Clear times on the editing scene

A sentence from an otherwise admirably clear and straightforward marketing document:

This helps reduce the risk of a successful and profitable project for all our clients.

Gee, I'd hate our clients to run the risk of having successful projects. Actually, that's the best one of those since Moses Hadas wrote of a book he didn't care for that it filled a much-needed gap in the literature.

Harmony in my head

A week or so ago I had the misfortune of hearing the song "Today" by the New Christy Minstrels in passing, and since then it's stuck obstinately in my head despite liberal applications of everything from Prokofiev to Brian Wilson.

It's bad enough to have one sappy ersatz folk song in my head, but something about the lyrics (starting off "Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine/I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine" and going downhill from there) reminded me of that other phony anthem to hedonism, "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." and now I've got both songs fighting for airtime in my head. Sheesh.

Lord help us...

One more reason people outside Texas might (and maybe ought to) think Texans are hicks, from the Austin American-Statesman(registration required):

AUSTIN — Republican Gov. Rick Perry refused to honor United Nations Day, even as President Bush signed a U.N. proclamation, because doing so would be inconsistent with the governor's views, his spokeswoman said.

Sad days for rock fans

Word comes that the influential BBC DJ John Peel has died at 65, and American rock fan, publisher, and record label owner Greg Shaw has died at 55. Both were early champions of innovators in rock, and both will be missed.

Self discovery through somebody else

From Into the Cove, by Randy, whoever he is: "I don't wake up quickly and well. I tend to choose only one."

Uhh, me too.

Ashlee Simpson and That Lip-Syncing Feeling

Lisa de Moraes in the Washington Post (registration required):

Oh, and here's one of those little ironies that make covering TV such an interesting and rewarding career choice: The director of that 'SNL' telecast from hell, Beth McCarthy Miller, was director of the infamous Super Bowl halftime show in which Janet Jackson's costume 'reveal' turned into a 'wardrobe malfunction,' thereby revealing her breast and leading to the moral decay of the children of America. Live television is a very rough racket.

You mean it's not part of some kind of media conspiracy?

Terror suspect Hicks Harry Potter fan

From The Advertiser, via Heidi McDonald's The Beat:

Investigators thought a series of numbers next to [Australian terror suspect David] Hicks' name on a cellblock roster were part of a secret coded message between Mr Al Halabi [a translator and librarian at the Guantanamo Bay prison] and Hicks.

The 'code', however, was the reference numbers for Harry Potter books in the library.

Aw, crap

From the Houston Chronicle: No World Series for Astros as season ends with loss to Cards

V.O.T.E.

Two of my very favorite artists, Chris Stamey and Yo La Tengo, have collaborated on this timely message. Don't miss the three alternate versions of the PSA, especially the Old AM Radio Version--it channels the spirit and sound of the Cyrkle better than anyone but Fountains of Wayne.

There's an associated CD, also called V.O.T.E, a mix of covers (including the Yardbirds' "Shapes of Things," Television's "Venus," and Les McCann's "Compared to What") and originals. The CD won't be in stores until after the new year but you can download it now from iTunes.

Uh-huh, yeah, right...

From The Cincinnati Post:

Some absentee ballots distributed to Hamilton County voters do not include the name of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, local election officials confirmed today.

A bit further down:

"It's a screw-up," said Tim Burke, chairman of the Hamilton County Board of Elections. "This just feeds the paranoia that's out there. The tragic thing is that even though I think we will have a very fair and accurate count here, this will cause people to question the accuracy of our operation."

Oh, thank god I'm not the only one...

Michael Bierut on ITC Garamond in Design Observer:

The most distinctive element of the typeface is its enormous lower-case x-height. In theory this improves its legibilty, but only in the same way that dog poop's creamy consistency in theory should make it more edible.

Hey, I've been busy...

So I haven't had much time or inclination to write. Not like I ever do. Anyway, here are some mini-squibs on topics of recent interest to me.

Brian Wilson's Smile: overhyped but great.
Presidential debate #1: I thought Kerry came out better, though not as well as his more enthusiastic proponents (I'm not one) would have you believe. I'm not swayed by Bush's "stay on message" rhetoric, but I can imagine how some might be, though.
Sky Captain: Enormous fun--I'm sure everybody caught the Wizard of Oz and Metropolis references, but someone more learned than I will have to comment on the film noir elements and the taxi chase rendered as an aerial battle. I loved the Space Angel and Nick Fury references, though.

