YOU'RE VIOLATING SOME SERIOUS ASS CODE HERE.
RETIRED BULLETIN ENTRIES
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|  | 10.35: On Why Some People Should Not Be Allowed Near Words
NIDA: Sticks and stones, right? Well, some words work and some do not. Two words that do not work particularly well together when you're trying to sell your position are "children" and "suffer". As in, "We understand that children suffer under this policy but we cannot compromise the law," said a horrendously prepared and extremely arrogant Secretary Chertoff this morning on the Cable News Network. Dude, you are purposely making children suffer and you know that you are making children suffer and you will continue to make children SUFFER because you can't compromise!? If you wanted to turn people off stringent immigration policy enforcement, particularly after the network you're on just hosed you by showing a mother torn away from her 2-year-old child, well, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, Mr. Secretary.
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| | 20.29: Some Rambly Bits, Some Good Bits, and an Offer
NIDA: In the GO Life, we understand the world to be be either visual or verbal. Which is not to say that we don't see also it in shades of gray or the occasional black or white or, if we're really lucky, technicolor. But qualifying a statement like that only weakens whatever argument or point you're trying to make. And a well-reasoned, reasonable argument that weighs all cogent factors is not necessarily an All-American favorite. Which is not to say that we don't do much reasoning around here. Rest assured, all clients and potential clients, we do a great deal of thinking here at the GO, LLC. In fact, some of us can't stop the inner monologue going on inside our heads and some of us have been known to write copy (brilliant, captivating copy, if I may say so) in our dreams.
So - visual or verbal, and hence our Communications Bureau being known informally around these parts as the Department of Verbal Wrangling. (I'm not sure if the Visual side needs any wrangling, since the boys take care of most of that.) And by "wrangling", I mean "wrangling". Because the muse can be a bit of a female dog and doesn't stick to schedules or nice little desks in airy new offices. I usually write write my best stuff on the move and by the time I get to a computer or a piece of paper, I'm just grasping at the fumes of whatever brilliance has wended its way through the brain folds and trying to flesh out those fumes.
So you have hereby been warned that this bit that I wrote in my head in my car on my drive home today was written before the bit above that warned you about this bit and has wended farther away. Right. See, I just wrote that bit right now sitting down at a desk, and it's really not as good. But as a verbal wrangler, I collect stories and questions that help the boys (the Visual) find answers. For instance, our mailman is biking 150 miles down to Delaware this weekend. An interesting story that leads to some good questions, yah? Here is a good story, which leads to other good stories.
And this is just because I like a good manifesto. Speaking of which, we are currently out of copies of ours, but please contact us if you'd like one and we'll send one out as soon as we get more printed up. Or, for the ambitious among you (and by ambitious I mean young, hungry, and eager to learn), request the verbal and design the visual yourself. And send us a copy. It could lead to good things, easy-peasy (though I'm sure the world's third side, legal, might have to add its input).
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| | 09.57: I Need a Hero
NIDA: An old supervisor/friend used to sing that to me and it would always cheer me up. This was back when I was drinking the red-and-khaki kool-aid. And after 6 months of trying to get high school kids to understand that they have their whole lives ahead of them and that life extends beyond the walls of the school and beyond the bounds of their neighborhood while trying to get yourself to believe that exact same thing, you could really use a good cheering up. And what this all means today is that it's nearing the end of the week and I'm tired and prone to crying over the smallest hint of beauty and I'm looking for some inspiration.
It could be a song, movie, TV show, anything that breaks the monotory of a basket full of lemons that all taste the same.
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| | 10.50: Free Hat! Free Hat!
NIDA: Sorry intertubal cyberwebbing tribes. I managed a harrowing escape over the weekend from the cyberwebbing, only to be ensnared again by the many luscious temptations of the eBay. O the eBay, how in the world could I have lived 19 years on this earth without you?
For some reason I keep buying hats online. I can't stop myself. I think it's because my favoritest hat of all time (a gray, black, and white striped Gap beanie known to all as the Nida Beanie) met a tragic end in a hostage situation. I'll admit that the hostage crisis was my own goshdarn fault but still--it's always the innocent bystander that gets hurt. Since then, I suppose I've been trying to replace the Nida Beanie-sized hole in my heart (and on my head) and have been scouring the internets ever since. I've worked long enough in suburban mall retail pseudo-skater hell long enough to know two things: whether something will fit me with just a quick glance and that I should try things on before buying something because fitting does not necessarily equal looking good. Although I swear, those store mirrors are rigged.
