Mhendrix22

Platybelodon was an ancestor of the modern elephant that looked like it got hit in the face with a shovel, then absorbed that shovel into its mouth.

Jane Austen

“I’m the person who gentle folk hear after dinner, what strikes fear in their drawing rooms,” our heroine overheard the balding gentleman in the dark hat and spectacles remark to his astonished wife. “Perhaps we should take to Bath this summer,” the wife replied, changing the subject.

Edgar Allan Poe

“And so I come, heartily rapping, not at all gently tapping, tapping, upon the chamber door. Tis I,” he blustered, “and no one more.”

James Joyce

Diseased soul. Force cancer out with words. Wife trembling. Stained duvet. Meh. Bed Bath and Beyond for replacement. Scabs cracking.

—You’re the danger?

Tacos later. Dyspepsia.

—I only knock for others, I say civilly.

Hearing but not understanding. Kitchen to make eggs. Flynn wakes.

Ernest Hemingway

“I knock,” Walt said. That was all.

John Steinbeck

Toast crumbs mingled with butter and the Albuquerque sand in his beard. The auburn hairs engulfed the particles in a flame that would never breathe or grow. He had taken his glasses off but they left marks on his temples, like the skid marks of a teenage drag race in the Dog House parking lot. “I’ll be the one who’s comin’ round to ‘em,” he said, his spittle dripping into the carpet fibers.

George R.R. Martin

“I am the man who swings the sword on others," said Ser Walder, of House White. "Valar morghūlis.”

J.K. Rowling

“Do not fear for me, my dear, for my alohomora spell is the one that makes Voldemort cower,” Walterius White explained to his wife, before transforming into a scorpion and scuttling into the outlet.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

He glared into the vast obscurity of her eyes with an aggressive intimacy. He needed to hold onto this dream for which he’d paid so dearly. “Are you worried about me, dear girl? Don’t worry about old Heisenberg. He’s the fella who knocks!”

Toni Morrison

Into the fading lights of his wife’s shuttering eyes he stared. “Knocking. Answering. Death.”

Dr. Seuss

“What do you think that it could be?

A horse, a cow, a tree, a bee?
You silly lady, don’t you see?

There is just one hand that can knock

It’s not a whimdingler come out of its flock
Nor a wackzinglit in a tick-tock clock

It’s a human hand and it’s on a spree
That hand is free and belongs to me.”

Stephenie Meyer

He gazed at me with hypnotic eyes that seemed to redden by the second. It was as though he was looking past my nearly translucent skin and straight into the blood pulsating through my veins. “Skyler, I’m the one who sneaks into your friends’ homes every night. Who knocks at their doors just quietly enough that their fathers can’t hear.” I instinctively stepped backward and tripped over my bookbag.

While Southeast Asia's half-ton giant freshwater stingray packs a 15-inch, poison-coated, serrated stinger, it’s actually a gentle, inquisitive creature, an endangered titan that researchers are scrambling to understand before humans drive it to extinction.

Table of Contents - Shady Characters


The @ Symbol - Shady Characters


The Octothorpe - Shady Characters


Shady Characters by Keith Houston


The Asterisk and Dagger - Shady Characters


Dagger and Double Daggers - Shady Characters


An index of typographical symbols - Shady Characters


Typewriters and Typographers - Shady Characters

wwnorton:

Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks by Keith Houston

Amazon ‽ Barnes & Noble @ iBookstore # Indiebound † Powell’s

"With zeal and rigor, Keith Houston cracks open the &, the #, the †, and more—all the little matryoshka dolls of meaning that make writing work. Inside, we meet novelists, publishers, scholars, and scribes; we range from ancient Greeks to hashtagged tweets; and we see the weird and wonderful foundations of the most successful technology of all time."
—ROBIN SLOAN, author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

Though his name famously sounds made-up, Jack Handey is a real master joke writer.

