Case closed.

The Alabama Leprechaun of YouTube fame has revealed himself(note the creepily ironic album title: We sing, we dance, we steal things). The citizens of Alabama are now safe…as long as they close their ears.

Pray people! Pray!

This morning it was announced on NPR that there is a great possibility that the dumbest governor in the United States, Sonny Perdue of Georgia, is one of the candidates for Vice President should John McCain get the nomination. Apparently they want him to gain the far right nutjob vote. I absolutely shudder at the thought of Bubba in the Whitehouse. Taking his lead from the water debacle, if there was a time to pray to God, it's NOW.

Purity of media

Ran across the following post on the blog Zen Habits. It's a subject I have thought about often when I choose what types of media to take in. I think he states it perfectly. Although a potato chip DOES taste good every now and then:)


One Simple Principle to Live By: Purity

“There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.” - Buddha

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips.

Today I was having an argument with my girlfriend about her watching Big Brother. Basically I was trying to discourage her from watching it. I gave her many reasons not to. It is a waste of time, it is petty, it promotes vanity. In other words, it is the panis et circenses of our days. I don’t think there is a coincidence in the fact that most people that watch Big Brother don’t know the works of George Orwell in the first place…

Anyway, after about an hour of sermon she told me she would try to stop. Thinking about the whole discussion, though, I realized that I could have summarized it in a better way: Big Brother is not something pure.

If you search in the dictionary, pure refers to things that are free of dirt or pollution, that have a uniform composition, that are complete and sinless.

The interesting thing is that this concept can be extended to virtually any field or endeavor. There are pure movies and impure movies. There is pure talk and impure talk. There are pure people and impure people.

Apply the principle of purity to your life and it will become much easier to decide the things you should be doing and the ones you shouldn’t.

Sitting in front of the television watching soap operas or reality shows is impure. It will not make you grow as a human being. It will not make you more conscious. Sometimes, in fact, it will do exactly the opposite.

Have time to spare? Learn a foreign language. Spend some time with friends and family. Read a classic book. Learn how to play an instrument. Practice a sport. These are pure things.

Not convinced that this principle applies to virtually anything? Think about your job. You could always step on other people to rise and make more money. You could always put honesty and integrity aside and do whatever it takes to gain more power.

Is such attitude pure? Would this be worth it? I don’t think so.

In the end it will be only you and a mirror, and usually only pure images get reflected.

Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible. - Mahatma Gandhi

Now where do our votes go?

Saw the top photo in the NY Times this morning accompanying an article on the dangers of electronic voting. Thought it reminded me ironically of another shot we have all seen.

We still have a long way to go

Tonight I went and listened to the co-chair of the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design, Phil Hamlett give an empassioned talk about sustainability and the roles of designers in helping to change things. At the end he flashed a picture of his infant daughter on the screen to put home the point of why he thought the movement is important. He choked up and tears welled in his eyes. I even had to hold back at that point. And what did the first guy in the audience who got up to throw away his empty watter bottle do?

Chuck it into the normal garbage which was next to not one but THREE recycle bins! Awesome.

God doesn't do waste.

Recently the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, taped a new years message to the public with a refreshing overarching theme of environmental stewardship. It's great to finally hear from a religious leader on this issue because, seriously, if the tenants don't clean up the apartment soon…isn't eviction usually the next step???

Your moment of Zen

i took this shot one evening at my parents farm. when one catches a moment like this, all the cynicism in our world suddenly slides away…for the moment at least.

Best of and rest of music for 2007

Just in case you are holding your breathe, I am now releasing my complete "best of" for 2007 in the music world. Sorry Kanye, you've been snubbed again. Coat-tailing off of Daft Punk was ingenious but not getting you on my lists.

Top 10 Albums of 2007:
1. The National - Boxer
2. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
3. Radiohead - In Rainbows
4. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
5. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
6. Great Lake Swimmers - Ongiara
7. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
8. Band of Horses - Cease to Begin
9. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
10. Deerhunter - Cryptograms/Florescent Grey EP
Honorable Mention: Caribou - Andorra, Bowerbirds - Hymns for a Dark Horse, Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha, Battles- Mirrored

Top 5 Live Shows of 2007
1. Animal Collective - Variety Playhouse - could be the one of the best i've seen ever. go see them before you die.
2. The National - Variety Playhouse/Earl
3. Arcade Fire - Atlanta Civic Center
4. Grizzly Bear - Drunken Unicorn
5. Deerhunter/Black Lips - Variety Playhouse

Top 25 Singles:
1. Bros - Panda Bear
2. Atlas - Battles
3. Someone Great - LCD Soundsystem
4. Nude - Radiohead
5. Brainy - The National
6. Your Rocky Spine - Great Lake Swimmers
7. The Underdog - Spoon
8. Hljomalind - Sigur Ros
9. Melody Day - Caribou
10. Breakout - Genaro
11. Fireworks - Animal Collective
12. Florescent Grey - Deerhunter
13. 23 - Blonde Redhead
14. Little Brother - Grizzly Bear
15. Lime Tree - Bright Eyes
16. Scythian Empires - Andrew Bird
17. Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe - Okkervil River
18. Veni Vidi Vici - The Black Lips
19. Keep the Car Running - Arcade Fire
20. Nantes - Beirut
21. Dark Horse - Bowerbirds
22. While You Were Sleeping - Elvis Perkins
23. Lovesong of the Buzzard - Iron & Wine
24. Detlef Schrempf - Band of Horses
25. The Perfect Me - Deerhoof

Top 5 Disappointing Albums of 2007
1. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky - holy crap this album is boring. please Wilco, no more soft rock.
2. Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger - Two is the only good song on this dozer.
3. The White Stripes - Icky Thump - Think i listened to it twice. That was enough. Finally the Stripes trip up.
4. Interpol - Our Love to Admire - I'm beginning to think they may never come close to Turn On The Bright Lights ever again.
5. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Some Loud Thunder - I'm not giving up on them quite yet because the live shows are so much fun but this album was definitely a sophomore slump. Satan Says Dance was the only track that stood out and i had heard that from their first tour already.

