Just a little something special to get me through the day...Could a person write a song about Obama that's better than this? Jimmy Carter says, no.

So I am {finally} working on my website again and going through my work to-date and came across a couple of Christmas-themed projects that have never seen the light of day. I am fond of both of them. So I thought I'd post them here. The first is a Christmas card I designed last year, but didn't get them done in time to have them letterpressed. Have I mentioned I like type? Because I really like type, especially when it's punny.


I was also working on a design for a Christmas CD a few months back, but things fell apart, and the client was interested in going in a different direction. Humbug! Oh well, Merry Christmas.

As 2008 comes to a close people all over the tubes are publishing best of lists. One of my personal favorites is Pitchfork's best of the Worst Album Covers of 2008 which includes this gem from Brad Paisley. Really, Brad, you thought this looked good? It must have been a pretty good year for album art. There are some on this year's list that aren't so terrible. The Deathcab cover could have been worser...

There's a great design challenge this week over at Typophile. I am posting my submission because I like to not post anything for a really long time and then post a lot in two days (Have you noticed?). My design is a bit morbid, but that was the luck of the draw. The rules of the challenge are:

1. Create a book cover, using a fictitious title and an image from the LIFE photo archive.

2. To get your title, click on the Wikipedia Random Articles page and whatever topic you get is the title.

3. Head over to the LIFE photo archive and enter the title (or part of the title) as your search term. Use any image from the search result for your book.

Hopefully, I can stay on top of Type Battles and post one each week at least while I'm on break.

So I turned treinta on Monday. To ring in a new decade, I celebrated with an unstoppable cake. Despite our best efforts, me and 30 friends were unable to devour it in one sitting. We did manage to make a mess though. Yes, that is cake on the wall.

School is nearly done, and I am really excited to start working on some side projects over the break... In preparation I was looking for a little inspiration and stumbled upon the photographs of Thomas Allen. He creates 3-D dioramas from pulp paperbacks. They're amazing.

I haven't posted in an age. My video class has me in the computer lab most evenings as well as Saturday mornings and Sundays. But I am officially finished with my first real video project, and I am pretty pleased with it. It's a four-minute rockumentary about the guys in Farewell Flight. Let me know what you think...

Last night we watched The Big Combo, a 1955 crime noir drama featuring a police detective who tries to convict a mob boss by appealing to the man's girlfriend. While the movie was good, I was sorely disappointed when there weren't any combos (big or otherwise) in it at all...

What a great weekend: Jenny Lewis at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington on Friday; Farewell Flight and friends in Lancaster on Saturday; and being productive on Sunday.

Last night, I dreamed I was at Nick's Fish House with a group of zombies eating seafood. I was filling up on popcorn shrimp so I would be "too full for brains" because honestly who wants to eat brains. When that didn't work, I resorted to telling them they could get kuru from eating brains, but apparently transmissible spongiform encephalopathy means nothing to the undead.

Dreaming about zombies could have several meanings:
+ They may refer to the mindless acceptance of ideas and a general unquestioning nature.
+ They can link to boredom. If you are unable to do anything meaningful then your mind goes blank.
+ They can represent people who will simply not think rationally.
+ They can relate to moments when you are unable to act and feel paralyzed.

Or maybe it just means I regret not going out to Nick's on Friday and gorging myself on popcorn shrimp.

You can stream Farewell Flight's new album Sound Color Motion for free on the Drop. These great guys are from the Harrisburg area and the album is decent. So give it a shot...

Gosh, I wish I had this much free time and three hundred thousands sticky notes.

Gosh, this makes me happy...

I've sort of had Oregon on the brain this week, and it got me thinking about that game The Oregon Trail, and how I always killed my family without ever reaching the lush Willamette Valley. Now that I am a grown up with a cat to take care of, I wondered if I was mature enough to safely navigate my family through the game. So I was thrilled to find out I could relive the adventures online. And yes, despite some rough road and some squirrelly squirrels, we all came through in good health.

Thanks to the Highland boys for introducing me to Turkish Superman. These are just the highlights. You can actually watch the whole thing here. And yes, that is a doll. Can't wait to see Turkish Star Wars...

It's 4:09. Class starts in 1 hour and 21 minutes, and I'm nervous for the first day of school...I'm taking Media Design and Workshop in Digital Video this semester. Here goes nothing...

So tonight I met another member of the Wire cast, Jay Landsman. We were at the O's game, and we were sitting among a rowdy crowd of "good police." Seriously though, they were really great including Jay who introduced us to everyone as part of his family.

Oh and the Orioles won 11-3 which is always a plus!

From YTMND, I got about 20 of them...

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has awarded Garrison Spik it's highest prize for bad writing for this opening sentence: Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.

Just some snaps from our trip to New York [Ollabelle playing at One New York Plaza; MTA says "Please, dip your ATM card"; Nassau Avenue, Brooklyn; Brooklyn Brewery; Monster, cashier and brewery cat; Aaron enjoying his hefeweizen; the Apple Store; a.k.a. Mecca; beers and frites at Vol de Nuit; and this guy who was on our TV the entire time we were there, just laying there, I don't know why]

I can't get enough of stop-motion videos, especially when they involve cooking...

James Houston is brilliant.

Petticoat 5, the first computer made by women for women. Thanks, Gotwalt.

