Baby's First Vlog

As many of you probably know, Hayley is a member of the youtube channel fiveawesomegirls. This week, their boyfriends are making videos in their places. Miss Thursday is Hayley, so today was my turn. Hayley is a goddam saint: she edited 4GB of rambling, "um"s, and general annoyance into this. I hope you like it; however, Hayley probably deserves more credit than I for anything good about it. My undying gratitude also goes out to Kathleen, who thought of pretty much every funny thing in the video.

A friend, Graham, is getting married on the 15th of this month. He's currently in NYC, and he and his fiancée were planning to fly back to Ohio on Saturday in order to make sure everything is ready for the wedding, which will be here. Then Graham was pickpocketed, and his ID and Social Security card were stolen. And now, in a remarkable feat of bureaucracy, Graham cannot fly home. You see, one cannot fly on a plane without ID, and one cannot be issued ID without a Social Security card. A birth certificate is needed to be issued a Social Security card -- his is in Ohio. I'm calling it Badgergate, because his last name is Badger and, well, this is scandalous. I'm the lucky one who gets to drive to pick him up this weekend. Kathleen is coming too, to help with the driving. We only have to drive to Philadelphia, because he's taking a bus to meet us there. But that's still about seven hours, each way.

About five of those hours will be spent on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The PA Turnpike and I don't really have the best relationship. Once, when I was on the Obama campaign, there was a crash, and I was stuck in literally the same spot for two and a half hours. People were walking their dogs on the freeway. The carfull of businessmen in front of me took out cigars and started smoking them, and then popped the trunk to have a couple of beers. It. Took. Forever.

Anyway. The reason I'm telling you this is because there is a chance I'll be able to visit the abandoned stretch of the turnpike on the way to Philly. I'm very excited about this, and I hope Kathleen agrees to it, because it's in the middle of nowhere in central Pennsylvania. And (no offense), all I ever want to do when I'm in central PA is to leave central PA. This time, however, I think I'll have the willpower to make myself stop and check it out.

In other news, I have some Sculpey and no idea what to do with it. If anyone has any cool, unconventional ideas, please leave them in the comments.

Typography Tuesday - A Proverb

There's an old proverb that I cannot find again, and it goes something like this.

Two typographers are released from prison, witnessing daylight for the first time in years. One looks down at the ground, seeing dirt, trash, and ruin. He thinks "I won't miss this worthless world- how could my life walking on this earth ever be enjoyable?" The other looks at the sky, seeing the sun and clouds and birds, and thinks "I am looking forward to living a full life, lucky for this beauty around me."

It's one of those "it's-all-how-you-look-at-it" things.

The first typographer looked down and saw the earth:



The second typographer looked up and saw the sky:



From here.

A Doodle Doodled While Waiting For The Doodler's Beloved To Return From Rocky Horror On A Saturday Night

Ancient History (Zombies! Clones! Trespassing!)

I'm not really sure what made me think of it, but today I realized that I took a Digital Photography class junior year of high school. It was hell. There were about three of us in the class who actually cared — everyone else was just there to get an art credit — but the teacher took an immediate disliking to my being a smartass and promptly assigned me a horrible partner, showed nothing of mine in the gallery, and gave me a B. I'm still a bit angry about that. Guess I deserved it for being a smartass, though.

Anyways. I was going through these pictures and, while they're mostly attempts to be artsy while conforming to the lesson, there were a couple that I sort of thought were worth putting up here. I can't find the originals, so all I have are the resized/compressed Facebook versions. Sorry. They're around here somewhere and, if I find them, I'll put them up.

First, there's a theme project I did on "Urban Decay," which, technically speaking, isn't the most urban. I visited a then-abandoned (now-demolished... RIP) truck depot and the vestiges of an old house nearby, neither of which being anywhere near anything urban. For the most part, it's not really anything to write home about, but I like to put all of my adventures in breaking-and-entering up here, especially since the truck depot was leveled last fall.

Urban Decay (click for album)

Then we've got these lovely numbers I did for my portrait assignment. I own that mask. It is a wonderful mask. It frightens children.

Lastly, there's my final project. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew it was going to involve a box and a sword. Lacking a sword, I drove to Graham's house to borrow one. Because, really, if you need a sword, that's where you're going to go. He wasn't there, but Sam was. And then this just sort of happened. I happen to like it a lot, shoddy as the photoshoppery is (and my lack of a tripod). It's called, "Attack of the Clones!" If you can't see the slideshow, click here to get to the album.

Typography Tuesday - Fonts in Books in Fonts

Today, the theme is meta, inspired by a slough of music I am listening to this week. The headliner is Patrick Wolf, whose song “The Magic Position” says, “You put me in the magic position/to live to learn to love, in the major key.” This is meta. Discussing music theory within music is tongue in cheek, but this song also takes it a step further with rising major scales in the background. Another example of this is Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah: “It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth/ the minor fall and the major lift/ the baffled king composing Hallelujah.” (Also see: that song from the Sound of Music: “Do! a deer! A female deer.”)

You get the point.

I love this tongue in cheek/artsy self-awareness, whatever media. Today’s typography grabs this theme, and is called Book as Type. Books are filled with fonts. This font is filled with books, which are filled with fonts.

As the creator, Amandine Allesandra, notes in this picture, “A book that is shut is but a block.”

And here is the alphabet- so colorful and gay!

What would be even cooler is to do a renegade setup of this in a library—a kind of underground typography vandalism. Leave your favorite librarian a special message—nothing says “I love you” like “I screwed up the order of your books for art.”

Green Windows (Well, technically, aqua, or turquoise, or something)

Well, who'd'a thunk? More pictures of the cement plant? What a surprise! (psst: You can see the window from the second picture in the first picture! 1000 points to whoever can find it!)

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This whole tonsil thing is pretty dumb. On Friday, when I got them taken out, it honestly wasn't so bad. But it's gotten progressively worse over the past couple of days. I'm not sure if it's the pain level or my annoyance with it that's increasing, but it's to the same effect. I can barely think; as per the doctor's orders, I've been fed a steady dose of Vicodin once every four hours since Friday. This has resulted in sporadic sleep, confusion, disorientation, difficulty keeping track of time, and general frustration. I don't really know why I'm whining here though. I mean, things could be a lot worse. I get a bunch of ice cream (even if all I really want is a Crunchwrap). I no longer have tonsils, which means I'll stop getting sick all the time. But no, I have to complain. Sorry. I'm also sorry if this paragraph made absolutely no sense; I'm having a bit of trouble thinking, what with being constantly drugged and all. Oh well!

Ariel will be around on Tuesday to talk to you guys about fonts!

Columbia-Portland (Ext)

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