BJ is fine, but The Bear is in critical condition. … Actually this is a wrecked semi I passed on my drive from PA to NC. I think it had happened just a little while before, because there weren’t any police or EMS people yet. From what the radio said later, it didn’t sound like anyone was actually hurt. Not even any chimps from 1979 tv shows.
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Every time I see one of these, I find it somewhat jarring. (Pictured is one of those “If you’re asked to pay something other than this amount, call this number” signs outside a Taco Bell drive-through window.)
What it tells me is: the people inside cannot be trusted — so much so that we don’t want you just to ask them to revise the amount they say you owe, but to call us and rat them out, because they’re essentially criminals on probation.
It’s like one of those sex-offender electronic ankle devices, only for a whole taco joint.
I honestly don’t think I’m overstating the case — at least not for myself. It really does make me think of all of these things.
It’s basically an architectural element, one which shapes the environment in a very particular way. No matter how friendly or responsible your particular fast-food window helper might be, this sign makes sure you question their honesty, even if for just a moment. That you, essentially without your consent, join a sort of police force that’s keeping them in line from outside their enclosure.
If I can’t trust the amount of money they’re asking of me, something I can actually verify by checking the prices on the menu, why should I trust that the food itself is safe and uncorrupted?
If I were a true pomo nerd, I’d start quoting Foucault. As it stands, I’ll just get my Nacho Grande and stop thinking so much.
I was digging through lots of old discs of photos today and found these from my 2002 venture out to Asilomar as part of the wacky little contingent that worked on whether or not a professional organization for information architects would be a good idea, and if so, what would it be?
In this whiteboard shot, we’re figuring out what to call it — which was of course dependent on what sort of organization it would be to begin with.
I realize the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture was too clunky for the long term, but something about being there was magic. I think in part because the place is so beautiful and simple, and relaxed.
I have a whole set of pics up from 3 years ago in my flickr album. Go check them out!!
In 1987 some friends and I traveled out to visit the Rev. Howard Finster in Summerville, GA. You may have seen his artwork on albums by REM and Talking Heads? But that wasn’t his main gig … his main gig was being a folk visionary for Jesus (and sometimes Elvis) who had an entire cosmology all his own. He was in some ways the William Blake of North Georgia. He had an entire garden of sculpture and art that he called Paradise Gardens, some of which the boys in REM helped him out with when they were younger lads.
We sat with Howard and listened to him opine, surrounded in his cramped living room where almost every surface had been turned into art — ceiling tiles, doorframes, everything. He served us CocaCola (a beverage he believed to be in some way ordained by God, with mystical significance) and played his banjo for us some.
I had taken along a weird little guitar I’d found and rebuilt (and painted turqoise…I was silly) and for some reason had a hankering for him to scribble something on it. An angel or something. I sheepishly asked him for that, but he took it into his kitchen for half an hour and then came out with it looking like you see here.
Howard told me way back then to please share the message he’d inscribed there. I never really thought about that until now, when it hit me that with the Internet, I can indeed share it with anyone who cares to see. So here it is.
I’m going to be trying to move the blog and my site to a new host over the weekend. So if something weird happens here, that’s why.
Google SMS is yet another thing that’s been around for months that I haven’t heard about yet.
Verizon charges me like $1.25 each time I call for the phone number to a restaurant or anything of the kind. But I can just message Google on my phone, now, and it’ll look it up for me!
Of course, you have to query it the right way, but really…pretty amazing.
For the coolest plastic figurines ever, check out Parastone Mouseion collection. Guaranteed to turn your office cube into a conversation piece.
According to the site: “With the greatest respect for the original works of art the designers of the Parastone studios in The Netherlands have brought to live famous paintings by lifting images out of the flat surface.”
As much as I like Bosch, the Aubrey Beardsley one may be my favorite.
The Pirate Supply Store!
Authors Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida opened up a specialty shop that sells pirate supplies in SF. The proceeds go to support the writing labs for kids that they started (one is at http://www.826valencia.org/).
One day I’ll have my head out of my rear end enough that I’ll not only write excellent books, but co-create the hippest publishing entity ever and find the time to set up non-profits that teach children how to do and love wonderful things with words.
In the meantime, I’m going to continue preparing for that day by watching TV and eating nachos.
I took this with my camera phone while hanging out in a pet store with my daughter. It’s a baby macaw (yeah, just a baby, but still its head is bigger than a softball)
And I sent it to Flickr with my phone, where it was added to the inkblurt album. And now, from there, I hit “blog this” and type this entry, and it goes straight into my blog!
I know a bunch of people already know about this, but some don’t. (And I just now used it for the first time — and I’m easily amused.)
I’m slowly migrating over to a new name here. Memekitchen will still work for email and for getting people to the blog, etc, but the new name is…
“InkBlurt”
Yeah it feels a little weird in the mouth. But I like it. It’s a little less high-concept than “memekitchen” and people will probably know how to pronounce it and not have to be familiar with meme theory to get the reference. Plus there are about a zillion other “meme-something” sites on the web now.
I was a little shocked nobody had this domain yet. Maybe I’m alone in thinking it’s a cool name?? S’ok … it’s mine and I loves it.
You may or may not have already heard of PostSecret, but I only just learned of it.
It’s fascinating to me both because of its function and its format. The function isn’t that different from many blogs where people post their secret thoughts, exhibiting them anonymously… some journal communities do this on LiveJournal and elsewhere.
But this place has rules about how things get posted. People have to take the time to make a physical artifact and mail it in. It strikes me as almost religious — an enforced ritual around confession. The artifact created and mailed and then displayed — is it a kind of penance? Does it cleanse? I wonder if the people who make them come back and look at it on occasion once it’s posted, the way they might visit a loved one’s grave?
They range from the humorous to the devastating.
Yeah. I’m gonna ramble about SW3.
First of all, at one point in the movie (SW III) Obi-Wan actually addresses a clone commander whose name is “Cody” (at least it sounded that way). So yeah, at one point he actually says, “Commander Cody, blah blah blah blah…” well, there’s some orders and stuff there, not blahs, but you get my drift. “Commander Cody” is (or was…hell maybe I’m just old, even though it was before my time) the name of a space-hero from movies in the 50’s. See here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045382/
This, to me, is a key for understanding why SWIII is a mess. (A glorious mess, but I’ll get to that.) Lucas is full of pieces and parts of things he wants to do all at once, but not especially adept at cramming them all together so that they work dramatically. Tons of what he does amounts to little homages to things he loved growing up and since. So this bit of dialogue is cute, in that sense. He would’ve seen the movie linked above when he was about the age I was when I saw the first SW movie. The problem is that it’s stuck in a spot where there’s a lot of action and tension, a sense of deep foreboding in the threads of the movie. It’s just misplaced, and ends up sounding like pastiche. (Another misfire is when Darth learns of a tragedy and holds his arms out and yells “Noooooooo!!!” — and it sounds and looks so much like a parody, that it’s hard not to burst out laughing.)
Basically what I’m getting at is that there are tons of things going on at once — political and philosophical introspection, incredible design, a “love” story written by a third-grader (which is like that, I think, because Lucas *had* to tell that story but would prefer to skip it altogether — he’s said before that he prefers designing things to writing scripts), Campbell “hero of a thousand faces” mythmaking, wicked cool and fast spaceships and things that are essentially floating racecars (another of his obsessions), excellent swashbuckling, etc etc.
He manages to put it *all* in this movie, and somehow, amazingly, I wasn’t completely appalled. I was actually touched at certain moments — mainly because of Ewan MacGregor’s superb acting (his swashbuckler twinkle-eyed pluck is fun as hell, and such a lovely throwback to Errol Flynn and the like, and his reaction to Anakin’s deceit and defeat sort of jut out of the movie to say “look this is what acting looks like”). But the clutter means that some scenes feel amazing, others feel like they’re from a wholly different movie.
I’m more impressed with the actor (forgot his name and no time to look it up) who played Anakin now — though with the dialogue he had to work with, it’s interesting how he’s more convincing as an actor when he’s silent than when he’s trying to say anything Lucas wrote. But when he is silent and smouldering, it’s *very* convincing, chilling even.
One fun part was seeing how the ‘look’ of the older star wars movies gets gradually folded into the sets and costumes in this one. It still doesn’t make sense — all that elegant and rich design evolved into duplo-block widgets?? Whatever… but still, because I saw the first movie at the age of 10, seeing it brought kid-feelings up that overwhelmed any 90% of my adult jadedness.
And off to my meeting …
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BTW I also tweet at @inkblurt.
