move

i am moving this shebang over to tumblr. since i'm not really an e-journaler, that site's set-up fits my needs more. so come on over. i promise to update more. i also promise to provide less boring crap about my personal life and more hilarious linkage/photoage/videoage/whatnot.

cut them out

Subways signs changed to forbid cast members of Full House

vio boingboing

a lubricated song-and-dance

this indian music video about the importance of using condoms is maybe the best sex education tool i have ever seen. while the lyrics are great, my favorite part is the condom freestyle dance between verses.

the speech that never was

William Safire, who now does the On Language column for the NY Times, wrote a speech for President Nixon in 1969 in the event that something happened during the Apollo 11 mission to strand the astronauts on the moon.

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

(courtesy of kottke.org)

wsj: slang usage sucks

Watch your language

A markets column contained a passage in early editions quoting the CEO of a home builder predicting that 2007 was “going to suck, all 12 months of the calendar year.”

Between editions, the language was mercifully cleaned up. Dictionaries call the verb suck used this way either slang or vulgar slang. We shouldn’t stoop to such usage just because almost everyone else does. If it is uttered in a direct quote by somebody major, the president or the pope, say, that’s another matter. If the source is an ordinary CEO, we might consider including it, but only if a page editor or deputy managing editor approves.

(courtesy of the wall street journal's style and substance)

this dog is awesome

flyer for an awesome dog (courtesy of boingboing)

so begins the links barrage

i realized that i sent a lot of web sites to my friends on slow days at work, and it would be a lot more efficient to post them here. so gird your loins and hide the silver, because you are about to get a lot of really cool links, courtesy of moi.

first up, a blog of comic book panels featuring crotch punches. (courtesy of boingboing)

let's get serious for a moment, shall we?

I'm participating in AIDS Walk Atlanta, a yearly 5k fundraising walkathon that raises funds for AIDS organizations in the metro Atlanta area. These programs provide essential care to men and women in our area who are living with HIV/AIDS. Beneficiaries of the 5k are listed here. The walk takes place Sunday, Oct. 21, and I'm on Creative Loafing's team.

Small donations can do a lot of good, especially if we're all willing to give a little.

Even if you don't make a donation in my name, any money you can throw at this 5K is tax-deductible and will earn you massive good karma points.

my donation site is here.

some things

1. my car was towed on sunday night from an empty parking lot in a strip mall where none of the businesses were open. also, my debit card has gone missing, so i canceled it the day before. two things about towing companies: they are run by people who daily accrue a massive karmic debt, and they only take cash. you can see why, then, my whitehot rage has only just now started to subside.

2. i went to the gym today, and realized that i always park right by the door so i don't have to walk as far. seems a little counterintuitive, but i'll probably keep right on doing it.

3. i went to see nickel creek on friday, and during the concert the guy playing upright bass busted out his clogging skills. my friend emily turned to me and said "wow, i didn't see that clogging coming." does anyone see clogging coming? ever?

don't speak

earlier this week i made my first foray into oral surgery. i underwent a procedure called gum grafting, which entails cutting gum tissue from the roof of my mouth and stitching it to the gum below my front bottom teeth. (i had an overzealous orthodonist, and long story short, i have receding gums, so this was a totally necessary surgery).

the end result will be delightful, but for the moment my mouth is a war zone. i have stitches on the bottom half my mouth, and i have a clear plastic retainer that i have to wear for the next few days to protect the wounds on the roof of my mouth. this means i can't eat solid food (boo)or talk (double boo!). i dearly love both of those things, so you can imagine the hardship. also, my face is swollen and i think i kind of look like rumer willis. so for the next two weeks, if i seem irritable, it's probably because i am.

but in better news, i got a new job! one that i'm really excited about! one that in no way involves working for a rag run by a classist old white bigot! in two weeks, ill be a page designer for creative loafing, inc., and i couldnt be more pumped. i don't think i've ever worked for a publication for whom i'm also the target audience, so i think i can bring a lot to the position.

i'm sort of nervous, too, because i'm going to be working with actual designers instead of copy editors who paginate on the side, but i'm thrilled to be working alongside people who know a thing or two about design. i always learn best by observation, so this is a perfect opportunity for me to learn more and eventually take over the world.

