SATISFYING BEND LUST SINCE '87.
RETIRED BULLETIN ENTRIES
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|  | 10.49: Now with 100% More Patrick Duffy
NIDA: Ahhh, Saturday mornings. Everyone loves Saturday mornings, right? What with the cartoons and the sleeping in and the New Scandinavian Cooking on PBS and the general feeling that on this one morning every piece of yourself and every second of the clock is yours and no one else's. Unless, of course, you are a retail wage slave or one of the poor painters who are finishing up our office (which is 5000 times brighter than it used to be, and if this whole designing thing doesn't work out for us, we can always open up a juice bar). Our painters, Rick and Chrissy, are absolutely lovely, so if you're around the Central Penn region and need a good painter who does a good job at a good price (he even patched up and fixed all the crud work that the previous builders had done), call up Rick Luczewski.
Well, it's Saturday, and Saturday is not a thinking day, so I will just point out a few things of general interest.
(1) Our portfolio is now up on our work page, so check it out if you want to see the voodoo we do.
(2) We sent our blog archivist into the nether regions of our archives to retrieve some files two Tuesdays ago and we haven't seen him since. There were a few screams from the darker corners of our library, but they've stopped now and we're pretty sure they're unrelated. So our Archivist is er, "on hiatus" at the moment (but no worries, he'll be fine - he's got one of those bright flashlights, a week's supply of rice cakes, and one of those vests with lots of different pockets) and the blog archives may not be updated as regularly.
(3) One of us here at the GO, Lancaster's premier multidisciplinary international design unit, has encyclopedic knowledge of Step by Step, the Patrick Duffy and Suzuanne Sommers sitcom, and the rest of us do not know why. It's part of the unfathomable mysteries of the GO, LLC.
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| | 10.26: Still in Search of the Funny
NIDA: Last Saturday, the international design unit currently known as GO, LLC made an unannounced appearance at the Dutchland Rollers' Shock and Awe Brawl. It was shockingly fun and we were in awe of all the blocking and jamming. (Heh heh....er..blurg...ok, still not bringing the funny, but we'll keep soldiering on...it's got to be around here somewhere) Roller derby seems to be picking up everywhere (I know because I saw it on CSI:NY, the herald of all the new hotness in today's pop culture), and Lancaster fields 3 different teams. We sat right outside the final turn of the track, which gave us a good view of the action and some of us an even "better" view of the "action" (I really need to start hanging out with more girls.). Being that close did provide a few moments of terror though, when one girl skidded out of control and straight towards our moneymaker. I was all ready to take one for the team and throw myself in front of Jeronimo's Latin good looks, but she stopped just in time. Bit of a scare, though.
The next roller derby bout is at Overlook Activities Center on July 21 so go check it out. I'm pretty sure the boys will be there.
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| | 09.51: Pitying Fools since 1982
NIDA: It's a beautiful breezy day, and I just read some absolutely gorgeous sentences over my morning coffee. ("Mountains rising to my right and to my left, mountains at my back, all dark as sin now in the predawn light of a white, white day....My breath burned as it came and steamed as it went.") So let's Oswald some Montecristos!
We have yet to find anyone who will let us do something like this or this but that would be SO Oswald. I think I also saw a psychiatrist's/psychologist's business card that doubled as a tissue somewhere in the current issue of Print or HOW but I can't find it at the moment. Overall, very Oswald Montecristo, and big ups to the people involved.
Also very big ups to Hasbro for this piece of mashed up genius. Get it, ha ha, er. I'll let you know when my sense of humor recovers from the puny punning it's currently saddled with. Until then, enjoy this, the most Oswald business card in the history of Oswald Montecristo-ing.
17.57: On a Blog Break
NIDA: I just came up with the most brilliant punny teaser/tagline, so I am rewarding myself with a bit of a blog break. Yes, the funny is still on the VaCa but we are soldiering forward - people pay for puns, right? We don't need no stinkin' funny! Anyways, this entry is about how wonderful the Interwebs are. Especially at the whole knowledge/information storage thing. I mean, there's the video clips and streaming TV episodes and the online music and giving it good to all those dastardly old-fashioned cartographers, but the neural support is worth however much Comcast and Verizon are screwing us for broadband.
