Favorite TV character from childhood
April 18, 2010
I suppose there can be little discussion about this. It was the Bear from the Andy Williams Show.
I???m not saying I didn???t watch other shows. I can remember quite a few that I always tuned into, either on my own or as part of regular family viewing. But I didn???t have the same emotional connection as I had with the Bear. To be truthful, I don???t remember many details.??
There was Andy Williams himself, and I was just old enough to be grooving on his greatest hits record album that my mom had (???It???s my happy heart you hear, Singing loud and singing clear ??????). And there was the Bear. The Bear who was eternally optimistic despite Andy always slamming door in his face.
I loved the Bear. The Bear was a little bit goofy, but more importantly, he was always denied the cookie he so desperately desired. As I???ve thought about it in the last few days, I wonder if deep down I wasn???t, as an only child, secretly identifying with the Bear. I didn???t want for any things, but I wasn???t spoiled either. But I didn???t get my Lite Brite until I was 35.
How much did I love the Bear?
In my early childness, my dad was a university music professor (101, theory, composition), so my mom, dad, and I often attended recitals of one kind or another. The recitals were held in Lehr Auditorium and there were always refreshments served afterwards. After one recital, I remember working my parents hard to be allowed to take home an extra chocolate chip cookie because I was determined to mail it to the Bear. Now, I don???t know if the cookie ever actually was deposited into a USPS mailbox. What I do know is that I dutifully sealed it in an addressed envelope and my parents patronizingly assured me that it had been mailed. Forty years later, I think I can be pretty certain that my parents were just humoring me when they nodded and said yes, they had indeed sent the cookie off to the Bear.
Aren???t parents wonderful?
Favorite typeface: Hobo
April 14, 2010
All day long I knew I was forgetting something, but I couldn???t quite put my finger on it. About ten minutes ago, it hit me like a thunderbolt. Hobo.??
I had dutifully reported my current favorite serif and sans serif typefaces (Archer and Gotham, respectively). They are clean and modern and make any design look good.??
BORRRR-ING.
You all recognize Hobo. You know you do. You see it everywhere and it takes you right back to the groovy 1960s and?????70s. At least that???s what you think. Hobo was actually designed in 1910 by Morris Fuller Benton. I didn???t knock myself out, but after a few minutes of internet searching I failed to find much more about its history than the following:
The Hobo font is a dynamically tapering face in which all strokes are accentuated curves, achieving a superb decorative effect. Hobo almost suggests a freely drawn alphabet with its unusual robust roundness. The Hobo font was designed to be used at large sizes. It has no descenders: the lower case g, p, q and y are incorporated into the x-height. The Hobo font imparts a friendly personality to display work such as invitations, menus, signage and packaging. (reference)
And about its designer:
Morris Fuller Benton (November 30, 1872 ??? June 30, 1948) was an influential American typeface designer who headed the design department of the American Type Founders (ATF), for which he was the chief type designer from 1900 to 1937. Benton designed more than fifty typefaces, ranging from revivals of historical models like ATF Bodoni, to adding new weights to existing faces such as Goudy Old Style and Cheltenham, and to designing original designs such as Hobo, Bank Gothic, and Broadway. (reference)
Hobo don???t get no respect. In my office we joke all the time about using Hobo in our designs. And then when we???re acting out on our exasperation with client revisions, we declare that we will refine our design by outlining/inlining/adding a drop shadow to Hobo. We don???t mean it in a nice way.
I got to thinking about why we treat Hobo so disparagingly. I???m always aware of when I see it out in the wild. One of the conclusions that I drew about why I pay attention to it is that beyond its surface hokiness, it is a darned readable typeface. From a distance, you know that it???s Denny???s Doughnuts (Rockford, Illinois), or Love From Minnesota (IDS Building, Minneapolis, Minnesota), or the Copa (barely readable) Cabana (Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin), or that you should have Happy Feet (Mall of America, Bloomington, Minnesota), or that Ginny Smiths [sic] the best stand for cappuccino/coffee/milk/ice cream (Minnesota State Fair, St Paul, Minnesota). When you???re at Emo???s Dairy Mart (Peoria Heights, Illinois), reading the menu isn???t the hard part. The hard part is making a decision.
No, I think how you feel about Hobo is quite similar to how you feel about Lawrence Welk???you???re embarrassed to admit you like it because it???s so forty years ago, but there???s no denying it???s a classic with mass appeal.
Side note: The whole time I was typing this, I was totally seeing this Helvetica or Arial (or whatever my default font in TextEdit is) as Hobo. Hobo text. There is no such thing. I am hallucinating.
Click to visit my Flickr set of even more Hobo photos, which I have been inspired to take to participate in the Hobo 2010 project which commemorates Hobo???s centennial.
Something small
April 12, 2010
As you may remember from the turn of the year, I had the purchase of a new computer in my sights, either an Apple iMac or Mac Mini. I decided on the Mini because it is, well, small.
This is my new setup: the Mini and two external hard drives. The Mini???s drive is 320MB, the externals are 1.5TB each. The external drive labeled CJ (after my black cat) is my Time Machine drive. I hate the user experience of tracking down what you want to recover with Time Machine, but you sure can???t beat the authorize-it-and-forget-it ease of its backing stuff up. My previous backup method consisted of periodically copying things (such as my Photos folder) onto one of the extra drives I had installed in my old computer, which was better than nothing but not so good for the things that had been added in the intervening months.
The other external drive, Dasie (my black and white cat) will be my jukebox. I chose to name the music drive after Dasie because she???s more of a crazy party animal than CJ, who is the steady, consistent personality and more suitable for the important backup function. It is waiting for me to hook up one of the internal drives (Bibi, former rabbit) from the old computer and transfer the files.
To that end, I have an external case to house an internal drive. But today it was busy with the main hard drive from the old computer, (which was named after my rabbit). I could have booted the old computer in Target Disk mode, but I was thwarted by both old Firewire 400 (I did get a Firewire 400/800 dongle. Don???t you just love the word ???dongle???? I do.) and laziness about plugging in the computer and keyboard. Yes, folks, I would rather open up the box, remove the drive, and attach it to a new case than plug in the computer at the outlet (by which I mean grounded power strip).
It seems as though I???ve copied over everything I could need from the old drive. Eventually I???ll reinstall that drive and redo the old computer, and either try to sell it for beer money or donate it.??
So I plugged in the Mini (also named after my rabbit) and was all set to do Target Disk with the old computer and migrate my settings and user stuff and be up and running in no time. That was when I learned of the Firewire snafu. Instead of one-hour gratification, I had overnight gratification. I had to connect the two computers via Ethernet (!) and left the process chugging away overnight. In hindsight, it was probably better that way because then I didn???t stay up all night setting up and playing.
That???s the great thing about Macs. The transition was anticlimactic. There were no hitches. The migration worked perfectly and when I did things like check email and go online, I really wouldn???t have known anything was different because it just worked. The biggest adjustment has been to how quiet the Mini is. I don???t even know it???s there. The external drives are pretty quiet, too. The old computer was kind of like a jet airplane under my desk, which I didn???t realize until the sound was no longer there. Even this afternoon when I had the internal drive plugged in and was using it, it was very noisy. But the new computer mounted the drive and didn???t need to have any drivers installed or any other special considerations. Same with the CJ and Dasie external drives.
Get a Mac. They just work.
This entry is inspired by my photo of something small, my Mac Mini, but when I got to the sentence above, I realized that quite a bit of what I wrote could double as explanation for the March 20 mission (which I never wrote about), which was to share a word that???s not in your personal dictionary. The word I chose is the proper noun Windows, as in the operating system. Thankfully thus far in my computer computer career I???ve not had the OS inflicted upon me, and only use the word in the context of being a Mac fanatic and feeling superior.
Refrigerator magnet face
April 11, 2010
I was very excited about doing this because the weekend before I had stumbled upon some nifty rabbit magnets at Borders and planned to use them as the eyes of the face. Then time got in the way.