this new employment development, paired with the ton of freelance i've been doing lately, has kept me pretty busy, but that's when i'm happiest anyhow. i'm also trying to take some improv classes in the next month or so, which means i'll probably stay busy. good thing i'm into all that.

a text message conversation

adam (my friend who lives in nyc): i just passed joanna gleason on the street

me: i just drove past a hardees

adam: doesn't compare

me: f you, frisco burgers are awesome

adam: dude (she was) the bakers wife

me: dude chicken nuggets shaped like stars

adam: omg they do that now

today, in jay mccarroll

as a pretty intense fan of project runway, i found this new york magazine article really interesting. i love jay! why oh why does success still elude him? give the man a talk show. i'd watch.

most terrifying web ad ever?

also

i watch a lot of 'scrubs,' because it's on when i get home from work and because donald faison and john c. mcginley are hilarious. by the time the show is over, i'm usually checking e-mail or something in my room, so i end up listening to the first few minutes of 'becker' before i remember that 'becker' sucks harder than a prostitute comprised of black holes and turn off the television.

now for something kinda different.

one of the comic strips we run at work, funky winkerbean, is AWFUL. when it tried to be funny, it fails. when it tries to (incredibly heavyhandedly) talk about The Issues Facing Teens Today, it fails. yet we run it, because old white men apparently looooove their crappy comics. but almost once a day one of the hip kids on the copy desk makes a crack about how awful the strip is. for a while, to have someone annoy you about something stupid was to be 'funky winkerbeaned.'

anywho, tonight i realized that 'becker' is the funky winkerbean of syndicated sitcoms.

things you can do when you live alone

it's only week 3 or so of the living by myself experiment, but right now i give the whole experience two thumbs up, way up. some of the perks are pretty obvious. (when i wash dishes, they stay clean!) others emerge after short bursts of contemplation. i don't remember which method of discovery contributed to the pantslessness that i am currently enjoying, but oh boy is it nice.

i'm easing into it slowly -- watching tv without pants, washing dishes without pants -- but i want to go bigger. making eggplant parmesan without pants. making appointments via telephone without pants. wearing pants without pants (DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND?!?)

i like fonts.

as you've probably gathered, i'm a bit of a font nerd. i think part of it stems from my early designing days. i wasn't really good enough to design intricate, complex layouts like some people i know, so the tiny building blocks of design were front and center for me. i could grasp typography. i could explain why the italic ampersand in garamond looks so damn cool.

my friend mack recently sent me a poll on slate.com of writers responding to this question: what is your favorite font, and why.

surprisingly (to me, at least), a lot of people went with courier. the rationale is that they use it every day in manuscripts. a couple went with staples like times new roman and palatino, and one courageous soul named hoefler text as the best font of all the fonts.

i recently queried the brain trust on which fonts they liked most. here's what the people who actually replied had to say:

Katie Tanner (friend, former co-worker): I've been using Tahoma a lot as a sans serif. I liked Gill Sans and Hoefler Text. Specifically, I love the swirly font Jose uses for mini review bylines in Paste: Hoefler Text-Swash italic.

Katie Davis (friend, former co-worker and pirate): didot italic. (i know, shocker.) i like its architecture, and its subtle serifs. and it made an omelet for me one time. with cheese and bell peppers. and bacon. and class.

Becky Snowden (friend, former co-worker, animal whisperer): Selfish and Porcelain but now it's EVERYWHERE... well porcelain is. It really depends on what it's for. LOVE cochin. Dang there's a font I'm really loving but it's on my comp at work...

Marilyn Cole (friend, computer science goddess): I really like plain ol' monospace these days. I'm always in terminal mode, with white text on black screen, and you need one of those for
coding. I do remember being a kid and seeing things like Courier and
thinking, why would anyone pick such an overtly ugly font?

Monospace is sweet, though. I also like Computer Modern, which is the
LaTeX font that Knuth (a computer science god) designed with vector
math.

And back when I was less dorky (?) I liked Garamond best for serif, and
Verdana best without.

Thorough enough analysis for your taste? I could go on.

Brandon Reynolds (friend, former roommate, owner of a fatass cat): Brandon:arial

me: mmk

why?

