The perils of finding a good typography blog is an entire morning spent on reading cool articles like the one I just found on the erotics of type. Might be one of those days. (Not worksafe.)
Population: One
Every now and then I find one of those tasty indie fontdesigner sites and wind up spending half an hour downloading a bunch of free fonts and yeah.
“This font was started with the idea, “Make that cool ‘m’ that you see in magazines sometimes. Make a whole font out of it!!” So I did, and it was drab. Meanwhile, a new idea is creeping around. “Make it 2 lines thick, you love to make fonts like that!” So I did. Then, it was not so drab. I named this baby Supreme, because sometimes when you throw spectacular names on so-so fonts, people get all raged up to download them. But this font is not so-so, it is the most. You couple that with the name, and geez, you know what I’m talking about!!”
So Fontalicious is good and I should not forget about it. Like I’m ever going to use any of these. But so pretty!
I’m a total slut for typefaces, so I really couldn’t resist Behind the Typeface Presents: Cooper Black. It’s a big Flash file, around 3 megs, but IMHO well worth it. And actually kind of informative as well as being funny, since I find it interesting to think about how a hot design concept such as a typeface goes from fresh to overused.
Jess Nevins has, impressively, already annotated League of Extraordinary Gentlemen v2 #1. Quick work, that. I’ve linked to the version on Enjolrasworld.com because Jess’ site is overtasked at the moment (ah, Geocities) and because Enjolrasworld archives all the comic book annotations available. Which is darned impressive.
Reign of Fire was bad on so many levels. It was good on one level: exceptional effects. But the people were stupid, they had stupid plans, the biology was fairly insulting, and just oh geeze.
I’m not really the type to bitch about military deployment flaws and so on; I’m not a military history buff and I’d be a poor strategist. Same goes for my biological knowledge, actually. So when I realize I’m shifting uncomfortably in my seat due to the flaws, and when I realize that the logical holes have eaten up the fabric of story and I can’t care what happens to the characters because I don’t believe they could possibly wiggle themselves into their on-screen situation, it’s a bad sign.
The dragons were exceedingly pretty, and there were three excellent scenes involving oral tradition.
So this I just don’t get. Say you’re John Ashcroft, and you come up with a plan to do such and such. You properly sponsor a bill to allow the appropriate federal department to carry out that plan (among other plans; it’s a big bill). The House takes a look at the legislation and modifies the portion of it dealing with your clever plan. They feel you should not carry out your plan.
Is it not wrong to say “Well, they didn’t understand us, we’re going to go ahead with it anyhow.”? I mean, this is the checks and balances thing, here. The legislative branch does get to say “We don’t think that’s a good idea.” It’s sort of how the entire system works.
The trend I see — and note that I’m not calling these guys evil — is an imperial Presidency; they appear to feel that they are trustworthy people who should be given the power to do what’s right for us. I firmly believe that Bush and Ashcroft are trying to do what’s right for us in their minds. I suspect they just don’t get that some people don’t trust them.
When you think of it that way, it makes more sense. Sure, some of these bills would permit horrendous abuses of power. But Bush knows he wouldn’t ever abuse the power, so what’s the worry? I think it’s crippling to assume that Bush’s goal is to abuse power; it hampers communication. He’d probably do some of the things I consider abusive, but in many cases the things that strike me as abusive might well strike him as abusive as well. Mostly he seems to want freedom to do what he wants without pesky oversight.
Doesn’t make me any happier about a lot of the legislation he’s proposed, though.
The estimable Q Daily News pointed me at the High Line, an abandoned elevated railway across Manhattan. There are some absolutely beautiful photographs of the line on that side; grassy and overgrown, and looking very out of place in Manhattan.
Umberto Eco always has such cool things to say.
“I calculated that I had saved the reader at least 25% reading time by shortening Dumas’s language. But then I realised that it was exactly those extra words and repetition that had a fundamental strategic function – they created anticipation and tension – they delayed the final event and were fundamental for the excellent vendetta to work so effectively.”
A lovely little article on the nature of translations.
I cannot believe that there is a Web site dedicated to Vintage MBTA maps. But I’m glad there is.
The Civil War did not end in 1865…. The Confederates went into hiding and in 1908 they used their boy Teddy Roosevelt to found the FBI – conFederate Bureau of Inquisition.
You heard it here first. I collect kooks for the purposes of generating weird NPCs for games. Possibly I need a kook category.