Re-branding the Self: Innards

Well. Thunderclaps in the brain certainly wait until one is on the threshold of sleep to strike.

My thinkfest on branding continues, and has ballooned outward to encompass so much more. This isn’t (just) about a brand. This isn’t pure self-promotion. It’s turned into a giant gulping fiesta of Potential On The Internet.

One of the words that has come up in every list of “What I would write about” is content. What a ridiculous and unspecific word. Content, however, took on a new sparkling life after I attended MinneWebCon and heard Kristina Halvorson speak about content strategy. Yes, strategic content! I say “content strategy” at work and I watch eyes glaze over, so I have to shovel the pure galvanized excitement out of my head and straight into their imaginations.

Crap content and you’re nothing. It’s not just true on the web. It’s been true throughout time, and we’re at a point in time where more content is being generated and consumed than ever before.

I just ran to my bookshelf and pulled down Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind,” which jolted my fuzzy brain back onto the road of clarity in 2007 and has stuck with me. Pink defines six “senses” on which “professional success and personal satisfaction increasingly will depend”:

1. Design (not just function)
   
2. Story (not just argument)
   
3. Symphony (not just focus)
   
4. Empathy (not just logic)
   
5. Play (not just seriousness)
   
6. Meaning (not just accumulation)

I have these six “senses” tacked up at my workspace. These points, to me, are the soul of content, of what content can be and how we use it and make it good.

Does all content need these things? Do content need all these things? I think they can act as sliding scales: some content demands more story (journalism is a clear example, or it would fall apart), some demands more play and design (the IKEA instructions for bookshelves, with the little man and his idea lightbulb).

Content through the lens of the six senses can be astonishing. It’s the root of good movie plots, of books that keep you up to get surprised by 2am. It’s the discussions that makes time at once stand still and fly by. It moves you to spur on the six senses in yourself, to get up and write a blog post and concoct amazing plans.

O-content! Honorable content! You will be uncontained and destuffed!

Re-branding the Self: The Quest Begins

I’ve been thinking about branding, or re-branding in my case. I’ve been using silentseas or variants thereof for about three years on the internet. However, my internet use has taken a turn, and I find the name doesn’t really represent who I am, what I do, or what I want to do.

For those blanking on their modernist poetry, the nickname is taken from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which I adore and makes me cry. Same with the blog title – An Overwhelming Question. However, look at this blog. It’s not about poetry. It’s not about me crying (often). It’s not about the ocean, or eating peaches, or literature (often) or any of that. Plus silentseas sounds passive. “Silent” is pretty much the last adjective that would ever be used to describe me.

At MinneWebCon last month, the Geek Girls had a joke: you know how long you’ve been on Twitter by how professional your handle is. The current trend is towards having a handle that reflects your real name; your name is your brand in many cases. But my name, and not getting down on my folks here, is very common. My nickname is my initials, also taken. I continue to stalk Twitter accounts related to my name, hoping against hope they’ll go dormant for 9 months and I can swoop in screaming “MINE MINE MINE.” Man, I can’t wait to be professional on the internet.

This rolls me into another issue: what do I want to write about? I want to write more, and not just reviews of books I’ve read, which is what this blog has largely turned into. Watch out, bullet points:

Things I would like to write about

• Web content and design
• Education
• Crafty things (Knitting, DIY)
• Baseball
• Japan
• Minnesota/The Midwest
• Travel

That is a pretty broad list with some pretty broad topics. Now, some of those things I don’t think I’d be that good at writing on. Baseball, for instance. I don’t have a head for stats, but I love the Minnesota Twins. But what if the Twins get into the post season, and I want to yammer somewhere about it, but I’m running a blog about content development?

The answer could be multiple blogs. The answer could be a better tagging system. The answer could be different Twitter accounts. There are a lot of answers, though I need to ask the right questions.

More to come!

Warshington

Timely as ever, that’s me. A year ago, Chris and I went to Washington, D.C. to geek out over American history and see the cherry blossoms. We had a great time, and it was strange to see so many iconic buildings and views first-hand. Things are much bigger than they appear on TV. Here are some of the highlights:

The Tidal Basin, surrounded by blooming cherry trees, with the Washington Monument in the background. We saw the blossoms on the first full day we were in town, and it turned out to be the last nice day to see them – a storm rolled through that night and took the rest off the trees for the season.

We saw many presidential monuments and memorials, but the Roosevelt memorial was hands-down the most moving. Here is a statue of FDR and his dog, Fala.

The Library of Congress was completely astonishing. We spent an entire morning there, though we passed on the tour, finding the extremely thorough pamphlets and interactive displays able to answer our questions so we could move at our own pace.

Wonderful Small

When I was in Japan, there was a car commercial for a tiny little Daihatsu hatchback. At the end, a warm-voiced announcement would proclaim “Wonderful Small!” in English. When I returned home, I noticed through the lens of time the fragile but stately gait and frame of Clive, one of our family’s cats. “Wonderful Small” became his nickname.

Eliot (left) and Clive (right). Clive has more white on him. They greatly enjoyed posing together, even if Eliot annoyed Clive often.

Clive (“Clive Allen Anderson,” or “Clive as in Barker?” – though neither Barker nor Anderson are my family’s last name) was a Humane Society gem, the kind of cat that has forever brought my family joy through their uniqueness and unpredictability. He was always on the tiny side; there is a photo somewhere of him curled up and sleeping in a ball as a kitten, the same size as the 3-inch floppy disk next to him for scale. A tabby-backed cat with a white underside, we suspect he was a Siamese build under the coloring. It was either the diamond-shaped head, or the way he could glare with such disdain at other pets in the way tabbies usually seem incapable.

