when i came out, aids was an established fact. my perception then was: if you are gay, you will die of aids. ah, youth. everything’s so black and white.
now that i’m older, i know better than that. i also have the chance to love another man and not worry as i did when i was fifteen.
if you’re not sure of your own status, please be safe with your loved ones. and the moment you’re brave enough, take the test. i know how hard that can be. i’ve been there. but being brave makes you that much more powerful.
don’t forget to turn out the lights: guess i’ll be back on dial-up for a while; my cable died this morning. the irksome thing about this is that the judge making the ruling could have easily declared @home’s services essential and kept this from happening. in fact, the FCC encouraged him to do so. so…if you’re pretty much the only company offering a service anywhere in the country and people depend on your service to do business…it’s essential, right?
yeesh.
to save time searching for inappropriate irreverence regarding terrorism (and can we please have a chat regarding the objectivity of that term?), you’ll be looking for this entry.*. enjoy your stay.
*if Operation Ohmigod I Totally Like Your Burqa is enacted, i want a spot in the history books.** and a shopping trip with lucy liu. that is all.
**and i want to be referred to as “Special Agent Delicious.”
just when you think you’ll never be able to find anything to buy me for christmas, hedwig’s released. how lucky for all of us.
more holiday gift items for the book-lovin’ design freak: the ambassadors, “we love you”: the world’s most pretentious (and gorgeous) album/book set. miekke gerritzon, “everyone is a designer: manifest for the design economy”: ponderings (pretty ones) on the future of design online. rick valicenti, “emotion as promotion”: rick’s new monograph and retrospective of thirst’s past twenty years. features a new typeface by rick and chester. probably lots of my work too. dunno, though…haven’t seen it yet. my copy’s en route!
whew. at+t broadband kicks back in. just in time to FTP to one happy client. (although it would have been nicer while i was trying to squeeze a 14MB wavefront .obj file of a head through a 56K modem…)
yesterday, i networked the entire house. now every office - two fixed stations, joseph and heaven (both G4‘s) and precious (the iBook, mostly used in the living room for quick iMDB searches while watching tv: “i know that name. what’s she been in? she’s talentless”) are now happily chirping to one another. i spent most of my time trying to hide cords. inetrestingly, i found all the baseboards in my house are hollow for just that purpose, as it was built when families were stringing electricity from room to room, trying to modernize their homes. the whole thing was very 1900 house. kind of a strange analogy: the beginning of the next century and here we are all over again.
(this deep thought has been brought to you by general foods international coffees.)
i am now officially Gayer Than Anything. how do i know this? because i’ve been commissioned to create fairy dust for a national magazine. i’m not kidding.
all the best fairies make their own glitter. i know i do.
christmas leatherette (6.2MB MP3). three cheers for postmodern pastiche! apologies to the normal. this link will disappear in a week or so.
thanks for hunting this one down, boyfriend.
christmas shopping? of course. my haunts this year: smithsonian. MoMA. design within reach. pantone. calyx and corolla. company store. naked music. incase. endicott five (thanks jocko).
everyone’s taken care of, and on a tight budget of $500. go forth and shop.
something i forgot to mention a few days ago: birthdays. my brother nathan (now a proud fater to his own family) turned 25. the day after, mom turned 54.
a look at mom the year i was born and thirty-one years later. hottie alert!
happy belated, guys.
how are you coping with life post-911? why, by going shopping, of course. advertisers would like us to believe so. unfortunately, the advertisers are making believers: my landlord, usually possessing of a modicum of taste, has decided to festoon the front door of our building with (not one but) two transparencies of the american flag with the words “SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: WE WILL REMEMBER” badly typeset underneath.
i mean, really. give me a break; this is tackiness, american style.
i think i remember j-no bellyaching about a seemingly now-successful college classmate. well, as time goes on, said classmate’s reputation is being questioned: he and the company he recently left are being probed by the new york state attorney’s office. in public. ouch. that’ll leave a mark…
y’know, i remember not more than two years ago, “real designers” giggled the moment i mentioned template-driven or widget-based design. that’s fine: these days they’re still making flat sites that will take months to redesign. if they want to keep on noodling in such an unproductive way, more power to them. it’s their money being wasted.
but there are some things in the design practices that need to be templated. at least adobe’s seeing how web and print inform each other. ‘bout time, too.
letterror has always made a splash with typography made of humor, imperfection and loving irreverence - something no other foundry can claim. their work always brings a grin, and you can buy it at the cutest little online store.
while you’re there, i want salmiak for christmas. pretty please?
actually, while we’re on the subject of what you’re getting me for christmas, i also want knockout, infinity, kruella (because it’s just terrible in that perfect way), and any calligraphy by chris bigg (who’s a god, and the one calligrapher i take much influence from…see the work i did for my fiend) of 23 envelope. merçi.
NAFTA be damned. we’d rather smuggle indentured servants into the country to ensure we have cheap labor indebted to us for the rest of their lives. sounds vaguely familar, doesn’t it?
a mostly-forgotten chapter of chicago’s design legacy: signage from the l (via l+s). public work of this sort is as important as the bauhaus’ relocation to chicago (scroll to the bottom), oswald cooper, and the american center for design. unfortunately, chicago’s rich history of hard-working design gets forgotten in light of our reputation as an advertising town.
create delight. unfortunate side effect: The Association of People Who Put Up God-Awful Christmas Displays. more power to ‘em.
one degree from me to rupaul. two degrees to matthew broderick. one degree to sean hayes. does six degrees of separation really hold up? let’s find out.
didn’t i suggest this, like, months ago?
nearly everyone’s aware of my embarrassing fascination with buffy the vampire slayer. can’t help it; i feel for the slayer and slayerettes. they’ve totally gone through the wringer: dawn (the fourteen-year-old twerpy kid sister) found out she’s not actually human and was later used as a sacrifice. anja the ex-vengance demon is worried about wrinkling now that she’s mortal (who’s not?). buffy’s mom had a brain tumor extracted (seemingly through a single pore; gotta love makeup artists) and later died unflatteringly. buffy herself died saving dawn, had to claw her way out of a coffin after willow the lesbia…er, witch botched a spell to reanimate her. she’s now in the embarrassing position of paying off her own funeral. oh, the humanity.
so what’s a cute lil’ blonde fighter of the undead to do about cashflow without a viable career? i mean, she had to drop out of college to stop an apocalypse and stuff. bankrate’s got some business advice for the slayer. (via MeFi)
bad food. stripmall architecture. cheap stucco. versace knockoffs. fubu. trailer-as-residence (sans irony). double-digit IQ scores. lord, deliver me from the tasteless pit that is fort lauderdale.
on the upside, i’m told new orleans is only twelve hours away. road trip!
