Covers Waiting to be Judged

When judging a book by its cover, don’t stop with the front.  The back holds some valuable information as well.  On audacious days check that cute little flap on the inside for a change of pace.  The price listed in there has some immediate impact, sure sucks for those Canadians, but that is hardly a lasting deterrent.

After years of reading books I don’t understand the big fuss.  Judging a book by its cover (though often the back or inside) is where a description of a book comes into play.  Except for reasons one and four I don’t understand why one shouldn’t judge a book based on this merit.  There are even quotes from others, and while I understand the editing process that goes into these quote decisions and therefore skip over them, I’m sure that holds a little power of decision for some.

The cover art comes in handy too.  If I don’t trust this person’s judgment choosing a simple photo how can I trust the rest of what they’re about to try and make me consume.  The art is there in order for you to save your reading energy for the inside where there are 399 more pages words.

If the cover is bad and you still have an unexplainable urge to read the thing, buy it in hardcover and take off the dustcover whose existence makes no sense to anyone anyways.

In high school, having my first class start at 7.20am was painful.  Rushing on the freeway with a bunch of other students and workers who also refused to get out of bed when their alarms first went off was obnoxious.  By senior year I’d discovered a way to hit the snooze button one more time and not earn myself a detention.  Negotiation.  That’s right a high school senior successfully negotiated not having to arrive for class until 7:30am.  The 10 minutes were much appreciated.

These days I beat the sun up, even on the weekends.  Having a 4:42am call is crazy early to have to be at work.  Having a 5:12am call is early.  Not having to stand out in the dark and cold until 5:42am is considered sleeping in.  Having a 6am call is cause for celebration and an extra round the night before.

Early is a relative term.  Some day it’ll mean 10am.  I’ll get up and creak down the stairs for coffee just in time to watch The Price is Right (reruns with Bob Barker, of course) and yell at the television set.

Limited hours spent staring at the pixels and my eyes are already going cross.  It is becoming clear why all computer geeks sport glasses.  Or maybe it’s that they previously had glasses and that is drawing them into computer based majors.  Chicken or the egg?

Their bespectacled selves may be way more proficient in making Photoshop do what Photoshop was designed to do.  But when I get distracted or screw up an image I make a really good zombie-devil scene with some asteroid action.  Michael Bay inspires me.

*A sample of the awesomeness that is failed Photoshop drawings will be provided as soon as the world is ready to see them.

Saba will start on her dog bed, the cat will then do pretty much whatever she wants.  Took a while but Blondie finally stopped trying to nurse the dog, and Saba learned that purring is not growling.

The dog gets fed up first surrendering the comfort.  Wimp.

The only time this doesn’t happen is when there’s a sliver of morning sunlight to share.  White flags are raised and mortal enemies are friends.

They also are adorable to watch “wrestle” each other.  So far there has only been one bloody lip, and that was when the cat clamped down on the dog. (camera-phone)

These pictures were asked for a while ago, apologies for the delay.

Working on a film in Chicago we had a crew that for some reason or another spewed out ideas for t-shirts at an alarming rate.  Most weren’t good, but any idea is seen as great during hour 16 of a work day.  That’s the beauty of it.

The best shirt idea stemmed from the dealings with a producer who refused to call and Production Assistant (read: pee-on) by name.  Instead he used PA as a derogatory term for whoever happened to be standing closest.  So all Pas, myself included, were going to wear in:

Note that the name on the back was not allowed to be our own. That way, if this producer decided to try and use our names he’d be outing himself as having no clue who we were to the rest of the crew.  They wouldn’t have fired all of us at the same time… we hoped.

Another shirt actually got made from an offhanded comment I made to a gaffer working for ESPN with me one day.  We were talking about students who were “too emo to be emo” and their t-shirts.  Turns out he owned a silkscreen company to occupy his spare time, and a week later some of these showed up in the mail (It’s wrinkly, that’s what happens when you pull a shirt out of a gym bag for a picture)

Another shirt I would totally wear if someone would produce it (after making it look good of course)…

After shopping around for a new road bike I realize the phrase may be a little off base.  Maybe something like “Cheaper then a lifetime of therapy” would be a more accurate price point.

And although this isn’t a shirt, I’d sport this bumper sticker on my car somewhere.

It’s supposed to be a bit of a slap in the face.  People often act stupid towards one another without thinking.  Though I think Yield to Life goes for a bit of a different public image then the sticker represents.  Still.  I’m excited to see how the organization moves forward and in the mean time I’m going to think about what I’d do if I were them.

