I *am* bovvered

Oh, hell to the no.

I had a bit of a chortle during press check tonight when I read one of our front page articles about LOLspeak and emoticons making their way into actual school writing assignments.  (It reminded me of when I was in HS and we all though it was soo kewl to type our essays in Comic Sans MS.)  But then I got home and read this: Chav Shakespeare.

Seriously, this makes we want to punch babies and kick kittens.  Ok, not seriously.  And I get that it’s a joke (innit?), but seriously.  Fuck the lowest common denominator.  Chavs = evil.  Chavs are like guidos, only pasty.  And on the dole.  Do not encourage this brand of douchbaggy yoof culture!!!  I don’t deny that it’s inaccessible and dense literature, but come on!  Romeo and His Fit Bitch, Jools ?  Offello? It gets worse.

The LOLCat Bible, that took serious effort and commitment.  And it’s funny.  This?  Not so much.

Besides, the Bard came up with much cooler wordplay than any of these ASBO’s could dream up in their wildest Burberry bling-bling fantasies.  O illiterate loiterers, etc.!!

Respect.

Unhappy Feet

So, people say that Iowa is way behind in the trends?  I got visual confirmation of that today.  On my way to work, I was driving to the post office and I saw a bunch of teeny-bopper skanks walking home from school.  And they were participating in one of the douchiest fashion statements since possibly acid wash.  Ugg boots with short-shorts.  Ew.  And also ew.

Meanwhile, I also proved one of my working hypotheses: Crocs are evil.  In fact, they want you dead.

Seriously though, I tried wearing a pair of those while I was doing some painting and I don’t know what the big deal is.  They are ugly, uncomfortable and they made my feet sweat a lot.

The gift that keeps on giving… blanks

Any guys wondering what to get their lady for Mother’s Day? 

Wonder no more.

 

Murphy’s Law – When Shit Gets Real

This is why you should subscribe to newspapers: so we can afford to buy new presses.

I don’t like to bitch about work.  Let’s be honest, I’ve got it pretty good.  But last night was not so good.

I started out my cutting myself on a plate.  The press plates are made out of aluminum or tin or somesuch pliable metal.  Anyway, I was stacking some plates and I didn’t have a very good grip on some of them and I sliced the tip of my finger.  Totally my fault.  It looks like a papercut, but it hurts like a bitch and since it’s the tip of my finger it might take a while to heal.  Grr.

Press time on Friday night is 12:35.  Ideally we’d be ready to go, but that never happens and we’re always waiting for something.  And ideally, last night we would have been waiting for sports (which isn’t unusual either) because they didn’t send their last plate until 12:25 and it takes an average of five to eight minutes to output a black and white plate (at least ten minutes for color plates).  But about the time that sports was sending their last plate, the press guys told me that we were missing a full page ad for the classified section.  Ooookay.  (Would have been nice to know sooner than five minutes before press time, but I’m not about to blame them for that.) That’s a problem, but the bigger problem is that on Fridays, ad services dumps all their ads for the weekend.  All afternoon, I’d been outputting every single full page ad and classified page we’re running for Saturday-Monday’s paper.  That is A LOT of pages.  So it’s possible that this page got lost.  But instead of dicking around digging through three days worth of ads, I decide just to resend the whole business.  That shouldn’t take very long, right? 

Haha.  First, I couldn’t find the output files to resend it. So I called ad services.  They had already left for the night (and why not – it was 12:30 after all).  So I called emergency contact Ad Guy Joe on his cell.  No answer.  So then I called the emergency tech services line.  Luckily for me, the emeregency line was with Tech Guy Jay, who is Ad Guy Joe’s brother.  Turns out Joe was just pulling into the driveway – in Geneseo.  Forty-five minutes from work.  Luckily, I found what I *thought* were the right plates so I was able to resend them.  Jay told me that Joe would be on stand-by though, because he has a remote system that allows him to work on stuff from home.  Then the output machine ran out of plates (for the second time that night, by the way… we have it set to run about 250 plates before it needs to be reloaded, so that should give you and idea of how many pages we’d output) so I had to literally run to fill the machines. 

Remember when I said I *thought* I had the right plates?  Yeah, turns out it was full page ad for the Muscatine Journal (we print their paper too).  GAHHH!!!  So I called Jay again and they output the page from their house.  And ideally everything should have been fine. 

