Smaller Places

The Italian brainrot capsule machine figures had been haunting me, as whimsical things between 1 and 3 inches tall are wont to do. I went back to the market on my next morning walk, stuck my quarters in the machine... and it jammed. Playing double or nothing seemed foolish, so I mulled over what it is that appeals to me about the things.

Meet Bernadetta Bobina and Zucca Malata.

My logic was that I really wanted two things. One was the surprise of using a capsule machine, which was now a non-starter. (But the happy acquisition of Ulbain-Ulunn the Pink satisfied that need.) The other was that what I really wanted was surreal peg people compatible with my vintage Fisher Price Little People. Since Mattel is unlikely to do anything about that, it was on me to produce my own.

Their bodies are the peg-person blanks that came with the extra Creatology house that I'm fixing up as their workshop. Everything involved with them is something I already had in the house.

Bernadetta Bobina is obviously an historic costumer. She has a slice of vintage fringe for hair, the two halves of a garment snap as either earrings or hearing aids, safety pins for arms, and straight pins for either hair ornaments or antennae. She is standing on a button for stability, as her narrow base and wide head were making her likely to tip.

Zucca Malata is an avant garde DJ and burlesque artist who always performs wearing a pumpkin head. Giving her bone arms was irresistible, so these girlies ended up as a missing evolutionary step between vintage Little People and modern ones. I was looking at ribbon to hide arm glue, dismissed the shiny roll because it looked too much like pasties, then decided that was the direction to go.

While there's a definite "I wasn't allowed to buy the same branded toys as the cool kids in first grade" vibe to all this, I enjoyed constructing them immensely. I don't usually do surrealism or monsters, so it was a fun exercise.

JAKKS Pacific has never met a bandwagon it didn't want to jump on. Prime Bargain Outlet (formerly a bin surplus store with prices that started at $15 then dropped each day) is now mostly fixed-price surplus. It looks like they'd bought a pallet of holiday 2025 close-outs.

The Charming line is advertised by JAKKS Pacific as a "viral trend," though I think that's the trend of bag charms in general. The dolls are about 4 inches tall, and nobody discussing them online seems ever to have unboxed one, even though they seem cute enough.

There are doll lines that seem to go straight from full price to close-out clearance to eBay/Mercari/Poshmark flipping without ever existing as toys people bought or played with. The Be My Bestie line (18-inch JAKKS Pacific "little girl" dolls exclusive to CVS) seems to have done this; and so does Charming. Buy at $10 or so, try to flip for the original price. (Hold inventory forever because literally nobody cares.)

Lacey got Skipper a Lafufu for their anniversary. Meet Ulbain-Ulunn The Pink, lesser-known cousin of Gandalf and Radagast.

The Doylistic backstory is that we went to Los Banos, apparently for the purpose of being disappointed. The indoor flea market is in the process of going out of business, in a hot, dusty, "what is this crap?" kind of way.

After being disappointed by every form of thrifting in Los Banos, we stopped for lunch at the Country Waffle that had, in the past, been good. They have descended into confusion and have also invented the medium-rare hash brown (seared on the outside, near-raw on the inside). However, their lobby goes hard for capsule machines.

I've said all along that when I see a Lafufu appropriate for one of my miniature civilizations, at about $1 price point, I would buy it. I do not care that the trend is officially over and the influencers have binned their Labubus in favor of collecting Nee-dohs. Capsule machine -- $1 in quarters -- Lafufu! Ulbain-Ulunn will have a good life with the fashion dolls.

Dad is feeling fine a day after his adventures. However, his ability to follow post-op instructions is about what I'd expected.

This despite my rearranging the kitchen and the household routine so he has no reason to bend over!

Tomorrow, I have to take Dad to and from a medical thingie -- it's not anything dire, just something where he shouldn't drive right afterward -- so of course we have to decide when to leave for an appointment.

Dad's theory of travel is that whatever Google Maps says for time, knock off 15% and just drive faster. This always results in barely making it on time to things, or being a few minutes late, while everyone is stressed out. I'm not doing that.

In my quest to get more exercise, I decided to get up at 5 a.m., feed the cats, and go for a walk before the sun is up. Although we're having a coolish summer according to high temperatures (barely any days above 100 [38 celsius] so far), the night time lows are only going to 70 [21 celsius].

Next time, I'm going to fill my coffee sippy cup and walk around the streets with houses. This time, I thought I'd go to the 24-hour convenience store for coffee and a sausage biscuit.

Edward Hopper, Gas, 1940.

The local gas station felt like something out of an Edward Hopper painting -- not the now-retro quaintness of a forgotten world of midnight diners, but the brutal emptiness of flickering lights and diesel fumes.

The c-store coffee had apparently been sitting since 2 a.m. It was a vile undrinkable sludge. The sausage biscuit was fine. I sat on a grassy bank and watched trucks go by. No doubt to someone, I looked like a Hopperesque symbol of loneliness, though I felt like a person quietly eating a sausage biscuit and watching the sun rise over the strip mall.

As we all know, I'm not ideologically opposed to capsule machines, so I check out the offerings to see if there's anything interesting.

