Fun with phrases that employ similar phonemes to humorous effect

It's true that all last post, I glorified Melvil Dewey and his campaign to simplify the English language. But for all that I love order and tidiness and systems that make sense, I'm kind of glad he didn't succeed.

If he had, I never would have had the opportunity to feel like a big shot for getting my photo in the paper prior to my appearance at the Toledo Blade Spelling Bee. Yeah! Spelling bees are fun! And if Melvil had succeeded, I also never would have experienced the crushing defeat that comes after forgetting to put the P in "neuropathy." ... Never mind. Spelling bees aren't that much fun after all.

But if we reformed our language, we'd also lose the opportunity to ponder those funny inconsistencies that are so...ponderable. Like, why is it that a "prisoner" is someone in prison, but a "jailer" is someone who puts people in jail? See? Inconsistencies are fun! Oh—here's another one! Why is the suffix "ee" always used to convert a transitive verb into its object...except in the case of "attendee", in which "ee" is used to convert a transitive verb into its subject? Huh. That was a little complicated. Maybe inconsistencies aren't that much fun after all, either.

But wait! I know one thing about the English language that will always be fun! Puns! If all words that sounded the same were spelled the same, not only would their meanings be pretty confusing, but lots of jokes would lose their effect. In honor of jokes, take a gander at these uproarious buckets of humor! (Yes, I made them up.)

Q:What do you call the person who gives the central speech at a grain farmers' convention?
A: The quinoa-oat speaker!

Did you hear the one about the raisin who decided to write its life story?
Yeah. It's called, "As I Lay Drying."

How about the one about the compulsive crafter?
The title is, "As I Lay DIYing."

Cue the laugh track, and give thanks for English!

Melvil Dewey

If my heroes were a brain, Emily Dickinson would be the artistic right hemisphere. Melvil Dewey would be the logic-loving left.



Melvil Dewey is the inventor of the Dewey Decimal System for classifying books in a library, and anyone who makes classification systems is OK by me. He advocated for the use of the metric system, which is really the only logical way to measure things. But the real reason he ends up in my little collection of heroes is because of his penchant for spelling reform.

Melvil Dewey looked at the ridiculously inconsistent ways in which English words are spelled, and he didn't just grumble about it like some of us. Nor did he take advantage of it and go on to win lots of spelling bees. No, he did something to change it.

Melvil Dewey wrote like this: "Speling Skolars agree that we hav the most unsyentifik, unskolarli, illojikal & wasteful speling ani languaj ever ataind." And he wasn't always known as Melvil. He was originally named Melville, but only attained linguistic fame after he'd dropped all the superfluous L's and E's. He even tried to change his last name to Dui, but had less luck getting it accepted.

Spelling reform! It's Occam's Razor meets the Queen's English! Melvil Dewey! He's the poster child for spelling reform!

While I've heard that Mr. Dewey was kind of overbearing and hard to get along with, I think on the whole, he and his eccentric ways with language make him well worthy of a spot in my hero boat.

An Ode to Emily

The following is a piece I wrote on Emily Dickinson for a prototype magazine for people with depression. Consequently, the article focuses on depression and skims over the other thing about Emily that I love—our shared inability to form healthy relationships in the real world.  Because of this common trait, we'd probably never have been friends if we met, but separated by several hazy decades and united by stirring poetry, I get to feel like we're good friends! And now, on to the article.

In the long history of mood disorder sufferers in the arts, one person in particular stands out to me as the ambassador of the depressed—Emily Dickinson. Reading her poetry might at one moment carry one straight into sadness’ firmest embrace, and at another moment, restore one to hope with the simplest imagery of joy. Though I’ve not made it all the way through her voluminous writings, the ones I have read mirror my heart in such a way that I consider Emily a friend of mine…a long-lost sister. It might be a tad presumptuous to speak so familiarly of this person I’ve never met—but what I do know, and what I’ve read of her work, have convinced me that that she is my literary alter ego. And I’ll warrant that a good many depression sufferers might agree.

In Emily’s time – the mid 1800’s – depression was not a disease that doctors recognized or diagnosed. But Emily’s life certainly shows the signs. After the age of thirty, she hardly left her family’s property—sometimes never even left the house. She led the kind of solitary life that is both born of depression and fuels it.

Her writings speak of a broken heart, of tragic loss, of the truth in agony, of a subtle yearning for death. Her words take all the thoughts in my tortured soul and distill them to perfect clarity—and make them beautiful. In Emily’s poetry, the broken heart is elevated to glory: Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it / Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee... The tragic loss is an avenue to spirituality: At least to pray is left, is left / O Jesus! in the air… It is a true artist who can reveal the glimmer of loveliness in anguish, without letting the anguish lose its sting. But Emily’s poetry succeeds again and again.

Wherever I look amongst Emily’s poems, I find my timid lost self, speaking in her voice. But the thing that I find most remarkable is, even though Emily is so adept at expressing the pain that lies within every depressed heart, she is equally adept at dispelling it. One of my favorite poems in her repertoire goes thus:

HOPE is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all…

Emily’s hope never stopped singing. It is her hope that reminds me there is a light at the end of every tunnel. Actually, not just a light—a cute fuzzy bird! What more could I hope for? Once in a poem, Emily wished, If I can ease one life the aching…I shall not live in vain. Emily, you have succeeded. Thank you for your wisdom and your hope.

Readers, Emily Dickinson’s poetry is freely available for anyone who needs it. Visit her anthology, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, at http://www.bartleby.com/113/.

My Hero!

Numerous times as a youngster (and a high-school student, and a college applicant, and a job candidate...), I was asked to name "my hero." I always found this task highly distasteful, because I never had a good answer.

In elementary school, my classmates seemed to usually pick their favorite athletes, musicians, or family members. I, too, eventually chose the family member route, not because I strongly idolized my relatives, but because I knew them well enough to give plausible reasons why any of them could be my hero—if I were to have one. I didn't, of course, since, as an extreme introvert from birth, I never spent much time thinking about other people.

As we got older, my peers grew more high-minded, selecting their heroes from a pool of upstanding charitable, intellectual, and courageous figures from the present and the past. Following their lead, I dabbled a bit in citing Gandhi as my hero. He was supposed to be all about peace, right? I like peace. But really, I didn't know anything about him. I'm not sure if I spelled his name right. I'm not even sure if I'm talking about Mahatma or Mohandas Gandhi. And what he actually did to promote peace? Well, that's a little hazy. All this uncertainty was making me feel like a downright fraud, so I reverted back to familial heroes.

I've realized since then, that while some people seem to easily become infatuated with public figures (Teens with their movie posters, anyone? Adults with their Obama shirts?), I rarely develop even a passing interest in people I haven't met. And thus my hero-deficiency may be neatly explained. However, it was only after I stopped being forced to write essays on this awkward subject that I realize what I would write – with confidence – should the need arise.

My heroes are not the great instigators of social change that I always felt should be my heroes. They're not scientific geniuses or founders of great religions. They're not even my favorite athletes. They are, like me, simple people with a love for words. It seems obvious now, that as a bookworm with limited social graces, I would choose literary figures as my role models. I don't have to relate to the people—I just have to relate to what they do!

Of course, now that I've realized where my true loyalties lie, I can't be content to select just one hero—and surely I'm entitled to a couple, after a lifetime of having none at all! Finally, after years of being obliged to half-heartedly endorse people who never really struck a gong in my heart, I can name my heroes with enthusiasm! So, over the next few days, I'll introduce you to a couple of the people I consider role models and kindred spirits.

An Eye-Opening Experience

Originally, I was planning on writing a post on the way I (and people in general, I think) always find something to be discontent about. Whenever we get what we want, we find something else to want instead. I was going to discuss, as an example, how when I'm feeling fat, all I can think about is how fat I am. But when I get over that, then I find myriad other things to hate about myself—such as the breadth of my shoulders, the narrowness of my mouth, the knobbiness of my knuckles. It's always something. I was going to talk about that, but then I ran across a much more interesting topic.

You see, the object of my self-loathing these days is my eyelids. Yes, my eyelids.  It seems to me that almost everyone else has fairly discreet eyelids. You see maybe a millimeter or two of the upper lids before they disappear under a fold of skin that I'd consider part of the eyebrow. If you happen to be East Asian, you probably don't have any visible eyelid at all!

Eyelids done right

Not so with me. I've got eyelids the size of Delaware. If I look straight at you, you can see the contour of almost my entire eyeball behind the upper lid! This, in my humble opinion, is not an attractive effect. It makes me look perpetually sad and sleepy. Possibly bug-eyed as well.

