August 25, 2003
Once an ad creative...
...always an ad creative. When I saw this ad outside my local 'dep' (convenience store) in Montreal, I couldn't help but think of John Gillard, my whacky old teacher at art school. The ad creative(s) who thought this one up were probably rather pleased with themselves for inventing such a visually arresting word/image play, but Gillard would have nailed them. Indeed, it's too bad they didn't think about how utterly revolting the resultant association is for just about everyone who's interested in the activities of eating and drinking (except perhaps Arnold Schwarzenegger). A visiting lecturer to our august School of Communication Arts summed it all up nicely: he described an ad he'd once seen for a hotel, built - conveniently enough - right next to the airport. Its headline read: "Out of the flying plane into the foyer." Oi! Fantastic wordplay, except to say that it's derived from an aphorism about radically worsening luck.
August 12, 2003
Listserv habits
I've subscribed to God knows how many listservs in the last ten years, but have only recently been seriously challenged regarding my assumptions about how they work (and why they often slow to a trickle or die completely). I'm thinking of one list in particular, a scholarly forum for the discussion of design which shall remain nameless for now. For the past couple of years it has been chiefly memorable as a spectator sport: watch the poor unsuspecting newbie post a short (perhaps naive; perhaps even ill-considered) message, and then witness a gargantuan, if erudite, response pointing up the ontological flaws in said poster's position, together with an authoritative 'state of the field' address for the benefit of anyone who's still paying attention. (When I say 'gargantuan', I mean improbably long posts with a gravely self-regarding tone, replete with citations and lengthy reference sections.) What to do? "Unsubscribe!" I hear you say. And many do, of course, by emailing the entire list with a whiny or indignant 'get me off your list' missive. (Which is inevitably followed by an email - to the entire list - from the moderator explaining to everyone how to unsubscribe. It actually seems that people often (a) join lists only long enough to forget how they got themselves onto them in the first place; or (b) pack their bags, so to speak, when confronted with the faintest whiff of tension.
August 10, 2003
August. Hotter than July.
Smart move with high humidity: Descend into the basement with the intention of 'fixing it up.' Not sure what's more depressing: watching the rain pour down outside or watching the fresh paint drip off the exposed pipes that are already ripe with condensation. Shoulda left them unadorned, clearly. The highlight of my day is the honking great blisters sustained in a battle with the old floor tiles on the basement stairs; perhaps I should have invested in a scraper instead of relying on an old kitchen knife (the one with mysterious burn marks on its tip).
August 04, 2003
New job; new city; new ISP...
I had heard that my new ISP in Montreal - sympatico (i.e. bell) - wasn't all that great to deal with. Then I called them up with a question about email relaying. The guy on the phone wasn't just self-assured to the the point of being annoying; he also told me he'd never heard of an email program called entourage.