Month: November 2004

Can you spot the arrow in the FedEx logo.

Click for the answer. And an interview with the designer.

I’ve never noticed it and even when I was searching I didn’t see it. Sneaky.

[via Waxy]

Rest in peace O.D.B., aka Old Dirty Bastard, Dirt McGirt, Osirus, Cyrus, Dirt Dogg, Big Baby Jesus, Unique Ason, Joe or Russell Tyrone Jones. He was 35 years old. I like to picture Tom Brokaw reading that line.

I actually have a post in my post queue about my favorite ODB verse. I should have posted it earlier cause now you won’t believe me, but here it is anyway:

From the song Nowhere To Run by DMX featuring Ozzy Osborne and O.D.B.

“ahhh yi yi yi yi
What, mother fucker?
Don’t try to psychology my shit, mother fucker
’cause you’ll never psychology it, mother fucker
Never, never, never, mother fucker, never”

The rest of the lyrics are located here.

Here’s some other good stuff I learned about everybody’s favorite functioning crack head. (well I guess not so much functioning anymore):

• A review of his concert at the Knitting Factory here in New York: “unpredictable, terrible, amazing, hilarious, sad, depressing and miraculous” “It almost reads as a cautionary tale about drug use: ‘ODB was so high and drunk that it seemed like he would pass out any second. For minutes at a time, he just stood in the center of the stage and stared straight ahead to the back of the crowd, not moving or saying anything.’ [via Gothamist]
  
• When MTV News followed him around at the height of his popularity, he took the camera crew and several of his kids (he was said to have more than a dozen, by numerous mothers) to the welfare office — in a limousine — to get an allotment of food stamps.
  And he received them. [via CNN]
  
• In February 1999, he was the first citizen arrested under a new California law that made wearing a bulletproof vest illegal for convicted felons. [via The Guardian (a really sad interview done when he was in jail)]

Slate’s Halo 2 writeup:  

areas

empty

I’ve been posting at a one-a-day average rate since I started.

Is this a good amount? Should I edit myself more or less?

I’ve got a backlog of almost 150 items in my post queue.

Absolutely loving Konfabulator. Now available for Windows.[note the site is really slow now for me, loads of traffic I guess]

If you had been following my previous advice for multi-monitors and MaxiVista you should have room for this eye-candy.

PS. I apologize to those readers with 250 feeds for which this will be another one of those me too posts.

From Low Culture: Getting the Most From Their Advertising Dollar:

It’s common to place ads in articles or TV shows to reach a target demographic, but this in-line advertisement which is embedded in a story in the Washington Times about a Georgia man who killed himself at the site of the World Trade Center might be a little too targeted:

The President is probably assured of a filibuster-proof Senate after the next mid-term elections if all the Democrats kill themselves, move to Canada, or secede.

As Rajul Mahajan says “This is a time to wallow in the defeat. Let’s not shrug it off too quickly. Let’s acknowledge what it means in a world that is in the process of being torn apart by a new crusade. When we move on to try to find hope, let’s start with a rational core, not one built out of wishful thinking, fantasies about how the world works, and self-congratulation.”

I am enjoying this phase of the political experience far more than I did the run up to the election. Before the election the commentary was tactical, all about how much Bush sucks in so many ways, schedenfreude over bad news coming from the economy, Iraq, etc. In retrospect a complete and total waste of time.

Slate is running a great series called “Why Americans Hate Democrats — A Dialog.”

Now the whole conversation has become useful. We are asking the right questions finally. Answers range dramatically, but at least we are talking. I don’t necessarily agree with everything in it, but of the series Jane Smiley’s is my favorite. She actually goes into the whole human nature angle and tackles the issue head on.

So let’s not start planning who should run in 2008 just yet. All this talk about recruiting a candidate from a red state is a waste of time. The issues are bigger than demographics.  Let’s meditate on this for a while. Why are we in this predicament? How could we let 58 million people get away with not holding a president accountable for the worst presidential record in a century?

Other reading: I liked Tom Friedman’s Two Nations Under God Editorial.

Remember gentlemen, November is International Beard Month.

Actually it isn’t official yet, but there was (is?) a November Beard Club which:

“firmly believed that because men have the natural ability to grow beards, they should. At least for a month. And the chosen month is November, due to it’s chilly climate and the fact men seem to have a natural inclination to grow facial hair around this time every year.”

So no shaving until December 1st.

 Click for more suggestions [link]

via Uncle Tweed [link]