My father often makes “pelt inspections,” talking to our cats about the state of their fur and how it would rank on a scale. Clive’s pelt was fabulous, and he was remarkably soft, leading Dad to tell him that the Smithsonian was very interested in archiving him for future study. Strangely, that Smithsonian call was one of the first things I thought about when my parents told me that Clive, at 12 years old, was nearing his end. He’s going to be put down later today.

Clive and Eliot cram into a tiny cat bed. They usually slept here together.

There was a brush with mortality about 2 and a half years ago, when I was re-acclimating to the US and my parents were (of course) out of town. Clive had been seeming… not himself, and Chris and I made the call to bring him into the emergency vet, which was terrifying and a heartbreak; we had just put our family dog down a few weeks prior, and I was not in any kind of shape to lose my little cuddle-friend. Fortunately, his kidneys were spotted as an issue, and he came back to us in much higher spirits, though remained on the lighter side (6-7 pounds as opposed to his usual 9-10 pounds) for the rest of his days. Injections of fluid with different frequency helped him (and were an amusing challenge for my family), and we had extra years with him that we wouldn’t have otherwise. Chris brought this up last night while I was crying my eyes out, about how my being an “excellent cat-mom” to Clive when he needed me helped both him and my family.

I don’t wan’t any links to the Rainbow Bridge poem, or other schmaltz. I’ve read them, and the honest way I take comfort in incidences like this (besides red-faced sobbing) is thinking of the joy in my life that would not have been if Clive wouldn’t have been with us. How blessed are we to have pets like these, with their love, comfort, companionship, and antics. There is very little in life that tops the company of an excellent cat.

Final Books of 2008

Hopefully I’ll remember some of these. 2009′s reviews should be easier to dredge from the swamp of my memory.

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26. Twilight – Stephanie Meyer
What can I say here that hasn’t already be said? Meyer is a hack (but a rich one, now), Bella Swan is a Mary Sue that would make teenage fanfic writers turn up their noses, Edward Cullen is damn creepy. I can say this book was disturbing. Having seen a friend go through the pure terrifying shit that comes with getting out of an emotionally abusive relationship, it turned my stomach over to read about the one between Bella and Edward, and see it portrayed as an ideal. Also, this book is a kind of creepy piece of abstinence propaganda. Remember, girls: if you let your boyfriend snog you, he’ll freak out and impregnate you with a bizarre half-breed lovechild that will start to devour you from the inside and will have to be prematurely bitten out of you. Oh, sorry, that’s in book four, which I never got around to reading. Also, the vampires in this book aren’t vampires… they’re crappy X-Men.

27. The City of Ember - Jeanne DuPrau
Much like Uglies last year, this was 2008′s fab young adult dystopian escape novel. I enjoyed this as much for itself as I did knowing how into this book I would have been in elementary school. Scarcity-ridden tiny community on the verge of being extinguished, and two intrepid kids find clues to escape left behind by the community designers. Really, really excellent adventure romp, and a quick read. I didn’t see the reviewer-panned movie; think I’ll let my mental image of Ember rule this one.

28. Real World – Natsuo Kirino
While in college, I read Kirino’s “Out,” and was blown away by the “why-dun-it” structure of the mystery. This book didn’t have quite so much of a mystery behind it at the end, and I was a bit let down. Kirino’s slow-build style was still really interesting to read, and I may give it another shot at a certain point, but I’d recommend “Out” as a first read for her instead of this.

29. Sleep Toward Heaven - Amanda Eyre Ward
Oh no, another book I read in a few days over a year ago and have mostly forgotten. A parallel-storyline novel of three women… and there’s a prison…? And a doc… tor? Oh man, I need to write these reviews earlier.

30. The Hot Zone – Richard Preston
This isn’t even really book 30, because I didn’t finish it. I couldn’t finish it. I am one of the most paranoid people ever when it comes to my health, though mostly in my own head. I have no problems riding public transport, or touching door handles, or things like that. However, when I start to feel sick, my head kicks into overdrive. A pain in my toe isn’t the weird hangnail, it’s foot cancer. A patch of dry skin is actually toxic epidermal necrolysis. WebMD was made to freak people like me out, and I can’t read it. So this book was just a nightmare trip for my subconscious and I had to just put it down and leave it be. Slight headache? Either a long day without caffeine or I was going to start gushing black stuff out of my eyes, because I was the new Patient Zero. Nightmare stuff, holy crap.

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That’s it for 2008! Holy nuts, 2009 reviews are coming along shortly. My goal is to get all of those things done by March.

Books of 2008: 21-25

Continuing to play catch up on books read in 2008. Thank goodness this is a short week.

21. Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
This is a book that I shelved a million times while working at a used book store. It always seemed to hit my daily pile, making me assume that it was some kind of massive but passing trend book, but my interest remained piqued. It emerged on a reading list for Urban Studies and I decided to give it a go; much to my delight, it was great. Not only do you have Bob Everyfamily wandering their way into the sparkle-shiny 20th century, but they seem to encounter every famous person who was alive at the time.

