INVISIBLE SKI HELMET

um: hey video editors, please think twice before using the "Impact" typeface, is all we're saying

This is how it works

Once every two years or so, the Extensis Community Blog, in a transparent attempt to drive up pagecount, has a contest wherein the participants write typeface haiku (or typeface senryū for sticklers. Hey, um, sticklers, we all think you're kind of bringing the party down).

I see through the attempt (due to it is transparent?) but I am not made of stone.

Although I am, apparently, made of honorable mentions.

Here are the contest winners.

And here are my submissions, for “posterity”:
(with the last one being the honorable mention one)

Here’s Palatino,
But look, there’s Book Antiqua:
Like two Captain Kirks

“My essay’s too short.”
(clicks Control-A; Courier)
“There! Ninety pages.”

For Bob Marley fans,
You want Gothic, not Roman:
“I shot the serif”

You use Lucida,
I will kick your ass so hard.
Please. Do not test me.

I composed this one
On a Linotype machine
ETAOIN SHRDLU


Be sure to check this blog in roughly one biennial for more strained hilarity.

Lock your desks, the CCD kids are coming

[I know someone who went to Catholic school and this is what the nuns told them every Wednesday.]
[But this is about a different CCD, so just ignore that.]

BoingBoing linked to an independent movie recentlyish: Vanishing of the Bees, about CCD, or Colony Collapse Disorder (which the entire population of non-apiarists first learned about in Elizabeth Kolbert's NYer article from August).

Please be aware that we are extremely concerned about this. (RECALL! The word "bee" is in our URL!) So, setting aside for a moment the fact that the phrase "Vanishing of the Bees" was wishful thinking around October, we here at the RecBee would like to also draw everyone's attention to the Van-o-Bees site.
Except, wait, what fucking typeface is the movie logo in? "Papyrus"?
Fuck that, that's the typeface used by Arizona Iced Tea and the Crocodile Hunter (who died of getting stung) (not by bees, though) (still, BAD TASTE).

And the computer animation of bees in the trailer brings to mind that bee from the Nasonex commercial? Which we kind of don't want to be part of life on Earth anymore? Please Antonio Banderas stop doing them?
And also, do we actually need them to finish the movie when the NYTimes has already figured it out: “Israeli acute paralysis virus”. (Done with you, Israel! Time to leave the nest and learn to fly on your own! Seriously.)
So we reluctantly ask that you not send the money you've earmarked for helping people complete documentaries to the CCD people, and instead consider Jason Scott, who (I just read on waxy) has begun editing his Interactive Fiction documentary, "Get Lamp".
I don't even know if he wants your earmarked-for-documentaries money, I just know I've been excited about this for a while now, and while I can probably live without almonds or peaches or cucumbers or soybeans or pears or cherries or apples or raspberries or blackberries or cranberries or watermelons or cantaloupe or strawberries, I kind of want to find out what "Professor" Brian Moriarty's opinions on "stuff" is.
If in the movie he tells everyone to stop playing interactive fiction and instead to save the bees, though, back to plan A.
JASON SCOTT PLEASE TELL EVERYONE IF YOU WANT THEIR MONEY AND ALSO WHAT BRIAN MORIARTY WANTS US TO DO ABOUT THE BEES.

Irony mark؟؟؟؟

I just ran across this entry for the irony mark (؟); I like it, because it saves me the time it takes to type "!?!?!?!?!!?111!ZOMG111!!!!1".

Which is a long time؟؟؟


However, I notice that there is no option for upside-down irony marks. Therefore, Spanish-speaking people can only achieve half-irony.


Everyone: Duh, that's why The Spanish Tragedy is written in English.
Patrick: Right. That makes sense.
Everyone: And it explains Borges.
Patrick: You're right. Thanks. Maybe I can get into him now.



Oh, hey and get this: the "sarcasm mark" (¡) has its origins in Ethiopia.

So like in seventh grade when the kids in the back of the bus were saying, "What do you call an Ethiopian with a pickle on his head?" the correct response was neither "a quarter pounder" nor “While your insensitivity to the famine, the causes of which are largely due to the drought but also partially due to the civil war being fueled by US-backed insurgents, N.B., is perhaps an appropriately distancing response to the shelf-life the story will likely have in the US Media, it pretty callously ignores the actual terribleness of what is actually going on in one of the oldest, most multifaceted and diverse countries in the world, and if you’ll let me sit in the back of the bus I’ll tell you more, in particular about how I just ate injera for the first time the other day? And it was good?” but rather, "Funny ¡¡".



------


You know how it seemed like Europe was on board with helping everyone in Ethiopia and the US had to scramble to find people to pay attention and do anything about it and the paucity of giving a shit was why Dan Aykroyd and Kenny Rogers were both in the same video? I think I know the answer. The above joke at least works in America, but check this out:

Q: What do you call an Ethiopian with a pickle on his head?
A: Royale with Cheese.

Right?

Although I think we can all agree a better title of the BandAid song would be:
“Do They Know It's Christmas!?!?!?!?!!?111!ZOMG111!!!!1”.

Think it through next time, Geldof, you mononippled bleedingheart.
(J/K! Keep up the good work!?!?!?!?!!?111!ZOMG111!!!!1)

Get this man an agent!

What an unbelievable talent!



My only complaint is the typeface is too small.

Victory Over Typographitardedness

This is old news, but I just found out that the fifteenth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style reverses ("abandons", actually) its previous stance on the use of a sans-serif typeface for letters representing shapes:

Rule 7.67: Letters representing shapes. The rule about using sans serif type for letters representing shapes has been abandoned (e.g., "an L-shaped room").

No word yet if the previous opinion on using medical illustrations to represent body parts is still in place (e.g., "a à-shaped pool").

(that's supposed to look like a kidney. for laughs.)


I love the Chicago Manual of Style. Maybe more than Fowlers.
Back in 1997, I would have asked Table 6.1 (from the thirteenth edition) to marry me if I thought she would have said yes.


Now: if we can get the New Yorker to coöperate and reëvaluate the use of the phonological diaeresis, I can stop complaining inside my head.

(I admit to being on the fence about "naïve" though, but only because it isn't in the dictionary).
(I'm looking at you, Malaysia.)

It was a bad idea

to have this contest open for ten days.

She misunderstood
When I said she was “Grotesque”
Akzidenz happen

Stupid McSweeney’s!
Now I can’t see Garamond
Without thinking: “twee”

Best actor ever:
Henry Winkler, as “The Fontz”?
Correctamundo!

Mind your q and p
Futura’s not ours to see
Que Serif, Serif

Post-Soon-Yi Previn,
Windsor EF Light Condensed
Somehow seems dirty

Designers face off
On new reality show:
“Last Comic Sans-ing”

“Sun”, “Square”, “X”, “Carrot”..?
Is this whole thing in Dingbats?
Carson, you devil!

Kristen ITC,
We will always have Juarez.
(Age of consent’s twelve.)

Do not be confused!
I did not write on your screen:
I used Vivaldi.

I thought I’d make an
“Ode to a Grecian Kern” joke
Here. (Lipsum culpa.)

v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^
Update, 3/28: I got an honorable mention for two of them.
Q: (1) Did I not win outright because I split the vote? (2) Am I my own Perot?
A: (1) No and (2) yes, probably.