It seems like the results of Slate's Write Like Sarah Palin contest are in (out?). I didn't make the cut, but I still like my entry:
“As I looked out on the standing-room-only crowd at the state fair rally, their faces lit in the afternoon sun like eager dandelions, I thought of my common-sense ideas, wafting at them from the PA system like a gentle zephyr, blowing through their minds and spreading the seeds of small-government reform throughout our great land.”
The Olympic flame sits across six seats on a plane as it is separated into six different miners' lanterns before leaving Athens, Greece, bound for Canada, on Friday, Oct. 30, 2009. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward)
(link goes to more-than-complete set of photos of the Flame being relayed....)
(well, as well as it ever was).
Remember when all it took to make a crappy repetitive song a #1 chart hit was a mindblowingly inventive, game-changing video to go on deep-dish rotation on MTV? You know, just before Reagan got re-elected?
.... if he were a priggish bigot?
The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.
WashPo article
Although to be fair, they used to react that way every time he'd come out of the bathroom before he left.
An interesting (and densely informative) article on corporate logos, designers like Paul Rand, and how things sometimes turn a bit weird for both.
If anything, the fact that the same person had designed the Enron logo and the IBM logo seemed to say nothing more than good logos and good companies didn't necessarily go hand-in-hand. Rand himself implied as much in his 1991 essay "Logos, Flags, and Escutcheons," saying "A logo doesn't sell, it identifies...A logo derives its meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way around. A logo is less important than the product it signifies; what it means is more important than what it looks like." And for those seeking Riefenstahl parallels, Rand adds, "Design is a two-faced monster. One of the most benign symbols, the swastika, lost its place in the pantheon of the civilized when it was linked to evil, but its intrinsic quality remains indisputable. This explains the tenacity of good design."
Sometimes I have trouble sleeping.
Sometimes there is a reason for this and sometimes not. Sometimes it's the rain, and sometimes it's the pipes.
At any given such time, whether there is a reason for it or not, there is always a thought that will present itself as the thing that occupies my mind at the time. Sometimes the thought is whether I should like sports more (yes, really) or whether architecture should be more open and accepting to amateurs (yes, really).
Tonight there were two thoughts which occupied my mind simultaneously, and made me both laugh and cry to the point of leaving my bed.
The first was a mental recreation of a tourist experience I had while visiting a site of Roman archaeological ruins in England, bordering a river by the name of Tyne. Among the building remains were many sub-structures that the site-designers (as the archaeologist-consultants must be described) went to great lengths to explain in the brochures as having served several and many specific purposes (“this is where they cleaned their coins”, “this is where they collected themselves and commented to each other on how clean their coins were”, “this building tells us how important the coins were to them, because it was structurally unsound, and they kept no coins in it” etc). And as we were walking through these various former-spaces I found myself saying to my husband “So… these Romans.. they had a steam bath here… according to the brochure.. and the water went out that way… Wow these Romans really cared about being clean… they went to great lengths to live up to this bathyness thing… you might say that they went all out to bathe in the Tyne daily.” … At which point the American tourists in front of us did an about-face and loudly expressed a happy “oh no, you didn’t.. [shame on you punster]”
The other thought was that Obama might be killed.