22. Bel Canto – Ann Patchett
HOSTAGES! Also, opera. Also, the ever popular unnamed South American Country. Guerrilla terrorists take over a highfalutin government shindig with plenty of foreign visitors for ransom… and then they get to know each other? While I was reading this, it felt like there was a huge slow-down, a languid slide of time that took me in with it. I wasn’t complaining, the story was moving along, but I was in as much of a time-slip as the characters seemed to be. “How long,” I asked myself, “is this book?” I was blown away to find that I’d read over 100 pages in an afternoon without even realizing it. The ending rocked me, and this book is definitely not as it appears.

23. Fables books 1-8 – Bill Willingham
I haven’t been a weekly comic reader in… well, ever. I’ll wait for trade paperbacks, or borrow already-completed stories and read through them that way. I was at my friendly local comic/game/everything store and was rummaging around for something new and the clerk muttered, “Um, a lot of chicks like Fables.” I’m glad my white blinding rage didn’t deter me from the books, and in 2008 I read through the first 8 collected books of the series like I couldn’t get enough. Basic, basic premise: the storybook and nursery rhyme characters of legend (calling themselves Fables) have fled their homes, which have been overrun by a menacing and mysterious Adversary, and have now taken up secret residence in a section of New York City they have dubbed Fabletown, and a farm upstate for those Fables who can’t pass as human (think the Three Pigs, or Reynard the Fox). For those of you poor suckers who still think that comics are just kiddie picture books, not only are you living in a wet hole of sad, you’re missing out on one of the great modern stories of the last decade. Willingham hits every genre square on the head and then rumbles for more; with such a dynamic cast at his disposal, every note rings clear. I haven’t cried over a long story like this since Sandman, and Fables has made me a weekly comics reader, much to my delight. Books 1 and 2 are being published as a jumbo-mega edition, which is what I would suggest new readers start out with; it gives you the first two big storylines, and a generous peek at the massive crazyquilt underneath it all.

24. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Yes, from one of my favorites of the year (Fables made the top 5), to hands down one of the worst. I saw this book on some list, a “What book club book changed your life” roundup, and decided to give it a go. Strange coming of age story in an elite college setting? Someone dies? They speak Greek and Latin? I like snooty, sign me up. What a mistake. This book was tortuously bad, and instead of just, you know, selling it back to the bookstore, I kept on reading. I was determined that if I gave up, then this book would win. Also, I was waiting to see if the book would ever redeem itself. Alas, no. A young man utterly void of personality transfers to a New England School of Prestige, to fall in with the “weird” and “nerdy” and “strange” clique who study the classics. He becomes desparate to emulate them and become one of them, even though they show no traits to classify themselves as interesting. They love to ignore him, and because it’s in first person, you’re stuck with this crap-ass whiner while he freezes his ass off in some kind of barn over the winter while the rest of the Fabulousness goes off to Rome. Everything is very dramatic for them, and then someone dies, and nobody really cares? Ever? UGH, even rehashing this makes me annoyed. I kept thinking I was missing something, that there was some key point that I just wasn’t picking up on… and maybe there is, but I have a negative amount of desire to go back and find it. Incidentally, I still have a copy of this book on my shelves, just so that when people ask about it, I can remember to tell them never to read it.

25. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
I think I was so wound up and angry from The Secret History that it clouded my memory and my judgment (see upcoming book #26, Twilight. AAARGH). I only remember vague parts of this book, mostly the stories within the story, but it’s all muddled up. I guess that’s what happens when you stick a book in the middle of a reading-rage sandwich, and then don’t review it for over a year and a half. Sorry, Margaret Atwood. I really liked The Handmaid’s Tale!

Books of 2008: 16-20

So far behind am I that I’m going over books I read over a year ago. Oh well! They’re still all worth comment.

16. Water for Elephants – Sarah Gruen
A man recalls his time traveling with the circus, falling in love, and getting to know an elephant. Not particularly mind-blowing, but would be known in magazine roundups as “a good beach read.” Sarah Gruen wrote the draft of this book during National Novel Writing Month, where you churn through 50,000 words in 30 days over the month of November, which was an encouraging tidbit as I’ve failed to complete NaNoWriMo twice (but have always learned something from the process).

17. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – Jean-Dominique Bauby
This was on the top-five list, and I’ve shoved copies of it at a lot of folks I know. It is a short book, and I read through it in one evening. Bauby suffered a massive stroke and was in a coma, awaking 20 days later to be mentally aware of his surroundings, but physically paralyzed except for the ability to blink his left eyelid, suffering from “locked-in syndrome.” The prospect of this utterly terrifies me, and that Bauby was able to write the book in this state (an assistant would recite letters from a frequency-ordered alphabet, and Bauby would blink at the appropriate letter) is astonishing. More astonishing is the book itself, an absolute must-read memoir.

18. Don’t Know Much About Mythology – Kenneth C. Davis
I am perpetually aware of gaping holes in my knowledge set (particularly “canon” books that this English major has never read), and often seek quality “summary” books to fill the gap at least a bit. Davis examines mythology from around the world, and though he can’t touch equally on every culture (Native American myths are touched on, but not examined as closely as, say, those of the Greeks), he constructs a solid overview. This will be a good foundational lead-in for this year (2010), when I finally read some Joseph Campbell.

19. The Great Train Robbery - Michael Crichton
I love a heist. I love a heist. Every part of a heist story is awesome to me: how the mastermind decides to steal a thing, how he gets his group together, the group examining the impossible to overcome challenges, making multi-stage plans, the thrill of the early stage successes, complications! or betrayal!, sudden changes to the previously planned-out challenges, and finally the big job itself (and the fallout afterwards). Formula? Yes. Awesome? HELL yes. This book is everything that’s great about a heist story, has tons of great historical detail (it’s a fictionalized account of an actual robbery, hot damn), and there is even a badass movie with Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland.

