TRYNA PLAY COOL COS WE DON'T PLAY FOOL.
RETIRED BULLETIN ENTRIES
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|  | 17.03: ABC, You Blurghers!
NIDA: Members of the Unit will be making a guest appearance at 405 Jazz in Harrisburg this evening. If you miss the Unit tonight, you can catch us out and about on First Friday. We'll be hitting the Infantree's gallery opening among other spots.
Things I Learned Today:
- Downtown Lancaster needs more public restrooms, especially if it wants to be a credible tourist destination.
- Zap & Co do not sell lava lamps.
- Some of us here at the GO, LLC like to openly scoff at ridiculous comments while others of us prefer to fall back on the Ironic Sneer (is it a sneer? is it a smile? what could it be?).
- My resolve to cold turkey the coffee lasts exactly 72 hours. O sweet, sweet caffeinated nectar, how I've missed you!
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| | 11.38: What's Wrong with Mint?: A Ridiculously Rambling Post About Oral Hygiene
NIDA: Ever wonder what Paradise tastes like? Yeah, neither have I. I just cracked open a new tube of toothpaste that is supposedly "Paradise Fresh". I don't really keep track of all the latest in toothpaste innovations - I didn't even know that you could really innovate toothpaste, unless science figures out a way to fix cavities through toothpaste. The latest hullabaloo in the toothpaste industry seems to be enamel strengthening. It's not as exciting as fluoride or whitening, but what can you do? The last bit of oral hygiene wizardry that got my attention was the chaw stick, which isn't really a new innovation at all since that's how they used to do before Paradise Fresh. But you can't go wrong with a flavored wooden stick that's been around since the before times as a method of teeth cleaning and is now packaged and sold on a Philadelphia corner (next to tube socks). Nope, can't go wrong with that. Unless you are concerned with tongue splinters and/or what to do with a saliva-drenched wooden stick that still has a few good chaws left in it.
PS. In case you're wondering, Paradise tastes like bubblegum. I guess it's supposed to be tropical fruit of some sort, but I don't particularly want to taste over-sugared goo when I'm trying to combat any damage wrought by my Sweet Tooth. Not particularly well played, Colgate.
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| | 11.31: Living the Questions
NIDA: Welcome to the Latest Feature of this Wonderful Design-ish* Blog. We believe mightily in asking questions and seeking answers here at GO, LLC, Lancaster's premier international design unit. We also believe that we'll never know all the answers but that shouldn't stop us from living the questions. So ponder these two issues: (1) Can Martha Stewart still vote? and (2) To party or not to party?.
Last night we were discussing some ins and outs of the penal (giggle, giggle) and political systems. Like whether Martha Stewart, as a convicted felon, still retains the right to vote. It turns out that the enfranchisement of ex-convicts is a state matter and varies accordingly. Only in a handful of states are ex-convicts fully disenfranchised, though current convicts do not retain the right to vote while serving their sentences. In the penal system (giggle, giggle). And I'm okay with that. If some enterprising, charismatic felon manages to organize his prisonmates into a political entity, we could end up with a criminal in office! Hehe...oh. Blurgh. At any rate, I will be keeping my eye on that Wentworth Miller. That fine, fine Wentworth Miller with the British background and Princeton education....maybe both eyes. Here's another question: If the prison minority population is disproportionate compared to the general public and minorities in this country are disproportionately more likely to be born or live in circumstances that would lead them to make bad choices, break the law, get caught, and/or be subject to racial profiling or receive discriminatory punishments compared to other races, is that a (legal) loophole to the Fifteenth Amendment? I know, I know, free will and all that and they didn't have to commit a crime, etc. Still.
We also touched on Congressmen and other elected officials who have switched parties. What does it mean to join a party anyways? Besides being able to caucus with the rest of the party and get a valuable committee assignment if you're a politician or being able to vote in your party's primary if you're a schlub like the rest of us. Do parties really matter? If you're going to join a party, you join the party that best meets most of your needs in an adequate fashion. With only two major parties for however many millions of voters, though, it's more like "some, if you're lucky, needs in a somewhat, but not really, adequate fashion". And you end up with guys like this. And people don't just change their party affiliations. Parties and their platforms change over time as well. Remember when the face of the Republican party was Abraham Lincoln? They always bring that up but fail to mention that they are also the party of Richard Nixon. If we're going to go that far back in history to laud a party, maybe we should resurrect the Whigs. Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!
