Woolly Brain, Batman!

"Psychiatrist kits anatomically correct woolly brain" = sweetest headline ever. And doesn't that little bundle of cerebral mass look cuddly? Read the full story here.

Loo loo loooo loo loo loo loo loo....

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Working Girl

Lots of you (yeah, like a whole 3 people) have been wondering what exactly it is I do at work. Well, let me tell you:

1. Read...thus far I've finished The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The End of Reason, several classic short stories, and now I'm starting on The Shack. I'm going to be super-literate by the end of this thing.

2. Blog browse...especially my faves in the column to the right. Check them out while you're on the clock, too!

3. Crochet...a cute scarf pattern, only to realize that I have no idea what those annoying short-hand symbols mean, and then I give up.

4. Listen to Online SIRIUS radio...especially the classic vinyl, the all Led Zep channel, and the Underground Garage. Good times.

5. Sit. And sit some more. I do believe my booty is spreading out, flatter and wider, because of all the sitting. Since I avoid the vending machines like the plague (ugh, and that vending machine coffee tastes like the plague), I'm hopefully not getting bigger. These sitting jobs are brutal.

6. Oh yeah, take a few calls here and there. Get my teacher/phone voice on and do my little pitch. Did I tell you about our holiday specials?

Daily Prophet, eat your heart out.

No longer are moving images only the domain of tv screens and bewitched newspapers for witches and wizards.

Esquire is the first magazine to use E Ink on their cover. Sadly, they took this rather impressive bit of technology and turned it into a cheap flashing neon sign. What's that, Mr. Esquire, about the web being a "cacophony of noise"? Although I cringe to think of an entire newsstand looking like downtown Tokyo, you've got to admit there are some pretty incredible possibilities with this stuff. Maybe one day even us muggles will have moving photos in our newspapers...

More thoughts on my new blog interest, Design Assembly.

Happy Election Day!

And congrats to President-elect Lyn Rosten and first dude Jesse!
Oh, wait...they didn't win? What?! Next year, guys...but you get an S for spirit! (more patriotic pics here)

No matter if your red, blue, or purple, I hope you had a great day, full of free coffee and ice cream (thanks to S-bucks and Ben & Jerry's). I know I did!

Arrr...Treasury!

Bunny Noses made it into a treasury on Etsy! Yeah-ah! Treasuries are user-created collections of items that have a similar theme or aesthetic. This treasury is called Help the Animals, Please: they're effing amazing. Ha. Check it out here.

It's pretty interesting to see the responses this pic has gotten, everything from laughter at its startling silliness to pity for the incarcerated bunnies. It is somewhat sad, I suppose, but I can't help but smile at those big ol' furry noses.

83 Applications Later...

I got a job! And that's just from my Gmail, not including paper and online apps., and all those tedious interviews. Yeah, brutal. Job hunting in Portland is not for the faint of heart. Oh, but if you saw how brilliant the leaves look right now, you'd know it was worth it.

So what is this job, you say? Well, it's at a call center called Stream. Yeah, I know, talking on the phone is somewhere around the equivalent of an un-anesthetized visit to the orthodontist for me (probably if you're reading this, I owe you a call), but I must endure until something more suitable heads my way. And the environment is super chill, there's an X-Box in the lounge, and a bunch of computer nerds with awesome lateral lisps (think nerdy Neil from Family Guy)...well, I can wish.



So, I'll keep plugging away until Oblation Papers & Press asks me to head up their letterpress shop...yep, still wishing...

Two new blogs.

Just discovered these amazing blogs:

1. Lab Partners : Absolutely stunning vintage inspired letterpress and gocco prints. I am in love with this stuff. This duo has the 40's/50's aesthetic down pat. Check out their flickr stream for even more eye candy.
























2. Laissezfaire : An all things design blog, in the vein of Design*Sponge. Can one see too much good design? Well...um, no, I don't think so. I mean check out this architecture! Even Howard Roark could stand behind that.

Washington.

Click on Cara above for pics from a quick trip up to Camp Ghormley in central Washington. Our kind host, Benjamin, (whose parents run the camp and generously let us crash at their place -- a wood two story with forest green carpet that looked suspiciously like our old house in Colorado [run-on?]) sadly didn't make the cut in the pics. He was too busy actually working while Cara and I tramped through the woods. Pics or no, thanks goes out to Benjamin and his fam for taking us in (and feeding us some excellent pumpkin-shaped cookies). And to the state of Washington for their beautiful leaves and awesome state highway signs.