20. Watchmen - Alan Moore
Reading Alan Moore’s work is not for the faint of heart, and any one of you gentle readers who dismiss them as “just a comic book” or get sniffy because they have pictures can get right out of here. Watchmen is long, intense, confusing, demanding, exciting, thorough, and more adjectives than I will subject you to. It was also completely worth it. I slogged through the first half, trying to piece together an alternate 1908s history with Nixon still in power, but I hit a point (namely Mars) when I couldn’t put the book down. The story began to kick me in the face and I needed to know what happened next. I wasn’t disappointed. I was disappointed in the movie; for all of the “look” of the book that it got right, the changed ending fell completely flat for me.

Another Year of Books

Once again, I completed my quest to read 26 new books in a year. I did that last year, but promptly neglected to finish my reviews. Those reviews will be coming, but may be a bit shorter overall since it’s been… well, over a year since I read some of the books. Reviews for this past year’s books will be up as well, so this will look like a Book Blog for a while (though maybe that isn’t bad, as it will get me back in the habit of writing, something I threaten to do often). For the books read this year, I’ll post up reviews of books after I read them, with possibly a re-visit review at the end of the year, for perspective’s sake. All the perspective in the world, however, cannot stop my rolling annoyance at The Secret History (which will be covered shortly).

The Books of 2009 (in alphabetical order, can’t find the list I made as the year went on)

1. A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
2. The Brief, Wondrous  Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
3. The Children of Men, P.D. James
4. Dogs in the Vineyard, L. Vincent Baker
5. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
6. The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
7. How The Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill
8. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
9. It’s The Little Things: Everyday Interactions that Get Under the Skins of Blacks and Whites, Lena Williams
10. The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness
11. Lamb, Christopher Moore
12. Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis
13. Lost Twin Cities, Larry Millet
14. The Magicians, Lev Grossman
15. The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
16. The People of Sparks, Jeanne DuPrau
17. The Prophet, Khalil Gibran
18. Sabriel, Garth Nix
19. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Lisa See
20. Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marcia Pessl
21. The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
22. War for the Oaks, Emma Bull
23. World War Z, Max Brooks
24. The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson
25. The Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks
26. Comics I kept up on this year (Fables (incl. the crossover, 1001 Nights of Snowfall, and Cinderella), Unwritten, and Buffy Season 8)

Well damn, I’d love to just jump into reviews of a lot of these now. Here are some short lists to tide you over, gentle reader.

Winner of the Snow Flower and the Secret Fan Award:
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. This award is named after this book, because Mom was constantly foisting it my way saying “YOU HAVE TO READ THIS.” Other books have won this in the past; it is for books that Mom has foisted at me for over 1 year and I finally get around to reading. I am amused that the eponymous book won this year.

“That’s Not A Book, Cheater” List
Some of the books on the list are not strictly novels or non-fiction. However, if the quantity of reading is significant enough (by my own measure), I count them. Fair enough to let you know though. And I’m not a cheater, I just read many things.

1. The comics (If you think comics don’t count, then jump in a lake)
2. Lost Twin Cities. (Many historical pictures, but exhaustive research and writing about buildings torn down in the name of “progress” in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Masquerading as a coffee table book.)
3. Dogs in the Vineyard. (Actually a roleplaying game, but the setting was so fascinating and the system so interesting I read it cover to cover. I read many gaming books, but more often as reference, so they’re not on this list)
4. The Zombie Survival Guide. (I needed something to fill the need for more Max Brooks Zombie Talk after World War Z.)

Top Five of the Year:

• Children of Men
• World War Z
• The Magicians
• The Name of the Wind
  
• Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Reviews of remaining 2008 and all 2009 books coming soon. Probably some this evening, since I am blessed with a day off tomorrow and a not insignificant supply of caffeine this evening.

Rocket Fuel Malt Liquor DAMN!

So, the sky above Norway last night lit up with some kind of giant death spiral and I really want some science-y reader to pipe up with what this is, because all signs point to aliens right now in my brain.

I mean, LOOK AT THAT. From the article: “This spiral then got bigger and bigger until it turned into a huge halo in the sky with the green beam extending down”  – AAAAAAAAAAAAA. The blog also helpfully puts up a video mock-up of spent rocket fuel being deployed in two directions and being back-lit by the soon-to-rise sun, but what rocket?! The Russians said they weren’t doing any tests. Someone had better own up to this – my tinfoil hat and I will be waiting for news updates.

Yelling at Two Men

Coming off of quite a stressful week at work, I was a bit on edge by the end of Friday. An 80-minute massage and a restful weekend certainly helped, but heading back to work Monday morning was rough. Curling up in bed and hitting snooze never felt so right.

On Monday evenings, my friend and I play racquetball. Due to the aforementioned stressful week (stressful month, really), I’d been unable to make it to the court for a while, and was really looking forward to playing. We have perpetual bad luck with the equipment room scheduling other events during our preferred time after work, and recently the racquetball club has arrived to force out all of the 5-6pm registration times. We could either reserve at 4:30 (directly after we’re out of work, and we’d be a half hour late while making our way to the gym anyway), or 5:30 (and who wants to wait around campus for an hour just to play racquetball? No thanks). We’ve opted for 4:30 and tried to make the best of it.