Last time I got bored on hiatus the web site was made (see the footer of the site for proof).  This time, I’m playing with PhotoShop.

Similarities anyone?

-       High key lighting

-       Bright colors everywhere

-       Sparse sets with a bit of an industrial feel

-       Similar camera style with awkward headshots looking dead into the camera

-       Soundtracks are both unnatural, obtrusive and poignant  (I think.  Haven’t seen Ugly Betty for a few years)

-       Lead male character in charge, good looking, but “shockingly” insecure and geeky.

-       America Ferrera look-alike.

-       Over the top female Cruella De Vil evil character

-       Overly melodramatic (can that even be a phrase?) soap opera story lines

All that said Ugly Betty is a great show.  Glee adds a musical element to the style adding to what has come before it.  Unless you hate musicals, then you should probably stick to Ugly Betty. The rest are invited to Wednesday night sing alongs.

Google has mapped a village known as Argleton, located in England.  Place looks interesting, not somewhere I would have ever thought about visiting but wouldn’t be bad if I stumbled upon it.  My interest grew exponentially when I found out that the place doesn’t actually exist.  It is listed on Google Maps with no explanation for it being there.

Google’s response is pretty lackluster, “Google Maps data comes from third party data sources. While the vast majority of this information is correct, there are occasional errors.”  It’s fine, don’t blame Google, whatever.  Do however explain how a village gets made up, placed somewhere, has pictures, and gets placed in online directories.

A Google search brings up a whole bunch of conspiracy theories, complaints, news stories, economic afflictions, and other (sometimes) entertaining reactions.  I started to sift through it all to give a summary, but got blown away.  Search at your own risk.

Argleton will soon be the road trip destination of high schoolers looking for a specific group of fields.

Fight Club.  No, not Tyler Durden.  Fight Club.  The people in the movie that participated in the underground fight club and then had to show up to work in their normal clothes with the crap beaten out of them.

We showed up dressed as usual.  Lori was awesome enough to come in just to do our makeup.  Then whenever anyone asked what we were we said that we can’t talk about it or that the first rule is that we couldn’t talk about it.

We had three brilliant judges: Vartan (crafty), Brian, and BJ.  They gave us a much undeserved third place in the costume contest!  We were pretty baffled, but took our candy and prize just the same.  Really we should have won the Jim Halpert Award: something witty, but only requiring minimal effort.

Quite a few people thought I crashed out on my bike over the weekend, and one of our security guards offered to beat up whoever did this to me before he figured out it was makeup.

The only thing that could have made it better was if Lori was working that day, because who doesn’t love a pregnant lady in their fight club?

Classy: Drinking Vintage Don Perignon at wrap.  Some of the best Champaign I’ve ever had, with my face as is.  Looked like I was celebrating an abusive husband divorce settlement.

This year I joined a league at work (Road to Seven)where no one really has any idea what is going on.  Went out and grabbed a magazine telling me what I needed to know and realized that I hadn’t watched the NFL in five years.  (College ball is just more fun when you go to a school with a good team and parties book-ending every game win or lose.)  Kept telling myself that I was fine losing as long as I understood the game and why I was losing, err wasn’t winning.  That mantra didn’t last come Monday night week one.

My season started off shaky.  Got LT’s first fumble, lost my first game, and there was nothing I could do to change the points I receive on game day… why would anyone enjoy this?  Immediately wanted to swap my whole roster and was convinced by a guy at work that Fantasy Football “is a marathon not a sprint.”  Still don’t understand why I can’t sprint the whole marathon.  Start strong, end strong, stay strong in the middle.  Then again, I’ve never ran a marathon, so maybe there’s a problem with that strategy that I’m missing.

Week four. My record: 3-1.  This game is awesome!  Unless there are injuries there really isn’t too much work to be put into the team after a good roster is set.  I get bragging rights and trash talk for exerting zero energy.  No wonder so many Americans love this game.  It is so much easier then taking on a bruised and battered game of Ultimate every Sunday, and has the same opportunity for dancing around with a win.

Back when we needed one more person I convinced my grandpa to join our league.  And now I will slaughter him. We face off this coming weekend, but I’d like to point out the league’s rankings:

Yea, I’m the condescending Clowns.  Because not much is scarier then a clown and nothing is scarier then a flying clown.