For example, there is an amazing young adult fantasy series that weaves together heroic myths, the struggle between good and evil, and magic the way only a British writer can, for some reason. And no, I'm not referring to Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings trilogy or The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe or even Neil Gaiman's Sandman. (Man, those Brits are prolific in their fantasizing.) I'm talking about Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series. I read this when JK Rowling was still a dirt poor git, several years and several home addresses (for me) ago. Although I was, unfortunately for me, probably the same height then as I am now. But I had forgotten the title of the series, of the individual novels, the name of the author, and any distinguishing traits of the individual characters except that the reluctant young hero had to move to Wales to recuperate from a bout of hepatitis. And even with this minimal amount of information to go on, I was still able to find what I was looking for. Amazing. Who needs a long-term memory when we have the interwebs?
During my search, I also discovered that a film of the series will be released this fall. I'm sure they're only trying to capitalize on the Potter-mania, but this news makes me happy and I sincerely hope it doesn't suck. Even more than I hope that the Simpsons movie doesn't suck. The plot goes something like this: there are some good guys and some bad guys and a young man who must fulfill his destiny and save all of humanity, no matter how much it costs him personally. Sound familiar?
The novels were such a huge influence on me as a wee bairn, even though I didn't bother to remember the author or title names. I do remember Madeleine L'Engle's name, but for the life of me I haven't a clue anymore what her novels are about. But Cooper's series was the first I read that made me actually realize what good writing is and does for the reader. Good writing makes the world a place of wonder. Her novels remind you that life is full of hidden secrets and lost treasures. It was also the first series of novels I read that made it seem utterly plausible that the good guys may not win and that was just how life goes. And that being a hero was a huge responsibility and a heavy burden to carry. Anyways, I am indebted to those big information tubes for recovering this part of my childhood. Thank you big Intertubes!
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| | 09.20: Back to the Braindumping
NIDA: The boys have informed me that people do not pay for puns. So it's back to the ol' brain dumping for this girl.
Last night, two thirds of the unit made a special appearance at a backyard grillin'. You too can have the unit appear in your very own backyard. All you have to do is ask. And provide burgers (we enjoy the cow but are not averse to the soy variety) and buns and fixin's and beverages. Brownies are also a plus.
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| | 17.31: In Which Ned Flanders Puts Us on The Naughty List
NIDA: This site has been Officially Flandersized. I was originally going to entitle this weblog entry, "Oiled Up Like a Greco-Roman Wrestler", but that was before I opened the ol' mailbag this morning. Seems like some of us out here on the Interwebs have been hitting the Hater-Aid. Thank you all for being concerned with the eternal resting place of my soul. I suppose if someone's gotta do it, it should be a random stranger trawling the information superhighway for prescription drugs.
So where was I? Oh yes....the oiling up. Back in the day, one of my fellow red-and-khaki organized a Saturday event at the National Constitution Center, and it was a good time had by all. Except for the slight ruckus that involved some middle school girls, the taking off of jewelry, and the unlidding of the Vaseline. Which has nothing to do with anything except that (1) middle school girls are vicious and they Do Not Play, (2) when they start taking off the rings, they are definitely Not Playing, and (3) if they whip out the petroleum jelly, you should run for the hills. Oh, and (4) that's what I thought of as I was hosing myself down with sunblock this morning.
We are not fans of the melanoma here at GO. Or farmer's tans, which seem to be stealthier than a ninja and have crept up on some of us in the five minutes we are exposed to the outdoors every day. So I picked up some spray-on sunblock this weekend and marveled at the latest innovation of the UV-blocking industry. Besides a higher SPF, I'm not really sure what more they can innovate, but every summer they come out with something. Although the drawback of the spraying seems to be gassing yourself if you're spraying anywhere within a 3-foot radius of yourself. Like your own body. Of course, I wasn't in a well-ventilated area, being indoors and all. I suppose I could have moved outdoors, but that would defeat the purpose, no? You'd think I'd learned my lesson that one Christmas a roommate and I painted a wall in our house with chalkboard spray paint (3-4 cans and 3-4 days of blowing it out my nose). Besides the gassing, the spray-on sunblock isn't too bad. I think the big selling point is supposed to be the non-greasiness of it all, though I would hate to try a greasy sunblock because all the "non-greasy" ones I've used were as bad as a fourth meal from The Bell.
Of course, the occasional grease and bronzed sheen is a perfectly reasonable trade-off for the life-threatening cancer.