His Deep Thoughts—which aired on Saturday Night Live in the ‘90s—comprise one of the best collections of jokes ever written, particularly when they spoof psychobabble or heartfelt confessions, like so: “To me, clowns aren’t funny. In fact, they’re kind of scary. I’ve wondered where this started, and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus and a clown killed my dad.”

Though technically a novel, Handey’s new book The Stench of Honolulu: A Tropical Adventure is the equivalent of 50 new Deep Thoughts books. Some of the jokes are layered like a wedding cake of absurdity:

“In the jungle you come to realize that death is a part of life. The bat eats the moth. Then the giant moth sucks the life out of the bat. Then the monkey eats the giant moth, pulling the wings off first, because he doesn’t like that part. Then the monkey gets a parasite from the moth that slowly eats his brain. It’s all part of the beautiful circle of life.”

A New York Times article by Dan Kois proclaimed “Jack Handey is the Envy of Every Comedy Writer in America.” Amen.

So what’s his best joke? For me, it’s not one of his Deep Thoughts, but a line from his humor piece “What I’d Say to the Martians,” which you can find in the book of the same name.

This is the joke: “I came here in peace, seeking gold and slaves.”

This joke is one of many self-contradicting, demented lines from this essay/monologue, in which the narrator is trapped in a cage, taunting and threatening some Martians, while unknowingly proving that he deserves to be in that cage. This is a typical passage: “You may kill me, either on purpose or by not making sure that all the surfaces in my cage are safe to lick. But you can’t kill an idea. And that idea is: me chasing you with a big wooden mallet.” In its context, “I came here in peace, seeking gold and slaves” might be the most deluded, deranged line out of a masterpiece of deluded derangement.

The entire “Martian” piece is great, but the line “I came here in peace, seeking gold and slaves” is even better on its own. It has a perfect setup and punchline, which are exactly the same length, creating a pleasing symmetry: five syllables of set-up and five syllables of punchline. The line isn’t iambic pentameter, but the ten syllables give it that Shakespearian feel. The language is simple, and the contradiction is massive. I dare you to write such a short, plain, ridiculous line.

This joke should be particularly pleasing to Handey himself, based on something he said to the New York Times: “Brevity is a big factor for me in a stand-alone joke. To get a laugh with the fewest number of words possible. Which is why ‘Take my wife, please’ is such a great joke. The closest I’ve ever come is probably ‘The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.’” The “peace” line is even more compact. MacGyver-like, Handey made a nuclear bomb of comedy out of the verbal equivalent of a paper clip.

This line is also the closest Handey comes to political humor. The greatness of Handey is that he usually avoids topical jokes, preferring to stay with what he calls “little boy stuff.” That stuff is timeless, like his “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer” sketch from SNL and jokes like this from Stench: “If Superman ever visited Tarzan, at first they’d get along, but then Superman would finally have to say, ‘How can you live like this?’”

That’s typical of Handey: his humor is escapist, taking readers to a playful, wacky world of funny cowboy dances, cannons coming out of hats, and scary skeletons, where troubles are ridiculous rather than soul-crushing. The Handey-verse is a wacky relief from our dreary world of twerking singers and school shooters.

But the “peace” joke has real-world resonance. “I came here in peace, seeking gold and slaves” is the mantra of every conqueror, imperialist, colonizer, and oppressor ever. Handey, the forever-young little boy, aims his slingshot at real evil, smack dab in the middle of a bizarre essay about Martians. There have always been people “seeking gold and slaves” while professing peace and treating innocents like Martians: there probably always will be. Handey not only made a funny; he summed up world history.

That’s a perfect joke.

Demon day 185

JEN: OMG!! Are you done with T.G.O.W. yet??

LESLIE: No! Started today. They just packed up and got on the road. So excited!

JEN: It gets SO good! I’m so jealous you aren’t done yet!

LESLIE: I <3 the word choice in Chapter 3!

JEN: Yes! Wait till the descriptors in Ch. 7. Where r u?? I want to discuss the end ASAP!!

