So I think I need one mega stream of consciousness blurt to get myself up to speed and back to the present. Although I don't know if it's really worth the bother as with Number 2 popping out some time in the next few months, there'll likely be even less time for blogging than there is now? Oh, which reminds me: I've been meaning to post the 20 week ultrasound image and continue my tradition of drawing unfavourable comparisons. Tell me, for instance, if you can see anything in this image other than a Simpsons' character? I mean, look at that overbite.
Oh wait, that's not the original... um, oh, here it is:
...but still... not much difference between the two to my eye.
So, I just returned from a holiday with a group of friends in Marysville, and arrived home to discover the front door wide open! No signs of burglary, so I can only assume that when I deadlocked the door as I departed I didn't give it the special up-and-to-the-left shove it requires to really click home. Whoops. The screen door was snibbed, but still, if you'd looked up as you were passing you could have seen right down the hall into the bathroom! (Actually, it's a bathroom that needs an eye kept on it.) Funny thing was the local paper sitting on the doormat featured a cover story on Darebin's "burglar curse" where it quoted RACV figures showing "all Darebin suburbs other than Reservoir are well above the state average of one burglary for every 48 homes." A fact to which my fly-wire door will (if prompted) attest! Perhaps the burglars were away on Christmas hols as well?
Oh, which reminds me: Christmas! Happy belated approximate birthday Jesus! You don't look a day over 2007. Hope your day was especially Awesome!!!!
Oh, which reminds me: I've been meaning to post this cartoon that I enjoyed recently:
Always nice to discover others who share your particular irritation.
Which reminds me: while you've got to hand it to the Breast Cancer Foundation people for such an amazing job generating awareness and support for their cause, I wonder if their success is to the detriment of other worthy causes? With their string of high-profile, pink-themed public events and an array of pink-coloured Special Edition consumables so vast you could live your life purchasing nothing else, it's easy to overlook the smaller voices crying out for attention as well. As I say, I don't begrudge what they've achieved, I just hope we don't fall into thinking our philanthropic obligation to society ends at the cash register with two packs of strawberry Tim Tams. And in particular (actually the catalyst for this little rant), I hope we don't see any more instances of emotional manipulation as blatant and clumsy as this:
What a shocker. Wouldn't "Buy Dove Pink to help find a cure for breast cancer" have worked just as well? Hey, no one wants to be the jerk who says they don't want a cure for breast cancer, so maybe it seemed like a good idea in the brainstorming session, but you've got to wonder what they were thinking?
Which reminds me: when Radiohead made In Rainbows available for download they inexplicably neglected to include cover art. A quick email asking where it could be found received a laconic "Cover art is not available" in reply. I did in the end find an image which, to my horror, was riddled with Helvetica. So much for being progressive and experimental! But thankfully the cover must have been fan-generated or somesuch, because it's significantly different to the cover art now available from iTunes and Amazon.
The splotchy thing's been flipped and rotated, a wavy blue Punch-Drunk Love-ish and Sea Change-ish slippy thing's been introduced, the type's been tightened up and, best of all, no Helvetica. They've gone instead with the UK's road signage face Transport Medium, and I think the result is considerably more pleasing. Although I would like to baseline shift those slashes.
Um, what else? Oh, that's enough for now.
UPDATE: While googlin' around for Jeremy Blake links (he of the Punch-Drunk Love/Beck work), I discovered he's dead! Swam out to sea and drowned himself last year a week after his girlfriend killed herself. Tragic. Wikipedia says they "believed that they were being followed and harassed by Scientologists up to the point of their deaths." Bizarre.
Well... in the meantime, please do enjoy his stunning clip for Beck's Round the Bend.
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Hey, no one wants to be the jerk who says they don't want a cure for breast cancer, so maybe it seemed like a good idea in the brainstorming session, but you've got to wonder what they were thinking?
ReplyDeleteI had some ideas about what they were thinking, remembered a famous image that illustrated the point, googled it, and ended up finding a blog post and comments that made all my points better than I would have anyway...
http://metaphorical.wordpress.com/2007/06/27/dont-shoot-the-nickel/299/
I will just add that I have the charming habit of picking up Pink-branded products in the supermarket and intoning solemnly to my wife that failing to purchase this particular brand of chocolate/deodorant/toothpaste will mean that PEOPLE WILL DIE! (or, if I'm feeling chatty, PEOPLE WILL DIE, INCLUDING MAYBE YOUR MOTHER. DO YOU WANT YOUR MOTHER TO DIE?)
(When the gods punish such hubris by inflicting breast cancer on all of my female relatives, I will no doubt be able to take cold comfort from the fact that buying pink products would have done precisely nothing to help them.)
Maybe this will work better...
ReplyDeleteHehe. Yes, good link. I like this:
ReplyDelete"...because if they’re daring me to be that big an asshole, well, I’m up to the challenge."
And in particular I like this, which says what I was trying say, only better:
"It’s the same thing with this “Buy Red” shit. Sure, you wanna contribute some of the price of a phone to some cause, great. And, if some people buy that particular model phone because of the campaign, good for Buy Red. But, at the same time, we can’t reinforce the idea that you can solve these sorts of complex global problems through consumer decisions. It’s irresponsible (and often tragically ironic) to allow people to alleviate their guilt about these types of problems by going to the mall."
And I'd love to be in the next aisle, JJ, reaching for a jar of vegemite, or whatever, when suddenly your voice of doom resonates through the shelves: DO YOU WANT YOUR MOTHER TO DIE? Hehe.
ReplyDeleteOh, and that Lampoon cover made me think of that eBay incident where someone listed a photo of some trees with the threat that they would be felled one by one unless someone bid to save them. I think no one bit so the photo was relisted with one tree cut down, and this time someone did!
ReplyDeleteOh, here's a link.