Monday was a bit of a storm, with my friend forgetting he had left his gym clothes at his desk on the other side of the river while already halfway along and having to turn back, to me getting transfixed by a baseball playoff game, so we were finally ready to go around 5:15. 15 minutes of reserved court time left? We could get in at least 1 solid game. Sadly, there were two men playing ball in the court when we got there. After they finished a volley, I knocked on the door and they came over.

“WHAT?” huffed the short, older man, while a younger boy (his son?) wavered around behind him. I said I was sorry, but we had the court reserved from 4:30 to 5:30 and were hoping to get in a game. “Well, you’re 45 minutes late, I think you’ve pretty much forfeited any right you had to this court. You wanna let us at least finish this game?”

I turned to my friend to see if he wanted to really play racquetball at all at this point, since we were so late. My glance must have been interpreted as some kind of hostile flare of feminine cunning, because the man completely lost his cool. “FINE, FINE, TAKE THE COURT. WE DON’T HAVE TO FINISH.” I yelled after him, “Hey man, we’re trying to figure out what to do here!” and he waved his hands in the air as he stormed away, still shouting, “NO NO! PLEASE! TAKE YOUR COURT BACK!” Ass! My rage did fuel me on to a racquetball victory, and I really hope I run into his puffing, ridiculous face again when we’re playing next week.

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Last night, while engaging in some knitting, I realized a hole had appeared in the scarf I was working on. Dropped stitch, damn. Not having a crochet hook, and not being sure about the best way to fix the thing, I resolved to zoom over to the nearest yarn store after my class and ask for help.

The store is in Cedar-Riverside, which is usually traffic hell, compounded by the fact that many people will cross the road at any given point or time, and stand in the middle of traffic in order to get where they’re going. When it’s dark and raining, this becomes even more exciting. I spotted a parking spot on the street in front of the store, and (after driving around for a few twisting blocks) came back around to find it still open. Score!

Check my mirrors, signal, and back into the spot. I go to open my door and find that another car has pulled up next to and in front of mine, and is going into reverse. He keeps reversing, and I beep the car horn to make sure he knows that there’s a car. He stops his car, but does not move it. I hop out, squeeze around his car, and he rolls down his window to yell, “LADY, WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?”

Totally flabbergasted.

Me: “I’m parking my car. I have parked my car. What’s wrong?”
Him: “Move your car.”
Me: “No! I parked my car here. I’m going to the store.”
Him: “Move your car. This is my space.”
Me: “It’s not your space, it’s my space. I’m parking here for now.”
Him: “I saw this space and I drove around the block and now I will park in it.”
Me: “Nobody was attempting to park in this space when I parked here. I have parked here. Now I am going to the store.”
Him: “WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM, LADY? MY GOD!”
Me: “I DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM HERE, SINCE I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY PARKED MY CAR AND AM GOING TO THE STORE.”

After this he made some kind of growling noise and drove away. The yarn store trip was not so successful, since the lady clearly did not want to help me with my dropped stitch and chided me for not knowing how to do it (“You know, someday you’ll need to learn to do this yourself.”) She determined that the dropped stitch was unfixable and sent me home. I went home, worked some internet magic, and fixed my knitting myself.

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After months of hiatus, I’m back on the blogging train. Watch out, the internet.

One of the ONLY times you’ll hear me say something nice about the White Sox.

A full and hearty congratulations to Mark Buehrle for pitching a perfect game (no hits, no baserunners, no errors). This feat is exceedingly rare, happening only 18 times (including yesterday’s) in the history of baseball. To pitch a perfect game takes an entire team to pull together and demands great fielding to prevent a player from reaching base – DeWayne Wise’s outfield catch (and bobble!) was astonishing and great field work. Deadspin has a nice rundown, and I take a small bit of pleasure in the fact that 1) this didn’t happen while we were playing them (though, as the article says, this is such an amazing occurrence that there is no shame on being the losing team), and 2) A. J. Pierzynski was not the catcher. That guy and his stupid hair drive me insane.

In the meantime, the Twins have the remainder of a West Coast road trip to wrap up before coming back home to face the White Sox. Let’s hope that the team’s pitching staff remembers how to do its job, instead of doing things like blowing 10-run leads and giving up 16 runs in a game. That’s out of your system now, boys. It’s after the All-Star Break. It’s business time.

Lileks-esque: Amanda on Old Photos

Poking around the internet today for some WPA posters, I wound up at the Library of Congress’ website and archives. Now, I’m no James Lileks when it comes to mastering quips under old photographs (though he has a newspaper archive at his disposal), but his website has broken links and broken dreams all over it. How many times has my fervered mind done excited flip-flops at the potential of a Lileks-led photo tour through the University’s old campus, just to come across a broken image, and promises from 2003. Nothing makes a girl turn back to her Lost Twin Cities PBS memories faster, Lileks. (I will note that his website is the best place to learn about The Gobbler, the grooviest motel in Wisconsin!)

Below is my own version of “Old Photos and Things I Think About Them.”

Pawnshop in Gateway District, Minneapolis, September 1939

The Gateway District was this crazy spot that has completely disappeared, except for the George Washington flagpole that I acknowledge before my bus crosses the river at Hennepin. It had a nice building, a fountain, tourist information, and no park benches (to discourage bums from sleeping there). However, the whole park became a dried out sack of run-down sad, and it turned out that bums will sleep on the ground or a step if there is not a bench readily available. The course of action was to raze the whole thing, except for the flagpole, and the spitting turtle fountain (now residing at the Lake Harriet rose garden). I loved this photo, because it appears that the first thing to go when you’re short on cash is the banjo.

Brewery, Minneapolis, MN Sept 1939

Heavens and loveliness, it’s the Grain Belt Brewery! Grain Belt Beer still exists, but is brewed down in New Ulm, as it is under the Schell’s umbrella now. This brewery is in Northeast Minneapolis, having been placed on the National Register of Historic Places and undergone an AIA award-winning preservation. It’s now an anchor to the NE Arts District, and is amazing towering castle of a place, as many older breweries were. Look at all those boxes of beer, ready to go in wagons and find their way to my fridge. What I wouldn’t give for beer wagons, especially on days when the people at Hennepin-Lake Liquor up the snark factor. Admission: I can only drink Grain Belt Premium on extremely hot summer days, or after I have had many other things to drink and am tricked.

Man in hobo jungle killing turtle to make soup, Minneapolis, 1939

I’ll admit, that title stopped me pretty dead in my tracks while browsing the LOC archives. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a turtle in the city, though I guess if he was by the river, they’d be more common than walking by my bus stop. Also, hobo jungle!? I thought that was something I called my boyfriend’s apartment, as he is on summer break and living a life of leisure.

Tourist camp in winter, Minneapolis, November 1937

I really, really wanted to catch a glimpse in this photo of some poor sucker from far away, shivering in a tent, wondering what possesses decent, hard-working folk to live in a frozen over, godforsaken hell. There’s a car back there, though it could belong to the photographer. Or maybe someone realizing the shelter with the grill in it was finally open, and it was time for some burgers!

Twilight at Lake Harriet, 1908 and Lake of the Isles, 1910

Aside from the small building in the picture of Lake Harriet, these pictures both struck me because, well, you could see the exact same scenes today. Granted, there would be a whoosh of cars going around each lake, and city noise in the background. In most cities, these urban lakes would be all but walled off to the public, their shores being backyards to mansions, and their waters only accesible by private dock or launch. But when Minneapolis was young, it bought all of the land around these lakes and they are hugely popular public parks, that still offer up stunning sunsets:

Retro Ritz? Request Redesign!

I had a big rant ready to go about a potential graduate school visit that is flat-out riddled with ridiculosity, but decided that more life-oriented updates are in order, and some links to keep you hap-hap-happy and prevent an uprising from lack of updates. すみません～

• On my calendar yesterday was “Make a well-informed electronics purchase,” and – not being one to disobey my schedule – I am now a proud iPod Touch owner. 8gb of space, named Abraxas and wearing a purple coat, he is a lovely little machine and I’m transferring a bunch of data over and going a bit crazy in the app store. Any favorite iPod apps, I’m all ears.
• I’m moving house at the end of the summer, so Chris and I are looking for a space. I get all dreamy about moving in to a new apartment, and have been scouring CraigsList for months, not so much to find the place, but to look at the kind of place that is available in our price range and with the amenities we need (we both hate washing dishes, so a dishwasher would be a big plus). I’m stoked with what’s available, and look forward to posting about the new place once it is secured.
• … which isn’t to say that I don’t live in a pretty awesome pad right now. A lot of that is attributed to my roommate’s collection of rock posters, but I think we’ve created quite a cool space. It warrants pictures. Also, Stinson the Cat lives there and he warrants more pictures.
• My cross-stitching hobby continues, undiminished in its fervor by the warming summer months. I have taken up with a group of knitters for craft-based support, and I knit my first Thing this weekend. It’s blue, diamond-shaped, and has strings at either end. The clear use for this was a cat saddle. The cat was unimpressed, tore the knitting off his own back, and glared at me from the sunroom. Jerk.
• As you may have supposed from the intro, I am considering graduate programs. Hopefully, the right masters degree can point me towards a career in higher ed academic counseling. The process is off to a good start so far, but the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) looms in the autumn. Guess I should remember how to do that “math” thing that I shoved aside in my brain to make more room for Modernist poetry during my undergrad.
• I have joined more ranks of the plugged in: you can now follow me on Twitter,  and join in for some Foursquare, which I found through the excellent local food blog Heavy Table. Foursquare is available in a number of cities on a trial run, and though I like the idea of racking up points and being the mayor of my favorite hangouts, it would be fun with some friends on there.

Link for the design-minded of you out there: The Dieline, a blog about package design. I found it after my roommate sent me this heinous picture:

They’re a “retro” summer-only package redesign for Target. Thank god they’re not permanent – that’s not retro, it’s just empty and sparse. It looks like something is missing off of the package, and it leaves me feeling confused and bothered. NOT feeling hungry to eat an entire row of Oreos, which is usually how I feel when confronted with a package of everyone’s favorite sandwich cookie. Bad move, Target – lucky for you this is only a one season blip.

More topic-oriented posts to follow in the days to come.

If I’m gonna get busted, it is NOT gonna be by a guy like THAT.

Someone asked MetaFilter about the crimes committed by Ferris Bueller on his famous day off. The answers are brilliant, and the whole thread is worth reading, but here are some of the highlights:

• Violation of 720 ILCS 5/32-5.1: False Personation of a Peace Officer. (“This is Stg. Peterson, Chicago Police.”)
• Odometer fraud (tampering): 49 U.S.C. § 32703(2)
  Odometer fraud (conspiracy): 49 U.S.C. § 32703(4) (“Whatever miles we put on, we’ll take off.”)
• 720 ILCS 5/Art. 16D – 3 – computer tampering (when he changes his attendance record). (“I wanted a car, I got a computer. How’s that for being born under a bad sign?”)
• 720 ILCS 130/2a, contributing to the delinquency of children. Class A misdemeanor. (“He’s getting me out of summer school!” as well as picking up Sloane in the Ferrari.)
• The Save Ferris campaign might be liable for soliciting under the 740 ILCS 128 Predator Accountability Act. (The sexy nurse that shows up at the Bueller house.)
• The Save Ferris campaign might be liable for soliciting under the 740 ILCS 128 Predator Accountability Act. (The sexy nurse that shows up at the Bueller house.)