LESLIE: They R sleeping by the road somewhere. This is making me want to camp.

JEN: Yes!! Let’s totally go camping! Wknd of Sept. 8?

LESLIE: Can’t, wedding. The 22nd?

JEN: Can’t, wedding. Next yr?

LESLIE: Yes! Totally let’s go camping next yr!

JEN: OMG, are they ever getting to California?!

LESLIE: Not telling. Don’t read any 9th grade English papers—full of spoilers!

JEN: Thx I won’t! I bet Tom looks like a young Tom Selleck.

LESLIE: I thought Tom Selleck too b/c he’s named Tom.

JEN: WTF kind of name is Rose of Sharon btw?

LESLIE: LOL. U know so many girls born this year will be named Rosasharn.

JEN: Totally. Moms will—HOLY SHIT SHE BREASTFED A GROWN MAN!

LESLIE: YES!!! OMG I was dying!

JEN: No wonder #mothersmilk was trending on Twitter.

LESLIE: YES! GROSS, RIGHT?!!!

JEN: TOTALLY!… wud U?

LESLIE: Yeah prolly.

JEN: Me 2… When does T.G.O.W. 2 come out?

LESLIE: Nvr. Steinbeck is dead.

JEN: Damn. Guess I’ll start The Wire.

Since the #NewspaperBlackout show in April, I’ve been making a poem every day and posting it to Instagram. It looks something like this (or this):

It’s a good ritual before I do my “real” work for the day. I use this little librarian stamp on the poem when I’m finished—if I’ve kept up with my routine, I only have to move the day slider one little notch:

They don’t always turn out:

Sometimes the bleed from the poem makes for interesting art on the other side:

I wanted to share a few of my favorites below…

See my poems as I make them on Twitter or Instagram.

Okay, everyone! Let’s circle up! This will be our final exercise.

I just want to say what an absolutely great job everyone has done. Today was about letting go of your fears, relinquishing control, and learning to trust your teammates. That is not an easy thing to do.

Remember the ropes course? How many of you thought, There is no way I am going through with that…? I saw it on your faces! And I watched each and every one of you push through that fear—with one exception.

When you all were rowing, how cool was it to see your skiff really start to move, once everyone agreed on a rhythm? Super cool, right? We also saw how a skiff will sit motionless in the water when one member betrays the team with their desperate, erratic rowing patterns. When one member lets their fear poison everyone’s chances of success.

Sure, the afternoon scavenger hunt was a lot of fun. But only after you started sharing clues and solving puzzles together! I wanted to cheer when you formed that human pyramid to reach the window into the clock tower! And I wanted to scream when a single, malignant force tried to tear down the pyramid.

Honestly, the sight of a grown man, clutching his one hoarded clue, dragging his teammates—his brothers and sisters—into the mud where he’d been hiding… it sickened me. It represented everything this workshop fights against. And you triumphed over it.

I’m gonna tell you something: I teach a lot of these workshops. They always go fine. People are good at faking their way through them. But every now and then a group blows me away. Today you reminded me what a well-connected group of people minus Spencer can accomplish when trust wins out.

Look at each other. Really see each other! No, don’t look at Spencer. Do not look at Spencer. Eye contact is a type of approval, and he does not deserve that. He’s fine in the corner. Look at each other and think: this is my family. When we work together, nothing is impossible!

I hear the bus pulling up outside, but I have one last challenge for you. And that’s to protect… this. It may look like a spirit stick, but I call it the Together Talisman. The Talisman represents everything you’ve accomplished today. It’s yours to keep. Does everyone have a hand on it? Make room for Lori at the bottom!

When I let go, it’s up to you to get it safely to the bus. I don’t want to see the Talisman touching the ground, and I don’t want to see anyone letting go! The team is strongest when everyone is involved.

That’s it—it’s yours now.