And so, bemoaning my fate as the ugliest human being ever to walk this earth, I set out to determine why this is so. I considered briefly that my eyes were set too deep into my skull, but rejected that, as it would cause just the opposite of a bug-eyed look. Then I considered that they might be set too far forward in my skull, but experiments with pushing my eyeballs back farther into the sockets (not a behavior that I would recommend, but I did it for science!) just caused my upper lids to look droopy and the "crease" (as it is known to those familiar with makeup tips) separating my eyelid and eyebrow to disappear entirely. So I concluded that my eye sockets are simply too big! There is a space between them and the eyes themselves—creating a hollow into which my flesh sinks, rather than folding neatly on the surface like eyelids are supposed to do! This also provides a tidy explanation for the circles under my eyes that persist no matter how much I sleep.

Following this epiphany, I set out on an image search for "eyes" to see just how uncommon my eyelid configuration is. The fruits of my search yielded the pictures of eyelids done right that you have been admiring above, but no pictures of eyelids that look like mine. They did, however, include a few results that led me to another epiphany. As I usually discover when I become excessively interested in a subject that I think is unclassifiable, there is a WORD for the object of my obsession—and that word is "heavy-lidded."

Funny, I have seen that term in literature numerous times, yet I never gave thought to how it would actually look outside the pages of a novel. But there it is, staring me in my heavy-lidded face!

The next phase in my journey of discovery occurred when I learned that a synonym for heavy-lidded eyes is "bedroom eyes." Now that was a shocker. See, I've always heard "bedroom eyes" used in a complimentary way. And since, in my mind, the defining characteristic of beautiful eyes is size (the bigger, the better—and if you look like an anime character, that's the best), I always assumed "bedroom eyes" meant "eyes the size of an entire bedroom." No, it turns out bedroom eyes are called so because they look sleepy, like the eyes of someone who's about to go to bed. Apparently, bedroom eyes are considered "sultry" and "seductive" because of other things people do in bed when they're not sleeping.

Apparently as well, bedroom eyes are best exemplified by the late film star Bette Davis. Some people think Bette Davis' eyes are just the cat's pajamas. I personally was never impressed when I saw pictures of Bette Davis, but it's comforting to know that my funny-looking eyelids are in such well-respected company.

↑ Bette Davis' Eyes . . . My eyes ↑

That's right, world! I've got Bette Davis eyes! (I even have her asymmetrical eyebrow elevation!) And, while "sultry" and "seductive' are not exactly the look I was aspiring to, I guess I'll take what I can get.

The moral of this story is, (in rhyme, just as in the best Aesop's fables):
Even if there's something about you that you hate,
Someone else probably thinks it's great.

This is my 100th post

I was watching my list of blog posts, so I could make a big fanfare when I hit 100. Then I logged in today, and saw that I already had 100 posts! I was very sad that I had missed my 100th. But then I realized that I'd only reached 100 posts because one of them was a draft of this post. So this really is my 100th post! Isn't that cool?

In honor of that coolness, I want to share with you just one thing that I think is cool. Just one. And, right here in this sentence, I will describe this one cool thing with words like "tight," and "sick," because I have this great love for new slang terms, but I lack the confidence to use them in everyday conversation.

Let me introduce you to the greatest computer game ever invented. Forget about MMORPGs, abandon your first-person shooters and your high-falutin' graphics cards. Instead, play this super 2-D puzzle game that was originally written for DOS. Oilcap. Go on. Just download it. You won't regret it. It is particularly fitting, considering the big BP fiasco of recent months.

Where I'm gonna go when I die

Speaking of things being at the end of their life span...the trusty pocket calculator that I've had since 8th grade (that's 14 years, folks) is starting to randomly display blank diodes. Its time is near...And I'll miss it when it goes!

Last time we talked, I was talking to you about what happens to consumer goods at the end of their life span.

Today, I'd like to talk to you about what happens to consumers at the end of their life span.

In America, a very popular way to dispose of bodies is to dress them up fancy, pump their now-defunct circulatory systems full of chemicals, seal them up in a fancy, expensive box, and then cover them up with a ton of dirt and a fancy, expensive rock. This rather ludicrous practice has its roots in the fear of decomposition (obviously something that we should all be worrying about once we're dead) and has no doubt been encouraged by the funerary industry, which stands to rake in a good bit of profit when corpses are provided with their own cosmeticians.

There are other options. Many people choose cremation, which allows the remains of the dear departed to be scattered romantically across bodies of water or favorite haunts from the time before the dear departed were technically capable of haunting anything. In some cases, cremation also allows the dead body to be stored in a very compact manner so that it can be cherished forever by adoring family members. Cremation is significantly cheaper than its cousin, the extravagant burial, but just think of the carbon dioxide emissions!

Actually, there is no other option that I can think of that's in common use. But obviously neither of those options are satisfactory to a tree-hugging hippie who would rather die than let any of those earth-scarring things be done to her dead body.

Oh.

Well, moving on! There are still other options--even if they're not as popular!

I've heard, if you happen to live in the right third-world countries, you can have your body placed somewhere out in the open so carrion-eaters can have their way with you. Unfortunately, I do not live in one of those countries, and I don't think that practice is ever going to fly in the US.

So, what's a good eco-conscious American citizen to do?

The answer is, find yourself a good green cemetery and do your best to ensure that's where you end up!
They are out there. I don't feel much like writing about it at the moment, because I think I've dripped sarcasm over just about every tradition related to respecting the dead, and if I don't want to join their (highly respectable) ranks, I'd better shut my figurative mouth now.

But here, visit these links:

• http://www.naturalburial.coop/
• http://www.cemeterygroup.org/

The downside to upcycling

Back when my purse collection was in its prime, it filled an entire printer-paper case, with a few extras lying about here and there. This might not seem that huge, but to someone who likes to avoid clutter, it was oppressive. Last summer, I donated a dozen or so purses, and the collection now fits inside a standard milk crate along with some other apparel-related odds and ends. Why am I telling you this?

Well, I'll come back to that.

One of the current trends in the waste-reduction world is to take old stuff that would ordinarily get thrown away and transform it into something new. They call this "upcycling." Something like adding postconsumer plastic to paving materials would be called "downcycling," because once the plastic has hit the road, it's really reached the end of the road. There's not a lot that can be done to further reuse or recycle that plastic, once it's been mixed with gravel and fused to the ground. And being used for driving on is not what every bottle aspires to. Plastic lumber is another example of downcycled material. If you know a tackier building material than plastic lumber, you let me know. Upcycling, on the other hand, is repurposing material into something of a greater value than the original.

The media is just all aglow with stories of great stuff being made out of not-so-great stuff. People are making jewelry from just about every reclaimed object under the sun. Terracycle fashions cute tote bags from old food wrappers—among many other clever products. And clothes made with cigarette butts? Yes, we've got those too.

But let's not get too excited about it, now. The point I was trying to make with my purse story was that we just don't need that many purses. Or light switch covers, or sandals, or trivets. There's only a finite number of things we can make with would-be junk, and our consumption of the disposable items is pretty much guaranteed to exceed that number.

In some ways, I would go so far as to say that upcycling is a euphemism for downcycling. Higher-quality does not necessarily mean more environmentally friendly, and while upcycled products might look a lot prettier than they did in their original form, they aren't any more recyclable than they were. At the end of the day, your wallet made from tires is still going to end up in a landfill.

I'm not saying that upcycling is bad. But the existence of a use (even if it's a one-time use) for old packaging materials gives manufacturers an incentive to not find greener packaging material in the first place. Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to invent creative things to do with our single-use products after we'd used them—because we didn't have single-use products to start with?

Well, we do have single-use products. But as consumers, we have the power to change that. The next time you're shopping, consider the full life cycle of whatever it is you're buying. If you're buying snack chips, you can buy the ones in petroleum based plastic, or you can buy the ones in the compostable bag (way to go, Sunchips!). While a purse made from potato chip bags is greener than a similar purse made from virgin PVC, the earth would be better off if you chose a purse made from cotton canvas—which, at the end of its life, will degrade neatly back into the dust from whence it came. That's closing the loop.

While upcycled goods are a nifty way to make use of the oft-wasted material cluttering our world, ultimately, I hope we learn to focus on eliminating the oft-wasted material at the source, making upcycling obsolete.

Grumble, Grumble

It's that time again—when I fill my blog with gripes about things that annoy me. (Let's face it, gripes about things that don't annoy me wouldn't make any sense at all!) Today's first topic:

Paginating online news articles

I'm told that people on the Internet have a short attention span. I'm told that they don't read; they skim. And I'm told that if you don't give your e-audience their information in little bits and pieces, they won't read it at all.

The online news media seems to have taken this advice to mean that they cannot post an article on their website in its entirety, but rather have to divide it into 2–4 pages. Mind you, these pages are not meaningfully divided, such as by topic wherein you can skip topic 2 if it doesn't interest you and go right on to 3. No, they're just divided to make the page look shorter.

Does this really result in any kind of benefit for anyone? If I were to break this blog entry right here, and make you click a link to see the rest of it, would you? Or would you decide you'd had enough, and it wasn't worth the wait to load an entirely new page just to continue reading?

If I've already committed to reading an article, making me click through several pages of it is only an annoyance. In my opinion, dividing content on the Internet should only be done if it assists in navigation—not if it slows the reader down.

On second thought, this unnecessary pagination may be a ploy to ensure the reader sees more ads. In which case, I complain even more adamantly than ever before!

Speaking of complaining...

There are some people on my Facebook who keep a running commentary via their status updates of all the things that have gone wrong in their life since their last status update. I hardly hear anything from them but some complaint. There are also some people in my immediate vicinity who have a cynical comment to make every time they open their mouth. Jeez! Grumbling every once in a while is all right (it'd have to be, or it would be very hypocritical of me to be writing this post), but try to maintain a balance!

And speaking of balance...

Yoga

I'm aware yoga has been in existence for millennia. Apparently it has some practical benefit, or people would have given up after the first thousand years. But ever since yoga splattered all over my radar screen about a decade ago, I have been struggling with my skepticism. I can't help but think that a good portion of yoga practitioners merely do it because it's trendy. And another good portion of them only do it because they like to show off all the strange ways they can contort their limbs. Maybe I'm just jealous because I'm about as flexible as a Lego person, but frankly, I just can't work up any respect for an activity that inspires captions such as the one below.

If we relax our minds and concentrate,
perhaps we can rip our own heads off!

Life After Graduation, Part 2

It occurred to me today that as a postgraduate graduate, I will probably never again have cause to create masterpieces like the above bit of nonsensical ingenuity that I doodled on the bottom border of a page of lecture notes during my last semester at UB.

I bought a window air conditioner today. This may seem apropos of nothing, but it set off the chain of events that caused me to become all nostalgic over my classroom artistry. You see, whenever I acquire something new, I have this overwhelming compulsion to purge my life of something old. It's 'cause I hate clutter. So today, while patently ignoring the existence of my new air conditioner and sweating under the breeze of two ineffectual fans (because I still feel guilty about using an air conditioner at all), I decided it was time to clean my bookshelf (again) of all the things related to my completed degree.

I ruthlessly recycled pages upon pages of photocopied articles that I'd kept, thinking I might use them as reference material someday. I culled two books that I'd been holding onto just in case I needed them as source material for a paper. I got rid of an entire notebook of typeface samples. I tossed away my student handbook and course catalog. I Freecycled two 3-ring binders and a folder, and I kept...one page of notes.

I'll miss taking notes like these--notes in which the terse and cursory comments on the lecture (half of which are upside-down) are overrun by a swarm of random phrases and pictures of owls. Don't get me wrong--I won't in the slightest way miss being bored during a lecture, but I will miss rifling through my notes and puzzling over the outrageously digressive works of art that adorn the borders of the pages. Some of my most creative designs came from not paying much attention in design class!

You know what else I'll miss? Writing papers. Yes, it's nerdy of me, but I find something immensely satisfying about pulling together a bunch of scraps of quotes from a pile of books and websites, and turning them into something that makes sense. A few days ago, a friend who is still in school was griping about how her school was forcing her to limit her 11-pages of writing to five pages, and I was jealous! If I found it immensely satisfying to put a paper together, I found it absolutely glorious to tear one apart, remove page after page, change a few words, and find that its meaning was still not lost. Yes, I do like to be long-winded when I write, but as I said, I also hate clutter.

Without term papers to write, dissect, and rewrite, I guess the only way for me to get my tidiness fix is for me to organize my bookshelf. Again.

Consider the Environment

You probably know me as your friendly tree-hugging hippie who just can't shut up about reducing, reusing, recycling, cutting emissions, and conserving energy. And for good reason—I am more than happy to talk about the ridiculous lengths to which we can go to save the earth.

For example, take a look at my headphones. They're not the only ones I've got, but I keep using them because I just can't stop!

These headphones are a chintzy piece of junk that I think I got free when I bought a tape recorder—if that tells you anything about how old they are. When the foam pads wore out and fell off, I glued on replacement bits of foam that I repurposed from some cell phone packaging.

Whenever someone visits and looks at my headphones, they immediately tell me I need a new pair. They even offer to give me a new pair! But I tell them, no, these ones are still working and it would be wasteful to throw them away!

But I didn't come here today to talk about my headphones. (Even though I do want to remind you that when your headphones wear out to the point where they can't be saved even with new foam padding, you should not throw them out, but take them to an electronics recycling dropoff, such as at Best Buy.)

No, today I came here to talk about an environmental trend that I think is stupid!

Have you ever gotten an email, and down at the bottom, it had this slogan, "Consider the environment before printing this email?" It probably even had a cute webdings picture of a stream meandering through some trees!

That's stupid! Email works like this: You read it, you delete it. How many people in this world actually print their emails? Do you? Do you keep a paper file of every message you ever got? Perhaps even keep a duplicate file, organized by sender address, for cross-reference purposes? No one does that! Sane people will only print an email if it's absolutely necessary—like, because it has driving directions on it or something. And sane people do not like to have their intelligence insulted by insipid reminders to consider the environment before doing something that's absolutely necessary.

So, if you ever receive an email that tells you to consider the environment before printing it, go ahead and laugh! I, the tree-huggingest hippie around, give you leave to do so. And if, perchance, you are one of those people who has that slogan in your signature, consider your audience instead. Don't you think the people you email have enough sense to decide for themselves when to hit print? And if you were possibly planning on printing an email...well...consider the environment, and print on the backside of another sheet.

Hair

As I mentioned in my last post, when I'm feeling ennuious (no, that's not a word, but it should be!), I develop 3 cravings: to eat junk food, to move away, and to wear makeup. There is, however, in recent months, another option. Lately, my general malaise has also been manifesting itself in a desire to cut my hair.

My ponytail measures 27 inches these days. It has already reached the point where people are awed by it, and there's really no incentive for me to keep growing it "until it starts to look ratty," as was my original plan. I'm growing weary of its demanding maintenance schedule (which requires a good half-hour of detangling every day, plus nightly braiding), and I've seen ladies with braids that extend past their butts, and I don't think they look all that good.

But still, I hesitate to sever all ties with my old friend (get it!?) just yet. I've begun to feel that my hair is my not-so-secret weapon. It's dramatic. It's a talking point. It gives people reason to notice me.

Without this 2-foot clump of keratin trailing behind me, I fear I would recede into invisibility. Without "Wow, your hair is getting really long!" as an opening line, my reunions with long-unvisited friends and family members might never progress past the awkward-grinning phase. I have long suspected that one of my chief social failings is that people forget me as soon as I'm out of sight. Yet, I've come to believe that my hair is the only thing that might mitigate my forgettability (no, that's not a word, either. Get used to it). Without my ridiculously long mop, I worry there would be nothing distinctive about me.

Before I commit to such a drastic move, I need to find another gimmick—something that makes me more than just another face in the crowd. There is that penchant that I have for one-of-a-kind thrift store getups... And last winter's experiment with knee socks as a wardrobe staple went off pretty well. Maybe I should learn to harness the power of accessorizing—without big tumors of hair sticking out of my head, I'd be free to wear things like hats! Or maybe I should just stop being so vain.

Anyway, while I'm pondering how to cut my hair without going through separation anxiety, I'll leave you to ponder this abbreviated top-ten list:

You know it's time to cut your hair...

• When you can hit your funny bone with the end of your braid.
• When you can use your hair in place of a scarf.
• When you see your hairstyle reflected in a window, and you remind yourself of an alien in a Star Wars movie.
• When a loose hair can work its way down your collar and become an instrument of itchy torture somewhere in the vicinity of your belly button!
• When you start accidentally sitting on it.

Makeup

When ever I become unhappy with my life, I start doing three things: I lose my desire to eat anything but junk food, I get this sudden urge to move somewhere else, and I start wanting to wear makeup. The appetite thing is easily explained by the food-serotonin link; the moving thing has to do with a desire to run away from my problems; and the makeup thing is just bizarre. Sometimes I think it's my subconscious saying, "I'm pissed off—here's the war paint to prove it!" Or maybe it's just another desperate bid for change.

In any case, I never actually do it--but since I'm constantly arguing with myself about whether it's time to give in and purchase a tube of mascara, I think it's a good time to make my stance on makeup perfectly clear.

