarer, more expensive one; bones or feathers in place of a whole animal; beautiful wrappings around nothing but mud. The more attractive the package, Ikram has discovered, the greater the chance of a scam.

See the National Geographic photo gallery and the interactive map.


Mummified cats. The quilting blog, Seams Likely, points out the “log cabin” design on the ancient mummified specimens--go figure!



Ram


Bullock


Crocodile, 37 inches


Dog


Jackal


Young Baboon

Chromatic Inversions

I don’t know what made me decide to “invert” this coral-sprouting goddess, using Photoshop, but it looked so cool that I tried it on everything. Here are the ones that also looked cool …

Daphne by Wenzel Jamnitzer, c. 1550, Musée National de la Renaissance.


Ancient Egyptian linen, British Museum.


Egyptian tools, British Museum.


Nets of native cultures, for fishing and trapping, Peabody Museum and National Museum of Australia.


Back view of a Greek Kouros statue’s head (this is the “hair”) Metropolitan Museum of Art


Horsehair Headdress, High Plains, Dakota, Peabody Museum.


Pink feather.


Oil-soaked pelican from the Gulf. If only Photoshop filters worked
in real life …
AP Photo/Charlie Riedel