Putting your own name on otherwise ordinary clothing is not design. Yes, Tommy Hilfiger, I’m talking to you, and a host of other narcissistic fashion hacks who wish they were you.
A Tip for Would-Be Fashion Designers
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Category Archives: Observations
The Best What Now?
So I’m watching a little bit of illegal television right now, consuming the NFL’s product and watching their ads despite their best efforts. One of the ads that the NFL does not want me to see is for Nissan. Apparently they now have “The Best New Small Crossover of 2008.” (Apparently “crossover” is the new word for “station wagon”. At least they’ve stopped pretending that they’re sport utility vehicles.)
Just how many new small crossovers were there this year? More than one?
Medal Count
I haven’t been paying much attention to the Olympics, but is anyone else out there annoyed by the fixation on medal counts by nation? Sure, I can appreciate rooting for “our guys” (whoever those guys might be for the rooter), but once you start aggregating the results of individual efforts into some national scheme you lose sight of the triumphs and disappointments that are what sport is all about.
Yeah, I know, I’m old and grumpy. Next I’ll be asking for sportsmanship.
Another Brief Message to the Gatorade Marketing Team
A while back, while on a road trip, I wrote a message to the boys at Gatorade. In a nutshell, I told them that all the flavors were silly, and many of the names of the flavors were downright stupid. To that I have this to add:
Lemon-lime and strawberry mixed together are awful. Making the result the same color as regular lemon-lime is criminal.
Road Music
Is it just me, or is the dinosaur rock of my youth fundamentally superior road music? ZZ Top or Boston just seems to lift the car a little bit. I wonder if the loss of roadliness in modern pop music is a reflection of changing values in our country, the fading of the American Road Myth.
I figured if the road was anywhere in American music anymore it would be country, but you know what? If the sampling I found on various radio stations today is any indicator, it’s not. A couple of tunes displayed a sense of humor missing in other pop genres, but the road wasn’t to be found there, either.
Has America lost its musical road mojo, or am I just imprinted from my golden days of youth?
A Legal Recommendation
Give ’em the Razors, Sell ’em the Blades…
I’m hanging with That Girl, and the other day we were out on the town together, shopping for a variety of techno-things for our office. One of those items was a printer. We spent time at OfficeMax looking at a variety of options, and finally settled on a competent-looking Epson for seventy bucks. I was struck by couple of observations as we lifted the black beauty from it’s packaging and set to work hooking it up:
- The cable to connect the printer to the computer is not included. This is mentioned in small print. Oddly, It is not possible to tell from the outside of the box what cable is required. You must get home, unwrap the printer to find no cable, then make a separate trip. Thanks, Epson. (Thanks also to the almost overly-helpful people at OfficeMax, who probably should have known about this.)
- The cost of a printer, including a full complement of ink cartridges: $70. The cost of a full complement of ink cartridges: $80. It is cheaper to buy a second printer and throw it away than to buy a backup set of cartridges. Wow. Just… wow.
The Science of Fishnet Stockings
This discussion will be hampered without diagrams, but I’m not about to draw anything right now. Let’s all appreciate the fundamental property of the fishnet: when viewed straight-on, they are practically invisible, and when viewed from the side, they are practically opaque.
What this does is make the fishnet-encased leg look not just more slender, but more well-defined. The subtleties of the muscles are amplified. The curves and contours of the calf and thigh are enhanced, making the resulting skinniness a healthy, athletic sort of skinny. I am, as I write this, comparing fishnets with dark stockings (all in the name of science, of course), and the difference in leg enhancement is striking.
Scarred for Life
This (somewhat dated) image of a NASCAR fan is disturbing on so many levels that all I can say is, “Hell yeah!” Don’t click that link if you’re happy with your life the way it is.
Stackers know stackers
Tonight I was in the crossfire of a discussion between a new parent and expectant parents. The subject of appropriate toys came up (a subject I was not shy about participating in), and blocks were mentioned. You know what I did with blocks? I stacked them. The yellow pillars were good for altitude, but the red wedges were where the elegance happened. Until tonight, I had forgotten those stacks.
As I sat reminiscing, thousands of miles away another friend was writing me an email. You see, during my wanderings I have enjoyed the hospitality of a Piker family in Central California. More gracious hosts you will never find, but it is Lillian who makes the visit special. Within minutes of our first meeting (seconds, actually) she was attached to my leg, and I never really could figure out why.
Now that’s an elegant stack. The kid’s a natural.