These are Italian Brainrot figures, part of a 2025 Gen Alpha surrealist meme trend. The deal is to satirize (?) or maybe just meme (!) the brain rot on Tiktok by AI-generating weird little creatures and giving them Italian-inspired silly names. The miscreant at far left of the card-shaped photos is Cappuccino Assassino. The elephant with the cactus body, top left, is Lirili Larila. One of the cup-headed girls is Ballerina Cappuccina.

Ballerina Cappuccina was married to Cappuccino Assassino until she cheated on him with Tung Tung Tung Sahur, the wooden log next to the banana-monkey hybrid. Because yes, there's lore!

There's a Roblox game. There are stickers and plushies. There are videos explaining who the characters are. Radio France asked in a podcast whether Italian brainrot is "génie de l'absurde ou signe que l'humanité est vraiment perdue."

This micro trend was completely off my radar, probably because it's concentrated among tweens and young teens. There don't seem to be any 20-something influencers doing Italian brainrot merch hauls, though you can buy large sets of this type of figure on eBay for about $1.25-$1.50 per figure (so more than the $1 the capsule machine takes).

The briefcase and tote bag are from the back-to-school section of Walmart ($3.98 each). Both had working fasteners, and you can put stuff in them. I felt that since Anthony moved into venture capital after his one-hit rap career, he needed a briefcase.

That's all I bought while out-and-about today. However, I found the Posh Ross!

I was not tempted by these, as I already have my favorites from the sofa selection, and that amounts to enough seats for everyone. (For anyone living in California's Central Valley, the Posh Ross is the one at Monte Vista Crossings in Turlock. If you're near it, go get your fashion dolls some furniture!)

New sighting at the Posh Ross: a bed-shaped jewelry box that is NOT Barbie-sized. In length, it's consistent with 1:12, but it's too wide and bulky for a normal 1:12 dollhouse. Stacey of the 1990s might fit, but Skipper would be too tall.

Sock dolls turn out to be incredibly difficult to date, because the trend keeps coming around. Here's the evidence.

Context: Deceased had no other fibercraft supplies, so these were probably bought or gifted.

Doll style: Those tied-off feet (like sock monkeys) should be hella easy to identify, but after hours of reading vintage ragdoll pattern books, I'm coming up dry. The big button eyes and full but flat faces feel 1980s to me, mostly because 1990s ragdoll patterns go for more minimalist faces. Once you hit the 2000s. the trend is ugly-cute. But then there are church groups who'll keep an older style alive for decades.

Fabric: The patterned fabric on the brunette is consistent with 1970s-1980s children's fabrics, but I can't find an exact match. It wouldn't be probative on its own, as fabric can stay in a stash for years. The blue polka dot is timeless: I have fabric like that from Joann in 2023.

Writing on doll's leg: I can't match Wa***fast or Wa***mast to any known sock brand, but I'm not a sock person.

Condition: These are not faded at all, which means either they're newer dolls in a retro style or they were kept in a box in the closet.

I would be delighted if someone popped up with "you dumbass, everyone knows these are X brand dolls from 2012," as I've Google-Lensed my little heart out to no avail.

We need to talk about fountain pens.

The ballpoint pens that we buy for cheap at the dollar store were not mass-marketed until the 1930s. If you prefer gel pens, rollerballs, or felt pens, those are also much later innovations! In the Blue Castle period -- some indefinite time between about 1913 and 1926 -- Barney would have used a fountain pen.

This is a stock image of an inexpensive modern fountain pen made by Pilot and sold via Office Max. Two thing are important here. In the middle of the pen is the reservoir where the ink lives. In 1920-whatever, you filled the reservoir by sucking ink into it from the ink bottle. Nowadays, you can get little plastic ink cartridges for your fountain pen, which makes refilling it much easier, at the cost of plastic waste.

The other important part is the nib, which is the pointy bit that the ink flows along to write. So many things can go wrong with nibs!

First, let's take a close look at a nib. This is a stock image from FountainPens.com. (This is not an endorsement to order from them; I've never done so.) See that narrow line down the center? It's actually a gap. This is about to be important, because it directs the flow of ink. (If you want full technical details, here's Goulet Pens' breakdown.)

A cheap or badly made nib will have slightly rough edges, or its gap isn't positioned right, or it otherwise isn't capable of reliably writing a clean line. Fountain pens were more expensive in relation to income in the 1910s-20s than ballpoint pens are for us. It would be tempting to buy a cheap one, and it would be tempting to keep using one after it wore badly.

I went to Goulet Pens (which is a good site to order from) for a list of things that can go wrong with your fountain pen. This includes:

Writing with too much pressure, which will spread the nib permanently

Not cleaning the fountain pen, which will lead to bad ink flow or a rough nib

Dropping it so that the nib bends

It's worth clicking through to the full listicle to see the photos of damaged nibs!

When the nib is bad in some way, the pen will skip or blot when you try to write. It's annoying and very messy! I can't demonstrate because (a) I managed to lose my last fountain pen when I moved in 2022 and (b) it was from Goulet Pens, so the nib was perfect.