For the first part of the day I was bumming because I hadn???t looked ahead at the assignment so that I could do it the evening before, and as usual I didn???t get up early enough to leave myself any extra time in the morning to accomplish it. I resigned myself to waiting until I got home after work and perhaps even until after bowling to make my face.
Then as I was digging my lunch out of the office refrigerator I comprehended that not only were those magnets suitable for face-making, they were suitable for awesome face-making. And not only awesome face-making but entire clown-making.
It was a no-brainer to use the small magnets as the eyes and smile. Then I realized that the wood-spoon butterflies would be perfect as hair. Then the felt flowers let me know that they would be just right as buttons. I added the magnetic bottle opener as the bow tie flourish.
As often happens when I am setting up my photos at the office when, you know, I should be working, someone catches me in the act and then I feel self-conscious and dumb. Sometimes I explain. Sometimes I don???t. This time I could have, but I chose not to because I don???t particularly like the person to whom I would have been speaking.
After I got some positive online comments about my magnet face submission, I decided it would be the perfect spring avatar. This evening I adapted it to the one you see on this account. I would have been perfectly happy leaving it as the magnet face, but as I enjoy seeing the face of the person whose material I???m checking out, I modified it once more to provide the same courtesy to you.
Not very interesting but there it is.
March 31
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Favorite dessert
April 11, 2010
You should answer this not taking calories into consideration, though it is true that last night instead of making brownies, I ate two grapefruit for dessert. This wasn’t because of any hippy skippy 5-A-Day thing. No, it was much simpler than that. I was out of white flour and wasn’t confident enough that brownies made with whole wheat flour wouldn’t taste, well, you know, like chocolate cardboard.
I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan of dessert. Unlike my dad, I don’t feel like I need a little sweet something to finish off a meal. If something comes my way, I might eat it, but I don’t feel incomplete without it by any stretch of the imagination.
Once again, I am influenced by my mom on what my gut instinct answer is to the question of my favorite dessert—pecan pie. I prefer it without a dollop of ice cream, though I might like it just warm enough to take the chill off. And if I were being completely truthful, I would also say that really, to me the pecan nuts are at least 50% incidental to my enjoyment of this delight. I like the sugary sweet custard, plain and simple.
I like regular yellow egg custard, too. My Grandma H often made it when we’d go visit in the summer. She had brown ceramic custard cups. Not ramekins, just cauldron-shaped dishes. I suppose they could have been considered ramekins, but they weren’t the white ones you mostly see today.
I also like cheesecake—just plain cheesecake with no “fruit” toppings. My favorite non-plain cheesecake was the Butterfinger cheesecake at Pizza Lucé in the Warehouse District in about 2003, I’ll say. I never saw it other than that one day. Pizza Lucé’s pizza is amazing; the Butterfinger cheesecake was out of this world.
Ice cream is sometimes good. By ice cream I mean plain chocolate in a sugar cone, or a chocolate malt extra malt, such as the kind I get at Potbelly Sandwich Works.
By now you may be wondering why I picture brownies. The answer is simple. They are the easiest to make at home with the ingredients I have on hand anyway. Okay, I suppose technically it’s easier to scoop ice cream out of a cardboard carton, but you can’t just whip up a batch of ice cream with ingredients that are just lying around. Brownies you can.
And I like making them myself because then I know what’s in them. So this is the recipe I use. I don’t bother with the cream cheese filling because that would require forethought. I just make the brownie part, and I have adapted it as it is typed in. The original recipe is pictured below.
Today I ate my grapefruit in conjunction with my brunch (this is the best time of year for delicious grapefruit in the Northern Hemisphere and they’re my favorite fruit, so I’m eating them frequently right now). In honor of the question of my favorite dessert I went ahead and made the brownies using whole wheat flour, pictured above. I’m pleased to report that they don’t taste at all like cardboard.