Stinker of the year goes to:
Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgist - what an utterly flaming piece of poo. please go away Billy Corgan.

A message from the original "W"

This could be the best "green" commercial ever made. So much better than toiling creative effort to hawk tennis shoes.

Remember Friday is Buy Nothing Day.

Think you can make this happen? I'm sure going to try. And I don't care if it is 50% off chinos at Macy's.

okay with it

It's 4:30 in the morning. That time that the real meets the surreal. Tom Waits is on the radio. No time for slumber. Because for now the surreal is devine and the real is just ordinary.

What is graphic design?

Sometimes public perception is refreshing…or really hurts. I think i'm going out for some more sun or maybe hire a chiropractor now…or just cry.

Quick thought of the day: You are what you eat

While our society has become so predisposed with how we look and how what we eat affects that, I'm so often amazed at how much we ignore our intake in other areas. Most notably the media we take in. Let's face it. We live in a world cluttered with media like no other time in it's history. Books, magazines, television, radio, ipods, internet, cell phones, pdas and much more deliver messages to us from all sides. As a matter of fact, we average per person, 3,000 marketing messages fired at us alone a day! It's overwhelming if you think of it. It has to affect us in ways we can not imagine. How we speak, think, act. And there is a good chance that much of the quality of that media, if not carefully chosen by the user, is the equivalent to your brain and psyche as chugging down a twelve pack of beer and a bag of cheetos is to your body. Makes me laugh at the irony of the uber-fit person next to me on the treadmill engulfed in the latest celebrity trash mag. Because aren't they really just trading one kind of fat for another?

i'm back

So after a horrible case of noblogitis, i am recovering well and looking forward to gracing these digital pages for the remainder of the fall and winter.

Highlights of my absence have been nearly losing my earlobe in a kayaking accident on the Ocoee River in a rapid aptly named Tablesaw(it's healed now and unfortunately no cool scar because my ER doc was such a badass), my continuing feet dragging of getting out of my granite cave of a house to either buy or rent somewher better in town, and the realization of how great it feels to fire clients.

More to come later.

Toodles.

Jeff

No logo?

I love logos. As most people in the commercial creative field do. Hell…there is even a website in which creatives will spend the whole day debating the kerning of the new paypal logo: http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/. We love admiring the beauty of them, finding meaning inside their simple(well..sometimes) shells, nitpicking every little detail, ridiculing them(ie. Michael Beirut calling the new UPS logo the "golden combover").

But DON'T ask us to wear one. IF you have ever noticed from any of your friends that work in the creative industry, they will go to painstaking levels to avoid any sort of logo on their clothes. This includes removing stitching, preforming precision surgery to take off labels, and just not buying anything with them on it(especially the one with the horsey on it). Have you ever noticed the look on a creatives face when offered a free t-shirt with pimping a company's logo? It will usually resemble the same look when they found they stepped in a fresh pile of dog poo. I'll admit since reading Naomi Klein's book, No Logo, a few years back that I have been even more aware in what i sport on the billboard of what i choose to wear.

While funny to think of, it raises the question why? If we love logos so much then why do we often keep them at an arms length? Is is a simple question of taste? Is it a representation of a larger question or problem? Is it the natural creative desire to not conform or to be an outsider? Is it a symbol of the awkward bedfellows that business and art often make? Is it a superiority thing in that we are smug about how we are versed in the ways of propaganda, that we are in on the joke that the rest of the population doesn't get? Or are we just in denial to the fact that often no matter how beautiful and meaningful our efforts are, that when it comes down to it, we are often just creating more junk that feeds the consumer monster?

Heima

On November 5th, Sigur Ros will release a concert movie from footage shot in their native Iceland last summer. Like everything the band touches, it looks and sounds absolutely beautiful. The innocence and beauty of Iceland makes me pine for a simpler life away from the shiny, plastic commercialized world we have created for ourselves here in America.

Alphabet City

When I was in grad school at Portfolio Center, I had a class in my first quarter where we were assigned to create a book of the alphabet using photos of everyday objects from around our wanderings through Atlanta that just happened to create a letterform. Everyone came back with such inventive perceptions for their books. It remains one of my favorite projects I did there. It changed how I looked at the world around me.

The other day I came across the above photo and all I could say was, "fucking brilliant!" It took the concept to a whole new level. I love this world we live in sometimes!

I get my best ideas in the shower…

…and some bands do their best work there too.

Pop and Lock Bears

Remember those scary singing mechanical bears from the old Showtime Pizza restaurants? Well…this guy, Chris Thrash on YouTube, has assembled the whole stage setup in his house and records popular songs with the band of bears and gorillas. It's both hilarious and very strange.

Joke Design Awards

Was flipping through Graphic Design USA this morning. It was their American Inhouse Design Awards issue. It should have been called The Special Olympics issue because I think everybody that entered got a hug. Ugggh. No wonder that rag is free.