Yet I still keep buying hats online.
Not much else is going on here in the 17602. Even in a "creative" field, routine seems to set in. Maybe it comes from all the sitting. We should install treadmills in here. Or Bowflexes. Those things are diesel. And then we would be diesel. Which would help me drop the ten vanity pounds I want to lose before I go mano-a-nida with Luke "The Original" Bunting in a Dunkin Donuts throwdown. He threw down the gauntlet awhile ago (and since he's so tall it's taken this long to hit the ground). This may seem counterintuitive, but I've done the math and the most I could gain back is roughly 2 pounds, which still puts me in a good place.
Otherwise, things have been pretty quiet around here. We're pitching a bunch o' proposals so we can start hiring people for our Top Secret project, known only by its codename, "Operation: Bob". If you're interested in learning more about the Bob, hit us up with your resume, portfolio, and a list of 10 things you want to do before you pass on to that Big Beanie Heaven up there in the sky. Here's mine:
1. Learn to surf.
2. Build my own darkroom.
3. Write a book of poems.
4. Start my own series of annoying educational kids' videos.
5. Restore a VW Karmann Ghia.
6. Find the perfect hat.
7. Trek Nepal.
8. Pay for a stranger's college education.
9. Learn Thai.
10. Build an awesome treehouse with my own hands.
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| | 14.57: Check yo'self before you wreck yo'self!
NIDA: I am a big fan of lists, as long as they don't involve the words "to do", "check", or "punch", although if a punch were a to-do on a list, I may very well reconsider. I also am a big fan of one of the managers I used to work with in pseudo-skater/surfer hell who for some unknown reason detested the word "moist". I'm still not clear on how the subject came up, but it amuses me. Anything that amuses me, I am a big fan of (see above). Like two-year-olds. And drunken businessmen at chamber of commerce mixers (see you tomorrow night!). And people who sing snippets of songs to me, if only because that snippet contains a homophone of my name (and only if they sing it tragically, tragically badly).
At the moment I can think of only one word that I detest, mainly because of how widely it's spread despite its misuse. And one does not a good list make. Ten tacos to anyone who can guess what it is. Hint: Dictionary.com defines it as a deliberate misspelling and mispronunciation that likens it to "garbage".
But here is a list of some of my favorite words (in no particular order):
Syllogism. Slides right off the tongue.
Tautology. Ok, I took a survey course in maths a bit ago, and while none of the actual numbering has stuck with me, the terms have.
Syzygy. So many y's, oh my! I learned this in the only college course I took (after I matriculated) that actually involved math. It also involved a leering Italian professor who wore tight jeans and shirts that showed off his chest hair and would slow down for us "non-physics majors" and tell us he was slowing down because he was about to (watch out!) do some math.
Percolate. Mmmm....coffee. Coffee that pops.
Sheepwalk. Which I saw on some other design firm's website and am firmly determined to steal for my own use.
Subalternity. You try figuring out what that one means at 8 in the o'clock.
Recidivism. A la celebrities and DUI's.
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| | 10.50: Coffee is for Closers!
NIDA: This entry will be short and sweet today. Jeronimo and I will be appearing tonight at the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce "mixer" (they throw everyone into a small room armed only with an adhesive name tag and a business card - only one person can be alive to walk out the door at the end of the night or everyone is blown up). If you are searching for a daily dose of the J-Ho (and I know you are, judging by our web statistics), tonight is your night. And I have no time for the web logging, as I have to psych myself up and get in the zone. The closing zone. This involves a little bit of Alec Baldwin's speech from Glengarry Glen Ross, a little Ben Affleck from Boiler Room, and pink flamigoed black Vans. See you on the flip side.
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| | 16.38: When You Care Enough to Hit Send
NIDA: Hey hey. This is my third attempt at the web logging today. The well is dry, peoples, DRY! So I got this from the Adfreak. Those guys over yonder are obviously full up on their wells. Or using some kind of septic system.
They say what we're all thinking.
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| | 20.50: To Monger or To Maven
NIDA: I was up in New York's Chinatown yesterday, experiencing the illicit thrills of crossing state lines and getting stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. We don't have that kind of thing down here in these Pennsylvania Dutch parts. We also don't have streets full of Asians. With their Asian language signs and their cheap Asian designer knockoffs and their Asian street food carts and curbside veg and fruit stands. I don't know about you but I only buy my baby bok choy out of the back of a van. Mmm...flavorful.
It's been awhile since I've been to Chinatown, and it seems a lot bigger. Or my memory is just a lot smaller. It's probably the memory. Apparently, it's been five years since I graduated and I really can't remember any of that time except for all the weddings and maybe divorces - I think I'm a few marriages behind the majority of my high school classmates and I really need to hustle to catch up. But anyway, it was good to get out of town and be a tourist and wonder why everyone was wearing ginormous sunglasses that threathned to eat their face. And we all remember Nida's Universal Truth Number 59, right? "Drink face good. Eat face bad." Or is it the other way 'round? It's like that feed a fever, starve a person stuffed up with snot thing. No one ever remembers which is which. But I've never been a real fashion maven and I'm not down with face-eating ginormity. I'm more of a nerdmonger, meself, and I'm quite alright with that.
Hmmm, I can already feel this web log entry start to wander off, so I'm going to just sprint ahead to the finish line and let you fill in the filler by yourself. Suffice to say: Tyra Banks, Princess Leia buns, needing 5 people to dress you, by "edgy" you must mean that it's ridiculously easy to cut yourself on all those bones you've got poking through, and I need more mothertruckin' walk-offs in my daily routine.
11.41: In Case You Were Wondering...
NIDA: ...what this weblog is about. It's been 3 1/2 months now and that's as good a time as any to explain yourself. This blog is about what echoes around the collective hive mind here at the GO, LLC (uber with the design and branding and multidisciplines). And since I am the only girl here in our little Lancaster-based international design unit, I can only assume that I am the queen. And if I am queen, I must necessarily use the royal "We", by which I mean "I". Or that we mean we.
This blog is not about the politicking. It is not about bellyaching (although my belly has been known to ache, what with the appendicitis and all). It is not about project updates or self-feting. Although we reserve the right to occasionally mention our feet. This blog may or may not be about the Search for Jeronimo's Legendary Feathers, Teepee, and Other-Somewhat-Nonsensical-Comments-
I-Can't-Believe-He/She-Actually-Said-Although-Considering-the-Size-of-His/Her-Pupils-I'm-Sure-It-Could-Have-Been-Worse.
Personally, I like to think this web log is all just a figment of my imagination.
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| | 15.36: The Answer? Mega Force
NIDA: Hello cybertubing tribes. As you may or may not have noticed, we have not been logging on the web as much. We do things besides write the weblogs. There is the designing and writing for the paying clients, which takes precedence over this weblog, at least until some kindly editor offers us that sweet sweet $650,000 two-book deal. Then there is researching, so we know what we are designing and writing about and do not act the fools. And then of course there is the lynchpin of the Great Hustle: the finding of the clients for which to give us the green for making things up in our heads and tapping on the little buttons of our mobile lap-based and/or desktop-bound computation processing units.
And of course, all that TV does not watch itself.
If I'd known how much research I would be doing in my professional life, I would have paid more attention in high school, when the school IMC professional (aka bookminder) showed us the various 3-ring binders full of obscure articles and indices that organized those articles that are now obsolete. This was back in the days before the Interweb exploded all over our lives, when we were all forced to interact face-to-face and therefore be polite to each other. We still used things like paper and 3-ring binders in those days. Mainly because we only had the one computer in each classroom, and we used it to play "Oregon Trail". This was actually before I ever was force marched to the SIRS binders, B. MS. (before Microsoft). Back when every middle-class suburban primary school classroom was proudly outfitted with an Apple IIgs to entertain the childlings with "Oregon Trail" so the underpaid teacher could quietly try to regain her sanity off in some other corner of the room.
I've been reading a book about the history of Apple and the Macintosh and the rise and fall of Steve Jobs (written before the re-rise, which just goes to show that you can't keep a good megalomaniac down) and have only recently discovered that the Apple II was built for reasons other than the exclusive purpose of entertaining school childlings with a mass hallucination of green-lettered frontier pioneering. The things you learn when you root around in the nether regions of the library because you are avoiding the SIRS binders like the plague.
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| | 19.55: "Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In"
NIDA: I just read an interesting item in that staunch stanchion of the overtly obvious, the Central Penn Business Journal. (I buy it for the centerfolds.) The article is about the boomerang effect that this area has on young professionals. People grow up here, they leave in droves, and then they come back when they've gotten knocked up. It's a fairly well-known phenomenon, one of which I've been cognizant since I was twelve and realized that all my friends' parents had known each other and themselves been friends when they were in high school. And then the crap nastiness of my secondary education really hit home when I further realized that they (my friends' parents) had had some of the very same teachers I had. Lo, the Circle of Life.
It's like salmon spawning grounds around here. Maybe there's something in the highly nitrated water that calls to all the ovaries or something about the equinoctial fertilizing process that gets the ol' vas deferens humming, because everyone comes back to settle down and raise a family. And we all know that it's not for the quality of the schools in this area.
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| | 18.58: "This Mess is Gonna Get Raw like Sushi, so Haters to the Left"
NIDA: To all potential interns and freelancers:
Rule 1: Research the company you are contacting.
At least read their website. Every company has one nowadays. Going through the phone book and cold calling companies without learning anything about them first does not show much creativity or initiative, both of which are somewhat necessary to work for a design firm.
Rule 2: Proofread any email, letter, or resume you send to a potential employer.
If grammar isn’t your thing, find somebody for whom it is and ask them to proofread your stuff for you. Spell check. Undo that Auto Correct thing that capitalizes the first letter of every line. Good design requires attention to detail and high, exacting standards. That first email or letter we receive from you is the first test. Pass it.
Rule 3: Leave the kitchen sink at home.
We love meeting young designers. We love when they share their work with us. We love asking them silly questions and getting to know them. Creative work is lonely work, but it’s rewarding because it’s all you. Your ideas, your blood, your sweat and tears. Putting yourself and your work out there to be judged by someone else, whether it’s a client, a prospective employer, or just the intertubal cyberwebbing tribes, is a gut-wrenching thing to do. We know – we’ve been there on both sides. And we know how proud you are of your work. You should be.
But we are busy people. We do not have time to pore over every single sketch you’ve drawn since the third grade. So just show us what you think is your best work and what best represents your range of skills and talents.
Rule 4: Follow directions.
We ask all applicants to do 3 simple things to apply for a position. (1) Review our website and figure out if the voodoo we do matches the voodoo you do (or want to do). (2) Write us an e-mail about your interests and goals, with two samples of work attached. (3) Fill out a short quiz (which we will e-mail you) that allows us to get a better sense of who you are. It’s listed right there on the Recruitment page. Maybe you heard of us through the grapevine and haven’t seen our Recruitment page. In that case, please see Rule 1. (Since you’re reading this right now, I am going to assume that you have managed to find our website, so you can probably move on to Rule 2.) The thing is, if you can’t follow these directions, how do we know you can follow through on directions and deadlines as a member of the team?
These are just some trends I've been noticing lately, and I think those rules pretty much apply for any employer or anybody you're trying to get to hire you. So let that be a lesson to all you young'uns.
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| | 09.48: A Snippet of a Poem for a Sunny Thursday
NIDA: This is from Arthur Symons's "Modern Beauty"
I live, and am immortal; in my eyes
The sorrow of the world, and on my lips
The joy of life, mingle to make me wise;
Yet now the day is darkened with eclipse:
Who is there still lives for beauty? Still am I
The torch, but where's the moth that still dares die?
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| | 16.48: Meets Most of Your Needs in an Adequate Fashion
NIDA: Has anybody been following the pajama party that is the Presidential primary season? Anybody besides policy wonks and lobbyists and special interest groups, I mean. And all of New Hampshire, because I'm not sure if there is anything else to do up there while they live free and/or die. The rest of us, I mean, do any of us really care right now, if we care at all? I am vaguely interested, but only because I have a very expensive and underused bachelor's degree in political science. From what I gather, no one really cares, in part (maybe a big part, but my poll sample of one person isn't really anything to go by statistically - I assume, because I decided to skip statistics while getting that very expensive degree) because no one knows what's going on. I'm sure pols and their people live and die on each twist of the news cycle and they feed on all the he said/he said/she said, but the rest of us don't have the time. And after nearly 40 years of salacious scandals, unpopular wars, and general disappointment, I'm not sure how many of us really care.
Which is sad, considering how much power has been gathered into one office. Has one man (and let's not kid ourselves - how many non White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Presidents from somewhere in the East - north and south - have we had in our 200+ years of statehood?) ever held so much power? Especially one who is elected by another group of people? On an episode of The Daily Show last week, some British author stated that the British monarchy was still necessary because it provided a figurehead of national identity that could inspire the nation, regardless of what was going on politically. Here in the States, we decided to make our head of nation the same as our head of state (if you're wondering what the difference is, technically a nation is a peoples who share a common group identity, a la the Kurds, and a state is a political entity, and while often the two overlap such that we can use the two words synonymously, sometimes it doesn't - see Chechnya, the Kurds, and Hitler's justification for annexing Czechoslavakia's Sudetenland). Which means if the Electoral College craps it up, then our national identity, how we view ourselves and how the rest of the world sees us, could go down the tubes. Personally, I would like the person with their thumb on the nuclear button at the very least to be able to pronounce "nuclear" correctly.
I was reading this Time magazine article on Al Gore, and I'm struck by this quote: "I'm trying to say to you, be a part of the change," he told the crowd. "No one else is going to do it. The politicians are paralyzed. The people have to do it for themselves!" He was getting charged up now. "Our democracy hasn't been working very well—that's my opinion. We've made a bunch of serious policy mistakes. But it's way too simple and way too partisan to blame the Bush-Cheney Administration. We've got checks and balances, an independent judiciary, a free press, a Congress—have they all failed us? Have we failed ourselves?" Apparently, he goes more in depth on our failing federal republic in his new book, which I am much more interested in getting than his other books. And frankly, I hope Al Gore doesn't run for President, because the only way he can win is to dirty his hands and by then he'll just be like all the others and no one will want him anyways. And after sixteen years of living between two political extremes and two charismatic leaders, we don't really need new inspiration or more dogma. We need someone who can come in and clean up the mess and straighten out all the paperwork and streamline the process. We don't need a hero figure to lead the way; we need a middle manager to give us some structure.
We don't need Al Gore; we need Michael Dukakis. Because he meets most of our needs in an adequate fashion. No more, no less, and that seems to be the most we can ask.
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| | 10.00: Everything's Lining Up Lemons
NIDA: That was Thursday for me - all lemons. Today is not feeling so lemony - it's got a dash of lime, but it's not that bad. Lemon-lime is still refreshing.
I did just watch that episode of 30 Rock and had forgotten how hilarious the ending was...towards the middle, public humiliation looms large for Liz Lemon, so I hadn't watched the whole thing through for awhile. I'm just not a big fan of other people being shamed or embarrassed. So I haven't seen American Idol since season one. And now that the thermostat is on the rise, that must mean summer is on its way and that must mean that I should stop watching TV until September, because the only shows running in the summer are the ones made by and about "real" people.
Real people edited tightly so that the rest of us can laugh at their embarrassing awkwardness from the comfort of our couches. I'm not sure if America's Got Talent, but it certainly does seem to have an aversion to well-written scripts. And even without the scripting and the editing that comes with "reality" television, by now most people know enough not to be real. They just keep on being polite. I suppose in some ways, reality television is all a socio-psychological laboratory experiment. Television executives throw people into a tightly controlled environment and then see what happens - and possibly, they wear white lab coats and safety goggles while doing so. At least, I know I would. The only thing is, for some reason reality is really real or dramatic enough. And when TV people are bluntly honest about what they're doing, audiences don't react well. Which is all to say, most reality television bores me. Except for this which is just SO Oswald Montecristo.
I'm sure that this is somehow related, but I really have no idea because I could not look away from Carrot Top.
