Why, yes I probably *have* lost my mind, thank you.

In 1966/67, when Kubrick was working on 2001: A Space Odyssey, he spent a lot of time coming up with a distinctive look for his vision of the future. One of the tiny details of the film was the cutlery that Bowman and Poole use when eating aboard the Discovery.


To convincingly portray the utensils of some 33 years in the future, Kubrick turned to a 1957 set by Danish designer Arne Jacobsen. Even in 2008, seven years after the events of A Space Odyssey and 51 years after they were designed, the cutlery still looks impossibly futuristic and exotic.


Of course, since I have a horribly debilitating 2001 obsession (almost as bad as Jim Smash's Alien problem), I lusted after the cutlery as soon as I first noticed it in the film (i.e. around age 8). When I later discovered it was real and you could actually buy it, then I only wanted it more. You understand how painful that is: I'm male and straight -- this sort of feeling towards spoons and forks is unnatural, and difficult to express to people without feeling embarrassed. There are few people who would understand: Claus shook his head at me in dismay even though he's the sort of person that just has to buy 8 gigs of RAM so that smoke grenades can be rendered slightly faster; perhaps Andrew Glazebrook might get it, since he spots which train model kit parts were used in the EVA pods -- though that terrifies even me.

So, today after years of annoying my wife by saying "I really should get those" and then just not doing it, I "wandered" into a houseware shop and bought four sets before I changed my mind for the 500th time. Actually, part of my brain knew what I was going to do from about a kilometre away, you always do when you're about to spend a lot of money one something you don't really need at all. I attempted to explain the Kubrick connection to the bright orange twelve year old shop assistant, but that didn't go well and I had to trail off in mid-sentence, as usual.

And now as I sit here looking at my rash (if taking 30 years to buy something could be described as rash) purchase, I am exremely pleased and touched to finally own something that is not only iconic, architectural and beautiful, but is also the exact same thing that Dave Bowman ate space carrots with.

Next, some of these: