Ten — yes, 10 — quips by M. Kingsley in this edition of Quipsologies.
Absolute power is tacky, absolutely.
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Following in the tradition of Saturday Night Live’s “Scotch Boutique” comes Pencil Revolution.
We make things. We think about things. We do things to things.
Things next to other things, doing things to things, make up our world.
Things is an on-line magazine.
“The design of commercial entertainment is neither a science nor an art; it answers only to the common taste, the accepted vision, for fear of disturbing the viewer’s reaction to the formula. The viewer’s taste is conditioned by a profit-motivated architecture, which has forgotten that a house is a machine to live in, a service environment. He leaves the theatre after three hours of redundancy and returns home to a symbol, not a natural environment in which beauty and functionality are one. Little wonder that praise is heaped on films whose imagery is on the level of calendar art. Global man stands on the moon casually regarding the entire spaceship earth in a glance, yet humanity still is impressed that a rich Hollywood studio can lug its Panavision cameras over the Alps and come back with pretty pictures. ‘Surpassing visual majesty!’ gasp the critics over A Man and a Woman, or Dr. Zhivago. But with today’s technology and unlimited wealth who couldn’t compile a picturesque movie? In fact it’s a disgrace when a film is not of surpassing visual majesty because there’s a lot of that in our world.” — Gene Youngblood, from his 1970 book Expanded Cinema; with an introduction by Buckminster Fuller. Recently added to the UbuWeb historical archives.
Tom Brinkmann’s Bag Mags is an amazing collection of outlaw, sexploitation, psychotronic, true-crime, and trashy magazine covers that could kick the ass of any cover on the American Society of Magazine Editors’ Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years list. And just in case you missed the word sexploitation, the site is possibly NSFW.
The Department of Perhaps They Went for the Lowest Bid asks: If the United States is the most powerful nation on earth, then why are the likenesses on the Presidential Coloring Pages so awful?
Forbes.com has a collection of special reports (actually, light essays) on Communicating, including comments by Arthur C. Clarke, Noam Chomsky, Jane Goodall, Kurt Vonnegut and felon Lizzie Grubman. [via The New York Times, delivered to my doorstep; who I forgive for all the bad WMD reporting and for spelling my wife’s name wrong]
Scanned Images, Engravings and Pictures From Old Books.
Twenty people fined for using the letters Q and W.
For those in a snit over STEP: Johanna Stokes considers the relationship between Girls and Comics.
“Thoughts of a Graphic Design Student: Evaluating a formal education in Graphic Design and formulating a manifesto for a contemporary graphic design education.” [Thanks to Claire for the link]
Michael B. reports on the imminent change of the AT&T logo. (Felix knows who is doing it, while Maven already considers the solution laughable).
Many, many — many — cassettes. [Thanks to Will Weyer for the link]
In more of Best X Covers of the Last X Years: The Village Voice celebrates 50 years with their 50 best covers.
Just in time for Halloween:
1. How to make a PC out of a pumpkin.
2. Test your freehand mouse skills, carve your own pumpkin. [Thanks to Carmen for the link]
3. Emoticon pumpkin. [Via Kottke]
The real question on the Presidential coloring book is: why did they stick Dubya on a swing, surrounded by children? Every other president gets a dignified portrait. ;)
On Oct.31.2005 at 11:10 AM