1:47 AM Brandon: i think it has many uses

it looks good at any size

me: that's what she said!

hioooo

as for me, i'm a fan of the futura family and bodoni lately, if only because those are two of the nicer fonts available to me at work.

least favorite font? comic sans, a hundred times comic sans. make the madness stop.

what are your favorite fonts? (and karen, i bet i can guess your's.)

mama has hit the big time

a blog about cheese linked to an article full of fake 2006 new year's predictions that my friend katie and i made way back in the day for my old newspaper. (i realize that was a very convoluted sentence, and i'm sorry, but i'm so EXCITED.)

everyone wants a shot of paris

how the mighty have fallen.

on shaving in small spaces

the shower in my new place is tiny, like dorm-bathroom tiny. it is WEE. there's no tub, and the shower itself is so small that i barely have room to rotate, much less shave my legs.

as i contorted myself tonight, i noticed myelf employing various yoga poses in an awkward attempt to make myself all smooth and pretty-like. there's this one move where you stand on one leg and put your other foot by your knee -- i have no idea what it's called, and in the end result you look like an epileptic crane, so i'll call it the epileptic crane -- and that's pretty much the only way the back of my knee is touching razor. other showertime-yoga favorites are the trapped bear and the bleeding swan.

it's uncanny

mural, originally uploaded by brookage.

side-by-side comparison of butthead and andrew jackson as seen on a mural in our office

i'm missing out on nachos

it's 12:43 a.m. on what is now technically a sunday, and i am not at a bar. i am at my desk, in my tiny terrarium-office, and i am waiting for the press to run.

this has pretty much been the story of my last six months. luckily for all involved (including you, gentle reader), mama is about to get a brand new bag in the form of a brand new schedule. due to an ever-fluctuating staff (and my general awesomeness), i now get to design pretty lifestyle pages. this is good for a panoply of reasons -- who doesn't love pretty things, right? -- a major one of which is the upcoming schedule change. no longer will i toil crazy late hours. no longer will my weekend fall on sundays and mondays. no longer will my social life consist mainly of tivo and reading material! i'm beyond thrilled, as you can probably tell by the exclamation point. i am not a woman who toys idly with punctuation.

i also moved this past week (third time in a year. i'm beyond thrilled, so far beyond it that i somehow circled back to annoyance). mama and i worked on making the new digs cozy, and after a day's worth of paint and a couple trips to ikea, i think this is the beginning of a beautiful tenantship. it's a tiny basement apartment in a house in va-hi, and for the first time ever i live by myself. i worry about getting lonely, but hopefully kickball and volunteering and freelance will keep me plenty busy.

the bad side of moving all the damn time: mama is broke. (i've started to refer to myself in third person as 'mama' all the time. it's becoming a problem.) so no fun in the immediate future where money's concerned.

so while i may be broke and stuck at work on a perfectly lovely saturday night, every cloud has a silver lining. my silver lining at the moment is the summer kickball league.

country roads, take me home

am stuck in leesburg until tomorrow for sister's graduation. rode down in station wagon with grandparents. grandmother kept yelling for grandfather to stop at roadside stands so she could buy tomatoes. grandmother was repeatedly denied. i tried to drown them out with the new charlotte gainsbourg album (it's fabulous and you must own it).

rue!

rue!, originally uploaded by brookage.

we got a free copy of rue mcclanahan's autobiography, "my first five husbands and the ones who got away," at my paper a few weeks ago, and i ripped through it in record time.

rue, as i like to call her, is best known as blanche from 'the golden girls," and she has had a lot of sex. as of page 87, she'd already had more sex than i will ever have in my entire life.

upon my sparkling recommendation, rue's book has become required reading for females on the copy desk. she was in atlanta tonight for a book signing, so a couple friends (and one very patient fiance) and i went to look upon the face of a woman who taught us all that it's better late than pregnant.

the line was pretty long (most rue disciples were gay men. i think her legions of fans should be called rue-fies), but a small-screen legend awaited us at the end. i told her that i liked the book (i did, actually, it was a fun, scandalous read), and she seemed surprised. i think she was just intimidated (thanks, karen) by my massive rack.

william miles grem

william miles grem, originally uploaded by brookage.

behold! it is the progeny of darren and jenna, and lo, the lord was pleased. wmg is the first of what i'm sure will be many babies born to friends of mine.

but you never forget your first time, folks. look upon him and know cuteness. and do check out the knitted cap (handmade, i'm guessing).