PS. If you want a good read, check this out.
* Why the ish? As our loyal readers will know (Hi, Dad!), we tango with the designing, branding, multidisciplinary-ing topics. Sometimes we mix it up and rumba, just to keep things interesting. We dance, but we do not really touch. Because design is life and life is exponentially prettier when it's interesting. So we write about life and things that interest us.
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| | 16.52: This Weblog Entry has Nothing to Do With Design Except that I Last Heard "Con Te Partiro" at the AIGA Paper Jam
NIDA: I have a morbid fear of dropping young children on their heads. This may stem from that one time I dropped my roommate's two-year-old nephew on his head. Cute kid. Luckily, he already had kind of a bumpy head, so the huge red lump was hardly noticeable. I felt pretty bad about it but even worse than I probably would have because he sounded just like Elmo. You know what's even better than a little kid sounding like Elmo? Operatic bedtime songs. Now that I'm thinking about it though, there are a lot of strange people "tucking" the little dude in at night. Should we be teaching children that it's okay to have a revolving bedroom door? Seriously though, Andrea Bocelli singing "Time to Say Goodnight" to Elmo is enough to warm even my cold cold cynical heart. Best duet. Ever.
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| | 11.54: I'm Not a Doctor But I Play One in My Head
NIDA: Some words are inherently funny. Like "douchebag". Or "fannypack". And "milquetoast". "Pantywaist". One of the writers or producers behind Futurama supposedly believes that "underpants" is hi-larious. And he's right. Think about it. "Underwear"? Meh. "Underpants"? Hi. Larious. Usually these words are funny because they're naughty by association. Like "fallopian tubes". There's nothing like a good fallopian tube joke. Really, anything having to do with reproductive anatomy just brings out the twelve-year-old in all of us (or maybe just me). Sometimes funny words are just nonsensical syllables, like "Ni". It also helps if you insert nonsensical syllables into unfunny words and then beat the gag to death: "edumacate", "oboemaboe", and "saxamaphone". Personally, I like to throw the occasional funny word, an "interwebs" here, a "vas deferens" there, into a blog entry just to liven things up and keep you on your toes. Alas, with great blogging power comes great blogging responsibility. There are these things called "search engines" (not funny) which you can waste your entire life using to find fun facts or awful plastic surgery sites, but some people occasionally have serious queries and somehow end up on our site reading about how I want to wind up and kick Seth MacFarlane in the nuts instead of why he became an entrepreneur. This is where you get in trouble when you start throwing around the funny words. I may have untold depths of knowledge on European schools of cinema (no one in the office gets my Fassbinder jokes), American political theory, and 30 Rock plotlines but not so much on knowing whether or not the old vas deferens managed to grow back together. Sorry, you're on your own with that. This is probably one of those things you should consult your doctor about, rather than Google.
PS. For all those out there who are still wondering what goes well with black shirts, I'll say it one last time. Two words: brown shoes.
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| | 15.54: Chewing on Life's Gristle
NIDA: It's a mean kind of day. The kind of day where it takes 40 minutes to travel 7 miles because someone decided to turn a busy two-lane road into a jammed one-lane road during morning rush hour. Where a PP&L truck is double parked right where I want to turn. The kind of day where you want to crawl back to bed but have to rest one eye up. This being a mean day, that one eye which you are using to keep haters to the left is inflamed and raw like sushi, mainly from the untold lethal fumes and other hazardous building bric-a-brac being kicked up by the builders upstairs and next door. What I'm saying is, it's Tuesday.
I think I wouldn't mind so much if they would just acknowledge the fumes and the sawdust and the bumcracks everywhere (though no crack bums have turned up yet or been turned out of forgotten corners). A small sign with something like, "We apologize for the inconvenience. And the sawdust and the noise and the fumes killing whatever few brain cells you've managed not to kill up until now. And the guys upstairs not realizing you were trying to conduct business and dropping a greater portion of what used to be a floor but is now a magnificent skylight onto the ceiling above your heads. And for that Port-o-Let right outside that smells worse and worse by the day." Actually, I'm being unfair to our landlord, who has been pretty apologetic about the delays in construction and especially apologetic about the construction foreman who waltzed into our office, started poking around in different corners, and then when we asked him if we could help him said, "No, I'm okay, I just need to see which wall we're tearing down." And I didn't have to walk by the Port-O-Let while breathing. Mea culpa. Ok, I should go and spend some time somewhere that doesn't make my eyeballs swell and itch.
NB. No walls were torn down during the writing of this blog entry. At least, no walls as far as I can see from where I'm sitting.
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| | 17.10: The TMI Curse
NIDA: And I don't mean the fact that my former hometown, the ol' burg where I spent 16 formative years, only started handing out potassium iodide pills to protect local thyroids from local nuclear power plant accidents within the last few years. From what I understand, the only local nuclear power plant accident occurred over 25 years ago, so I'm not quite sure why the recent need for the pills. I'm sure if it was serious they would have told us.
No, by "TMI" I mean "Too Much Information." Like the whole gay bearded wizard thing. Maybe JK Rowling should have spent less time on extraneous character development and more time on making the magic thing more magical. Seriously, what keeps everyone from shouting out the killing curse when they get pissed off? Have you ever seen The Daily Show? If Jon Stewart were a gay bearded wizard, he'd be killing at least five people per show. Dude drops a lot of F-bombs.
And like my knowing why one of our former coop neighbors wants to buy a second house and leave the first one to his mother-in-law. (You really don't want to know.)
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| | 12.21: Boy Becomes Man. Man Becomes Werewolf.
NIDA: The latest in Oswald Montecristo awesome.
18.45: Four Out of Five Dentists Agree
NIDA: When I was four, I wanted to be a dentist.
As my dentist snapped on his latex gloves and his assistant lowered large plastic safety glasses over her eyes, I couldn't quite recall what led to my childhood periodontal ambitions. Maybe it was the sealed trays of shiny tools. Or the tiny sink my dentist operated with foot pedals. Or the chair, also lowered and reclined by pedals. It could have been something about the Snoopy sticker thoughtfully placed on the overhead light (which I also coveted). He still has a Snoopy sticker up there, even though the light is a newer model. I've always thought that Snoopy sticker was a thoughtful touch. A calming, cheerful presence to every child who had sat in that chair over the years. Which is what I was desperately trying to focus on this afternoon when the assistant handed a 10-inch long metal spike to the dentist, who placed it against my front teeth, leaned over, and said, "You might want to close your eyes."
This is what happens when you are genetically gifted with a small jaw that won't quite accommodate all the teeth it carries. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Besides having surplus teeth and the requisite surgery to remove them, you also get to learn how to say "Mississippi" with a hunk of plastic and wire shoved against your maxilla. If you're especially lucky like I was, you'll get the further gift of adolescent braces. Except I wasn't even cool enough to get the full set of braces - I just had them for the incisors. I was like half an Ugly Betty. And then came the final gift: permanent retainers, metal strips bonded to the back side of my teeth to keep my pearly whites in position.
I suppose it was worth all the pain and adolescent existential angst. I did win City Year Greater Philadelphia's Best Smile (Female) of 2004 Award, a distinction that rates the first line of my resume up to this day. It was all worth it until today, when I went to get the one sucker removed. Hence the massive chisel/stake against my lower incisors.
"How does that feel? I mean, besides like a sledgehammer pounding against your teeth."
My dentist had cut the metal strip and was trying to bump it and the cement holding it off my teeth. He had earlier made a pointed remark about hoping that would be all that was needed to get it off. As he held my jaw in one hand and tapped away with the other, I tried to think of what could be worse than a sledgehammer pounding on my tooth (and tried not to think of what to do with my tongue). It turns out that having a tiny power sander grinding away at stubborn cement that matches almost exactly in color to the underlying enamel is a much, much worse alternative. If you're wondering what that sensation is like, trying giving yourself a paper cut in the web between your fingers and toes. Just like that. But in your tooth.
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