Some of you look nervous about having to walk so close to Spencer. Don’t be. He is nothing compared to the power of this team. Focus on each other! You’re almost at the—SPENCER. SPENCER, GET DOWN. Keep your hands on the stick, everyone! Just keep—do not let Spencer touch it. DO NOT LET HIM FOUL THE TALISMAN WITH HIS TOUCH. PUSH HIM DOWN. YES. PUSH HIM. NOW GET ON THE BUS AND LEAVE HIM. LEAVE HIM.

Okay, great. Good luck!

Pow!

[Top: Seaweed farming rafts off the coast of the Chinese province of Jiangsu, south of the city of Qingdao, via Bing Maps.

Middle: enormous mats of algae floating off the coast of Qingdao, as photographed on June 29th by NASA's Terra satellite. The Los Angeles Times states that this is sixth year that the algae has proliferated so uncontrollably in Qingdao's coastal waters; the area covered has been estimated at 11,500 square miles.

Above: the algae washes onto beaches, where local officials deploy boats, nets, and construction equipment to collect as much as 160 tons of algae a day, loading it into dump trucks and transporting it to a nearby "algae processing facility".]

The New York Times reports:

Last month, [local officials] declared a “large-scale algae disaster,” sending hundreds of boats and bulldozers to clean up the waters off Qingdao, a former German concession in Shandong Province that is famous for its beer and beaches. As of Monday, about 19,800 tons of the algae had been cleared, the Qingdao government said. While valued for its nutrition — or as an ingredient in fertilizers and biomass energy production — algae in large quantities can prove dangerous as it decomposes, producing toxic hydrogen sulfide gas…

Although biologists are at a loss to explain the most recent algae bloom, scientists suspect it is connected to pollution and increased seaweed farming in the province just south of Shandong. While similar green tides have been reported around the world, the annual bloom in the Yellow Sea is considered the largest, growing to an estimated million tons of biomass each year.

The green tides were first reported in Qingdao in 2007. A central factor is the high supply of nutrients from agricultural runoff and wastewater. But those pollutants have been in the Yellow Sea for decades, leading scientists to look for new triggers.

A group of researchers believe that the algae that washes up around Qingdao originates farther south in seaweed farms along the coast of Jiangsu Province. The farms grow porphyra, known as nori in Japanese cuisine, on large rafts in coastal waters. The rafts attract a kind of algae called Ulva prolifera, and when the farmers clean them off each spring they spread the algae out into the Yellow Sea, where it finds nutrients and warm conditions ideal for blooming.

“It feeds off those nutrients and grows bigger and bigger, and eventually you can see it from satellites,” said John Keesing, a scientist at the Csiro Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research in Australia who is studying the green tide with Chinese researchers. “The currents gently move the algae in a northeastern direction out into the center of the Yellow Sea. You get a huge amount, and eventually it starts to wash on shore.”

This is feedback, the accumulated white noise of aquaculture.

Every so often—say, once in a generation—an opportunity presents itself for humanity to leave its mark on prosperity by constructing a giant thing. We are building such a thing and we’d like you to be a part of it.

This is not a fundraiser for another obscure business, or a call to alms to help recuperate some unfortunate victims or cities. We’re not raising money to research diseases. We are not feeding orphans. We are not supporting science or religion, or any number of so-called “philanthropic” pursuits. No, this is more. Much more.

We are building a thing. A giant thing. Something that will traverse the skyline for centuries and poke its head into the heavens regardless of what happens to the environment or civilization, or life as we know it. Something we can point to and show grandchildren or strangers and say, “See that giant thing over there. I had a hand in building it.” That’s what we’re talking about here. Something we can be proud of. Something that signifies how, when we all come together, we can accomplish any number of giant things.