Thought for the day.

The reader 'plays' the text as a musician plays an instrument...Like an interpretation of a musical score, reading is a performance of the written word.

**Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton

Phenomenal-illustrator-that-throws-me-back-to-my-childhood of the week

is...S. Britt.

In the style of Ezra Jack Keats, Eric Carle, and Richard Scarry, he revives that fantastic 70's/80's aesthetic. A-mazing.

An Unfortunate Encounter with Pop Music.

Last night: restocking, reorganizing, refolding after hours. As soon as we closed shop, my fellow employees changed the radio station to some Pop Top 50 thing. I avoid music from those charts like the plague, but this time I was locked in with my paycheck riding in the balance.

And I left with one question: WHY??!!

Let me give you the overview:

Lyrics: Damn, girl, you lookin' hot. Damn, boy, I'm lookin' hot.

Beat: Same canned hip-hop beat we've known since the early 90's, looped bass line, annoyingly repetitive sample from old song or movie.

Message: Male = woman user. Female = meat.

Musicality: I don't know words with more than 3 syllables.

Seriously. Depressing. Tell me how this falls under the same artistic category as Bach, Beethoven, Glass, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, Sigur Ros...it's blasphemy, I tell you! I know I'm a music snob, but, honestly, this is the popular music of our generation? It's like I'm inside an Ayn Rand novel...

Time for the E.A. Meetings...

That's right. Etsy-holics Anonymous. I'm addicted! You can get on the forums and help answer people's questions and critique their shops...and then you post a comment and people look at your shop...and then they say they like your bunny pic and more people look at your shop...and then you have people favoriting you and wanting to trade...and then you become well-known enough to quit your day job--wait, I don't have one--well, to just use your part-time job for it's stellar discount and make stuff full time...and then...wait, sorry, totally dreaming. But I did get a bunch of favorites and a trade offer. What fun!

Oh, and about my discount...did I mention that I got about $300 worth of stuff today for $90 when they gave employees a %70 percent off sale items sale? Jealous?
.

Betsy on Etsy.

Yes, the crafty little community that stole my name without the B now has me on as a seller.

My name: Plan B.

I'm just getting started, so there's only a couple things on now, but more is to come soon. You can keep track by this handy-dandy Etsy widget to the right here. And, dear friends, now would be an opportune time to buy so that you can be my guinea pigs, before the real people start buying (hehe...just kidding. You're real!). If you see anything on my website you especially think should be posted, please, do tell.

Oh, slight warning: when you venture onto the Etsy site, better alot a significant slot of time, cause there's some amazing stuff on there (my own included, of course!).

End of self-promotion.

a jar and an unwritten note.

Some pics I took this week. And, I finally got a job! I'm working at J.Crew in support/visuals and raking in a crazy awesome discount. Should be a fun place to work for the time being. And now I can have my heat and electricity turned back on...

Ron Paul = Substance

Ron Paul seems to be the only candidate to bypass all the sycophantic fluff and just tell it like it is.

How do we get this guy on the ballet???

Why *everyone* should read The Fountainhead.

"...why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want."

From Peter Keating, of all people, comes the crux of Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead. What if we disregarded what others thought of us, stopped wearing the clothes that make others turn, buying the toys that make others envy, pursuing the profession we thought others would approve of? What if our actions were determined solely by our own convictions and deepest desires? Maybe the "virtue of selfishness" would make the world a better place, because behind every job done, every thing created, every action made would be the greatest passion and the most ardent aspiration for the best in ourselves.

Don't worry. I'm a proffetional.

Happy.

Some people are made happy by ice cream. Others, by kittens. For me, it's by changing the default font on my browser to Futura. Craig's list is looking a whole lot better these days.

Ah, those summer days...

I forgot I had these...reminders of the fabulous camping trips I took this summer.
This particular one had everything:

family (above)

burgers

danger

fire

firecrackers

photo fun

a beached whale (really!)

Obama momma

Eric's butt...er...footprints

waves and sand

strange plant life

and really cool contrails.