the fighting scooter libbys never say die

i am sad to report that my kickball team, the fighting scooter libbys, did not win their first game. we lost 5-6 to nkotb. it started raining before the game even started, and because of that I had to take off my glasses, so i was blind, cold, wet and, upon sprinting from second base to home to score one of our first runs, extremely winded.

despite these hardships, i think everyone had a good time. we will play this sunday at noon at field 4 in piedmont park. as i told the team in my weekly inspirational e-mail:

our narrow loss -- by one point! in the pouring rain! with no beer! -- is nothing to be upset about. trust me. i lose a lot, and i know when to get upset and when to let the failure wash over me so that i may rise, phoenix-like, to win another day.

i also went to a benefit called baconfest this weekend. all proceeds went to dad's garage, and i was luckily able to convince fowler to go with me, because i knew next to no one. it's still jarring to come from athens, where i knew everyone and their junkman's daughter's brother, to atlanta, where i work at night and barely see people i know anyway, much less make new friends.

an improv show followed the bacon+beer+bands. every time i see improv -- even bad improv, which this definitely wasn't -- i'm reminded of how fun it is. i really miss making an ass of myself for the amusement of others.

which brings me to another item of note. remember how you told me i was the funniest bitch you knew? no, not that time. the other time. well, you were right. i found out last week that i won first place in the georgia press association's humorous column competition. this is awesome, because it means i am retroactively hilarious. i've thought about going through my old news stories to make sure i wasn't cloaking any morsels of hilarity within tired prose about bostwick's possible subdivison regulations that they might talk about maybe thinking about getting some time in the indefinite future maybe if the cotton crop doesn't spoil.

i doubt that venture would be very successful. i won a feature writing award as well, and a couple of minor design awards, but my staff won a general excellence award for lifestyle coverage. it was gratifying , because i know everyone at my old paper (ok, most people) worked incredibly hard, and we busted our asses week after week for a labor of love and a miniscule paycheck.

i now have a job where i don't routinely have panic attacks, though, so i guess that's nice too.

yellow fever

i've spent the better part of the last few days either misspeaking obvious words (dublin instead of belfast) or finding myself completely incapable of thinking of the simplest words (yesterday i actually said 'what's that word? opposite of cold?').

i'm not even allergic to pollen, but i'm blaming pollen. apparently, a high pollen count is traditionally in the 120+ range, but down here it's been over 5,000 for the last two days. it's like nature peed all over my car, and her pee makes most of my friends really sick.

a scene

PETER, ROBIN, BECKY and BROOKE are wandering through a parking deck.

ROBIN: Are you sure we're on this floor?

PETER: I reckon we're one lower.

PETER, ROBIN, BECKY and BROOKE file in the tiny elevator and go down a floor. PETER hits the panic button on his key chain, causing a car horn somewhere in the vicinity to blare.

PETER: Where's that coming from?

ROBIN: I think it's coming from where we just were.

PETER, ROBIN, BECKY and BROOKE once again file in the tiny elevator and go up a floor. PETER hits the panic button on his key chain again, causing a car horn somewhere in the vicinity to once again blare.

PETER: Where is that noise coming from? I thought it was coming from right here.

ROBIN: Hit it again.

PETER sounds car horn several times. After an incredibly long 30 seconds, a random guy sitting in a car a level below them yells:

RANDOM GUY: IT'S COMING FROM DOWN HERE!

PETER: Where?

RANDOM GUY: IT'S RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY CAR.

PETER: Thanks.

RANDOM GUY: NO PROBLEM.

let's go fly a kite ... or not

i think i am pretty much in love with spring. i'm sitting in a coffee shop not working on an article, and across the street there is a whole lot of hipster kite-flyin' going on.

we never flew kites when i was a kid, partially because our backyard had too many trees and partially because we lived in the country and had to make our own fun, fun which usually entailed locking my sister in her room and telling her she was adopted (the two days she actually believed this were some of the best ever).

when i got to college, i bought an x-men kite in hopes of flying it in the myers quad. the only problem with this plan is kite flying is apparently difficult for people who locked their sisters in their rooms and told them they were adopted.

does a font by any other name look as sweet?

