November is a dark and dreary month here in Raincouver on Canada’s Wet Coast, and the first two days have certainly been, uh… wobbly. Â Yesterday was dim and dark, but today was only foggy (like, Londonesque) and then suddenly freakishly nice out. Â It’s waffling. Â Nice breezes. Â Good sweater weather. Â Not weather that’s good for sweaters, but weather that calls for good sweaters. Â Even the old Heathcliff Huxtable from crazy Aunt Flarmboza in Rangoon would be nice on days like today. Â I’ve got a sweater drawer (that’s technically under the bed, but it’s a drawer-worth of stuff), and then I have this huge schwack of tee shirts, some of them are older than both my kids combined (okay, maybe not combined – both my kids in parallel concurrent streams of timespace).
Uh, what?
Yeah, work was just work today. Â Not crack-under-the-pressure, screamin’-an’-peein’ work, just a day. Â A day in which things that were supposed to happen didn’t, and some that weren’t supposed to happen, did, and generally nobody freaked out. Â Just a day of slugging through to the other side of the clock, y’know? Â Things was did, and stuff got doed.
The Movember moustache is already silvering up nicely. Â Looks like I’ve been making out with a pixie. Â Not saying I have or haven’t, just saying it’s what I look like. Â Also old, and tired, and yellow. Â Arm’s length camera with flash is alarmingly bright and shiny, without flash is jaundiced and eye-baggedy. Â Moving on.
Okay, here’s something hip and new that’s media-based that all the cool kids are talking about: fonts
(ooh, I’m getting into design and now this is going to become a design blog, and have guest bloggers from Iceland who enjoy skydiving while screaming every seventeenth word from Brian Eno’s journal “A Year With Swollen Appendices,” while playing minimalist covers from the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album in Swahili.)
Fonts are used for
(no, really, that actually sounds like fun, now that I think of it. Â Maybe the Icelandic band “Mum” could get on that, and do a remix/relaunch of the Beach Boys vs. J Dilla “Pet Sounds: In the Key of Dee” album)
Fonts are…
(what?)
…you done?
(yeah, oh no, yeah, I’m good, go on, this is fascinacipaction going on over here, honestly)
FONTS. ARE…
(…)
used in ads all the time to convey stuff. Â Fancy fonts (we’re rich, or you are), interesting (we’re hipsters, or you are), comic sans (Latin for “Funny – NOT!” from the late 80s, and should have been banned around the same time)
There’s a font that’s been bugging me lately though. Â Reaching out and grabbing me right in the oculars, y’know? Â Forcing me to take notice. Â Y’know why? Â ‘Cause there’s “Notice” right there in the poster. Â That’s not entirely why though. Â It’s the fact that the poster appears to say something other than the hip/hot/dangerous thing they’re trying to convey.
I’m talking about, of course, the new Spies on the Run (on the Sly?) show “Bum Notice.” Â You don’t retire, you get bumed.
No wait. Â “Burn Notice” Â BuRn. Â Burn. Â Burn. Â See what’s happening there?
Look:
Notice the Bum
So, I’m no fontophile (textualistico?) but this is what happens to my brain when I’m supposed to be busily not noticing things. Â In transit, on transit, transiting, transmutating, whatever, and then stuff like this pops up and I wanna go “Hey, lookit THAT Elmer, that thar them there postar says ‘bum’ onnit!”
Sad.
So to avoid noticing bums, (and getting mine back in shape in the process) I’m getting a new bike. Â Mine’s old and kinda falling apart. Â Actually, that’s not true. Â *I* am old and worried I’m falling apart, so I’m going to blame the $500 I spent six years ago, and run away to the circus with a new $800 instead. Â I shall refer to this new bike as my midlife crisis mobile and get a private license plate for it that reads “Burn Notice” and people will think I’m insane. Â My mom’s kicking in the bucks to make this happen, as a payback from the UN for putting her in harm’s way (it’s a long story, and it’s fascinating, and it’s freakin TRUE)
So yeah, new bike. Â Getting a Kona Asphalt something. Â Dew… thingie. Â I have to go to the store and actually LOOK AT AND SIT ON one of them, but after that, I’m going to ask if I’m big enough that I’m going to run the risk of actually shattering the frame and landing on what is essentially a Burmese Tiger Pit before getting run over by a car or five. Â Haha (hi mom!)
No seriously, I’m going to ask that, without laughing. Â No space age polymers in my lower torso, thanks, I plan on using that later (maybe as a place to balance a bowl of popcorn, but still – needs it for laters).
Tomorrow’s another day. Â Hope yours is, too.
Was listening to William Gibson’s latest in audio book format, which reminds me of how I accidentally listened to what amounted to a shuffled version of the latest Neal Stephenson tome.  Like, Track 1 from each disc in order, and then track 2 of each disc, but there were (I think) three parts to the book, and there were aliens and futuristic (and some very not-at-all SciFi bits, and they dealt with people who were exposed to the outside world every 10, 100, or 1,000 years.  With time jumping provided by my iPod being on crack.  Imagine 12 Monkeys meets Memento by way of Steven Wright read by Walter Cronkite on cold medicine.
No wonder I notice stuff while in transit. Â Look at the soundtrack I choose.