______________
(my adapted version)
I made a woodcut (follow-up)
April 8, 2010
If you have been following this blog for three or more months, maybe you remember that Christmas weekend I went on about having done a woodcut. At the time, I didn’t want to reveal the picture, because the person for whom it was intended had yet to see it. That moment of suspense passed, and I can now reveal what was originally redacted.
It is this, readers, another version of My Rabbit, and here is a picture of it. It’s the third unframed original woodcut taped to my front room wall. One of these days I should take care of that.
March 14
My theme song
April 8, 2010
Of course I have very many songs that I love. But a theme song? I never thought about it. I mean, it’s not like I’m a baseball player going up to bat.
So I thought about it. And I decided on “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen from their album “Jazz.” This is for two reasons.
First, I have loved Queen since about 1975. As much as I love Del Amitri, which is a whole lot, Queen is my desert island answer. I can’t explain it. Justin Currie is one of the most best songwriters ever and is a brilliant, brilliant lyricist, but Queen overwhelms Del Amitri in musicianship and innovation. Del Amitri is the most awesome bar band ever. Queen is just awesome.
Second, “Don’t Stop Me Now” comes closest to embodying my personal joie de vivre. Do those of you who know me think otherwise? There are lots of other songs that shiver me timbers more, but for general mood and loose interpretation of the lyrics, this one does just fine.
Don’t Stop Me Now
Mail a random person a cryptic letter
April 7, 2010
I had grand intentions of pointing to a name in the phone book and mailing a piece of paper through the USPS. (Phone book, huh? Does anybody even use a paper phone book any more?) But then as usual, I ran out of time and took the easy way out, doing it online. I did it twice, each time with the emphasis on one aspect over the other.
My first cryptic note was, I feel, the more cryptic of the two, as it was a response to the cryptic note that had been sent to me. The sender explained his selection process: “This message sent to a recipient I determined randomly from a list of people who were most likely to not reply “wtf” Fortunately, I did not wonder wtf and instead found a translator with which to craft my reply.
Later in the day, I received another cryptic note: “Zegabee-dash-coovran-dos-leek-va-ich-nop-hu-8797-hay-deek-dosh.” I initially thought it was a cryptogram like a few other notes had been, but it looked too much like actual language. I briefly though that maybe it was an elaborate anagram as the sender was British. I searched for the entire phrase and found nothing, so I searched in smaller and smaller chunks. Eventually (I don’t remember how, because I’m unable to recreate the search results now) I got to the lycaeum.org website. What I saw there looked very much like the cryptic note I received. When I entered any of the words in my message in the Search box, it seemed to generate a page based on that word. Weird, and interesting. Thanks, Jack!
The second cryptic note I sent was not so cryptic, but it was to a random person. A truly random person. I found an online name generator, entered the minimum parameters, and got a name: Ella J. Harrison. I performed a Google search for Ella Harrison (okay, you sticklers, my computer performed the actual search) and clicked on the first result. That took me to a seemingly regular person on Facebook with about a thousand friends, so I was hoping she’d be receptive to my overture.
I posted my not very cryptic note to Ms. Harrison: “I used a random name generator to make a name. Then I did a Google search on that name. Yours was the first result listed, so you’re the lucky one! If you’d like to know what I’m up to, please visit this link. It’s good, clean, creative fun!”
She has not responded.
March 12
Irrational fears
March 25, 2010
Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to be all controversial and rail against the people who think that President Obama is turning America into a socialist or communist state (he isn’t), or that he’s *gasp” Muslim (he isn’t) or wasn’t actually born in the U.S. (he was). It would probably make for more interesting reading, but no, I’m talking about irrational fears such as stepping on a crack and breaking your mama’s back.
I have two irrational fears that easily come to mind. The one that pushes to the forefront of my thoughts about ninety-five percent of the time when I’m in a situation where it could happen is getting my foot stuck in railroad tracks.
I grew up in a small town in Ohio that was bisected by the Pennsylvania Railroad. Historically it was the Pennsylvania Railroad; what it is known as today, I don’t know. The former depot is in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
What I do know is that when I was a child, my mother warned me never to step directly on the rail when I was crossing, lest my foot become inextricably lodged and I’d be trapped there, only to be made into mincemeat by the next passing train. Our town was a speck on the map. Trains didn’t slow down as they passed through. They blasted their horns and the crossing gates lowered, but the trains did not slow down.
This was back in the day when parents didn’t mollycoddle and overmanage their children. Comparatively speaking, I ran wild as a child. I walked or bicycled to my friends houses. I informed my mom that I was spending the day in the library or swimming pool. I went to play in the woods at the end of the street. No one saw me for hours. Nobody panicked. Eventually I showed up.
But I digress, because I’m having fond memories of the first thirteen years of my life. Why do I, thirty-three years later, still wax so nostalgic about this basically nondescript place? Okay, it’s not completely nondescript. It has the only Wilson football factory in the country. The balls you see being thrown and kicked around in the Superbowl are made in my hometown.
But I digress.
Nervousness about the consequences of stepping on steel at an unfortunate angle still haunts me. I ride a train to work every morning. The rail is at street level and I must cross it to get to and from both platforms. I am always very careful to extend or contract my stride by ten inches in order to avoid disaster. I always take extra looks both left and right to ensure that the beast is not going to hurtle down on me mid-stride.
Wow. Thanks, Mom.
The other irrational fear? That, when I come back after having had to get up in the middle of the night, some under-bed gargoyle is going to grab my ankle and pull me under, and I will never be seen again. I don’t know where this one came from. As I’ve tried to remember today, I’m guessing that it was what my parents told me when I was a youngster so that I wouldn’t dawdle in said middle of the night.
Thanks, Mom and Dad.
Mom’s coming for a visit tomorrow. I could confirm these things with her. It’s her birthday today. Happy birthday, Mom!
Street View © Google Maps
It was a dark and stormy night ???
March 16, 2010
Tonight I present a group writing effort, courtesy of the TweakToday community. Our mission was to write a story by building on the previous submission. We have a little grey goose who just wants fast internet but has to battle an army of super-beavers by channeling her inner llama. Contributors are credited at the end.
Once upon a time in a small corner of the interweb
…there lived a small gray goose that was stuck in the land of dial-up internet access…
but one day that little goose was gonna get the biggest and baddest broadband connection available, then and only then he would be webmaster of….
the entire pond, the rest of the ducks would be her minions, if only she could defeat the evil…
General Beaver and his army of chipmunks, navy of otters, and airforce of hawks. His life mission was to….
…stop the number 1 cause of beaver deaths. Falling trees!
But the ducks interfered with his mission, as they were against cutting the trees that surround the pond.
In order to fight back, the ducks had to arm themselves. They strapped on …
fricken laserbeams.. That’s right, austin powers might have failed, but the ducks wouldn’t. They…
believed in the words of this charismatic leader. She, the enemy of half measures and weak decisions, would lead them to a paradise of lightening-fast internet connectivity- but they had to earn it first, and they knew the likely cost. Together they…
took aim at the beaver dam and prepared to fire but out of nowhere three giant…
super beavers stepped out of the forest. Paws beating their chests, chanting their creepy, awe inspiring, hold to the bottom of your seat chant that went something like
Beaver two, beaver one, Let’s all have some beaver fun!
Beaver four, beaver three, Let’s climb up the beaver tree!
Beaver five, beaver six, Let’s go get our beaver sticks!
Beaver eight, beaver seven, Let’s all go to beaver heaven!