George Will, them’s fightin’ words!

Conservative columnist George Will wrote a bit in the Washington Post about jeans that made me so mad that I WROTE A LETTER!

Dear Mr. Will,

I’m a big believer in letter-writing, and would have put this in the post to you to lend it a bit more gravity, but e-mail has become a more immediate mode of idea exchange. I’ve read your columns on and off for the majority of my life, as my parents are Newsweek subscribers. I’m not often in agreement with you, but think you are a thoughtful writer and you examine your own opinions as well as the actions of others in your columns.

I can’t express to you how disappointed I was in your recent column “Demon Denim” in the Washington Post. While I agree that workplace dress has changed significantly, and that denim should not always be the default mode of dress, I find it silly that you’re railing against wearing jeans during leisure time. Fashions change. I know that I’m not trying to pass myself off as a California gold panner of yore when I wear blue jeans. I wear them because they’re comfortable and practical for my daily activities.

However, I should also mention that I am a woman who wears pants (generally unthinkable a few generations ago, but look how far we’ve come). I’ve followed your recommendation to look to Grace Kelly, and she wore pants as well! Whew. However, my figure is very different from hers – high-waisted pants look odd over my hips, and my calves are larger than usual, making boot shopping problematic and capri pants laughable. Fortunately, due to changing fashion trends, I’m able to purchase a cut of pants that flatters my figure and makes me feel good about myself. I have a favorite pair of jeans which can be dressed up with a sweater and heeled shoes, or dressed down with a t-shirt and sneakers.

My actual issue with your column, however, came when you tried to speak of certain hobbies as infantalizing and immature. Your statement “Seventy-five percent of American “gamers” — people who play video games — are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote” was saddening. Do you honestly believe that people who play video games are nothing more than unthinking children at their base level, and should not be allowed to participate in democracy? Even though I sincerely hope this is not the case, it makes me angry that people continue to pick this hobby (one in which I participate and enjoy) as an example of immaturity in thought and being. Some might say the same thing about being a Cubs fan.

Dear Pope: Really!?

I’ve never been a big Pope fan, and not being from a Catholic household don’t especially feel any ties to him. However, he is an extremely powerful world figure – what he says carries a lot of weight with both Catholics around the globe as well as leaders.

But when he says that condoms are not the way to fight AIDS in Africa and, in fact, make the problem worse, I get pretty steamed.

I get it – abstinence is the only way to 100% prevent contracting HIV/AIDS through sex. But what good does it do to tell an entire continent to stop having sex!? The correct and consistent use of condoms reduces the risk of transmission by about 85%.

People are not always going to get it on for the sake of having a baby. Fact of life, sorry your Holiness. Also, people are not going to wait until they’re married to knock boots. But man, what if people just got married before they had sex! Sacred act preserved for the enjoyment between a married man and married woman, after all. And man, if there’s one thing that drives off HIV/AIDS infection, it’s married sex. Marriage for everyone! What a way to revive the economy as well!

Make The Pledge

I’m not a hardcore font snob, but I do have a soft spot for delicious typography. One of the (many) high points of the Obama campaign was the stellar design work that was done on it, especially using Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ Gotham. I follow H&FJ’s typography blog regularly.

I can’t hate on people for using standard Microsoft fonts, or wanting to punch up a flier with something with a bit of sass. But certain fonts make me want to pluck my eyes out (I’m looking at you, Comic Sans). With that, I was very pleased to find the following poster pledge:

I’d sign it for myself, though would remove the “Ever Again.” Someone would slaughter me if I turned out a draft with one of those fonts. Are they even installed on my computer? … checking MS Word says Comic Sans and Papyrus are there, though Hobo is absent. Shudder. I’ll stick to my old standby of using images of monster trucks as placeholder images.

Books of 2008: 11-15

I’ve deleted the cathead Tom Selleck picture, since so many of you have flipped out about it. Onto more book reviews! I need to do these before I’ve completely forgotten what I read in 2008.

11. Design Your Self – Karim Rashid

I’m always interested in life-design books, even though I am heinously cluttered and unorganized. This book caught my eye in the bookstore one day – it is extremely colorful and interestingly designed. Regrettably, I don’t remember much of the actual design advice in the book, and what I do remember I have failed to implement. Rashid recommended always wearing colors, but I tend to wear black at least a few days out of the week. Rashid also said to have few things, and to have things you do have shut away in cupboards. First, HA. I have a ton of things. Second, if I have things that I enjoy, I like to display them to see! My bookshelves are a good example of this – I love seeing my book collection. Despite not following any of the book’s advice to make my life “designed” better (though I have incorporated green into my wardrobe recently), the book was a fun read for a typographic and print design point of view.