Finally we have all of our plates and the press guys throw them on the press.  Our press, Big Blue, was at one time state of the art.  Unfortunately, that was about the same time that John Peter Zenger was making fun of the governor of New York.  And we’ve been having problems lately.  This particular evening, there was a safety sensor that wasn’t locking down and if the sensor isn’t in place, the press won’t work.  So the press guys start banging around.  Pretty soon they are doing things involving ladders and flashlights and metal pipes and I’m just trying to stay out of the way.  And they get the sensor on and it’s now about 1:00.  If we have to delay press time by half an hour, we have to call the operations manager, so at this point we’re cutting it close.  The press starts… and some of the ink isn’t laying right.  So we shut the press down.  More banging around.  The sensor gets tripped again.  More banging.  Some swearing.  Guys are getting on the phone.  I’m staying out of the way.  Press starts up again.  And some of the plates are on wrong.  Press stops.  And then, as if all of that wasn’t enough, the guideline that leads the paper through the press broke.  It happens all the time (you’d break too if you were running six miles of paper at a high rate of speed) and it’s easy to fix, but it makes a mess because the paper that’s in the press rips up (so they have to dig it out) and the paper that’s still on the roll falls straight down (so they have to roll it back up and reset the paper).  And really, as if enough hadn’t happened already.  I mean, there were… there were… flames on the sides of our faces.  So I took some of the less than stellar copies that had already run out to the newsroom, although most of them had given up any hope of getting remakes out (I think they looked to make sure none of the headlines had swear words in them and said “screw it” and left).  And I did some of my end of the night chores and made sure the machines were full again.  FINALLY at about 1:30, we were ready to go.  And after I told them there were no remakes, there might have been hugs all around if the press guys hadn’t been covered in ink (well, they’re always covered in ink, but it was a little more than usual after all that… and it was fresh ink). 

And when I was driving home, I almost hit a homeless guy riding a bike.  In my defense though, he wasn’t wearing any reflective gear.

But the damn paper got out.  So there.

At least he’s moisturizing

So, last night I was watching Memoirs of a Geisha. (SPOILER ALERT: It’s visually entertaining and all, but the book is better.  And also?  It’s really nice that Ken Watanabe’s character took care of Ziyi Zhang and made sure she was a geisha and they ended up living happily ever after and whatever, but really, when you think about it… he decided that she’d make a good geisha and he’d want to be her danna when she was nine.  Seriously, the whole thing is like The Thorn Birds… but in Japan.)

Anyway… towards the end, there’s a part where Ken Watanabe and Ziyi Zhang and a couple other people entertain some American military to try and convince them to invest in Ken Watanabe’s company… and I thought one of them looked familar.  Sure enough, it was the guy who plays Stottlemyre on Monk.  (You know?  Monk, with the Tony Shaloub and the OCD?) 

 His name is Ted Levine, by the way.  I IMDB’ed him, because he’s obviously probably been in other things and being the curious sort that I am, I wanted to know what they are.  I’ll watch Monk if it happens to be on, Stottlemyre’s an interesting character, etc.   I was… not exactly prepared for what I learned. 

Stottlemyre wants you to put the fucking lotion in the basket!!!!ELEVENTY!!!

I’m a little traumatized now.

Yes, we can

superman wip

Originally uploaded by piccadillyline

This took forever. And I’m not sure I’m totally happy with it, but I was sort of inspired by my brother doing comic book effects on posters for a project he’s been working on. So here’s Comic Book Obama.  (Clicky on the piccy for slightly larger version.)

Meh.  I don’t quite have the extract tool perfected yet.  And the halftones didn’t work quite the way I wanted them to.  But I can deal with this for now.

Maybe I’m not sold on it because I’ve been in kind of a funk lately about other things.  Oh well.  It’ll do.

I don’t feel like coming up with a witty title, so here’s a post

It’s always a nice surprise when you have a day that starts out pretty crappy and ends up ok.

And for as unmotivated as I was when I got up, I actually got a lot done today. I had to fill out a thing for my life insurance. I’m guessing that my insurance company thinks their clients must be terrorists, because I had to fill out a thing stating I knew they would be submitting my crap to the Department of Homeland Security in compliance with the US PATRIOT Act. And if I refused to sign it, they wouldn’t give me insurance. Huh. Here’s hoping they never look at my Amazon purchase records. And I made some appointments (chiro tomorrow, yay!), filled up my gas tank (boo), went to the post office, cleaned my car and cleaned my room. And I capped off the day with some fine cinema and I finished a book.

