There's lousy cell phone reception in office where I work, unless you come stand right by the windows. That is, right on the other side of my cubicle wall. But you have a phone at your desk, so why would you need to use your cell phone? Oh, because you need to argue with your significant other or a collections agency or anyone else who needs a good arguing with and you don't want your coworkers to overhear. Just, I guess, me.
"Every time you sniff and say somebody has 'too much free time,' the part of you that used to love making things for pure joy dies a little." - Merlin Mann
I'm eliminating the phrase "too much free time" from my vocabulary. Even before I came across this pithy sentence from Merlin, I had been thinking that a lot of the stuff that I do, other people would probably think was a waste of time. So, just because someone else has come up with an odd way to invest their energy, that's no reason for me to belittle them. Now, I'm still gonna laugh at them, but I'm not going to question their basic motivation for engaging in the activity. Cool?
Update: Making Light shares a video of Clay Shirky speaking at Web 2.0 and answering the similar question "Where do people find the time?" It's a 15-minute video and well worth a watch.
Oh my lord. Here's a new ad campaign for Swedish Fish (long a Fuzzy-favorite anyway). In case you can't read it on this copy, there's a tiny "Nej" (No) under the kitty and a "Ja" (Yes) under the fish and the tag line is "A friend you can eat". There are 4 other images in the campaign, including a redonkulously cute bunny on a waffle.
(Via AdFreak)
I have, at work, a slightly-oversized coffee mug. It's from Crate & Barrel, sturdy, and a pleasant (I think) shade of green. This is, if I may digress from my point a bit, one of the ways I cope with the corporate environment. Years and jobs ago I got that mug and a complete, single set of silverware (knife, fork, tea spoon and soup spoon) specifically to bring into the office. Eating team-building deep dish pizza with plastic silverware will drive you crazy, I believe.
But the point is oatmeal. I make instant oatmeal in that mug for breakfast many days. (McCann's Instant Irish Oatmeal, Maple & Brown Sugar flavor, to be precise. An unsolicted endorsement. All natural flavors, and isn't that refreshing to see every now and then.) And if I hop up from my desk right after I finish my oatmeal and rinse the mug out it cleans up in a trice. Lickey-split. Easy as pie.
If I wait 15 minutes or half an hour or longer -- glue. There's a hard film all over the cup and tiny bits of oatmeal get welded to the bottom. It takes soaking and scrubbing to get it clean.
It seems hard not to think that there's a life lesson lurking all too obviously there. Clean up your messes right away and they're easy to take care of. I just wish I could learn that lesson, at the very least with regard to the mug.
OK, check it -- Monday night I said of a friend of ours, "well, at least she didn't display her butt on Display Your Butt dot com." Erica asked, "is that domain available?" It was. A few photos of the Blewt crew hanging around for Chicago Underground Comedy later and Team Gerdes Plus Noah is proud to present:
Well, huh -- I suppose that once you come up with the pun "deadbeet" there are only so many ways to draw it. On the left, a deadbeet icon I created for the Deadbeets website around 1996 or so. On the right, a detail from Joe Ledbetter's King of the Deadbeets from 2006 (also available in toy form, which is how I found out about it).
The results of this year's Chiditarod have finally been announced and Blewt's Silly Funny Goof Gang weren't very fast runners (we came in 46th out of 77, nearly an hour behind the winners) but we were awarded "Best Fashion". Yeah, that's right, we're pretty.
Hey, you're a jaunty little potato. Cute chef's hat. That's a nice batch of french fries you're leaning so casually against. Wait... did you make those fries? Out of your family!?!?
Gary Gygax is dead and I am sleepy, so I'm off to bed. Commenting is now only a quarter broke. Probably.
I probably spent 100 times more hours just reading the D&D manuals than actually playing a campaign. Thanks, Gary.
I can't let it rest, because there are other Barack Obama Miis being posted on Check Mii Out, but they're just not as good as the one Erica made. I've determined this scientifically, people. (Also, I finally got the export from Mii Editor to work so I could bring you this high-quality version. Print out your own poster at work on the work color printer. Your employer will thank you!)
To get Erica's go to Check Mii Out, Posting Plaza, Popular, Search (the magnifying glass), Change (the circular arrows), and then enter the entry number 4764-4332-9025.
And heck, why not T-Shirts too? Combine your support for Barack Obama and your love for the Nintendo Wii on a high quality(?) Cafe Press t-shirt.
It's got to be karmic payback -- occasional-designer-Fuzzy defended Pixish against charges that it was spec work, and then actor-Fuzzy was presented with an audition this week where the power relationship was very askew and pay is uncertain.
Derek Powazek defended Pixish again in more detail, mainly by talking about the power-relationships difference between spec work and Pixish. That is, it's spec work if a big company does it to a little design company. Pixish, he argues, is different because the power relationship is different, especially because the process is open. (Insert here the stuff I said about Threadless earlier.)
But besides the power (and the money) there's another criticism -- spec work is both a symptom and exacerbation of a devaluation of design. Some companies, I'm sure, solict spec work as business proposition -- why pay for anything if you don't have to? But many others likely do it out of ignorance. Design is "just moving words and pictures around", right? I could do that, if I just had the time, the client thinks, so it should be cheap and easy for the designer to throw something together. (Clientcopia abounds with just such stories.) (Of course, I think design is becoming a more accessible and distributed skill.)
It's a lot harder to quantify that devaluation, of course. And it's a lot more emotional because it's tied up with questions of respect. (Threadless, to go back to that example, has, I think, increased the respect for design among their audience -- the comments in the scoring section of the site are often filled with cogent and constructive design criticisms.) Every time a client lowballs you because they don't think design is important, it reminds you of when your Archtypical-Aunt-Tilly asks if you're "still doing that work with the little pictures" and you want to scream a little*.
And if you think you hear that as a designer, it's a lot worse as an actor/comedian, believe you me. If someone asks me about "your skits" one more time -- to the moon, Alice, to the moon. Last week, I came off stage after an improv show, which the audience had paid to see and I had been paid to perform, and one of the audience members congratulated us on the show and asked if any of the cast were "aspiring comedians". Sigh.
So we're back around to the audition I just did and I probably shouldn't say anything more because I do actually want the work (it'll be fun! it's building relationships!) but just know that it's all a little wonky and you probably shouldn't trust any pontificating I do. Because lord knows, I love me some pontificating.
* Feel free to yell "projection!" at any point here.
I'm working on a longer blog post about this in general, but I'm not done with it and I couldn't make this fit in a tweet as hard as I tried:
Cabel Sasser asks if Threadless is spec work: No, it's not 'spec work' to accept unsolicted designs, which is all Threadless is doing. They just happen to be very open about their process and their initial selection committee is 'everyone who participates in the site'. If your design is selected you get paid and you're entirely free to use your unaccepted design elsewhere.
"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings, valentine!"
"Freedom", eh? Sorry, but I think Optimus Prime is trying to break up with you. "I need my freedom, human. I'm a truck *and* a robot -- there's more of me than just one person can love."
Order has been restored. Thanks, Mustache Factory. (But how do you feel about sandwiches, Fuzzy?)
Dan (H) is very kindly helping me fill the mustache-shaped hole in my life.
That should be a lovely mustache button from the Moustache Factory. Worse, the just-a-plain-mustache button is not currently for sale. Where Is My Muuuuuuustahce?!?!?
Hopefully Andrew has the original in his hands by now, so I'm going to go ahead and post this...
Follow me, here, for a moment, as this ties together several of my areas of interest.
In 2005 John Hodgman (This American Life, The Daily Show, the PC in those Mac/PC commericials) wrote a book called The Areas of My Expertise, a fake "compendium of world knowledge". It had a long section on hobos which included a list of 700 Hobo Names, names like Boxcar Ted and Guesstimate Jones and Microfiche Roy, the Side-Scroller. As part of the promotion material for the book, Hodgman released an mp3 of himself reading the entire list while Jonathan Coulton plays guitar in the background (live, one take - fingers of steel, that man). The book, by the way, is hilarious.
Inspired by a challenge from BoingBoing, some illustrators, including Adam "Apelad" Koford, set out to illustrate each of the names. An informal group covered all the names, but eventually Koford illustrated all 789* names by himself as well.
In early 2007, the LOL Cat internet phenomenon, which had been around as "Image macros" for years, really took off. In June 2007 Koford "revealed" that his grandfather, also a cartoonist, had actually invented LOLcats with his 1912 cartoon "The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats". The cartoon was the adventures of Meowlin Q. Kitteh and his kitten friend Pip, both hobo cats. I was an instant fan -- the combination of old-tymey humor, internet jokes, and the cuteness of the cats hits some magic combination of switches in my brain. The Laugh-Out-Louds Cats are created via an interesting process -- rather than being drawn on any sort of schedule, they're drawn as people buy them. For $20, you get the orignal artwork mailed to you and Koford posts a scan to his website. It's been popular -- where even a daily comic strip would just produce 365 strips a year, the Laugh-Out-Loud cats hit number 666 (on New Year's Day 2008) after just six months. At times, Koford has also used the same model to offer custom monkeys or animals or new hobo names via his website.
Also in 2005, Erica's good friend Andrew Livingston began to play bass in the Mike Doughty Band, which he continues to do to the present day (new album out February 19!). Everyone in the band had nicknames and Andrew was named Scrappy, which was quickly shortened to Scrap. Because it's what Mike calls him onstage, a lot of people only know Andrew as "Scrap Livingston".
Which is an awesome hobo name.
So that's what we got Andrew for Christmas 2007.
The end.
*The second paperback edition of the book included bonus hobo names.
I've always been impressed with improv groups that celebrate their 100th show or whathaveyou, not just for the longevity, but because I've never kept that good of records, to even know when the 100th show was. Until this year, when I started using a modified blog to create the little performance calendar on the FuzzyCo home page (and another on Erica's sidebar). So now I can tell you in 2007 I did:
for a total of 84 shows.
I also read 38 books (down from 79 last year), saw 34 movies, and played 14 video games all the way through (I'm in the middle of about 6 others).
I ran 335 miles, including 18 miles of the Chicago Marathon.
I posted 2004 photos on Flickr, posted 243 tweets, and made 410 blog posts here at FuzzyCo and another 261 at the Chicago Metblog.
I've been threatening promising to make this video for months and finally got around to it. She also circles the coffee table in the living room and people sitting in the office. She also just sits, sometimes, so you don't worry that she's an endless circler.
In honor of Columbus Day, Erica and Jim Fath's musical number from the first season of Impress These Apes.
I'm kinda old school, in that I like having a landline phone in the house, especially because I've had bad luck with cell phone reception in my last two places. But since we're moving in a couple weeks I thought it might be a good time to move the landline number off of AT&T (née SBC) and lump it in with our RCN service to get bundle pricing and save a little money. So I wanted to see if any of our Chicago peeps had any good or bad experiences with the quality of RCN phone service?
I did not even know that I had been waiting for Beyonce to make a mod/hip-hop dance video. And yet, there it is and it's perfect.
Parker has been 'capped' by Anton at the Lolcatgenerator. My photos of Rio and Bear have also been... enhanced. Ah, Creative Commons, what can't you do.
Johnny Knight took some photos of me (with beer) for a thing he did for the Drinking and Writing Beerfly Alleyfight. He is not to blame for the lolization.
Seriously. I'm on like page 280 of 6000 and I keep almost catching glimpses of discussions on the internet. I knew that if I was going to read this last book with any sense of surprise, I'd have to read it quick before the plot was just out there in the zeitgeist. Soon, I'll bet you, people will be using events from the book as examples in pop culture, just because so many people have read it that it'll be a cultural touchstone. (Or maybe I'm over-estimating the influence of a bunch of 12-year-olds and nerds.)
Photo by Erica.
(Again, the original photo by La Shinda Clark.)
I can't get enough lolcats and so must make my own.
Where all my Canucks at? What-what!
This is largely a note for myself. Vatterott has four Ts and one R.
The artificial, extended pause just before a result or contestant's name is announced on a reality show is over. ("The next name I'm going to call is.......") I so decree. It has become a cliche, but worse, a useless cliche. I mean, the horror movie cliche of "we all jumped at that noise but it was just a cat" is despised, but it works -- you jump at the noise. The extended pause no longer works. The contestants are as nervous as they're going to be anyway. And it doesn't increase our tension, because we're used to it. It's just annoying at this point. Please note. Over.
It's been a long-standing rule at FuzzyCo that if you advertise your product or service to us via Unsolicted Commerical Email (aka The Spam) then we can't buy it, even if we might have wanted to. (It's happened -- I've opened an email, thought "hey, that's a neat gadget" and then realized that it's from a company I've never given my email address.)
