My Collections

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This is a basketball, acquired from Mad Martian. I haven't gotten around to getting the right kind of pin for our pump to be able to inflate it.

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These are all beachballs of various sizes and colours, all from Mad Martian. The smaller ones are have nine inch diameters, the larger one has a sixteen inch diameter.

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I made this one myself out of seed beads and a small cardboard box. This is the lid. It can also be seen with other beaded objects in my beading gallery.

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This is also from Mad Martian. It is a plastic bowl with a diameter of about eleven inches. At the moment, I mostly just keep other eyeballs in it.

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I made this eyeball cake some time ago as part of my habit of making strange novelty cakes. More information can be found in the cake decorating gallery. It is indeed a real cake - chocolate, in fact - and entirely edible.

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These were acquired fairly early in my collection from a local grocery store the day after Hallowe'en in the early 2000s. The cashier said they were cute. I said I collected eyeballs. She looked frightened. I pointed to them and said, "Well, fake ones like that." She seemed appeased and began describing her goose collection to me. Everybody has an odd hobby.

The reason one has a blue plastic "hat" on is that these particular eyeballs occasional can be found in unexpected places in the house, forming military lines. The "hat" is a bubble from our hamster cage. Apparently, the one with the hat is some kind of general. Corran denies any knowledge of assisting the eyeballs move around the house. But that's okay, because he is as insane as I am.

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This delightful oddity came from Mad Martian. It is a combination keychain, candy dispenser, and advice toy. You put the small, multicoloured, awful-tasting candies in the blue part (which I assume is supposed to be a retinal nerve or something), and if you press the cornea, it dispenses the candies out a hole in the bottom. Furthermore, inside the cornea is a magic-8-ball-like toy, with a die sporting "helpful" phrases such as "Of Course" and "No Way" floating in water. It works very poorly, but is incredibly amusing.

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This is supposed to go on a car antenna, but it is quite heavy and I imagine would damage many antennas. I got it from Mad Martian.

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These eyeballs, all of which came from Mad Martian, glow in the dark. The first two also have tiny holes through which one can suck up and subsequently squirt water.

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This roughly thirty-inch-long inflatable hammer is covered with eyeballs and squeaks when squeezed. I have no idea why...some things just are what they are. Got it at Mad Martian.

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This guy is about thirty-seven inches from hand to hand. He also squeaks when his foot is squeezed. Got him from Mad Martian.

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I got this either as a gift or from a novelty store, I can't remember which. Either way, I got it while still in Canada since I know I used to play with it at my desk as a tech reporter and slightly frighten other staff. The goo used to be very stretchy and clingy, but after going through an unairconditioned period one Las Vegas summer, it lost its elasticity and now it's just a pot of green slime with some not-very-eyeballish eyeballs floating in it.

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These are jetballs, acquired at a novelty store back when I still lived in Canada. Jetballs are a ball inside a clear outer ball, with water inside as well. The inner ball is weighted so it remains more or less in a fixed position while the outer ball rolls, giving a cool, eerie effect of rolling while still staring upwards. That is, until I dropped one of them and obviously knocked the weight out of place, because that one always points forward now.

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These earrings and the necklace were found at various stores in the Toronto area several years ago. I also have a ring but I'm not sure where it is at the moment. My first eyeball purchase was actually a different ring, but the cornea fell out, so I bought a new one. I also once bought an eyeball bracelet at the Pickering Flea Market, but I lost it that same day somewhere between the flea market and the car.

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These lights from Mad Martian came with their own short string of lights and a battery pack, but I prefer to use the caps on my actual Christmas lights. Here are several view, lit and unlit, of the eyeball lights on the garland I have running up our staircase.

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These heavy-duty magnets came from Mad Martian and now live on my fridge.

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These adorable little guys from Mad Martian collapse into balls, or extend to be small figurines about an inch high.

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These cocktail umbrellas came from Mad Martian. I don't even drink alcohol, because imagine how weird I would be if I did! But they're eyeballs, they're odd, they're nifty, and so they're mine.

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Found these at a Walgreen's drug store by accident and had to add them to the collection. They're very sparkly and strange.

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The pen on the left (the purple one) was a gift from Corran. It has batteries inside and vibrates (and yes I know it looks like another kind of special toy that vibrates), and when it does so, the rainbow spring on top twists and turns wildly, making it look like the eyeball is looking all around. The red one was a gift from my mother-in-law. It unscrews to reveal a bubble stick in soapy liquid so you can blow bubbles with it. The top eyeball has a red oozing centre that is supposed to pop out when squeezed and then retract, but over time it has just oozed out and won't go back in. One of the mini guys from above is standing between the pens where they live on my VCR tape shelf.

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This plush eyeball pillow came from Mad Martian. It is about eleven inches in diameter, very soft and fun to pet.

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I don't remember where I got this ping-pong eyeball from, but I've had it for at least a decade. It resides in the skull of Harvey the Skeleton.

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These are poppers. You push the stiff rubber dome inside out and set it on a hard surface. A short time later, it will right itself and make a loud pop in the process, plus fling itself across the room. Far too much fun, especially when the other people in the room haven't yet realized you're playing with one and it's about to go off. They have a natural proclivity to land in or near people's drinks or other spillable items. They came from Mad Martian.

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Mad Martian calls this a "realistic" eyeball, and I suppose it is relative to the other eyeballs in my collection, although it is clearly still fake. Still, very nifty. I actually do have a pair but the other one wasn't readily found when I was taking pictures.

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I got this rubber eyeball at a novelty shop as a teenager.

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This soft eyeball toy came from Mad Martian. I think it's supposed to be one of those hackey-sack type of things.

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I found these socks at Target by chance one day.

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These toys from Mad Martian work by pressing the spring down so the suction cup sucks onto the base, and then a short time later the spring forces the suction cup to lose its grip, springing the entire unit a short distance.

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This was a gift from Corran. It's entirely disgusting and I love it. It's basically a rubber bag full of eyeballs with enough goo inside to make it squishy and gross.

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These are stickers from Mad Martian that combine eyeballs and smiley faces, thereby being extra nifty.

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This cute guy came from Mad Martian. He's fairly small and fun to play with because his arms and legs wiggle easily, so one can make him dance by dangling him from the string attached to the top of his head/body.

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These squishy water tubes came from Mad Martian. The idea is they look easy enough to hang onto, but with the slightest pressure they squeeze out of your hand.

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This delightful toy from Mad Martian also doubles as a generic Beholder-type monster for our roleplaying games.

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This is a whistle shaped like an eyeball from Mad Martian.

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I got these balls at a dollar store near where I worked in Toronto, and then one day while bored at my desk turned them into a sort of Nativity scene. This is the havoc boredom wreaks. I'm not even Christian and don't care about the Nativity!

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Corran got me these as gifts, and I now use them on crappy days to make me feel better. The mug in particular happens to be exactly the right size for a proper serving of hot chocolate.

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This was also a gift from Corran, a small rubber bouncy ball that glows in the dark. The third picture is what happened when I had been taking glow-in-the-dark pictures, but turned on the light and took another picture forgetting that the camera was still set to a one-minute exposure. I turned the lights back off right away, making it both overexposed and slightly green-glowing.

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This is Happy. I acquired him at the mall next to where I worked in Toronto, during a post-Easter sale. When you squeeze his hand, he emits a child-like giggle and shakes, and then eventually declares, "That tickles." He is utterly insane and I love him!

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I call this my Jar of Heads, and keep it in the kitchen to amuse me. It is full of smiley-face bubblegum I got several years ago at a Bulk Barn in Scarborough, Ontario. On rare occasions, I open the jar and choose a victim to chew, even though they're a bit hard and stale, just for maniacal fun!

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This was a gift from Corran. When bounced on a hard surface, some mechanism inside causes it to vibrate slightly and flash a light, glowing from the inside. However, as the years have passed, whatever powers it must be dying because it is growing rather faint.

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I bought these magnets from an online specialty magnet retailer a few years ago. They currently reside on our filing cabinet.

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I don't remember where I got these socks from, but they have smiley faces and peace symbols so that makes them pretty good in my estimation.

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A couple of smiley face pencils I found at Walgreens.

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Corran gave me this bouncy ball as a Christmas present in 2004.

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I am amused by smiley faces and what I call toe-socks, these glove-like style socks that provide a sleeve for each toe, so I had to buy this pair when I found them at Target by accident.

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I found this at a dollar store, and now it adorns the tissue box in the kitchen.

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This is a water-bag-tube-squish toy, which seems simple to hold but has a tendency to shoot away unexpectedly. It was a 2004 Christmas gift from Corran.

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This is my collection of toys and antenna balls from the restaurant Jack In The Box (a burger/etc. fast-food restaurant in the US). The collection started in 2001 when the restaurant gave away a Christmas ball (the ones with the earmuffs and scarves) with every purchase of what happened to be Corran and my favourite sandwich, and we ate there frequently as part of our regular Friday night Dungeons and Dragons game sessions. That Christmas, one of our D&D group, Eric, made me a nifty colourful stand with springs as a gift. The heads sit on the springs and wiggle around.

Since then I also acquired a generic Jack Head (the one with the pointed yellow hat), a full-figure Jack Bobble Head doll (shown on its own in the lower picture), and leading up to Christmas 2004, the restaurant started issuing a reindeer version of the heads as well. Those reindeer ones weren't freebies, but Corran and I got a couple each, and then our latest D&D player-friends, Joe and Jeff, gave us the ones that actually were thrown in free with a meal of theirs.

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These wall stickies were a gift from Corran, and adorn our bedroom walls by my side of the bed, where they glow brightly every night when I turn out the lights.

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This is Harvey the Skeleton. He was the main gift for my sixteenth birthday (because I am indeed the kind of girl who would prefer a skeleton to more typical sweet-sixteen presents). He was a kit, coming as flat sheets of cardstock that had to be folded and pinned into place. Half of him has Latin names for the various bones, and the other half has English labels. He is six feet tall.

The wig used to belong to my mother, which I gather she actually wore in the 60s when such things were fashionable. The eyeball is a ping-pong ball, the sunglasses are an old pair of mine, and I found the caution tape fluttering in some bushes in my late teens so I added that for additional flare.

Poor Harvey has travelled a lot, back and forth to university in Ottawa, around various apartments in the Toronto area, and then the long drive from Toronto to Las Vegas. He was never out in our first apartment in Las Vegas because there wasn't room for him, and thus sat in a box for a couple of years. All of that moving took some tolls, such as his misaligned jaw, once-crushed ribs, and several small tears. I have recently done some extensive restoration/strengthening work, affixing wire behind each rib to keep it stiff, another piece of wire from his spine to his sternum to keep the ribs "inflated", wire supports inside the skull and jaw, and a reworking of the hanging shoulder support to be more stable.

So now Harvey lives in our front room, and it's only on rare occasions that I catch his reflection in the window at night in the kitchen and startle. Really, I'm not spooked by my own silly toys. Never. Much.

The third photo shows how I had Harvey and several of the eyeball items (shown above) posed for Hallowe'en in 2004.

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I acquired these separately several years ago, I think from Michael's Crafts. They are poseable and thus often occupy space on my nighttable engaged in naughty poses (don't ask me how skeletons can be naughty without fun fleshy bits!). They don't glow in the dark very well, especially the blue one, but they do glow a little as shown in the second photo.

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A small jointed plastic skeleton that glows in the dark. I actually have two of these, but I'm not sure where the other one is as it got packed away in a box some time ago and I've never seen it since. I can't remember how I got the first one, but the second was a gift from Corran (he didn't know I had one somewhere). It glows very brightly.

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I've had these socks for so long that I don't remember where/when I got them. They are fairly tight these days, though. They have a definite right and left foot in the pattern, which is a skeletal motif on top/front and a reflexology chart on the back/bottom.

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A cake made to look like a fossilized skull. More pictures and details can be found in my cake decorating gallery.

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My mother in law gave me this as a gift. It is paua shell inlaid into a wooden box. It is very small, but very beautiful.

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This hanging mobile was a gift from Corran. The dolphins glow in the dark. It hangs beside our bed and glows so brightly when we turn out the lights that I could probably read by the light for a few minutes. The bedroom fan blows them so they turn slowly, which can be discerned in the long-exposure shot of them glowing in the dark.

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This was a gift from Corran. It is a pen, but it makes a dolphin-ish squeak when the lever to put out the pen nib is pulled. The interior gears and wheels spin as well.

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These "motion sculptures" are dolphins that spin and/or rotate based on the power of a magnet and hidden battery. The one on the left was a gift, and its small dolphins spin on their own axis while the entire wheel turns. The one on the right was purchased at the Ontario Science Centre on a trip back home to Toronto, and its dolphins stay fixed to the outer wheel but bump the hanging ball as they move back and forth. Both have a tendency to get stuck in an upside-down position until the next time someone shakes the bookcase.

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This is Splooshie the Dolphin, acquired at Sea World in San Diego when Corran and I went on vacation to California in 2000.

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I got this wood carving of two dolphins from Novica, by artist I Wayan Rendah.