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| | 10.27: "Hoohaw" is a Surprisingly Versatile Word
NIDA: Apple and Steve Jobs had some sort of big hoohaw yesterday that got the Macheads in the office all riled up. Which is never a good thing - putting them all to back to sleep can be as treacherous as a middle school girls gym class.
Check out this hoohaw. Pretty Oswald. Thank you Fake Steve Jobs! I'm not sure you had anything to do with it, but if you say you did, I will believe you!
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| | 09.46: "Meat is the New Bread": A Play for 3 Voices
Voice 1: Wow. This sure does...glisten.
Voice 2: It's supposed to. That's how you can tell it's fresh.
Voice 3: Yeah. The sheen locks in the juices. (walks over) What did you have? The turkey?
Voice 1: Yes. The pink one. The turkey's pink. The ham's the pink with spots.
Voice 3: Here, let me try one. Wow. That's quite a sheen.
Voice 1: Yes, very sheeny.
Voice 3: (takes a bite) Mmm...are you sure that's turkey?
Voice 1: Would Oscar lie to us?
Voice 2: How is it?
Voice 1: I hope the glistening helps oil the works.
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| | 19.41: Trying Not to Turn Around
NIDA: Because every time you do nowadays, something like this and this and that and let's not forget about the other thing happens and honestly, is anyone keeping track of buggy-jackings because this has got to be some kind of record this year. Normally I don't read the local news because it's either boring or depressing, but then I miss out on things like this, right across the street from us. Which means I either need to get into the office at 6 in the morning when the excitement happens or just read the newspaper every so often.
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| | 18.23: Tuesday's Bits
NIDA: Things I Have Learned Recently No. 1- Prince Harry's voice is lower than Prince William's. But only by a little bit. Both their voices are reassuring rumbles, these deep deep bass voices you can't find in these days of falsetto melismatics. I mention this only because (a) it's so disappointing when hot guys sound like Norm MacDonald (I'm looking at you, ghost of John Kennedy, Jr, may you rest in peace) or have high-pitched Cockney accents that for some reason remind you of a Frenchman (that one's bent for you, Beckham) and (b) really, Matt Lauer, you're sitting down with the second and third in line to the British throne and you're asking them how "cool" it is to be a prince? What are you, a five-year-old little girl talking to her Barbie? You just lost all that street cred you gained when you interviewed Britney Spears. I cannot believe they let Stone Phillips go, he of the rumbly deep depths. Stone's got gravitas, ballsy gravitas - you can learn a thing or two from his gravitas, Matt Lauer.
Things I Have Learned Recently No. 2 - You can put the keg behind the six pack. If you don't believe me, check this out. I once watched that kid eat three ginormous platefuls of cheese fries (for the uninitiated, french fries smothered in cheese whiz - yum) and then on his next plateful, when he was well assured of winning the contest (I think the other three contestants were still trying to choke down their second plateful), he picked delicately at the fries, as if to savor the cheesy goodness. If that were me, I would be savoring the delicate sear of my esophagus, as all that cheesy goodness reversed direction (known in competitive eating circles as a "reversal of fortune" - talk about good copywriting).
I may or may not have learned other things recently, but you will have to wait until another day to be burdened with that knowledge.
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| | 08.10: Stick That in Your Portmanteau!
NIDA: Bit boggy over here at the moment – we're trying our hand at the ol' compartmentalizing and multitasking (though my feelings on "multi"-ing are well published), so I'm finding it a little difficult to gather enough brain cells in one spot to throw together a coherent weblog entry. Not that my entries or blogging in general really spend much time in the inside-the-lines world of coherency, but I figure I should make some sort of effort for posterity and any potential six-figure, 2-book publishing deals (the possibility of which I am willing to spare a few brain cells to entertain, all you editors out there). In my efforts to play the fast-moving game of the Great Hustle (in my head, the Great Hustle is something like Rollerball, but only vaguely because the only versions of either movie, the James Caan classic or the LL Cool J remake, I've been able to find are both dubbed in Italian – the Italians sure do love their roller derby), I trawl the web (trawl is a verb, troll is a big ugly noun that lives under a bridge) for information bombs and tidbit grenade. Like this. Which I thought had spread around the blogosphere enough without my help but [failed manure joke deleted]. Hmm, seems that manure jokes are a little harder than I thought.
And in case you were wondering, my favorite word of all times is "nosocomial". Just rolls off the tongue, dunnit? Although "mundacity" is a close second at the moment.