In a similar vein, I'm announcing a new rule: if you advertise your product or service using fake "lost pet" flyers, then we can't purchase or support your efforts, regardless of our feelings about your offerings. Real lost pet flyers are too important to have the medium polluted with commercial messages. Not that I wanted to watch John from Cincinnati anyway, but it's definitely off the list now.
My new favorite spam subject is "that mcgrady is garyville". I think I'm going to start using it as a disparaging remark. Oh man, that mcgrady is so garyville.
Still in Mississippi. Home soon.
I was out running, early, and saw a bird pulling a worm out of the ground. Done and done.
A few years ago I bought a $50 MP3 player from Secondhand Monkeys for Erica. And then I got her an iPod, so the lil' MP3 player got tossed in a drawer. This winter, I was between iPods and I pulled out that MP3 player to have something to listen to while riding the train. Unfortunately, it used a non-standard USB cable which I couldn't find in any of my assorted-computer-parts boxes. So I emailed Pat Misterovich from Secondhand Monkeys, who has moved on to projects like the Pez MP3 Player, asking if he still had any of those cables I could buy. And he just sent me two, which was delightful.
And then Erica got me a new iPod and the Secondhand Monkey player went back into the drawer (this time with its cable rubber-banded to it). But the point of the story is just to note that there is still good customer service out there and that if you're in the market for a novelty MP3 player, I know where you should go.
This is one of my favorite jokes, and I tell myself it all the time to remind myself of the importance of context:
"Waiter, these noodles are terrible."
"Sir, it's not noodles, it's sauerkraut."
"Oh... well then it's excellent."
Look, I'm not sure you need to know why I did this to a blameless duck. But I thought it'd be a shame if no one saw it. Just enjoy it. Gaze into its calm eyes. Let the sparkle carry you away...
Where's Mustapha? Kate reveals him!
Inspired by this guy. Dialogue by Erica.
Dan got the new cathead accessory for his XBox 360. I'm waiting for the wireless one.
I think my usual Little Corner order is 8 points. Sometimes, at unfamiliar places, I do like to get my server's opinion, but I'm usually a pretty hard-qore orderer.
(via Outside Counsel)
First person* who can guess why I had pieces of paper taped to the TV wins a DVD of Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (his adaptation of Macbeth). Click the picture to view it larger at Flickr. Leave your guesses in the comments.
* Other than Erica, who was there helping.
Update: It's been sussed out. Rather quickly. But feel to make a ridiculous guess before you read the comments and then share your suppositions.
Thank goodness we didn't let anyone bring their digital cameras along when we knocked over that gas station, but Dan sent along his photos from earlier in my birthday evening and Chris Biddle handed me a CD of photos from which I added a few to my birthday set.
What a birthday! After getting up at 5:40 to go give Don Hall his birthday present we picked up Alex and Alyssa from the airport. On the way back into town I took a gamble that the cold weather would decimate the line at Hot Doug's and I was right, so we had an excellent lunch there. While everyone else took naps, I had a rehearsal and then got home just in time to head back out to the Playground. The PoM show was redonkulous -- we had every active member there, plus PoM alum Steve, Alex (who just got on a team at The PIT), and Andrea Swanson all sat in. I think there were 100 people on stage. Don't Spit got canceled, because the heat in the theater was all wonky -- I was a little bummed, because it meant I won't be able to do Dr. Baron Ludwig von Evilschlager until March, but it did mean we got to get drinking early. We left a note on the gate at the Playground, but it was so cold that the tape was having trouble sticking. I hope it held and that no one showed up for the show and got confused. We spent the rest of the evening at the Spoke as friends came and went. Why do my friends like such violently named drinks -- car bombs and shotgunned beers? I owe Dan Telfer enormous thanks for sticking around until the bitter end to be my designated driver and for walking back to Broadway and Belmont in sub-zero temperatures to get his car and come back and pick us up. And now I'm old -- whee!
Christopher and Katie got all dressed up to go to a fancy event on Saturday and Katie lamented that their digital camera was out of batteries. Fortunately, the event had photographers on hand:
Happy Birthday, Don Hall! (Tim Whetham, we'll get you next year.)
Our flight out of Columbia, SC is delayed and I'm really happy because it means we're going to get to see the whole game.
Lots.
Lots and lots.
Forty minutes on h