I don't object to makeup. In fact, for most of my adult life, I had a reasonably respectable collection of it. However, I threw it all out a couple of years ago, when someone I was in love with told me I didn't need it. I wish I could say I've never looked back, but I do. Frequently. Especially during those times when I want to start wearing black and run away to New Mexico to eat cheesecake all day. It's just that, all things considered, I think makeup is something better left unworn.

Like so many of the other things I shy away from, I believe makeup breeds dependence. According to my book, makeup is something you should wear for decoration. That's why my collection of old had nothing practical in it such as foundation, but mostly consisted of an assortment of colorful eyeshadows. However, for the average female who has graduated from 7th grade, makeup is something you put on to make you look beautiful.

You understand the distinction, right? According to me, makeup is something beautiful you wear. According to convention, it's something that alters the perception of what you are. For those of us who are naturally beautiful (*bats long, luscious, unpainted eyelashes*), such artifice is completely unnecessary. But those who buy into the belief that makeup can make you beautiful soon find that they only feel beautiful when they're wearing it. And when they're not, they feel ugly. Thus they are forced to wear it all the time to keep up the image they've established for themselves. I choose to keep my face looking plain, because if people get used to seeing me with my natural look, they won't think I look like a corpse when they see me with my natural look!

Of course, there are other reasons (mostly having to do with laziness) that I choose not to paint my face. I'm pretty happy with my ability to get ready for work in 15 minutes every morning (and that includes styling my unmanageable mane, which will be  a topic of later discussion), and I don't see why I should slow myself down with unnecessary preening. Nor do I see why I should have to go through the hassle of washing it all off every night. I don't put soap on my face, period, and I see no reason to change that.

And then, of course, there's the simple argument that wearing makeup is actually counteractive to most of my goals. I maintain that makeup makes you look more gorgeous—only if you're already gorgeous to begin with! For my part, makeup is not going to hide my chubby cheeks, nor is it going to bring my eyes out of those hollows they're sunk into, nor is it going to straighten my deviant nose. Honestly, wearing makeup only makes me look old and mean, which doesn't seem the best strategy to combat a discontent brought on chiefly by loneliness.

So, while sometimes I have the urge to splash some color onto this waxen face of mine, I think for now I'll just refrain. But you ladies out there who disagree with me, go ahead and keep doing that thing you do! That way, I can compare myself to you and feel liberated, and the cosmetics industry will stay in business should I ever change my mind!

That old-time music

I never had a first-generation gaming system, but apparently I'm nostalgic about them. In fact, I seem to be on a retro tech kick. I don't know the reason, but I do know that's the reason I was compelled to create the "1980's Nintendo-Style Tree" (credit for the name goes to Geoff) of two posts ago.

It also explains my latest musical obsession. Remember when I waxed ecstatic about how Welle:Erdball composes some of their music on a Commodore 64? Well, it turns out that that delightful 8-bit music has a genre all of its own!

I discovered this quite accidentally while exploring a new website, radiotuna.com. They feature some strangely categorized genres (like, who knew rock and roll was a subcategory of rock?) and some genres I've never heard of (viking metal? screw? gabber?), one of which was "chiptune."

I decided to try it out, and instantly fell in love! Bleeps and bloops and scratchy bass galore! Wikipedia told me a lot more about the genre, most importantly the technological basis for that peculiarly fun, jittery sound that's in so much old-school video game music--it's their attempt at simulating chords. I quote, "In early video game music, arpeggios were often the only way to play a chord since sound hardware usually had a very limited number of oscillators, or voices. Instead of tying them all up to play one chord, one channel could be used to play an arpeggio, leaving the rest for drums, bass, or sound effects."

I find this inordinately exciting. If you are even half as thrilled as I am about micromusic (another name for the genre I just learned today), I encourage you to download a few of these thrilling bits of pseudo-history. How about some chiptune remixes of popular songs! Want to resurrect the 90's trance scene with some Nintendo power? Try Yerzmyey's remix of Robert Miles's "Children"! Or mix up the decades a little more, and bring some 80's into Madonna's 2005 hit that samples an old disco track: TDM and Factor 6 reproduce "Hung Up" on the ZX Spectrum (no, I don't know what one of those is, either). Or feeling a little more adventurous and want to try something totally new? Try "I Want More Diamonds!" by The Galactic Stranger. I don't remember anything about it, but I made a note to myself that I should add it to my collection.

And, if you're really motivated, you should run, don't walk, to www.cvgm.net and do some exploring of your own. Download some tracks, or listen to their audio stream! Learn about the dudes who make the songs and their spiffy equipment! And, as an added bonus, watch Super Mario spinning out in your address bar!

After you're done, be sure to tell me what you found. I just spent the last week organizing my music collection, and now that that's done, I need to mess it up a little with more new stuff!

Boos and Woohoos: Or, a Set of Reviews

I get really excited about some things, and I want to share them with the world. And some things make me really grumpy, and I want to gripe about them. But I never seem quite sure how to address them in my blog--not enough to talk about, too much of a downer...there's always something holding me back.

But not any more! I am going to write about them in the contrasting viewpoints format that is so popular among publications. You know, like thumbs-up/thumbs-down? Or like rants/raves? Except that, if you somehow managed not to read the title of this post, these are called "Boos and Woohoos!" Today's reviews are on a few topics related to environmental friendliness.

Boo

You know those yellowish envelopes you send interoffice memos in? Oh, you don't send interoffice memos any more? Well, you know those yellowish envelopes that you can buy to send your mail in? The ones that usually have a metal brad or a little doohicky with a string that you use to help hold them shut?

I always thought those envelopes were pretty cool, because thanks to the attached doohickies, you could use them multiple times. What's not cool about them is they are apparently unrecyclable! Yes, according to at least a few sources, this "goldenrod" paper is saturated with dyes that can't be removed--meaning the paper can't be recycled. Apparently this is true of any dark-colored paper. Well, I checked on my city's recycling website, and it did not prohibit goldenrod envelopes--but (and here's a point you should remember) just because the city accepts something for recycling, that doesn't mean it actually gets recycled!

So, just to be on the safe side... Next time you buy envelopes, don't choose any that are mustard or dark in color!

Woohoo

On a different recycling-related note, the last time I was at Payless Shoes, the cashier asked me if I wanted to keep the boxes. I said no, and asked her if they recycle them. It turns out they actually do one better: they return the boxes to the manufacturer for reuse! Way to go, Payless! Not only did you hook me up with an awesome, comfy pair of shoes that everyone compliments me on for just 10 dollars, but you also have shown a commitment to packaging reduction! If I didn't love you before for your great prices and irresistible BOGO sales (which I did), I definitely do now for your sustainable ways! Keep it up!

Life After Graduation

You know, it may be a little late to get incensed about this, but why does everyone assume "University of Baltimore" means "UMBC" (a.k.a. University of Maryland Baltimore County)? If I meant UMBC, I'd say UMBC!

A little under a month ago, I graduated from the University of Baltimore with my MA in publications design. I mentioned this to one of my freelance clients, and he said, "Ahh, you're a CSP!" "CSP?" I said. He answered, "Certified Smart Person!"

That's right. Now that I've joined the ranks of the highly educated, all sorts of new possibilities have opened up. With my advanced degree firmly in my grasp, I've already begun accomplishing great things!

I took on full-time work! (Full time caretaking the bulk foods section of a grocery store...)

I converted 3 men's shirts to women's shirts!

I set up a hook to hang my headphones on so I don't have to wrap them up and stow them in a drawer every time I'm done with them.!

I designed and created 2 new pairs of earrings, one of which is finished and pictured here!

I learned – after a year of thinking it impossible – how to turn on the outdoor faucet, and then procured a garden hose, to enable future washing of my car unhindered by the expensive and frantic process of using the carwash!

I organized my beading supplies--an act inspired by the process of creating the aforementioned earrings!

I repaired the brake on my bike and logged 7.1 miles on the 2-Mile Challenge!

With a flourish of my permanent marker, I labeled all my property in the basement and shed, so as to prevent future incidents like the mysterious disappearance of my stain remover's lid!

Though I had been deeply saddened by the tragic demise of my favorite pair of jeans (the only pair of jeans I ever had that I didn't find obnoxiously uncomfortable) I finally gave them new life by sewing the patched part of them into the shape of a pouch, in which I now carry a set of tableware so I don't have to use a new disposable set every time I eat at work! Later on, I intend to turn the rest of them into napkins.

I moved all my cosmetics into a nice, organized box and rearranged my bookshelf! Again.

I designed a long-overdue new Facebook profile picture! It is pictured to the right. Yes. It is another tree.

Wow! I accomplished a lot of wonderful things! It's amazing where a master's degree can take you!

Cocoa versus Cocaine Or, what a difference a letter can make!

Not too long ago, I helped a customer at the grocery store find some carob products. He was very adamant in his refusal to consume chocolate, and when I asked him what was wrong with chocolate, he looked at me with wide-eyed sincerity and said, "For one thing, cocoa...cocaine!"

"Oh," I said to him. "You know, they're not really the same. Chocolate is made from the cacao plant, and cocaine is made from the coca plant." The customer didn't appear to believe me, and he seemed just a little too firm in his beliefs for me to press the issue, but I would like to make it clear right here and now that chocolate and cocaine do not come from the same plant.

My self-righteous customer does not seem to be the only one holding this erroneous belief. Today, in fact, I read a news article stating that Bolivia was marketing an alternative to Coca-Cola made from the cocoa leaf. The article also stated that cocoa leaves are a major ingredient in cocaine. Now, the article cited a slightly longer article from the Irish Times as its source, so after I had spent a suitable amount of time scouring the Internet for articles about the difference between coca and cacao, and working myself into a fit of didactic rage, I looked for the article on the Irish Times website. I found it, and it said what I knew to be true--that coca, not cocoa, is the base ingredient for cocaine. So, I was relieved that the Irish Times wasn't leading people astray, but it was still too late. The damage had been done.

I must set the record straight. It's time for a botany lesson. Also a culinary lesson and a drug-manufacturing lesson--whee, you're in for a treat!

Let's do drugs first. Cocaine is made from the coca plant.	Now let's have dessert. Chocolate is made from the cacao plant, also known as the cocoa plant. The terms are interchangeable, but some people prefer to use "cacao" for the beans before they have been processed.
The coca plant looks like this: The coca plant is a bush.	The cacao plant looks like this: The cacao plant is a tree.
The coca plant is known to the scientific community as Erythroxylum coca.	The cacao plant's scientific name is Theobroma cacao.
Cocaine is a naturally occurring alkaloid found in the coca leaf, and when extracted and purified, it becomes the addictive stimulant we all know and love.	Chocolate is produced by drying and grinding the seeds of the cacao plant and mixing the powder with sugar, oils, and other good stuff, producing the addictive sweet we all know and love a lot more than cocaine.
For more information on coca, visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca http://www.tni.org/primer/coca-leaf-myths-and-reality	For more information on cacao, visit: http://www.chocolatesource.com/glossary/index.asp#Cacao http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacao_bean http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/c/cacao-02.html

There. My desire for the truth has been satisfied. Researching that little lesson was a major effort. Now that you've been educated, please just do me one favor. Never look me in the eye and equate one of my favorite foods with an illegal drug.

Flight school

Signs in the airport gave me a few ideas about how to improve the world. Firstly, if airlines don't want you to fly sick and infect all your fellow passengers, they need to make it easier and cheaper for you to cancel your reservation. Secondly, I think someone could start a great business selling powdered shampoos and cosmetics, for people who are limited to a quart of 3-oz bottles in their carry-on bags.

Recently, I traveled by air from Baltimore to Oregon and back again. While this is not the first time I have been a passenger on an airplane, it was the first time I've been able to experience the flight with 26 years of learning behind me. This trip, I was struck by all the ways in which flying is not just a skin-drying, gravity-defying, ear-assaulting, germ-transmitting, internal-clock-attacking adventure, but it's also a learning experience.

First of all, flying is a sociology lesson. What better way to learn about herd behavior than to observe a bunch of people entering an airplane? I flew Southwest Airlines this time, and unlike all the other airlines I've flown on, which ask you to tell them your seating preferences when you book your ticket, Southwest lets you board in the order you checked in, and choose your seats on the plane. For 3 of my 4 flights, I was among the last people to board, and I watched as all the people in front of me snapped up the seats near the front. The last seat in the plane was always the last to go. What does that say about human behavior? I really don't know--I'm not sociologist! But I do know that it worked out well for me.  Being forced to sit in the back of the plane meant that I was conveniently close to the restroom. I never had to stand in line for the toilet--I could just watch the door and wait for a convenient time to get up. I also got a great view out the window, completely unobstructed by the wing. That never happens to me!

This great view and fairly clear skies gave me ample opportunity to study the ground below, whereupon I realized that flying is also a geography lesson. You never appreciate how mountains ripple out from their central ridges until you've seen them from above! You see how rivers bend and loop, and how the trees cluster more densely around them, and how even when you can't see the water, you know it's there by the branching fingers of green that it nourishes! You see big bloated riverlike bodies of water and you realize they are the reservoirs formed by dams. You can tell where people have been by the geometric shapes they leave behind them! Staring out the window was so fascinating, I wondered how many flights I'd have to sit through before I ever tired of the view of the earth from above.

As I neared the end of my flight back home to Baltimore, I had my third learning experience. Flying, I realized, is also a history lesson! I had seen how the land in the Midwest was neatly divided into gridlike patterns. (And I had pondered long and hard over how I can see circular irrigation patterns so easily from the air, yet I've never noticed them on the ground--but that's another story!) The less-populated areas of farmland were like a patchwork quilt of perfect squares, and (with a certain amount of apropos boredom) I was brought back to my school days, when I learned how the government parceled out land in the West, squares divided into smaller and smaller squares until at last they divided one final time into rectangles (yikes! Now I'm thinking of mitosis! All this talk of school will do that to me). Traveling eastward, the patchwork quilt pattern gave way to a crazy-quilt of fields of all shapes and sizes...roads going every which way...near complete chaos! This being a relic of the time when property lines were defined more by natural features than a grid. It was fascinating to look at, and to realize this distinction, even if it makes finding your way places a lot more difficult here in the East!

This concludes my rhapsody on air travel. Thanks for choosing Val's Galorious Galaxy, and have a great evening!

Going green with Greenie

A year ago in November, my bicycle (Greenie, in case you were curious about its name) was in an accident that scratched its paint job, ripped a small hole in its seat, and disconnected its front brake line. I was content to leave the cosmetic damage as-is (though, now that I think about it, I should probably cover up the holes in the paint before they rust...), and, not being a hardcore biker, I was also content to let the front brake line flap in the breeze. The back brakes worked fine, and I just never could work up the motivation to take it to a shop!

Then everything changed! I joined this biking promotion thingy which I'll tell you about in a minute, and then I received a coupon for 20% off any REI product, and I thought, "Now is the time to take advantage of this coupon to buy a new brake cable, so I can ride my bike more and better to make the best use of my biking promotion thingy!"

So today I grabbed my REI card and my purse and a pair of pliers, and pulled Greenie out of the shed so that I could take off the old, broken brake cable to bring to REI as a guide for buying a new one. Upon some examination, I realized the brake cable wasn't actually broken at all--part of it had just slipped out of its notch. It took me 10 seconds to put it back together.

Oops. I spent a year and a half riding a bike with no front brake when I could have fixed it in 10 seconds. Well, the good thing is my coupon for 20% ended up saving me 100%! What a bargain!

Now, are you curious about this mysterious biking promotion thingy?

Consider this. 40% of urban travel is within 2 miles, and 90% of those trips are by car! 25% of the US carbon dioxide emissions come from motor vehicles! I had no clue about these statistics until I lifted them from the promotion thingy website – and I will probably forget them tomorrow, since numbers go in one of my eyes and out the other – but I can comprehend this little equation:
 
More bike travel + less car travel = happier planet!  See? -->

So how do we achieve this end? By riding our bikes instead of driving on our day-to-day travels? You betcha! And there's a certain biking promotion thingy that will make it easy and fun and will not only make the earth smile, but will also support your favorite bike-related nonprofit!

It's the Clif 2-Mile Challenge! If you have a bike, I encourage you to register and join a team (I'm on the Gold Team)! If you don't have a bike, they even have a tool that will help you custom-make one of your own! Get cracking now! It will encourage me not to get distracted by other things. Later on, when I don't have a vacation to get ready for (and assuming I don't get distracted with other things), I might even send you a challenge.

It will be fun!

Yep. Still Famous.

I am proud to announce that I have found more of my clip art floating around on the Internet. Like the question mark stock photo that appeared on a Russian site on international driver's licenses and the graphic of bottles and cans a retail/food service website used on a page that no longer seems to be working, I not so long ago found my trusty "bottle pile" image (seen below) on someone else's website (you have to click on "give away" or "find" recyclables and then pick a state before you can see the image in use).

It's kind of an awesome website, by the way—it connects people who have recyclable materials to get rid of with people who collect recyclable materials. If you ever hoped to get a little money for your massive collection of old newspapers (annoying housemate, I'm talking to you!), I recommend visiting this site – ecycler.com – and trying it out!

