Llama People Clothing Blog

It seems like every day now that the postman stops by our house to knock on the door and personally deliver some kind of parcel. Only yesterday it was nice new ‘In the Beginning Bag…’, now with all new special website address printed along side the picture. See if you can make it out in this picture, which you may not be able to as it seems to be more focused on me posing than the beautiful, beautiful merchandise.

 If that simply isn’t enough to make me feel important, today I recieved something even more special. Not content to carry around a bag that proclaims something about visiting a website, I thought that my life would never be complete until I enjoyed the capacity to carry around hundreds of business cards on my person so as to be able to thrust them upon each and every unwitting person that inadvertantly crosses my path.

 So, I was not 100% unsurprised when a box arrived today inside a suspiciously unmarked box labelled, “Priority”. I love international post. I do realise that I ordered it express post (well, in all honestly that was the only option they gave me), but the fact that I ordered it the week of Easter, and recieved it only the week after, originating in the United States, makes me a very happy man.

But then again, regular post from Australia to Estonia still seems a lot faster than sending mail from Geelong to Melbourne (a distance of 70 odd kilometres).

The contents of the box even looked important. They smelled important, and the little slips of cards looked like the numbered in the thousands. I am thinking that maybe I should have ordered the 2000 cards, just so that I could have felt four times as important as owning 500 cards allows me to feel.

I piled them high just to bask in my own self importance.

 And now all that is required is finding the victims to thrust these upon…

We call this one Le Penseur, or shall we say Le Llama. Yes, it is The Thinker himself. When people think about The Thinker, the thought that generally comes to mind is that of Auguste Rodins most famous sculpture of bronze and marble, originally named The Poet. What people don’t generally realise is that Rodin’s famous work is actually inspired, if not entirely ripped off, by a famous pose that originated over a century after Rodin created his first small plaster version.

Above one can see our preliminary working of the great Thinker, inspired by Rodin’s Le Penseur (and who knows, maybe we will go on to make an actual sculpture of it, that’s a great idea…), and below see Rodins sculpture itself:

What most people don’t know is the ORIGINAL work, pictured below. Commonly referred to as Le Toefur’s Philosopher Grande:

And why is the Toefur better than the Thinker? Because it is a true to life model in true genuine 100% technicolor. Examine the subtleties and nuances of dramatic and philosophical exposition within every inch of the sculpture and you can see the obvious and blatant plagiarism of Rodin himself.

Now, Occams razor would suggest that obviously Toefur is a copy of Le Penseur because it was created many years later, but the truth is far from that and relates to incidents involving Auguste Rodin and a time travelling device and many skips into the future for what he likened, in his secret diaries, to ‘inspiration’. More like downright thievery if you ask me.

So whilst Rodin was obviously a complete fraud, we can attest to the fact that the Llama Thinker is a genuine work of art taking generous inspiration from both works to create a piece that is of amazingly higher quality than either of the original sculptures, and still even better than both combined.

Enjoy The Thinker, He will be techni-colored and plastered all over merchandise for your consuming pleasure as soon as is possible!

Brian e-mailed me yesterday with the sketches for our next three Llama designs. It’s a pity I’m not making millions of dollars of this whole llama thing yet, because I’ve got a list about 200-llamas long of hilarious and brilliant ideas for llama-as-human designs. In fact, just writing that then I had another great idea - Purple Tentacle from Day of the Tentacle? Instead, Purple Tentacle Llama. I don’t know how that would look, but I like that idea. A poster, “Day of the Llama.”

Bernard: [Unties the tentacles] There, you’re free to go.
Green Tentacle: Thanks, Bernard!
Purple Tentacle: Yes. Thank you, naive human. Now, I can finish taking over the world! [Purple Tentacle leaves]
Green Tentacle: Wait!
Bernard: Oh yeah. Now I remember. He’s incredibly evil, isn’t he?
Green Tentacle: Uhhh… I’ll try to talk him out of it.

Anyway, that little bit of nostalgia out of the way I was here to talk about Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. Something about this one just made me laugh hysterically. Though, in all honesty they all do when I first see them. My initial joy and amazement doesn’t start to wear off until I’ve ordered about twenty products featuring the design and realise that even though I sell them, I still have to pay for them.

The sheer expression and character that are prevalent in all of our Llama designs just makes me so happy, the style is so perfect for what I want to portray; and in an effort to sound significant I will describe my artistic desires as being a visual representation of the human condition, as presented through the image of llamas.

As brightly as the sun shines, these llamas just ooze character. If Frankenstein Frankenllama isn’t a roaring success, then I’ll have no choice but to rant and rave about the depravity and general apathy of the working class. Until then, savour the sketch…

So, just when I was starting to lose hope about all chances of ever getting this great Llama project off the ground (not that I have hade much time to put into this project of late, unfortunately real life concerns sometimes get in the way of my grand dreams) I hit the jackpot. And let me tell you a little something about that jackpot.

We went away for a little vacation these last three days to Mount Gambier in South Australia. We saw some caves, some lakes, some sinkholes, lots of famished possums and only two llamas. It was a great trip. I wish I could spend my entire life just travelling around.

Anyway, we were on our way home from this (three days without a computer, it was great!) and not far from home I began formulating in my mind what I would need to do when I got home. First and foremost, before even beginning to unload the car I would need to check my e-mail for any hordes of fan mail that I would have undoubtedly recieved and then to see what success we had in sales for the last three days.

I started dreaming that I wouldn’t have many orders. But that what orders I did have, would be huge. I was pretty sure that the son of the Nigerian president was going to place an order for about 100 varied Llama shirts for his servants, and then I calculated how much money I would make from that. I added it all up, got excited (even though I wouldn’t be close to break even point for this whole project at this stage) and couldn’t wait to be home.

So then we got home, and because I didn’t want to get my hopes up for nothing, I said out loud, “It’s okay - I know I haven’t made any sales.” Just so that in the off chance my Nigerian friend hadn’t placed his order, that I wouldn’t be too let down.

So I hopped into Thunderbird and there it was before me. An e-mail letting me know that I had made the sale I was after.

No, it wasn’t 100 items. But it was my first official sale! And when I say first, I mean second. Because about one month ago, before the site was even up properly I made a sale of a Dalai Llama womens shirt. Don’t know where it came from, but it doesn’t count because I didn’t work for it.

This one, which I probably didn’t work for either - it was probably some poor internet traveller that acidentally found themselves at my little llama site, was my first official one. And though it wasn’t for one hundred items, it wasn’t for one item either.

It was a sale for one Drama Llama t-shirt, and a Embrace Your Inner Llama tote bag. I was so excited! My first official sale. Surely it can only be up from here? So far I am off on my projected outcomes for the Month of March - one sale per week - but there is still time to make up for that.

Anyway, I’m going to go to bed now and dream the dream of success.

My millionaires mansion will be shaped like a giant llamas, if you were a roaring success, what sort of extravagent house would you buy yourself?

I was lying awake late last night, pondering the meaning of existence and things like that when a really significant thought struck me. There I was, lying there, and the little voice that lives inside my brain asked me, “So, if we lived in a world in which Llamas were people and people were Llamas, would Llamas think it funny to make shirts centered around people?”

I just thought of all the outrageous possibilities that these LLamas would come up with, and how funny they might think they were. There’d be one, like Count Dracuperson and he’d look like… well, the famous literary character Dracullama, but instead of being normal and being a llama… he’d look like a person. Hence the name, Count Dracuperson.

Or designs based around religious figures, like the Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Llama… there would be a version of him that would be the Dalai Human. The Llamas would get such a kick out of that.

That was my contribution to society for today, a lot more valuable than selling video games, don’t you think? Anyway, back to the real world for me…

Brian completed the most recent request of Llama Pictures over a week ago now, and I forked out the cash for them. I’m more than happy to do that, have you seen this guys work? If not, go check out the main page - Llama People Clothing and look at our designs. This guy is a creative genius. We give him some vague ideas like, “Man, you know… a llama… and, like… you know the Da Vinci thing with the guy… and the circle? I think Dan Brown drew it. Um, can you draw that… but it’s like a llama instead…” And then he turns these embellished (is there an opposite word for embellished, I wonder?) directions into works of art. For the pure brilliance of each and every drawing he does for us, he provides a very competitive rate.

Anyway, the point I was getting at was that it’s costing me a little bit of money and quite a lot of time to get this whole Llama Clothing thing happening. I’m in a spot of trouble if it doesn’t work out for us. I’m kind of laying all my hopes and dreams on this idea, and my idea of a future free of work (I’ve calculated that I only need to sell, gee, about five hundred shirts a day to be able to retire comfortably) and travelling as I please in the vein hope that this website is a roaring success.

But come on, who can resist these llamas? Llamas are in general pretty awesome, and they have a little bit of popularity on the internet, but if you aren’t even into Llamas - these shirts just look so awesome. How can anyone not buy them? In fact, I’m expecting a bucket load of Dracullamas to arrive at my front door tomorrow.

Anyway, so now that I have a reasonable amount of Llama Pictures (though I will be ordering more and more to help expand the site as we progress through this project) I need to work hard on the site and everything that goes with it, so that I can make this go where I want it to go.

Life would be so much easier if I were a llama.

I thought that it was about time to start writing blogs. I figured that since I’m a Llama specialist now that I should also write blogs about the site and all things llama because Llamas write blogs. In fact I’m pretty sure that I read somewhere once that the first blog ever created (at least, the first blog that identified itself as a ‘blog’) was documented as having been written by a llama.

You may raise your eyebrows in bewilderment at that statement, but when you think about it for a bit you’ve got to realise that most of the llamas in the world spend most, if not all, of their lives cooped up in these tiny little paddocks without a whole lot to do. Most other llamas I’ve seen haven’t really even got anything interesting in their paddocks, not even a tree to relax under when harsh sun beats down upon a wooly llamas back.

So you’re in a paddock, nothing to do, see, or look at… what do you do? You do things like discover penicillin, write the greatest theatre production ever written, invent the internet, run for president, and write blogs.

So if that is what llamas do, then that is what I too shall do.

Next time, more llamas! I’ll see you there!

- Llama Chris.