We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

It’s no secret that humans respond positively to repetitive forms. Architects deploy this principle to great effect, designing buildings that please the eye with recurring elements. So do artists like Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Sandy Skoglund, Yayoi Kusama and a billion others. The pleasure of repetition is one reason why sushi rolls look so delicious, and why giant bins of candy cause kids’ brains to short-circuit.

We were pleased to find that the same principle applies to clothing. These socks are made in Turkey at a family-run business that supplies socks for both the Belgian and Turkish armies. They’re woven on Italian machines computer-controlled to guarantee the exactitude of each pattern (ROBOT SOCKS!)

We think they’d make equally good hand puppets.

“Clocks, calendars, timetables and guidebooks assure us: there is an order to things,” begins Dr. Clock’s Handbook. “In Dr. Clock’s absurd world, on the contrary, things are not always what they seem. Logic leads to surprise, paradox reigns with looking-glass rules, things quickly slide from the sublime to the ridiculous.”

Indeed. A hefty book of thick many-colored pages, Dr. Clock’s Handbook is a collection of absurdist writing and thinking published by the legendary Redstone Press. Among those represented are Ed Ruscha, Flann O’Brien, Franz Kafka, Damien Hirst and David Shrigley. No kidding!

To page through the book is to feel a rush of mental pops and fizzes. Concrete teepees! Zebra stew! Nonsensical proverbs! (”Cold meat lights no fire”.) Every possible form of off-the-wall thinking is included in this compilation, which combines photographs with recipes, manifestos, diagrams, charts and essays. The editing is shrewd––there’s no filler––and the content is endlessly generative. You could use this as a creative manual for any type of project; just keeping a copy perched on your desk could induce boundary-pushing ideas to bubble up from the ether. Dr. Clock’s Handbook is one of those volumes that you might read every day and never get sick of. A desert island book, for sure.