Woohoo! My graphics are being used to such a noble end!

Portfolio

Well, the great Procrastination Project is finally finished (I do not recommend trying to do in two weeks what you should have been doing the entire semester), but I have to say that in spite of all the agony that it's caused me, I like the way my portfolio came out. My professor even complimented me on it when I brought in my display board--ooh, I could have just melted--such a welcome change from the days when I was always being told my work needed to be more "polished!"

But hey! Relentless cheeriness is no fun! Let's take a look at some of the lowlights of my creative process.

• January 27: Delighted to learn that I could do a digital portfolio (getting designs to print right is my constant Waterloo). Promptly proceeded to suffer creative block.
• March 3: Was told I was behind in my work and I needed to start designing things (excuse me! I was setting up the perfect architectural framework! Function before form!)
• March 10: Had to nix glorious plans for interchangeable layouts (à la CSS Zen Garden) when I learned that my digital portfolio and all printed collateral (résumé, business card, etc.) had to have a consistent "identity."
• March 11-April 26: Worked at a leisurely pace and took frequent breaks for computer games and shopping.
• April 27: Suddenly realized that I had a week left before the project was due, and I still needed to build 4 web pages; write and design and print a resume, cover letter, business card, and CD cover; update all the descriptions in my database, move the site from my local machine to my Web host, purchase a new domain, set up the new domain, take screenshots of the website and put them on a CD, mount the resume, cover letter, business card, and CD cover on mat board, come up with a catchy catchphrase, repair all my broken JavaScripts, and other things that I have blocked from my memory.
• April 28: Became very crabby.
• May 2: Finally finished with printed collateral; took printed collateral files to Fedex Office and had printed. Got home and realized I needed 2 copies each of resume and cover letter and I had only printed one. Also realized I had not printed the text on the business card.
• May 3: Took files to Fedex Office again and had printed. Received parking ticket. Went home and learned that documents were full of typos and needed to be printed again.
• May 4: Took subway to DC to purchase mat board. Walked half mile in search of Fedex Office but never found. Walked another half mile to Staples. Was obliged to purchase a 10-pack of black folders even though I only needed 2. While paying for excessive quantity of folders, learned that I had left my debit card at ATM on the previous evening. Walked to art store and then back 3 blocks to bank to cancel debit card. Got blister on foot. Put on band-aid which promptly fell off. Returned home. Prepared documents for taking back to Fedex Office again, then tried printing on home printer. Finally, a highlight! They printed without the ugly lines that I had previously believed my printer put on everything! Cut out business cards, realized text was positioned wrong. Printed again. Mounted everything on mat board, then realized I needed to mount the CD cover as well. Rearranged everything on mat board, leaving glue marks in inappropriate places. I think this ends my litany of lowlights.
• May 5: Delivered portfolio collateral to University. Received compliment. Rejoiced.
  Returned home. Ate ice cream. Obsessively recounted everything I had done, waiting for another lowlight to present itself. It didn't.

And your reward for reading through that protracted tale of portfolio? Behold!

www.valeriehoy.info.

If you find a typo, please break it to me gently.

I'm too busy to blog, so here's an old blog entry about blogs!

Are you tired of reading about loneliness? I am. But I'm also occupied (read:overwhelmed) with finishing my portfolio in time for graduation. So I don't have time to write a new entry. Fortunately, the blog I wrote for the class that started me out on this journey towards my neverending portfolio development project has my back. Let's see what I had to say about blogging in the golden days of 2007.

December 4, 2007
On Blogging

I'm delighted that we're going to be talking about blogs this week. Blogs, I think, are one of the most wonderful inventions of the modern era. They're a convenient way to stay informed, entertained, and in touch.

But it wasn't always so, and I wasn't always so enthusiastic. Blogs have come a long way in just a few years. My first experience with blogs came in the form of friends' LiveJournals. I read a few, found them boring and full of Internet English [editor's note: I'll resurrect a post on this linguistic phenomenon later], and quickly decided they were not worth my time.

When I first encountered the word "blog" (I think some article referred to them as the next big thing), my only real thought was, "That's an ugly word." From what I read, blogs sounded like a fad best ignored.

The first time I heard the word "blog" spoken was in a class in my last semester of undergrad in 2005. My professor, new to the concept himself, wanted us to participate in his new blog. "I got a blog," he said to us in our first class. He said it in the same way one might say, "I got a slimy creature that looks like it might spit acid at you if you touch it." The next class, he informed us that his superiors had decided blogging was too much work for undergraduate students, and the blog assignment was nixed. So I narrowly escaped the blogosphere for a little while longer.

Later that semester, I student-taught a bunch of mostly uncooperative, malevolent high school students. All student teachers were required to keep a daily journal and hand it in to our supervisors once a week. I was a terrible student teacher, but my journal was impeccable. It was the one thing I enjoyed about the whole experience—and it was my initiation into the system of regular public updates that blogging entails.

It was only that summer, facing eternal separation from my friends, and a complete lack of a future career (I certainly didn't want to become a teacher!), that finally, out of loneliness and boredom, I got a blog of my own. Of course, then, I refused to call it that. "Blog" was still an ugly word and a fad best ignored. So I called it my online journal and wrote in it increasingly regularly and at increasing length.

But now, two and a half years later, blog is a household word. If you still think of blogs as slimy creatures from the great unknown, you're officially living in the Pleistocene. Now it seems that anyone who's anyone has a blog. And anyone who's no one—they have one too.

I've got one! I'm still not crazy about the word, but one syllable beats out four any day, so I guess "blog" is here to stay. While my blog is of the lowest sort - the kind in which plebeians with no credentials ramble on about nothing in particular and have a Google page rank of zero - it is, nonetheless, a blog. And one of these days, when I'm not so busy trying to write in this blog trying to graduate, I'll actually post a new entry.

Sitting in my room, analyzing social phenomena with professional disinterest

Only 2 days after writing my last little thesis on loneliness, I ran across this highly relevant article about renting friends by the hour. While that idea's pretty creepy and ultimately stupid (No matter how desperate you are, why pay for companionship when you can find it for free on Craigslist?) the article had all sorts of interesting things to say about being lonely, most of which were things that I was going to say the next time I decided to write about the subject, which I guess is now.

They say that loneliness is a feedback loop. Yes, just when I'm feeling the most unhappy with my own company, that's when it's hardest to seek out the company of others.

They say that looking for comfort in online interaction is like "eating celery: 'It’s better than nothing, but there’s no long-term sustenance.'" And yes, I was going to say that I I think having so many online friends actually contributes to my loneliness. Hardly a day goes by that I don't spend a good portion of my time chatting through the internet. I'm hardly isolated from the world, but having all these people to chat with sometimes prevents me from actually trying to be around them. Conversation is great, but sometimes you just need a warm body in your general vicinity--and by "warm body," I mean something other than a nicely heated CPU.

What I wasn't going to say, however – which the article does – is that loneliness is contagious. Oops. Just by blogging about it, it looks like I have infected my entire readership. Sorry, guys, I'll pause while you weep silently in a corner.

...

Pity party over? OK, we'll move on.

The article also didn't quote Britney Spears, which I was most definitely going to do. But oh, no! It's time to go to work! We'll have to continue this discussion another time!

Give me a knight with a white horse, shining armor, and the ability to arrive before he's called.

I really look forward to my days off. Today was one. This past week I worked three full days in a row at the store (whoa, I know...), so I was feeling burned out on groceries and eager to get back to my cozy room where I can edit websites in my pajamas. Strangely enough, though, while leading people to the honey all the time and making endless amounts of coffee burns me out quickly, it seems that working all by myself in a chair burns me out quicker.

Usually, after just a single day of e-freelancing, I begin to feel this creeping sense of sadness. It's a little bit lack of motivation (which I admit is pretty easy to feel when you are surrounded by all the paraphernalia of your life that have nothing to do with work), and a little bit restlessness (but you'd think that wouldn't be such an issue when I take exercise breaks every time I get too cold or antsy), but mostly, I think it's just loneliness.

I have that much-touted ability to see eternity in every moment. Unfortunately, for me, this means that when I'm happy, I think it's going to last forever and am devastated when it doesn't...and when I'm lonely, I can't help but think that's going to last forever, too, hence the creeping sadness, despite all the logical self-admonition I can muster.

I often wonder why, when I've been around people for a while, I start to crave solitude so much, knowing that only a few hours of it will turn me into a tragic figure that sits silently in shadows, leans wistfully out the window, and dreams incessantly of her white knight. However, putting it in those terms, I realize exactly why I feel lonely.