12. The Adventures of Johnny Bunko – Daniel Pink

Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind” was in my top 5 last year, and over the summer I was fortunate enough to nab tickets to hear him speak. Poor guy was up against Barack Obama clinching the Democratic Nomination across the river in St Paul on the same night, but the lines to see him were long and crazy, and Chris and I had already paid for our tickets to see Daniel Pink (we did catch Obama on television later that night). The man is an amazing thinker, and hearing him outline some of his processes as well as his ideas was fabulous. That being said, Johnny Bunko wasn’t my favorite book he’s written, though I don’t think I’m the core audience. It’s written in a manga comic style, and looks at a fellow trying to get ahead in his career. I’m pretty content with where I am and what I’m doing now, but I know I don’t want to do it forever, and the Six Bunko Lessons are things everyone should keep in mind when looking at their career path. Every college student (heck, every high school student) would do well to read this before they take their next steps!

13. Shakespeare: The World As Stage – Bill Bryson

I gobble down Bryson’s work like so much candy, and love it. My aunt, knowing this and also having good taste in books, sent me Bryson’s look at Shakespeare’s life as a birthday gift. I definitely enjoyed it, but it certainly didn’t roll my world over. I’ve taken a lot of courses on Shakespeare, and was pretty familiar with his life and Elizabethan England. Bryson’s treatment of the subject matter was brilliantly researched, and told with his trademark witty lilt, making it a fun read. There are obviously more in-depth biographies of the Bard, but this was a well-balanced and easy-to-read introduction for someone looking for background, not a hammer to the face.

14. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth

Is it shameful that I have never read Philip Roth, winner of a chunk of prestigious awards (Pulitzer, PEN/Faulkner, etc.) and one of the most celebrated living authors in America today? Probably, though the amount of 20th century “canon” literature I haven’t read is pretty atrocious, so better late than never. I read most of this surrounding a crazy 36-hour trip to Miami to visit my gal-friends, so there was a lot of airport and airplane time to get absorbed. And absorbed I was. Roth’s alternate history surrounding WWII in America, with Charles Lindbergh as an anti-semetic president, was sinister and chilling. I recognized so many events and people from my history studies, and seeing them cast in very different situations was great. The ending felt a bit rushed and strange for my tastes, but that was the only sour note in an otherwise gripping book.

15. Shipwrecks – Akira Yoshimura

Cousin Karl gave me this book last year upon my return from Japan, and I feel awful about having gotten around to it nearly a year later. However, this book wound up in the top 5 reads for the year, and lived up to all of Karl’s raves (as his recommendations usually do). A poor coastal village in medieval Japan scrapes by through meager fishing, but mostly through making salt drawn out of the ocean. The salt fires, however, are also used to lure unsuspecting merchant boats onto the rocks. The bounty the village takes from the ships is the only way for them to survive, and the coming of Ofune-sama (“great boat god”) is anticipated by everyone. Isaku, the main character, is a young boy in the village, and his perspective lends an interesting lens through which to view the morality and the harshness of the situation. This book was haunting, and its slow but steady pace felt like a deep drum beat, urgent but troubling when it suddenly stops.

Visualizing One Billion Dollars

As a visual person, graphs appeal to me as a way to get my data, and see how things relate to each other. Thus, websites like Graph Jam make my day brighter, and Wall Stats leads me to more comparative thinking than just how many Chipotle burritos a certain things may cost (my usual standard of measure).

When the government announced in October that the bailout package would be $780 billion dollars, my mind reeled (it reeled even more when they said they had just plucked a number out of the aether, but in a different way, the kind that leads to a stiff drink). I, like most people have little concept of what a billion of any one thing would be. My burrito logic falls apart because a billion burritos is kind of crazy, and not something I would buy – at one time.

Wall Stat’s visualizations of what one billion dollars is equal to were eye-opening. Here are the ones that struck me the most; the rest of them can be seen here.

“Why Do You People Live Here?”

For those not in Minnesota at the moment, we are undergoing some dangerously cold weather right now, with windchills hitting -40 degrees. I don’t even have to translate that into celsius, because it’s the same! This weather has been going on for most of this week, but should let up a bit by Saturday. After this, 10 degrees will be a beach party.

I was drifting back to consciousness and listening to the news chatter on my morning alarm yesterday morning. One of the voices chirped that, due to the harsh cold weather, national news crews were going to be around the Twin Cities during the day, asking why we live here?

Clearly, we ask ourselves that, especially on weeks like this one. It takes a certain kind of gritting your teeth to really roll out of bed and go to work in the freezing dark of January, when you know that 10 minutes of exposed skin will land you in frostbite territory. But the more I thought about it, the more irritated I got. My roomie and I had a chat about it on the way to work, and she was bugged by it too.

People live all over the world, and no place is perfect. Do people from the rest of the country seriously think that we’re surprised by this weather every year, and that we’re not prepared for it? Dealing with the cold is built into the culture of living here – our houses are insulated, we layer on clothes as a matter of habit from November to April, and there is an extensive network of skyway tunnels downtown, as well as underground tunnels between many buildings on university or work campuses.

Plus… there’s other things to do here! I certainly love Minnesota summers (some of the best weather anywhere, ever), but that’s not why I live here. Awesome arts and culture, great restaurants, family, friends, a billion opportunities to do a billion new things or old things.

Also, people could ask the “Why do you choose to live there?” about a ton of things. Florida (hurricanes), Arizona (searing heat), Seattle (rainy), Kansas (tornados), L.A. (human wasteland). But folks who live there will tell you that those things are occurrences, not the reason they live there. Most of them are seasonal, and during those seasons you adapt to the condition. If a condition is too extreme or irritable to a person, they usually go and live somewhere else if they’re able.

A coworker told me that he had friends come to Minnesota from New York City, and they had actually thought that the state was a year-round icy tundra, and were blown away by the green and lovely outdoors. Come on!