Utah gets nothing but sugar beets (now a defunct industry.) Colorado gets a mint, Montana gets Injuns, the South gets nothing but happy darkies workin’ in the fields. Pretty sad map all the way around, if you ask me; even discounting the racism, it doesn’t even highlight the best things each state has to offer.
I’d like to think we’ve come a bit farther than this.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Head over to Rookie magazine and check out their campaign:
It’s a mag for teen girls, but I loved the idea – so here’s my contribution:
The Old Wolf has spoken.
photo by André Kertész, 1929. Found at Frog Blog.
Taken in 1998 during a family trip to Europe. As everywhere else in Ireland, it was raining that day – until we got up to the edge of the cliff, where the wind was rushing up the precipice so fast that the rain couldn’t get to the ground.
Is fearr liom Éire ná áit ar bith eile…
Some time ago I posted about internet trolls, familiar to anyone who frequents forums and discussion groups. Indeed, one of the net’s most prolific and unsavory trolls was recently outed by Gawker (I’m not posting the link because it’s a pretty sordid story, but it’s out there if you’re interested.) Today I happened across a description of this kind of behavior from the early 19th century, which I thought was interesting – Trolling is not new, and apparently the only thing that has changed is the medium.
This litigious humour is bad enough: but there is one character still worse — that of a person who goes into company, not to contradict, but to talk at you. This is the greatest nuisance in civilised society. Such a person does not come armed to defend himself at all points, but to unsettle, if he can, and throw a slur on all your favourite opinions. If he has a notion that anyone in the room is fond of poetry, he immediately volunteers a contemptuous tirade against the idle jingle of verse. If he suspects you have a delight in pictures, he endeavours, not by fair argument, but by a side-wind, to put you out of conceit with so frivolous an art. If you have a taste for music, he does not think much good is to be done by this tickling of the ears. If you speak in praise of a comedy, he does not see the use of wit: if you say you have been to a tragedy, he shakes his head at this mockery of human misery, and thinks it ought to be prohibited. He tries to find out beforehand whatever it is that you take a particular pride or pleasure in, that he may annoy your self-love in the tenderest point (as if he were probing a wound) and make you dissatisfied with yourself and your pursuits for several days afterwards. A person might as well make a practice of throwing out scandalous aspersions against your dearest friends or nearest relations, by way of ingratiating himself into your favour. Such ill-timed impertinence is ‘villainous, and shows a pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.’ – William Hazlitt, “On the Conversation of Authors,” 1820
Found at Futility Closet
The Old Wolf has spoken.
In simpler times, travel was fun, exciting, and romantic. Compared with today, when any part of the world is accessible to those with a little money, a high tolerance for discomfort, and a willingness to be violated by the petty thugs of the TSA, potential travelers of a day gone by would amuse themselves with stereopticons at parties and dream of the leisurely exploration of exotic locations.
Stereopticion
Vienna, Karlskirche. Cross your eyes until the images come together for a stereo view.
Even travel posters were works of art, designed to evoke images of romance, comfort, and sights never-before-seen. The following posters promoting travel to Austria were created mostly in the years leading up to World War II, before the Anschluß. They depicted Austria as a cheap and picturesque travel destination, which it was. After the depredations of the war, Austria rebuilt itself from the ashes and remained a popular destination – cheaper than other high-profile areas like Paris, Rome, or Geneva because of its relative obscurity. Even as late as 1971, when I traveled through the country with a friend, it was insanely cheap:
This Gasthof in Lofer cost us $4.00 for the night – breakfast included.
And this was the view…
Modern travel posters employ high-resolution photography, but somehow they don’t quite capture the imaginative aspect of travel that existed before the days of mass media and digital everything.
Edit: Snow bunnies. Has anyone thought about what it would be like to do a faceplant with a pipe in your mouth? That wouldn’t be terribly gemütlich, if you ask me.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Saw this today over at Frog Blog:
It reminded me that my grandmother, gone to her reward these 33 years, used to be terribly precise about how she made sandwiches.
A great cartoon over at Left-Handed Toons addressed this issue with regards to how Subway made their sandwiches:
I always thought this was terribly funny, mostly because it was true. What I didn’t know is that people like Drew Mokris, poking merciless fun at Subway for their un-geometric procedures, actually made a difference. At least in Australia and New Zealand.
Found this over at Gawker; the original article from The Consumerist is gone (and their robots.txt file stopped the Wayback Machine from scraping it), but it was picked up by various news feeds, including NPR.
However, not all store managers were down with the change:
This manager is a douchebag.
And the article over at the Inquisitr documents one particular sandwich artist named Chris whose sole purpose in life appeared to be frustrating customers.
I’ve been working at subway for about a year and a half, and it always amuses me when people complain about not tessellating cheese. Now, merely to amuse myself, not only do I not tessellate the cheese, but I also leave gaps in the cheese placement so that an indeterminate amount of your bites will be cheeseless. Also, I put a really small amount of dressing on your sandwich whenever you ask for it. Then when you ask for more, I squirt out a large quantity before you can say stop so that your sandwich has far too much dressing. Then, when I cut the sandwich in half, I only cut it 3/4ths of the way through so that you have to messily tear the rest of the sandwich yourself.
Yes, he’s a douchebag too. If I were running a Subway store, he’d be looking for a job at McDonald’s faster than you can say “bogan.”
I don’t eat at Subway all that often, but I’ve never had a bad experience there. Now I’m tempted to go, just to see how they do it in my vicinity.
The Old Wolf is hungry.
About 20 minutes south of my home is a 5,000-head dairy ranch owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Today several of us went down this morning to volunteer a morning’s work, as members from local congregations do on a regular basis throughout the year.
I had never been to this particular outfit; our task for the day involved covering up a mountain of silage, and cleaning up excess tires on other mountains. Here are a few photos of the event.
7:45 AM: Heading off to work. More joined us at the work site, and some folks brought their kids along, who had a great time and also contributed to the best of their ability.
Sunrise over Elberta AG
Pulling plastic over the silage. This was a fresh mountain of corn – it had just rained, the silage was wet, and had begun to ferment; the smell was very pleasant.
Looking East over other mountains of silage – some corn, some chopped cornstalks, others unknown.
Some of the hills had too many tires on them; they only need two rows of casings along the edges. Our second task for the day involved pulling off the extras, stacking them up in the aisles, and getting them into large front-loaders which took them away for storage.
Heavy work; most of the tires were full of water. Another detail headed over to a field that was scattered with tires over about an acre, and worked to get them all piled up into a central location.
At around 10:00 they brought us chocolate and cookies-n-cream milk from BYU’s creamery, which was a nice pick-me-up, and one family had brought doughnuts for the crew. Welcomed! I was about out of energy.
We did good work today – but I can’t remember having been quite so exhausted in a long time. I’m not as young as I was 40 years ago…
The Old Wolf has spoken.
While researching my recent post about changing brand logos, I stumbled across this Jennie and Jack cartoon by W.E. Haskell, dated 1908:
It popped up because the characters had a distinct similarity to the Campbell Kids. Now I had never seen this cartoon before, but a loud bell immediately rang in my head. Have a look at the following Buster Brown strips from 1905 (click on the thumbnails for full-size versions:
Busy Little Buster Brown
Buster Brown Goes Shooting
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but that doesn’t fly in the copyright world. The similarity here may be coincidence, but it looks like a lot was lifted, not only in terms of content but also “look and feel.” Just a random notice in passing.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Playing in the World Game 