Thank God for Netflix. I’ve had The Thin Man sitting around for over a week and I hadn’t had a chance to watch it. It was verrrrrrry funny. Alright, murder isn’t funny, but dialog from 1934 is. I shall have to add more of the adventures of Nick and Nora Charles to my queue. It’s a horrible cliche to say this, but they don’t make movies like that anymore. Of course, now if a guy punched his wife in the face and they tried to play it for laughs, the wider symposium would be all up in arms about it. And you can’t have a debonair, alcoholic hero anymore either. (Seriously, despite the description I just gave, the film is beyond charming. And I want an Asta. And I wonder if the book is as good as the film. And I want to be Nora.)

Speaking of things that are beyond charming, one wouldn’t expect a book calling Stealing Lincoln’s Body to be a gasser, but I just finished it and it was quite enjoyable. I’m not going to call it funny (although the ineptitude of the would-be thieves was good for a raise of the eyebrow or two), but it was a quick, jaunty little read. I picked it up at the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum a few months ago (FYI: the museum sucks, but the gift shop is pretty good). I’m still itching to read the books I bought at the Museum of Funeral Customs (yeah, I read books about dead people, what about it?), but I needed to have some fun with a novel first, so Nick Hornby got the call.

Let’s see… tomorrow: clean bathroom, go to chiro, run errands, make pie. Urg. We’re hosting Easter on Saturday, so there’s still quite a bit around here that needs to get finished. Although, I’m pretty glad to have some days off. I just worked eight days in a row (due to others on vacation) and even though I don’t do a whole lot at work, sitting around all night is exhausting. It takes effort to look like you’re actually doing something when you’re not. But the copy editors are always good for some laughs, which helps.

Nothing but time

Shh… I’m at work right now.  We went to press early tonight (because we’re outputting an extra 8000 copies of the paper), so I get to sit around for about the next half hour and hang out until my shift is over and basically make sure the press doesn’t explode or something equally unlikely.  Don’t tell anyone though.

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Anyway, The Guardian, whose opinion I normally trust very much, just released a list of “1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die.”  Clearly, they decided that anyone can come up with a list of 100 Albums or whatever, so they went balls-out.  Looking over the list, it kind of shows.  Like, at a certain point they had to have run out of actually “good” albums, and just started looking through their own collections.   I’m not sure how else to explain the presence of artists like Girls Aloud, Sugababes and Sean Paul on any list of must-hear albums.  Also, they had the nerve to put a number of soundtrack and compilation albums on there.  The soundtrack to Grease?  I can’t die without having heard that?  House Mastercuts ‘95?  Yeah, I’ve got a few mix tapes I made back in sixth grade that could probably have made the cut if that’s the criteria we’re using.  (Also, Freedom Rock is inexplicably not on the list.)  There’s no classical, no opera, no Coltrane, no Dire Straits, no The Band.  But they had room for the Spice Girls. 

This warrants further investigation.  Don’t get me wrong.  There is some very good stuff on this list.  But then there’s stuff where you just know they were like, “Awww, fuck.  Deadline’s in 20 minutes.  What CD’s am I using for coasters?”  So I may move to separate some of the wheat from the chaff.  This list may come up again. 

Could have been worse though.  The list could have featured… the Batman soundtrack.

That’s hot. Or not.

So, I guess this is what $5000/hr gets you:

Worth the money and ending your career?  I can’t say for sure.  (Ok, I will say for sure.  Yeah, she’s attractive or whatever, but any guy could walk into any bar on any night of the week and pull the same thing for free.  On the other hand, Bar Chick might not have four Whore Diamonds to her name…) 

But, once again I’m reminded that I am clearly in the wrong line of work.  Like, I’m not saying I could pull down $5k an hour, but I’d have to be doing better than I am now.  I’ve seen what local hookers look like. 

No, I am not going into prostitution.

(The Smoking Gun has more lame pictures, pulled from her MySpace and Facebook pages apparently.  And she’s still on Facebook.  And her name isn’t really Kristen.)

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Two more stories making news:

Sheriff: Kansas woman sat on boyfriend’s toilet for 2 years  (I like the sheriff’s name.)

Conn. student punished for buying candy from classmate  (YA RLY!)

 And finally, I was privileged to be part of a conversation this evening about whether or not we should use the word “taint” in a headline – as a noun.  (We decided not to.  And for the record, it was a story about government regulation on tainted water.)

Why I Love Virgin Radio

Apparently last summer, the big song on the radio was Rhianna’s “Umbrella.” Since I have something of an aversion to terrestrial radio (and Quad-Cities radio stations in general), I really haven’t actually heard the whole song, but consensus among the girls at work was evenly split between Love It/Hate It.

So, I was listening to Virgin Radio (as is my wont) and it turns out the Manic Street Preachers actually covered the song. And it is awesome! My love for MSP aside, it’s like, a really good song. Yay!