It's not that I don't need lots of alone time. I do. I'm a certified introvert. But even the most die-hard hermit needs other people occasionally. And I see that moment coming from miles away. Long before I've reached the point where I feel desperate for companionship, I'm worrying about the time in the future when I will reach that point. I worry because I know I am powerless to prevent it. The difference between a person who is lonely and one who is not, is that the un-lonely person knows how to not be alone when they no longer want to be.

That esoteric knowledge is inaccessible to me. I truly am at the mercy of whatever white knight may appear to rescue me from my solitude. For I know not how to summon one. Or, if I were not so inclined to speak in terms of fairy tales, I might say that social phobia keeps me in my lonely tower – no, no! Must dispense with the fairy tale imagery! – that the effort of reaching out to people stresses me out so much that it pretty much negates any benefit that I might gain from having company, in the event that my attempt is a success. I might also say that I don't know how to connect with people, and when I try, I end up looking like a total fake.

So I just don't try. I think it would be easier to stab myself repeatedly with a pushpin than start a conversation that might embarrass me.

Believe it or not, this hasn't been a sloppy wallow in self pity. It's just an insight. I don't think it has the power to turn me into Miss Congeniality, but knowledge is power. Maybe there's enough power in it to drive me to call up an acquaintance and see if they'd like to get ice cream with me! Then again...oh, look! Pushpins!

Love your broom.

It is a simple enough request: love your broom. It has served you well. It has lifted dust from places you'd otherwise have had to clean with your hands—ugh. It has – well, I don't know – everyone's relationship with their broom is different. But surely your broom has done great things in your life, even if you are not a witch.

There is little that pains me more than to see a big crate full of brooms, jammed on top of and next to each other, bristles sticking out every which way. That's not love! That's certain death to your faithful cleaning implements!

I get frustrated that, where I work, when we get a new broom, it lasts for about 2 weeks before it's ragged and nigh unusable. If you've ever wondered why your brooms always end up lopsided and curved, why the bristles stick out to the sides like whiskers – and why they end up this way so quickly – it could be because you've been jamming it into places too small for it. But it probably has more to do with your storage style.

When you sit down, you don't sit on your fingers! So why rest your broom on the delicate appendages that it needs to do its work? Don't store your broom on its bristles on the floor! Get a wall bracket and hang it up! If your workplace *ahem* is too cheap or complacent to make the effort to purchase a wall bracket, don't try to stuff 5 or 6 broom heads into a crate along with the dustpans, shovel, and whatever other cleaning implements are being stored there—just turn your brooms upside-down! You'll find they fit into their storage space much easier, and they live a lot longer!

This has been a cleaning tip by Valerie.

Graphic Defender

A blast from the past
In my last post, I mentioned a blog entry from way back, which I wrote in defense of the fonts everyone loves to hate: Comic Sans and Papyrus. Today I share with you the entire post (edited somewhat).

November 12, 2007

This entry has been a long time in coming. This is my objective look at the whipping boys of the design world: Papyrus and Comic Sans.

Consider for a moment. Do you despise these typefaces? Do you do so because there is something fundamentally abhorrent about their design? Do you do so because you are tired of them? Do you do so because professionals, professors, and classmates have wagged their fingers and said, "No, no, no"? I'm fairly new to this business, and I'll admit, a prejudice against these fonts was instilled in me early. Mostly for reason number 3 above. So I decided it was time to make an objective study of my own.

I've looked at these fonts, I've even interacted with them, and I am convinced they are not the devil incarnate. While I wouldn't set a book with either of them, and I wouldn't recommend them for anyone trying to project an air of sophistication, they are not inherently evil.

The problem with Comic Sans and Papyrus is that they are 2 of the very few fonts with "personality" that come in the Windows font set. And since they are the only interesting fonts that most people have easy access to, they are the only interesting fonts that people regularly use. And things that are interesting when they are fresh and new, become trite and annoying when they are old and used.

But let's not blame the victim here. Let's blame the software distributors who are too miserly with free, quality fonts. Rather than chide them for being silly and overdone, let's give these typographic workhorses the praise they so richly deserve!

Comic Sans says:

Let's take a closer look at Comic Sans. What is it good for?
Its name says it all. It's comic! It was designed to represent the speech of adorable Microsoft help characters. For that kind of purpose, it works. Don't use it on your resume, but don't ostracize it either. That's not nice. (Sure, there are lots of other "comic" fonts out there that we haven't seen 3 million times before, but again, don't blame the victim--blame the overusers who don't know when to say enough's enough.)

Papyrus says:

I have to say Papyrus is one of my favorites. Long before I ever stuck my foot in the design door, I was using Papyrus in my AIM profile. (Actually, both of these fonts are splendid for on-screen use. Other "interesting" fonts that I've known become pretty much illegible at 10 points, but Comic Sans and Papyrus? No way! They rock an IM window like nothing I've ever seen!) At small sizes, Papyrus looks stylish and elegant, and I was rather disappointed when I once blew it up to a larger size and saw that it was all raggedy-looking. I think designers think it is tacky because it's been distressed, and what good is an elegant typeface that's shredded around the edges? Almost none. The field of legitimate uses for Papyrus is very small, but people like it. So it gets used, over and over again. Poor Papyrus. I feel sorry for it. It's been used and abused.

I will sum up today's musings with yet another variation of the NRA's famous slogan: Typefaces don't ruin designs; people ruin designs. Rather than banning popular typefaces with limited uses, OS vendors should include new fonts with their software, schools should teach students the basics of typography, and everyone should remember that variety is the spice of life, but too much spice is nauseating.

With values like these in place, I'm sure the world of design will be a much better place.

There. My work here is done.

Best use of Comic Sans ever!

Even if you have never studied typography, you're probably aware that the design community - and a good portion of the general public - hates Comic Sans. Actually, for a class, I once wrote a blog post in defense of this much maligned font (and some day I will let you see it!), the essence of which was, it's not the font that's the problem--it's people using it inappropriately.

A classic real-life example, the likes of which I never thought I'd have the opportunity to share: A company - a rather respectable company that you all have heard of - which sends monthly donations to my organization, contacted us by mail to let us know that they would be making all their future donations electronically. The whole correspondence - the letter, the form we were supposed to complete, and even our address - were composed entirely in Comic Sans!

I had to do a double-take. Then a triple-take. My disbelief was so great, I forgot how to laugh. My mouth is still hanging open.

Picture this now:

Please give us your bank account number.

Nothing like cartoon lettering to inspire confidence in a financial transaction!

Did this really happen? Or was it just a strange typographic dream?

No one respects my poor old grammar.

I think it's funny--nay, it's sad--that the Internet--which is only made possible through a complex syntax of semicolons, commas, periods, and parentheses; and only navigated with the help of colons, slashes, periods, and the occasional question mark--is so unfriendly to punctuation when used in content.

A few days ago, I posted a question on Yahoo! Answers, and a notification popped up: "Whoa! You used a lot of punctuation. Try revising your question." I was right miffed! I needed that punctuation! I wasn't about to sacrifice my good syntax to the whims of some Internet robot, so I simply ignored the warning and posted the question.

But it made me curious. I came back today and tested various questions. I get the notification when I use as little as two double quotes and a comma. I don't know how that qualifies as "a lot," and Yahoo! was not so gracious as to actually explain to me what's wrong with offsetting a quote according to the rules of grammar. Or how it can have an exclamation point as an integral part of its identity and still be so prejudiced against punctuation.

Shortly after the Yahoo! Answers debacle, I learned in an email marketing tutorial that using excessive punctuation in your email subjects is more likely to get them flagged as spam. Now, this I can understand, after receiving enough messages along the lines of "CHEAP VIAGRA!!!!!!" to be unsurprised that exclamation points might be the kiss of death. But commas? Quotation marks? Properly articulated sentences?

Punctuation is essential to meaning! You can't just do away with it because some people misuse it! Consider the classic case of the koala who eats shoots and leaves, versus its evil twin who eats, shoots, and leaves (we won't go into how that miscreant of a koala acquired a firearm).

I foresee a day when all communications revert to pre-Medieval standards:

WESHALLWRITEINALLCAPSANDNOTWORRYABOUTSILLY
THINGSLIKEENSURINGTHATOURWRITINGISUNDERSTOOD
OHANDALSOWEWILLTYPEINBLACKLETTER

Dance Dance Reloaded

For a clever title that ingeniously combines a whole series of movies and a video game into just 3 words, look above. For a continuation of last post's delightful discussion of dance music, look below.

As I mentioned last entry, I've been hearing some dance music on the radio lately. Unfortunately, the dance music I hear on the radio tends more toward house and less toward the trance that I prefer, and – much worse – seems limited to insipid lyrics about one very limited subject. Why is it that every dance song that makes it onto the pop charts has to be about dancing—Hey, dance music! Get over yourself!