Ballroom Dancing: NOT a Sport
For some reason, here at Little Café Near Home, we are watching some sort of Ballroom dancing competition. Like figure skating, it fails on all three of my criteria for being a good sport:
- No judges – if you need someone else to tell you who won, it’s not a sport at all. Lack of an empirical scoring system removes the activity from even being considered as a sport, let alone a good one.
- Scoring must be a significant event – NBA, please take note. Scoring should be a cause for celebration.
- Scoring must be possible – take hockey. Points are rare, but things are nuts and a score could happen at almost any moment. Soccer occupies this weird realm where almost scoring is such a rare event that even that is cause of great emotional release. I will grudgingly allow that perhaps you can derive some tension from knowing that your team could in the next few minutes work their way into a situation where they almost score (but probably won’t).
Anyway, ballroom dancing stumbles at criterion number one, and so cannot be considered a sport at all. Yet here it is on the Czech sport channel. All other judgement of worthiness aside, I watched for a while and wondered, “isn’t dancing supposed to be fun?” I watched a little longer and had to wonder, “isn’t dancing supposed to be about being with someone?
Here’s the thing: the women in these events have their backs arched and their necks twisted such that one must conclude that they find the man they are with repulsive. They hold their heads as far from their partner as possible, with plastic smiles on their faces, looking anywhere but at the man. I’ve had dance partners like that, actively radiating disinterest, lest I get the wrong idea. Yet here are the friggin’ professionals, people who theoretically have chosen to be together, yet to appear to be enjoying the company of your dance partner is considered bad form. When the music’s over they still don’t look at each other; they turn and suck up to the crowd. I wonder what would happen if one of these teams went out and did a really passionate dance, eyes locked, and at the end the dude gave her a little kiss. Maybe just a kiss on the hand, thanking her for the wonderful time they just spent together. Like they were courting. Like they were dancing.
Forget about whether it’s a sport; in my book, this competition is not even dancing. It is, to twist a phrase, strictly “ballroom”.
Tons and Tons
Q: Which weighs more, a ton of feathers or a ton of lead?
A: A ton of paperwork.
Although, now that I think about it, if one were to weigh out a ton of feathers and a ton of lead at sea level, the mass of the feathers would exceed the mass of the lead. The feathers would be be more bouyant. Neither, however, come anywhere close to the crushing weight of a ton of paperwork.
Overheard In My Apartment
Funding for NASA
If private industry could sponsor NASA projects for the naming rights, I bet the space boys could make some pretty good money. Candy companies would make particularly good candidates for sponsorship, what with Mars and Milky Way and so forth. The one I want to see? That’s right, you guessed it… the Double Bubble Hubble Space Telescope.
Mad Dog’s Dog House, Last Observations
As I released urine back to the wilds (Andy Williams singing “Born Free” in my head throughout), I discovered that I had the opportunity to purchase “the ONLY glow-in-the-dark condom certified to prevent unwanted pregnancy and the transmission of sexually communicated disease”. That quote is, I afraid, only approximate, but the word “prevent” was definitely there. I cringed a bit at that; I suppose it’s already been argued in court just what reduction in statistical probability qualifies as “prevent”. Foe me, prevent is absolute; condoms are not. So somewhere, I imagine, “reduce the probability by 99%” has been legally defined as “prevent”. Meanwhile people in the real world read that word and believe prevent means prevent.
I’m just sayin’, is all. I’m not arguing against condoms, far from it. 99% protection is massive. Maybe it’s better than 99%, but they are imperfect, and lives are at risk. Not a time to be harboring unrealistic expectations.
And… crap. When I started this episode I had the serious thing to discuss and then the light thing. Start serious, go light. Journalistic gold. The light thing has long since wandered off to the sunny meadows where happy thoughts romp, and unfortunately I forgot to put a radio collar on the idea so now my chance of tracking it is negligible. It’s a funny thing (in the not-funny sense of the word); I set out on this episode absolutely confident that there was no possible way I could forget the second point. Whatever is was. It probably wasn’t that good anyway, or I would remember. That’s what mom used to say, but maybe that was before she realized what a rockethead I am.
Cyberpunk theme: You get an idea, and you say “tag that”, and the machine that is part of your brain applies a verbal recall code to your thought. The machine then remembers the idea for you, and you can recall it by invoking the tag. The crisis: most people decide to tag everything, which leads to hopeless clutter, and civilization teeters. The moral: there’s a reason you forget stuff. Most of it is crap anyway. I see a sit-com…