Is it just me or is this pig and his wellies just about the cutest thing ever? Cinders apparently suffers from mysophobia, a fear of dirt. I am hoping Wellington Boots will make teeny tiny galoshes commercially available. They could be the only hope for my cat's debilitating case of agrostophobia.

Cinders is using her celebrity to raise money for the Farm Crisis Network. I'm thinking my cat (with the proper footwear) would make an excellent spokesanimal for the Society for Lazy Unemployed Goodfornothings, that's right SLUG.

It's Friday, and cats on the Internet make me laugh...

J. Spaceman is back...and opening for Lenny Kravitz? The only thing better (and by better I mean more random) would be Portishead opening for (the new) Journey .

I have a feeling the irony of being a pinhead is lost on this guy.

So after a two week Buffy-induced malaise, I am back and trying to be productive. School's out for summer, and I have some home projects to get done including wallpapering our bathroom.


Need to get the house ready for a get-together sooner or later. Anyone interested in a watching Twin Peaks? We were thinking about rewatching the first season and thought if people were interested we might make it an event with cherry pie and a damn fine cup of coffee.

Question for Shia LaBeouf: On a scale from 1-100, how much pressure do you feel to be "the beef"?

Darth Vader. Only you could be so bold.

Now that classes are winding down, I've had time to think about my plans for the summer, and I booked a hotel in NY for the last weekend in July. Cannot wait.

I also have about ten weeks to get back in shape for a race in July. To do that, I'll have to get my IPod in shape first...Some recently added tracks:

+ Simian Mobile Disco, Hustler
+ Chow Nasty, Ungawa
+ The Go! Team, Grip Like a Vice
+ Gnarls Barkley, Run
+ Kanye West, Stronger
+ CSS, Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above
+ the National, Mistaken for a Stranger

Any suggestions?

See if you can beat my 31/34...

I really like the ambigram on the cover of the 20th Anniversary Edition of the Princess Bride. How do they do it...

For this week's show & tell we have to bring in an example of something we collect. I'm not much of a collector, but in the past month, I've started collecting a number of new things:

+ empty bottles of wine
+ an impressive assortment of dirty laundry
+ dust bunnies that look remarkably like actual bunnies atleast in size and furriness

This logo for London's Office of Government Commerce is pretty funny (if you don't get it, try tilting your head 90 degrees counterclockwise). In honor of this logo mishap, the Telegraph put together this slideshow of regrettable logo designs...

Congrats to the husband who officially won the internet today when one of his LOL cats made it on the front page of I Can Has Cheez Burger.

Posting this week's show and tell from Paste Magazine, The Weepies' Guide to a Happy Life.

I am posting my spreads for this week's project.

Embarrassing as it is, I do fantasize about fame and celebrity, but mostly, I just want the chance to talk to famous people and get answers to the running list of questions I have in my head. I thought I might start posting a few of them here, just in case I never get famous enough to ask them myself.

Today, I was wondering if Michael Cera ever sings "Sarah" by Starship and imagines the song was written for him...

Here's is my Show & Tell for today's class (mostly just tell...), "So a Squirrel and a Chipmunk Walk into a Bar" by David Sedaris. It's only about 8 minutes long.

So mi esposo and I have come down with a serious case of Spanish fever. We've been studying Spanish for about a month now, and last night I re-christened our cat, Pumpkin Escobar, with un nombre español, Santa Cruz-Cruise. The poor thing must have an identity crisis with all the nicknames we give her (including Slugabed and Cool Pack). As you may be able to tell from her pic, Santa Cruz-Cruise es una gordita.


In school-related news, I watched Atonement yesterday, and I'm pretty sure that my movie is not going to be as good as that, which is really disappointing to me. But I am hoping to start building my sets tonight. So we'll see how that all goes..

I almost picked mixtapes for my classification project. Now that I know about Muxtape, I almost wished I had gone with it...

[Click to enlarge]

Advertising Agency: Ogilvy, India
Executive Creative Director: Piyush Pandey
Creative Directors: Abhijit Avasthi, Shekhar Jha, Mahesh Gharat
Art Director / Designer: Makarand Joshi
Copywriter: Anurag Agnihotri

What's a better example of the synergy of words and imagery than lolcats? To build a lolcat, take a cat, mix in some kitty pidgin (aka "lolspeak"), set it in Impact, and you've got hours of waste-able time. Aaron has become a little obsessed with creating lolcats, and yesterday we were lol-ing the night away. This one was my personal favorite that we can up with. Enjoy!

We need more party animals.

So, not only do I get to bring show 'n tell to school, I also get to make art the good old fashion way with construction paper, scissors and a glue stick. I think I'm in grad school. Anyway, this is a group project we did on Saturday on imagery and narrative. I don't think we ever did come up with a title. Suggestions are welcome.

So a social cause design-y thing, I might bring for show 'n tell this week is the Hurricane Poster Project. THPP is a collection of posters designed in response to Hurricane Katrina. The posters were sold and the proceeds were donated to the Red Cross.

Here are some of my favorites:

pobres emo niños

With his book, If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs, Big Boom (trust me, you want to click on this link) has won the prestigious Bookseller magazine's oddest book title prize for 2008.

Past winners include:
The Joy of Chickens
American Bottom Archaeology
Versailles: The View From Sweden
Re-using Old Graves
Highlights in the History of Concrete
The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition
Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers
The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories
People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It
The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification