August 2005 Archives

After spending a chunk of Sunday screwing with the Kubrick theme for WordPress (note to the guy who made it: gaaaaauuuughhhh!), I would like to reiterate my love for Movable Type.

If you're not yet convinced that Six Apart are some of the coolest kids on the block, check out their Viewmaster show entitled "If Bloggers Had Been Around Throughout History."

UPDATE: I didn't write that very well. You can see the Viewmaster itself here.

For the purposes of this joke, the word "OOL" means "cube."

This sign was around for two weeks:

Then these appeared:

...and a car drove by. That's not unusual on Burnet Road.

The unusual part was the slogan on the car: "Do you have Donkey Bread?"

I had to admit this answer was no.

And if this is a marketing strategy designed to get people to their website, it works. I had go to and see what Donkey Bread was. I encourage you to do the same, not because the baking mix itself is fascinating, but because I would love to hear your thoughts about why anyone would market baking products like this. Is there really such a market for "just add beer" baking mix?

They are also conducting a Model Search, so if you want to be the Donkey Bread Girl, make sure you get in touch with them.

Via danah boyd's blog apophenia, I found out about the Minstry of Reshelving, launched by Jane McGonigle of Avant Game.

Basically, the idea is to relocate bookstore copies of 1984 by George Orwell from Fiction/Literature to a "more suitable" section, such as Current Events or Politics. You leave a notecard in the space where the copies were previously shelved to direct buyers to the new location. Jane later added a few modifications that folks could use to play along but minimize the impact on the people who work in bookstores.

I find the idea delightful. I also think back to the pain of going through the small bookstore in the Nature Company to remove all the Chick Publications anti-gay, you're-going-to-hell pamphlets that someone managed to sneak into the shelves and into the books themselves while we were busy. In the end, I think the 1984 reshelving is speech, and I doubt it's so much of a pain for the bookstore employees that it should be quashed.

However you feel about this particular game, you should definitely read Jane's statement on avant gaming. It's short, and it's quite thought provoking.

DIE DIE FUCKING DIE!!!!

Or just leave.

And tell your friends, the mosquitos who live in the bottom dryer in the laundry room.

Tamponblog reports that there's a line of shirts sold at Nieman and Marcus which is sized by bra size. 32A to 38D, and you can also choose from regular or long.

The next time I have over $150 and want to buy a cotton shirt, I know exactly where to go! And since their sizing formula is "patent-pending," I won't have to be afraid that this innovation will spread to the stores where the undesirables shop.

p.s. I am discovering so many excellent blogs from the BlogHer blogroll. I will keep sharing, I promise.

If you weren't in the Twin Cities (St. Paul and Minneapolis, not Midland and Odessa!) during the early 1990s, you probably have no idea who Gallowglass is.

However, you've probably heard of audio cassettes. That's all that many bands were producing in the early 1990s, especially if they were small like Gallowglass.

Many people I know cherish their cassettes of bands like Gallowglass, because they are irreplaceable. Unfortunately, far fewer people I know have working tape players. And then there's the tape being eaten issue that crops up now and again even in the most well-behaved of tape players.

Here is your solution: Cassettes2cds. I sent them irreplaceable cassettes, heavily insured, and trembled with fear until I had confirmation that the package had arrived. Several weeks later, I have CD versions of all these cassettes. Remarkably little noise compared to attempts I have made at home with my PC. ITunes doesn't correct the volume very well, so the tracks are a little quieter than the rest of my music library - but by quiet, I do not mean "straining to hear."

This is the real deal, folks. Dig out your treasures, ship them off, and breathe a sigh of relief that the music of your college years can be enjoyed without fear of loss.

As reported on The World Today in Australia, which I found via Magipe, who saw on it on librarian.net:

No longer will a visit to southern Sweden's Malmo library be restricted to borrowing conventional items such as videos, educational aids and, of course, books.

A homosexual, an Imam, a Muslim woman, a gypsy and a journalist will be among nine people available for members of the public to borrow this weekend. Easy to locate within the Dewey Decimal System, lenders will borrow the human items for a 45 minute chat in the library's outdoor cafe.

I don't know if the people who really need it would do it, but this seems like a good method of allowing people to ask questions they would hold back from asking - or that they don't have an opportunity to ask because they don't routinely interact with members of the group they have questions about.

For example, I've always wondered how people who were blind since birth decide what they would like to wear. What criteria do they use? But my only contact with anyone who is blind consists of seeing him or her on the bus. Not exactly the setting for a question that might be perceived as intrusive, especially since I don't know from looking at them whether they were blind from birth.

On a more serious note, many "minority" communities have requested that those of us in the dominant social group educate ourselves, rather than continually expecting them to point out the problems. But in this situation, members of these communities have officially made themselves available to help. So you can stop asking your one African-American friend to explain it all to you, and instead get yourself down to the local library. This one person can't represent everyone in the group, obviously, but it makes a designated space where you know you're not badgering someone by asking them questions.

Well done, librarians of Malmo!

I would like good writing, please.

If you'd like to inspire me, these passages from the Democratic Leadership Council's "Idea of the Week" aren't going to cut it:

In an important new report from the Progressive Policy Institute, Michele Stockwell, PPI's director of social and family policy, argues that parents, while remaining the first line of defense, need help protecting their kids from commercializing pressures and outlines a series of modest steps policymakers can take to address some of the more egregious marketing practices without unduly intervening in the market economy.

All of these measures are aimed simply at adjusting public policies to reflect rapid changes in technology and marketing techniques and giving parents the tools they need to effectively control and counter the harms associated with hyper-commercialization.

I'm obviously not the first to have issues with the DLC's lack of fire. They position themselves as "appeal to everyone, offend no one," and it shows. But is it possible that they offend no one because they put their audience to sleep?

White is not the color I would have chosen if I had my pick of all the cars in the world, but Svetlana is a good car. I hope. The mechanic said so, at least.

The Princess: You're lying on me.

C-Man: That's unusual.

The Princess: No it's not.

C-Man: Yes it is, because of those one whatever Batman laptops y'all have.

I should either be throwing away my current stylesheet and starting from scratch so I can stand to look at my own site, or I should be writing up my BlogHer notes into posts.

Instead, I give you this, from a conversation my sister and I had when I was contemplating flying to Chicago to see a fantastically cute boy I met in a bar:

Sister: So how's...Pete Smith? Joe Black? Tom Ford?

The Princess: Umm, Tom P-----?

Sister: Ha, I got his first name right. I knew it was something generic.

The Princess: He's fine. I really want to go up there, but he's not havin' any of it.

Sister: You should come here. (pause) The kisses you get here will be different, though. I just think you should know that up front.

I'll get to the other stuff when I'm not so tired. Maybe that will be today, since I was asleep by 8:20 last night.