Beaver ten, beaver nine, STOP! It’s beaver time!
but then the ducks responded…
In disbelief knowing that they were out gunned. The only means for victory would be to travel to Hollywood forest and summon the invisible swordsmen so that…
they would be given the knowledge of how to defeat the giant beavers. Meanwhile, the small gray goose had an idea and googled…
to find a gaggle of more geese to support the ducks in the effort. But her 128k modem dropped the connection so instead she had to …
use a much more reliable source of communication- the carrier pigeon. She enlisted the help of her winged comrades to call upon the council of seven Anatidae Elders- the great geese of yore whose knowledge, wisdom and power were her only hope against the toothy menace. The elders responded…
in their ancient and arcane dialect that victory favoured the bold, so taking her mighty asparagus spear in her beak, and feeling a spirited wind in her feathers…
she flew through the netherworld of dark cable features and foggy grey bottoms to find the information that
her ancestors had been right – she was not a goose afterall, but a…
llama, transformed by a curse years before. How fortuitous it was then, that the ducks returned just as this was revealed to her to inform her that the invisible swordsmen had revealed the super-beavers only weakness- that most awesome and terrifying of creatures- none other than the llama.
As the ducks then walked away to prepare for the awesome battle that awaited her father emerged from the woodlands behind her. The same man that vanished on that December 26th night some ten years previously…
, he explained that he went out to buy some smokes and got lost in a blizzard. but she did not believe him because…
his eyes had that same smokey haze they had when he told her mother he would be back soon, he was just going to the 7Eleven for a pack, she replied: “……
“don’t bother me with your nonsense. I’m busy learning on my abacus and drinking scotch.” The man continued out wondering about ducks and geese that lay ahead.
And at that very point in time, the gray goose realized that she had to channel her inner llama, the llama that she used to be. This was the only way to defeat the Beavers.
She pawed her webbed foot on the ground and waddled up to the first Super Beaver. She stared him in the eye. She took one, two, three deep breaths, and from the depths of her goosey innards expelled a giant, gooey spitball at the Beaver. The Beaver clawed at his eyes and cried out …
“Gross!” Little did he realize the true consequences the spitball would have. In a matter of seconds,
The beaver from his disintegrated eye pulled out a weapon of mass destruction. The very much feared
ocular dribble cannon… he took aim and…
tried to fire at the goose, but the spitball goo had quickly solidified, causing the ocular dribble cannon to backfire into the Beaver’s head. The Beaver
Beavers head exploded and his brains covered his tribe. With pure evil and anger flowing through the tribes veins they…
lost their self-control and blindly charged at the goose, forgetting …
their lunch boxes, cool box of refreshing juices and their ethics, thereby causing…
fits with the beaver union and forcing a work stoppage. As the entire Beaver community protested their lack of snacks, the small gray goose with the heart of a llama decided to offer up a treaty by offering…
The holy grail the beavers have been searching for all their lives…
The one, the only, the Beaver-Wings of Auresteus, son of Laumos born of Ilya. Such wonderful and unfathomable a prize could the beavers hardly bear to imagine. Acquired by her bravery in the Battle of Hayden and given by the king Rawl, these wings had been her prize for years, nay decades. The young goose/llama returned to…
her community of peaceful waterfowl and revealed the treaty she had proposed to the Beavers. The elders of the noble Mallard Clan, however, were displeased she had given away such a treasure as the mystical Beaver-Wings of Auresteus. They proclaimed…
“You silly goose! You’ve given away our best bargaining chip! Now we’re screwed.” The goo-lma sighed and said …
oh dear me… dear dear me… what have i done? she reached into her utility belt and pulled out a…
peace treaty, and she asked everyone to join her around a stump, where she said…
“Dear geese citizens today is not a day for doubts, but a day for decisions. A day not for quarreling, but for rejoicing for here in my wings is a great treaty of…
the world wide web. May information flow to your heart and music stream to your brain.” And with a flap of her wing…
she launched herself into the fathomless blue sky and sped off to the south for it was autumn. They all threw up behind her a cry in joyous support of net neutrality and…
honked, “Now, may we PLEASE have a high-speed connection?”
Authors: amazingaaron, thedigitalghost, jackcomrie, a_noob, superc0w, x-u, saxchik, toyotaboy, merendis, thebradymachine, tmmh, fstopblues365, kellydna, redd141, mandy716, sayanythingbam, imryanharris, athanie, coco-tidan, chaomancer, quacorezx, nonlinear_time, philos-phobo
Illustration: athanie
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