Two songs that are big now are "Evacuate the DANCE floor" [capitalization my own] by Cascada, and "TiK ToK" by Ke$ha [capitalization her own], which is an unflattering account of her clubbing habits. Add that to the fact that Ke$ha has annoying voice and an annoying habit of using symbols for letters and capitalizing in inappropriate places, and you have a recipe for disappointment.

Lady Gaga does somewhat better. Of her four dance hits of which I'm aware, three of them have nothing to do with dancing, and one of them is a personal favorite of mine. But the other one? "Just Dance"? Come on, Lady! Buck the trends a little! I thought you liked to live on the wild side!

Anyway, since the pop charts won't allow me to get my dance on to anything but self-congratulatory tales of girls going clubbing or behaving badly or usually both, I'm forced to search elsewhere for my kinesthetic fix.

Did you know that on Monday, I went to my first concert ever? I'm not talking about the kind where you sit in an auditorium and sedately page through your program. I'm talking about the kind where you stand in a room with flashing lights and cheering humans, and dance around while the bass thumps through your feet!

After 26 years of living, I have finally arrived!

The concert was a performance by VNV Nation, which is described variously as "Industrial," "Synthpop," "Futurepop," and "Electronic Body Music"—or, by those who wisely choose not to classify the unclassifiable, "Electronic." Technically, theirs is not "dance" music, but at the concert, there was still a whole lot of dancing going on. Top that off with a delightful LED light show and lyrics that had nothing to do with the music, or DJ's, or the dance floor, or the club, and everything to do with...well, actually I don't know, because I wasn't paying attention. But I hear tell the lyrics are thoughtful and smart. Which wins them points in my book, should I ever choose to drag my attention away from the spine-tingling synthesized basslines and actually listen to the words.

All in all, it was a good choice for my debut into the world of contemporary concert-going, and a good way to forget the agony of idiotic party girls "trying to get a little bit t...i...p...s...y..."

Dance Dance

Yesterday morning, inspired by hearing two dance songs back-to-back on the radio, I had the brilliant idea to devote an entire blog post to my favorite genre of music! That's right--lounge! ......... Haha, that was funny, wasn't it!? Hahaha!

Okay, sorry, I'm just having trouble finding a good lead-in. Let me try again.

I recently renewed my subscription to eMusic. It seems like a pretty good deal--24 DRM-free mp3's  for 12 dollars. But eMusic caters to obscure artists and minor labels, and thus doesn't have any of the music that you already know you want, and you have to use all your downloads within a month! The 30-second samples that they provide are wholly inadequate for helping you decide if you like a song enough to spend 50¢ on it.

Case in point: once upon a time, when I had some free downloads--they might have been from eMusic, or maybe some other source, I blew one of them on a track that I'd never heard before (except the 30-second sample) but had a promising name: "Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss."

Excuse me while I digress for a moment. Being a fanatic about both dance music and linguistics, I spend more time than your average Joe thinking about the proper verbalization and transliteration of the classic sound of electronic dance music. Thanks to Pandora, I now have a name for this sound: a "four-on-the floor drum beat (four quarter-note kick drums per measure, usually associated with an upbeat high-hat)." Unfortunately, I still don't have a word for the sound itself. Ever since I first heard it spoken (at summer camp, when one of my fellow counselors decided to sing a verse of a song "techno style"), I've been spelling it in my mind, "Nn-tsuh, nn-tsuh, nn-tsuh." Recently, browsing eMusic in a futile attempt to use up my remaining 17 downloads, I saw an editorial that introduced itself and the entire genre of electronic music with the phrase, "Oonce. Oonce. Oonce. Oonce." Which I guess is a fair way of spelling it.

But apparently you should not trust the people who spell it "Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss," because their song about it is boring. So boring, in fact, that after downloading it, I deleted it from my computer--something I never do. Even the most boring of songs, once on my hard drive, get relegated to a public folder where they may, perchance, enrich the lives of others who might like them better than I do. But not Uhn Tiss. It is gone forever. Except on YouTube.

I think I'm not done talking about this subject. But I labored long and hard over this post, and I'm tired of writing. I shall take a break. And listen to some lounge. Haahaha!

Asterisk

The punctuation mark as a design element: It's a phenomenon I've been watching curiously over the years, and I decided it was finally time for me to try my hand.

My punctuation mark of choice is the asterisk, because the curly brace is overused, the exclamation point is overwrought, and the ellipsis was already appropriated by the person who denied me the opportunity to register dotdotdot.com. Technically, an asterisk is not a punctuation mark...but it is used semantically in written material, and everything I do must be star-spangled (see this blog's subtitle), so I figure it's good enough.

When I set out on my mission to use an asterisk, I had to think about all the different ways this character can be rendered and find the perfect one for my needs. Should I choose round-edged and splashy, or crisp and geometric? More difficult to decide on: Five arms or six?

Take a look at all the different asterisks we have to choose from--Below is a sampling of commonly used fonts and the asterisks that come with them:

I was overwhelmed with so many choices! Eventually, I went with Gill Sans. I wish I had chosen Perpetua.

Your sea of stupidity bears an uncanny resemblance to rancid milk.

The nice thing about this blog is that people actually read it. Unlike signs that I hang up to communicate with others when I'm not there, it functions as more than just an apparent decoration. This blog has an almost-captive audience. And because of said virtue, I'm going to use it as the means by which I vent all my angst at the parade of morons who make my life difficult.

Because the morons won't listen to me, you'll just have to do it instead. Thank you. Your sacrifice will not go unappreciated.

Today's topic: Basic sanitation in the workplace and respect of your fellow workers.

Let's imagine for a second that you work in a grocery store. And in the course of your daily duties at the store, you run across a product that is unsellable due to damage or spoilage or expiry. Being the conscientious employee that you are, you remove the product from the shelf. But you can't just throw it away, because the store needs to make sure its demise is properly documented in order to maintain an accurate inventory. But since the store doesn't trust just any old employee with its inventory, it has designated a holding area (a few shelves and a crate) where this and other sub-par products can repose until such time as a  properly trained and authorized employee is able to catalog and dispose of them.

So, when you, non-properly-trained-and-authorized peon that you are, remove some offending item from the shelf, what do you do with it? The obvious answer is, it depends on what the item is. If it's a small carton of yogurt, you place it in the bottom of the crate. If it's a gallon of milk, you hurl it on top with great force, to ensure that it crushes the small carton of yogurt and splatters its contents everywhere. If it's already leaking, so much the better! That way, you can carefully arrange it leak-side-down and let it work its magic all over the area one drop at a time.

Now come on. I'll grant you, maybe you're too illiterate to read the signs all around the designated area that said, "No leaking items," (and I'll grant that if you are new to the business, you might never have seen them, since I removed them after they got covered with splattered yogurt after months of being ignored) but are you also totally lacking in common sense and empathy? When you remove a container from the shelf because it's leaking all over the place and it can't be sold, do you think it magically stops leaking when it hits the holding area? Do you know who is the trained and authorized employee that has to slosh around in the mess you leave? It's me! Why are you doing such a thing to me!?

Ode to Dude

Another term that has passed its prime but still warms my philological heart: The bomb diggety! This phrase should be used, but used with care. I see great potential for its use in adding comedic effect.

When you need a generic interjection to express some sort of amazement, surprise, distaste, etc., what do you say? Zoinks? Jinkies? Holy smokes? My interjection of choice these days is "Dude!" And though I not too long ago jumped on the Dude wagon, I'm glad I did. It has brought joy into my life.

How long has "dude" been around? According to Etymology Online, it was used in the late 1800's to describe a city slicker, and by a century later, surfer culture had turned it into a generic word for a male person. Based solely on my own perceptions, I believe that "dude" came into use as an interjection sometime in the late 90's, and enjoyed the height of its popularity when it played a seminal role in the classic film, "Dude, Where's My Car?"

Of course, at that time, I was way too uptight and snooty to use such a bohemian slang term, and although I warmed up to it as the years went by, its popularity with the general public slipped just as its popularity in my own mind increased. It got to a point where all I really wanted was to holler, "Dude!" but had to settle for words like "Wow," and "Boy," since I considered my word of choice passé.

All that has changed. Thanks to the relatively recent acquisition of a few friends who use "dude" in everyday conversation, I now feel confident enough to proudly exclaim this four-letter word for all sorts of situations requiring a little verbal punch. Occasionally I even use it to address a male, in such exchanges as:
"Hey, girl!" "Hey, dude!"

This concludes my happy tale of linguistic liberation. Dude, you rock my socks.