What is this giant thing, you might ask. It could be anything, really. It might be a giant, 400-story cement monkey that doubles as an apartment building, and future people are always talking about heading to cocktail parties there. “Where’s the party?” “The monkey.” “Of course the monkey, but specifically?” “Penthouse, near the left eyelash.” That’s how giant this thing might be. It could be a giant bronze swirly garden maze, and when citizens begin climbing it, after a quarter-mile or so they notice there’s a massive river flowing at them. They’ll start running in the other direction, only to realize there’s a giant marble coming their way. They’ll run back the other way and some other weird engineering feat will await. Eventually, after a few hours or weeks, they’ll escape and share their adventures and cell phone pictures, and the legend will grow. Our legend.

See, most entities raising money to start businesses or charities use funds for operational costs, or staffing issues, or fancy logos. They waste hard-earned money not on the goal itself, but every critical step that has to occur before they reach the goal. This giant thing is different. We don’t have an office, nor will we. We don’t accept credit cards or issue receipts for tax purposes. We’re not even setting up a website. We are devoting 100 percent of the proceeds—which is nearly all of it, minus some allotments to cover basic caloric needs and a social media editor—to build this giant, charismatic thing.

We get it. There are clever startups raising money to visit Mars, or mine the asteroids. It won’t work. There are heart-wrenching charities soliciting funds for stillborn Dalmatians and overfished carp. Everything dies no matter how much money we throw at the problem. But this thing we’re building—this giant, beautiful, magnificent thing—will exist long after the last glacier melts, long after the final beast whimpers, just sitting there outside our kitchen windows, waiting for some pretentious alien species that outlived us to arrive and discover our giant thing and reflect, “Wow, these humans really had their shit together when they wanted to.”

beatonna:

There’s something wonderful about Marvin Bileck’s minimal illustrations for All About the Stars.  

Last week, a chemist found what might be an important clue in the ongoing mystery surrounding mass animal deaths in Florida's Indian River Lagoon: Multiple unknown toxins, isolated from algae in the lagoon, that kill mammalian cells. But despite widespread ...

In March of 1987, having paid a hefty licensing fee of $500'000 to Capital Records and Michael Jackson for the privilege, Nike released the first ever television commercial to feature a song from the Beatles' sacred back catalogue—in this case, Revolution. Rather unsurprisingly, the move was seen by many as a controversial one, particularly by the Beatles/Monty Python fan responsible for sending the following wonderfully furious complaint letter to Nike's advertising department. The letter now hangs, so I'm told, at the company's head offices.

In July of that year, a lawsuit was filed by the surviving Beatles, all of whom opposed the song's appearance in the ad; they settled out of court in 1989.

(Source: Letter kindly submitted by Richard Denon.)



Transcript

March 30, 1987

Nike, Inc.
Advertising/Marketing Dept.
3900 SW Murray
Beverton, OR 97005

Dear Sir or Madam:

This letter of complaint is in response to a very nauseating advertisement of yours which I saw on television yesterday. From your complete lack of taste you have created a commercial for your "Michael Jordan" shoes which exploits, defiles and utterly insults Beatles' fans, and all others of musical distinction. Your debasement of the Beatles' song, "Revolution", in the commercial ad is apparently indicative of your lack of integrity as a business. Your tactic, obviously, is to use the Beatles' universal popularity to sell your product. Have you sunk that low? "Is nothing sacred anymore?", as the cliche' goes? Your only motive is to make more money for your greedy selves, and in the process you seemingly could not care less that you have trampled and befouled the precious memories of millions and millions of people throughout the entire world. Your kind makes me puke; you low, vacuous, malodorous perverts. Your dearth of sensitivity is equaled only by your plethora of obnoxiousness. To your credit, you have waited nearly seven years since the death of John Ono Lennon; but it was obviously not done out of respect (Huh? What's that?) for the deceased.

Throughout my high school years as a basketball player, on to my college years, and up to present day, I have bought your athletic shoes. However, as of this very day, I can assure you that I, and many of my friends, will never, EVER, contribute in any way whatsoever to your sickeningly corporate-selling tactics. You know, with people like you in the world, euthanasia has untapped possibilities.

Thank you, and I hope you choke.