i recently learned of a haiku contest. the subject is fonts (helvetica, specifically), and those who know me can understand the enthusiasm with which i approach the project. here are my first three attempts:

stocky and homely
your curves are nonexistent
like girls at thirteen

you are a default
i change you to futura
but you haunt me still

i shot the serif
im sorry times new roman
you slept with my wife

i know the last one isnt really about helvetica, but it might be my favorite so far. there are some pretty good ones up on the contest's site. check it out.

also, i met two of my heroes this weekend.

meeks' diary

my friend helen's dog meeks has a blog, and a few weeks ago i was a guest poster. here is what he spoke through me:

Dear Diary:

My heart has been shaken to its core. Mommy left last week. She didn't tell me where she was going, or why she was leaving, or even if she'd be back. At first I thought we were going to the park, but when we pulled into Camp Woof, i knew one of two option were afoot: abandonment or paw painting, and there was no paint in sight.

The last time I had an extended stay at Camp Woof, I had trouble finding my niche. The collies just glared at me judgmentally, the poodles were too busy sniffing their butts to be bothered, and I kept waking up with a shifty Labrador glaring at my through the bars. he whispered something about making me his bitch, but i'm a boy! that's not possible!

After the first few hours of counting the tiles on the ceiling (it got repetitive, as I can only count to three), I tried to pass the time in more productive ways. my attempts at knitting were pathetic, because you need thumbs for that, and i couldn't work on my upcoming line of baby rattles, because that requires thumbs too. evolution is not a king mistress, especially to an up-and-coming rattle designer with paws instead of hands.

I was left with thoughts of suicide and the searing knowledge that mommy was a bitch. i wish i had tear ducts.

Edit: Mommy just came to pick me up! ohmygodilovehersomuchwhywasiupsetagain?

picture time!

remember that time we all met at the yarn store in watkinsville to honor a soon-to-be-mother, academic and 'lost' theorist? i took some pictures. they's on the flickr. does anyone have a link to jen's picture's from this event?

don't let the ides get you down.

are we at walley world yet?

this guy puts clark griswold to shame.

(kottke)

my blue period

so it's been a while. let's acknowledge and move on.

i've been really cranky and generally in bad spirits for the last few days, and i realized tonight that my period is nigh. while i'm all for aunt flow -- she's like a big bloody 'you're not pregnant' card that i get once a month -- i never liked this habit that girls fall into of blaming mood swings and erratic behavior on their special time of the month. i just didn't buy it.

As far as I was concerned, my period's only side effects were getting me out of gym and the occasional ticket. But for the first time, this month I realized that my cosmic bitca-tude directly coincided with my uterus sloughing off its lining. and i'll bet you a dollar that all my life, while i've been busy making fun of girls who blame their periods for excessive weepiness, i've been crying because i can't find a matching sock right around the time aunt flow comes riding into town.

it's like sex that way

so i'm trying to write a short piece about minigolf for LOL, and i'm wading through the infuriating minutes or hours or days that precede me finding the words that i want. i have an outline before me, a general idea of where i want to go, but no luck so far in figuring out which puzzle pieces are going to join to make the whole i'm after.

this is infuriating.

where's the bride?

if i ever get married, this will be it.

Flea Market Montgomery

one man's flea market is another man's minimall.

my night

i had a pretty wild night last night (it was a one-year breakupversary drinking whiskey and cokes watching bands drinking more whiskey and cokes kind of night) but i think my friend ty wins. he woke up this morning at the clermont lounge with a fudge round in his pocket. that country song writes itself.

words

"it's a bore, but the answer is good things only happen to you if you're good. Good? Honest is more what I mean. Not law-type honest -- I'd rob a grave, I'd steal two-bits off a dead man's eyes if I thought it would contribute to the day's enjoyment -- but unto-thyself honesty. Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the other's sure to."

-- "breakfast at tiffany's," truman capote

i love having time to read again.

eeyore was right!

A short article in the New York Times reports that people in Denmark are happier than any other Western country. The reason? They don't expect good things to happen to them as much as people in other countries do, and when something good does happen, they're thrilled.

“It’s a David and Goliath thing,” said the lead author, Kaare Christensen, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. “If you’re a big guy, you expect to be on the top all the time and you’re disappointed when things don’t go well. But when you’re down at the bottom like us, you hang on, you don’t expect much, and once in a while you win, and it’s that much better.”

from boingboing

unfortunate screen capture

who knew saddam hussein would be disguised as james brown and displayed in Augusta? that's cold, man.