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| | 07.49: Posting Will Be Sporadic...We Apologize for Any Inconvenience You May Experience
NIDA: We are currently out in the field building some cardboard fortifications. Once we shore up the northern wall, things may settle down enough to post a regular dispatch. Until then, please find an episode of Man vs Wild and enjoy. Currently, this poor man has stranded himself on the French Alps and is ripping into a fish. My question is not so much why he subjects himself to these things (after all, there's a television camera involved and if I've learned anything in my short life it's that people will do anything if there is a television camera involved - anything), it's "Where the fudge are his gloves? Why isn't he wearing gloves?!" Seriously, I almost never go anywhere without gloves in the winter. Heck, I'm wearing gloves right now.
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| | 16.58: Innocent as a Killer Cyborg Lamb
NIDA: Children of the Big Eighties, prepare to be disappointed. When I heard that a Transformers movie was coming out, I thought to myself, "Hasn't that already been done?" And then I was told that it would be live action, and I said, "That can't be good." And then I learned that Michael Bay was in charge of things, and I was confirmed in my suspicions that this would suck mightily. Suck some mighty Megatron, if you know I mean.
If you have any doubts, please allow me to quote from the Wired article: Optimus Prime now boasts bright orange cholo flames and — much to fans' horror — lips. "I'm the director. I make my own decisions. I like to paint the house green, even when everyone says it's got to be white."
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| | 10.03: This Blog is Not Quite so Cunning, But I'm Sure You Could Pin Something on It
NIDA: Hallo [waves from behind cardboard bunker in an undisclosed location]. As a raging liberal, I know I should be all about the buying fresh buying local rah rah let's support the local community and pretend to take an interest in state politics, but I gotta tell you, I am feeling the love for big national conglomerating syndicates right now. Like Comcast. Because Comcast can narrow its service window down to 4 hours, which is more than I can say for some regional cable companies. Unfortunately, Comcast does not provide service to cardboard bunkers. Grrrr.
You may have guessed by now my fondness for the written word and my even greater fondness for the well-written...written word. Which I'm never quite sure I provide enough of, so if you are starved for good weblogging, please check this out. I guess Dubai is the new Shanghai. I'm not a big fan of gossamer wailing meself, being an acolyte of the deep rumbly rambles, but to each her own.
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| | 20.12: Currency
NIDA: Some of you out there on the interwebs may wonder what it is like to work in an international design unit. Allow me to give you a snapshot of the things currently, cluttering up my desktop during a normal-ish workday. Keep in mind that I do anything (including but not limited to switchboard ops, whiteboard management, and refrigerator inventory) but the actual designing and keeping of the books, so for all of you design students/designers/people who want to be designers/ people who want other people to think you are designers out there, this will not in any way be useful or interesting to you. Unless you also want to be me, in which case you are in luck! So here we go...
In the ear buds: State Radio, courtesy of Fab Channel.
Recent Obsession: Bansky, which led to my watching this which I decided was a little too rich for my poor ass (I'm splurging on a grown-up bed soon - yeah, I know, pathetic, but something about buying your own mattress/bed for the first time just kind of ties you down for real. I can't just pick up and move to Japan to teach English now because I just got this bed, ya know, and what would I do with it? I can't take it on the plane with me, I don't even want to contemplate the storage fees, and see, those are some serious roots I just invested in). Seriously, a book written by an anarachist graffit artist that was supposed to be distributed at a price point accessible to the masses (5 pounds, I think) shot by 100 pounds sterling six hours before the end of the auction. What are these people doing? Have they never eBayed before? Don't they know they're supposed to wait until the last five minutes to go hogwild?
It's interesting how commodification is an inevitable consequence of a capitalist system, and how value has become a byproduct of desire. As I've stated before, I've got this bleeding heart (it just won't clot, no matter how much red meat I eat - and I refuse to believe that the two are unrelated, no matter how many web searches or pre-med classes you may have undertaken), so I believe "value" can't necessarily be determined by the market. But what do I know? I misspent my youth reading books instead of being a hotel heiress. So Banksy led to Alexandre Orion and to remembering this guy which is genius. You know what's even more genius, in an Orwellian dystopic satire kind of way? Being cited under the ominously named "Anti-Social Behaviour Act".
And lastly, the document on which I am currently pecking away goes something like this: "Seventies-era television comedy roommates who end up in predictably complicated yet hilarious situations each week." I'm trying to work "Innocent as a killer cyborg lamb" in there but we'll see how that goes.
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