Very untruly yours,

(Signed)

On May 22nd of 1925, the great Gertrude Stein wrote to fellow author F. Scott Fitzgerald and offered, in her own inimitable style, a brief review of his recently published novel, The Great Gatsby. It can be enjoyed below. Also of note: Fitzgerald's editor's reaction to an early draft of The Great Gatsby, here, and a rejection letter once sent to Stein by Arthur Fifield, here. All are fantastic.

(Source: The Crack-Up; Images via here and here.)

Hotel Pernollet
Belley
(Ain)

Belley, le 22 May, 192-

My dear Fitzgerald:

Here we are and have read your book and it is a good book. I like the melody of your dedication and it shows that you have a background of beauty and tenderness and that is a comfort. The next good thing is that you write naturally in sentences and that too is a comfort. You write naturally in sentences and one can read all of them and that among other things is a comfort. You are creating the contemporary world much as Thackeray did his in Pendennis and Vanity Fair and this isn't a bad compliment. You make a modern world and a modern orgy strangely enough it was never done until you did it in This Side of Paradise. My belief in This Side of Paradise was alright. This is as good a book and different and older and that is what one does, one does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure. Best of good luck to you always, and thanks so much for the very genuine pleasure you have given me. We are looking forward to seeing you and Mrs. Fitzgerald when we get back in the Fall. Do please remember me to her and to you always

Gtde Stein

UK artist Ryan Jordan led a workshop earlier this summer in Montréal, building musical instruments out of geological circuit boards, an experiment in terrestrial instrumentation he calls "Derelict Electronics."

[Image: From "Derelict Electronics" by Ryan Jordan; photo by Lauren Franklin].

The sputtering and noisy results use "a mesh of point contacts connecting to chalcopyrite and iron pyrite to make crude amplifiers out of rocks."

"When an electric current is sent through the rocks," Jordan explains, "sporadic noise bursts from the speakers. With some fine tuning these rocks begin to behave like microphones, amplifying howling feedback and detecting subtle scratches and disturbances in their surrounding environment."

[Image: From "Derelict Electronics" by Ryan Jordan].

The extraction of sound from or by way of minerals is less bizarre than it might at first sound, considering that, as Jordan points out, his experiment is actually "based on the Adams Crystal Amplifier (1933), a precursor to the modern transistor, one of the fundamental building blocks of today's electronic and digital world." In a sense, then, these are just a hipster rediscovery of crystal radio.

The resulting instruments, though visually crude, are Frankenstein-like webs of copper wire and rocks affixed to, in these photographs, a wooden base. The potential for aestheticizing these beyond the workshop stage seems both obvious and highly promising.

[Images: From "Derelict Electronics" by Ryan Jordan].

In fact, I'm reminded of the amplified lettuce circuits of artist Leonardo Amico or the recently very widely publicized work of photographer Caleb Charland—in particular, Charland's "Orange Battery"—which literally taps fruit and vegetables as unexpected electrical inputs for lamps and other lighting rigs.

[Image: Caleb Charland, "Orange Battery" (2012), which took a 14-hour exposure time].

Charland takes stereotypical still-life arrangements, using, for instance, apples and potatoes as an electrical source for the lamp that illuminates the resulting photograph—

[Images: Photos by Caleb Charland].

—or he simply plugs directly into crops while they're still growing in the field, as if we might someday set up lamps in the middle of nowhere and build outdoor interiors shining at all hours of the day. Redefining architecture as electrical effects without walls.

[Image: Photo by Caleb Charland].

Combining Charland's and Jordan's work to stage elaborate, fully functioning rock-radios built from nothing but wired-up pieces of crystal and stone could make for some incredible photographs (not to mention unearthly soundscapes: podcasts of pure geology, amplified).

But, continuing this brief riff on alternative geo- and biological sources of power, there was a short article in The Economist a long while back that looked at the possibility of what they called "wooden batteries." These botanical power sources would be "grid scale," we read, and would rely on "waste from paper mills" in order to function.

The implication here that we would plug our cities not just into giant slurries of wood pulp, like thick soups of electricity, but also directly into the forests around us, drawing light from the energy of trunks and branches, is yet another extraordinary possibility that designers would do well to take on, imagining what such a scenario literally might look like and how it would technically function, not solely for its cool aesthetic possibilities but for the opportunity to help push our culture of gadgets toward renewable sources of power. Where forests become literal power plants and our everyday farms and back gardens become sites for growing nearly unlimited reserves of electricity.

(Earlier on BLDGBLOG: Electric Landscapes).

Oh my god, you geeks. There is a kickstarter about zombie ants, possessed by fungus.



One of the rewards is fungus.

Look at me. Look at me. I’m a mess.

Wasn’t enough to make me one distended scene, to fill me with “It felt like forever”s and words like serenade. Wasn’t enough to email me around so your friends could laugh at me. I mean, look at me. I had a Snickers for breakfast. I’m wearing your ex’s boxers. I’m a fucking mess.

It’s going to take some time to realize how to fix me, and even more time to realize I shouldn’t be fixed. I should be thrown into a dumpster. I should be deleted in one of those dead blue-screen catastrophes your second short story is wishing for. But for now you’re going to look longingly at me as your first moment of true genius. Let’s face it: you’re going to print out copies of me and give them to your co-workers. You’re going to make me sit there on the desks of MFA faculty, sorted into the What-Even-Is-This pile. You’re going to tinker with my words and matchmake me with the thesaurus on your mom’s work-from-home desk. I’m going to be everything to you. Which is the only line of dialogue you put in me.

In a week I’ll be up for workshop, which your first poem says is like giving a bunch of undergraduate biology students scalpels and asking them to perform heart surgery. Most of us don’t make it out alive. We bleed out right there in the classroom, our hearts breaking like you made them in my last paragraph, everyone’s damn hearts breaking, just a bunch of important breaking, broken hearts. Except here I am, in my boxers. Got a dozen other Snickers in the freezer. I DVR-ed an episode of Million Dollar Listing. Go ahead. Stab me in the heart; see if I care.

Which is another line in me. Except you forgot my semicolon.

So here’s the rub. I’m going to sit here in your computer and, like, I don’t know, wait for you to poke me around a little. When I’m up for discussion you won’t listen to a word anyone says. Thank God. People are going to be talking shit about me and you’re just going to think No one understands me and I don’t deserve this. The professor will say something like This is an interesting moment and I’ll know she’s just taking pity on me because, well, look at me. I’m a mess.

The Asian woman in the rice hat on my third page is original and fresh, sure, but maybe you could’ve made her speak in English that isn’t more broken than your sense of self-worth. Maybe your narrator shouldn’t be sixty-six and dying of a cancer you know nothing about. Maybe there’s another way to write me.

Except, wait, no. Don’t touch me. Slide me into the trash. Withdraw me from submission. Avert your gaze. Because, well, look at me. I’m a little cross-eyed and am pretty sure I ate two lunches. I’m your first short story. And I’m a mess.

Share and Enjoy:

by Mike Dang

In one of their financial models, Dudley’s students proposed all community college students pay 1.5 percent of their incomes while all four-year public university students pay 3 percent — both for the duration of 20 years after graduation. The pilot program committee will likely choose one university and one community college to experiment with the details, Dudley said.

Oregon is exploring an inventive way for students to fund their educations at community colleges and four-year public universities in the state: Free tuition in exchange for paying a small percentage of their adjusted gross incomes into a special fund for, according to one proposal, a 20-year time period. This would allow students to graduate without a heavy burden of student debt in front of them. My student loan payments are definitely higher than 3 percent of my income at the moment, so, in my view, this would be more than manageable.

The plan, which is called “Pay it Forward, Pay it Back,” was unanimously passed by Oregon’s Senate last week, and approved by the House. A committee is being formed to develop a pilot program, and the legislature will decide whether or not implement the program in 2015.