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| | 10.21: Everything's Lining Up Lemons
NIDA: I will be honoring the troops and the vets and whoever else is memorialized on this day in our office, surrounded by fumes, doughnuts, and the detritus of all the piled up paperwork that I say, "Pfft, I'll get to that on the weekend," that "weekend" being the two days I never come into the office. What can I say - a girl needs some "me" time. The paint fumes are from the office being painted (Spiced Honey and Autumn Gourd) and the doughnuts are for my training regimen. Luke and I are going to throwdown in a doughnut-eating contest and I need to work on my jaw strength and timing (bite, chew, chew, swallow).
The doughnuts seem to be going to my head a little bit (mmm....fat and sugar) so this should be as good a time as any to answer the fictional questions from our fictional mailbag with some fictional nonsense. I hope you are as entertained as I am.
Q: How did GO, the premier international design unit of Lancaster, get its start?
A: The GO story is one shrouded in the mysteries of time and the foggy memories of its founders. It is a story fraught with nepotism, intrigue, and the continuing struggle between the forces of good design and crap nasty design. It began with a ring, a flaming eye (that conjunctivitis can be a fungdark of a problem), and four hobbits on a quest to save the Shire...
Q: By "hobbits" you mean...
A: Four arrogant chuckleheads sitting around a kitchen table, plotting vengeance on the crap nasty in the name of the innocent logo-buying public.
Q: And by "the Shire" you're referring to...
A: The rolling farms of South Central PA (yeah, Lancaster, recognize beeyotch!) But I shouldn't really say more unless you know the secret handshake.
Q: Ok, so why Lancaster? Why not the big city?
A: FYI, Lancaster is technically a city. The oldest inland city in the nation, doncha know. Besides, what with the internets and the cyberwebs, geography doesn't really matter that much anymore. Which is great, because I suck at geography.
Q: But c'mon, the Lanc-Lanc? For realsies?
A: I know, right? But some of us grew up here, we went to school here, we're too lazy to pack up our stuff, find a new place and move....And good design isn't limited to the size of a city's population or how tall its buildings are. Or the fact that their downtown is bigger than a two-block radius. Good design comes from hard work, solid values, and the talent of some very creative branding masterminds. So yes, for realsies.
Q: Cool.
A: Yup.
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| | 19.14: Tids on Tuesday
NIDA: Big Ups to Friend of the Unit and of this blog, Becky Cloonan, who got big upped on Boing Boing.
If you're interested in other interesting websites, check this out. I do love me some ingenuity. And I read an article in the Washington Post about some poor high school pole vaulting chick who suffers from the misfortune of being 18-years-old and hot and has had her picture spread all over the interwebs by the blogging folk. Now hundreds of thousands of people are watching clips of her on Youtube and she's understandably freaking out about the loss of her privacy. I'm not sure having an article about this splashed on the front page of the WaPo is really going to alleviate the problem, especially since I had never heard of this poor girl before today, but hey it is what it is. My calling attention to it probably just exacerbates things...o blurg, am I part of the problem or the solution? Blurg.
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| | 09.24: By the Hammer of Thor, Why did I Have that Third Nipple Surgically Removed?!
NIDA: I feel like I've been off my game. I just haven't been able to bring the funny lately. So I guess it's good that my dreams of writing for The Daily Show have been crushingly unfulfilled. At least I can say I'm still a writer. Technically. I'm writing this weblog, aren't I? And I just wrote a couple e-mails yesterday. I'm honing my skills for the day when Jon Stewart calls. (Jon, I am waiting by the phone as I type this - 5 lines over 3 different phones, actually! We believe in EXTREME telecommunicating here at the GO.)
The thing about being a writer is, calling in sick is a bit difficult. It's not like a cold or the flu really incapacitates my ability to pick up a pencil and put words on paper. So not only do I have the immune system of...erm, something that never gets sick, but being a tad under the weather is not necessarily a good excuse for me to call off.
Anyways, sick or not, I am the most boring person on earth right now. But you guys out there (Hi Dad!) in Deutschland (Guten Morgen. Wie geht's?) and, for some reason, Mountville deserve the funny. And who brings the funny better than anyone? This guy right here.
PS. If you were searching for porn or cialis and somehow found this site, we apologize for the lack of udder nudity. We promise there will be more nipples next month.
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