I knew it, I just knew it...

CNN.com covers the Ig Nobel Prizes:

"The medicine prize went to Steven Stack of Wayne State University and James Gundlach of Auburn University, for their 1992 report, 'The Effect of Country Music on Suicide.' The research of 49 metropolitan areas concluded 'that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate.'"

Aha!

I've been reading Bill Chance's Daily Epiphany for a good many years now. Right now he's in the process of getting rid of junk so he won't have to pack and move it.

Our Real Estate agent said something interesting about clutter, about why people don't throw stuff away.
She said, 'People keep things because they are afraid they will lose the memory that goes along with it.'"

Makes sense.

You wouldn't believe the crap we packed and took with us when we moved here. We made an effort to get rid of stuff, but there's still way too much crap around. I all but had to kick and scream and hold my breath to get Ron to let me throw away a bunch of old too-tight T-shirts.

Thomas Phinney on those damned forged Air National Guard memos

Interview with Adobe's Thomas Phinney, by Sandee Cohen, from creativepro.com.

The discussion of these memos that's filtered down to me has been extremely incomplete. Phinney's a genuine expert in the field of digital typography, and he covers his topic like a horse blanket. He explains how he concludes that the font in the forged memos is Times Roman, in terms a normal person can understand, while at the same time making the incredibly bad reproduction a non-issue. He identifies the two typewriter-like devices available in 1972 that had proportional spacing and (to my satisfaction, anyway) eliminates either of them as a source for the memos. Excellent illustrations in pdf format are included.

Phinney also discusses the unevenness of the baselines in the forgeries which have led some to believe that they must have been typed on a typewriter. Phinney points out what's known to everybody who's ever had to recreate artwork from a faxed original: that the low resolution of the fax process tends to introduce irregularities in letter forms which may be made worse if the fax is a bit crooked on the page, which isn't unusual.

There's also discussion of how Word treats ordinals and superscripts and how in spots it looks as if the forger took steps to defeat Word's automatic superscripting.

Now what I want to know is how such obvious forgeries got through CBS's fact-checking apparatus.

Recent Rebrandings

Speak Up on new doings in the world of corporate identity and branding.

Gosh, what a bunch of mediocre solutions. MBNA's new logo is probably the best of the lot, and that's not saying much. The negative space under the tree branches on the left just begs for the initials to be tucked into it.

Sure is an improvement on its predecessor, though.

Chansons

Three very familiar songs usually sung in French have been called to my attention in the last couple of days:

1. During a peculiar movie caught on cable the other day, schoolchildren sing "Dominique." (The particular scene takes place during the mid-60s in Paris, so that would still have been a fairly current song.)

2. U.S News and World Report describes Karl Rove at a dinner party singing "Alouette" by way of illustrating his lighter side. "Lighter side" is their term, but I can't read it without thinking of the late Dave Berg's regular strips in Mad. (I won't link to the story because a fee is required.)

3. A kid I saw in a drug store today, probably 7 or 8, was trying to sing "Frere Jacques." He sang:

Para yaka, para yaka
Deja vu, deja vu
I am glad to meet you
I am glad to meet you
A-a-men
A-a-men

Weird. Little kids know the phrase "deja vu"?

Desperate, desperate, desperate...

From SFGate.com:

In his Cincinnati speech, Cheney said indicators that measure the nation's unemployment rate, consumer spending and other milestones miss the hundreds of thousands who make money selling online on eBay.

"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," Cheney said. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay."

Granted there are people who do make a living selling stuff on eBay--are there really any more of them, relatively, than there were 20 years ago selling out of the back pages of Goldmine and the Comic Book Buyer's Guide and the like? Are they making more and better money?

Gee, who'd a thunk it?

From the AP, via CNN.com: "Floppy disk nears obsolescence"

APESGRAPES - Midget Clown

As certain persons of my acquaintance would say, this is just wrong. Especially the special offer for funerals and wakes.

[By way of Jen Segrest's Very Big Blog.]