This kind of creative thinking is very much needed right now:

According to quarterly data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, student loan debt has been the biggest driver of borrowing since the Great Recession ended in June 2009. Student loans reached $986 billion in the first three months of this year. That’s up from $675 billion in the second quarter of 2009.

Photo: saml123

1 Comments

Calligraphic flair by DSType, a geometric stencil from Talbot Type, a tempered sans by MVB Fonts, a warm slab courtesy of Dada Studio, a fluid script from Sudtipos, some hand-drawn lettering by Mike Rohde, an art deco inspired face from Tilo Pentzin, a vintage sans by Hold Fast Foundry, geometric forms from HVD Fonts, and a tribute to Ladislav Sutnar by Suitcase Type Foundry.

DSType: Aparo

Designed by Dino dos Santos

Aparo appears to be a very simple bold italic roman typeface, but it has plenty of calligraphic flair, including swashes, collision detectors, alternate characters and a very extended character set.

Talbot Type: Kroppen Round

Designed by Adrian Talbot

Not strictly a stencil font given that several characters are not stencilled. The design has more to do with achieving each character from a single stroke, or series of single strokes.

MVB Fonts: MVB Solitaire

Designed by Mark van Bronkhorst

A tempered sans-serif somewhere between a humanist and a gothic, MVB Solitaire captures a 21st-century neutrality.

Dada Studio: Clavo

Designed by Michał Jarociński

Its warmth comes from subtle details, classical proportions and traditional forms, while its harmonious structure prevents distraction while reading.

Sudtipos: Rolling Pen

Designed by Alejandro Paul

Rolling Pen runneth over with alternates, swashes, ligatures, and other techy perks.

Delve Fonts: Sketchnote

Designed by Mike Rohde

Designed to be practical, to convey the human character and quirks of Mike Rohde’s normal handwriting and unique hand-drawn lettering with the benefits inherent in digital fonts.

Gestalten: High Times

Designed by Tilo Pentzin

High Times takes its inspiration from the eras of Art Deco and Art Nouveau but with a radically contemporary approach.

Hold Fast Foundry: Prohibition

Designed by Mattox Shuler

This vintage sans takes queues from classic war and workforce posters.

HVD Fonts: Niveau Grotesk

Designed by Hannes von Döhren

Based on geometric forms and influenced by classical 19th-century faces.

Suitcase Type Foundry: Ladislav

Designed by Tomáš Brousil

A tribute to the typography of Ladislav Sutnar.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

This Week in Fonts

In February of 1820, on learning that his good friend, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, was suffering from a bout of depression, noted essayist and clergyman Sydney Smith sent her the following precious letter, in which he listed twenty pieces of advice to help her overcome "low spirits."

Two similarly helpful letters of advice—specifically on the subject of depression—spring to mind when reading this: one from Stephen Fry; the other, from Henry James. All three are wonderful. For more information about depression itself, the Mind website is a good place to start.

(Source: The Selected Writings of Sydney Smith; Image of Sydney Smith: Replica by Henry Perronet Briggs, oil on canvas, 1840 (1833) NPG 1475 © National Portrait Gallery, London.)

Foston, Feb. 16th, 1820

Dear Lady Georgiana,

Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have done—so I feel for you.

1st. Live as well as you dare.
2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°.
3rd. Amusing books.
4th. Short views of human life—not further than dinner or tea.
5th. Be as busy as you can.
6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.
7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.
8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely—they are always worse for dignified concealment.
9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.
10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.
11th. Don't expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.
12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy sentimental people, and every thing likely to excite feeling or emotion not ending in active benevolence.
13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.
14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.
15th. Make the room where you commonly sit, gay and pleasant.
16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.
17th. Don't be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.
18th. Keep good blazing fires.
19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.
20th. Believe me, dear Georgiana, your devoted servant, Sydney Smith

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