Buddhism
“Buddhism. Another go-figure religion. ‘Hey, why don’t we all put on robes and sit in a rock garden and just, like, be aware?’ Exactly. That’s the easiest rhetorical question I’ve ever asked.”
—Stephen Colbert, I Am America (And So Can You!), 2007.
The Lavender Armageddon
“The biggest threat facing America today—next to socialized medicine, the Dyson vacuum cleaner, and the recumbent bicycle—is Gay Marriage.
It’s like the Road Coats, Green Peace, and the Yellow Peril combined.
I call it The Lavender Armageddon.”
—Stephen Colbert, I Am America (And So Can You!), 2007.
a well-pressed Armani suit
“The serifs are sharp and pointed; clean pen strokes evoke a
well-pressed Armani suit.” From What font says ‘Change’?, an analysis of the typography of the top U.S. presidential candidates by Sam Berlow and Cyrus Highsmith of The Font Bureau.
The 2007 Periodic Table Printmaking Project
to produce 118 prints in any medium; woodcut, linocut, monotype,
etching, lithograph, silkscreen, or any combination. The end result is
a periodic table of elements intended to promote both science and the
arts.” My favorite elements—so far—are Aluminum, by Ellen Brooks, Iron, by Steffan Ziegler, Lead, by Hannah Berman, and of course Ununbium, by Carol Myers.
More information and an interview with Azure are available in this article at Etsy:
Art and Science Converge: The Periodic Table Printmaking Project.
the rise of deco
the marbled endpapers of her journal
“[N]ow the seal of evening was on the wooded hillsides and on the pastures. The sky broke into bands and whorls of muted color until the entire west was like the marbled endpapers of her journal.”
—Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain, 1997.
2001: A Space Rainbow in Curved Air
In the post-modern mash-up tradition of The Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, it’s the “descent to Jupiter” from 2001 and Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air. I ran into this last night. And I don’t know . . . what would you call it?
a printer ink war
Here’s a headline that caught my eye: Printer ink tops $1000 a barrel. The situation is dire. According to UK news source News Biscuit, “In some parts of the world, people are having to print out documents
in blue or even green ink, continually having to pause to over-ride the
irritating instruction from their bleeping printer to change the black
ink cartridge.”
“‘Typical ink development might have five PhD chemists working on it for several years, and of course an army of technicians,’
says Nils Miller, an ink and media senior scientist for HP. ‘And that was just to develop it.’” Oh, ok. That explains everything.
Forget oil. Forget water. World War 3 may be a printer ink war.
a suspicion of brilliantine
“At seven thirty, her cheeks glowing and her high-piled hair gleaming with a suspicion of brilliantine, Evylyn descended the stairs.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Cut-Glass Bowl, from Flappers and Philosophers, 1920.
planets and nebulae of cigarette smoke
“Wendesday there was a four-hour wrangle in a conference room crowded with planets and nebulae of cigarette smoke.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, Crazy Sunday, from Taps at Reveille, 1935.