C| O>O

Awhile ago I posted about if you can mail a crumbled sheet of paper through the postal mail.
http://www.spudart.org/blogs/randomthoughts_comments/2424_0_3_0_C/

They have all arrived on the same day, just a few days after I dropped them in the mail (It just took me awhile to finally post pictures on my site here). Check out this image to see how they came:
http://www.spudart.org/blog/images/2005/307_0729_full2.jpg

The extremely crumbled sheet of paper came in a special "We Care" U.S. Postal envelope. Apparently they thought they damaged my letter, so they put it in an envelope explaining that it was "inadvertently damaged in handling by your Postal Service." *giggle*

The other two letters arrived safe and sound.

LTD Commodities sell items for every down-home American. Some of the stuff is cool, most of it is odd cheesey stuff. My friend updates their weekly "new and exciting" section. It's always got a few noteworthy items. But this week there was a good handful.



Flip-Top Boot/Shoe Scraper
So you open the frogs mouth and wipe your shoes on his tongue? hilarious!



My Styleô Knitting Machine
Don't tell me that thing automatically makes socks? It looks like you just put the yarn in and turn the handle, and POOF! knitted socks!



"Punky Brewster" DVD Sets
That's so funny.



Hot Wheelsô Batmanô Racing Set
DUDE. this looks so cool. To be able to race the new kickin batmobile! And to have the cop car chasing!



6-In-1 TV Photo Album
It's so cheesey, it's cool.



Disposable Swimwear
Why would you want to throw away your swimwear after one use?



6-In-1 Travel Game Set
Carry this thing around, and you will looking like the coolest gaming person ever.

There's a group of people that want to make "jigga" be the 11th letter in the alphabet. Not a word, but an actual letter.
=======================
To: worobey@uiuc.edu
Subject: jigga in the dictionary

I want jiggabuns to the a letter in the alphabet! How do i join your club?

The link to tell Merriam Webster is broken on your site . I click on it, and it gets me to a blank page. Please fix it soon, because I cannot wait for this to become the new letter. It would be jiggatastic!

I anxiously await your reply.

-jiggamatt maldre
=======================

Have some kid ralf all over the sidewalk in front of your booth. I saw it happen last week in front of the Staples sidewalk giveaway.

Last week Staples was giving out 128mb USB memory storage devices on Michigan Ave in Chicago. How nice of Staples. At first they tried giving us just some lame Staples stickie notes. The mini-stapler was ok. Michigan Ave of Chicago can be a great freebie zone.

Everyone is familiar with the image of Jesus on a cross that we tend to forget the pain and humility involved.

Imagine someone taking their pet dog and duct taping his paws to the wall and letting him die there. It's incredibly sick and wrong. Now imagine someone doing that to a human.

Back in the time of Christ, hanging a person on a cross was the Romans most humiliating and painful way to execute someone. Left hanging and hanging while everyone sees him slowly die.

A friend of mine, Andy Matznick, had a contest at his work to build a scene using Peeps as the focus. His Peeply Field scene won.

Punching out the last piece of gum from the 12-piece gum foil package gives me much satisfation. Looking back at all twelve empty pods in the gum blister pack gives me a sense of of accomplishment.

This month the American Indian Center opened up the Trickster Gallery in Schaumberg--the one and only Native-run contemporary fine arts institution run in the State of Illinois. It will showcase contemporary Native American artists while shattering deconstructive images that result in misconceptions of Native Peoples. They will step away from museum practices of cultural objectification and instead present Native perspectives and ideals on contemporary society.

Their current show, Dissipating Indians, features a handful of contemporary Native American artists--several artists had some interesting pieces displayed including Athabaskan Inupiaq's Erica Lord's eery self-portraits. Upon first glance it just looks like a 12 portraits of women ranging in age and social backgrounds from Indian princess, clueless W.A.S.P. hippie, good-old tomboy, intensely dark temptress, and bilious teenager. But upon closer inspection, some of the portraits look like they might be the same person. Then inspecting ever closer, it becomes shocking that these are all of the same person.

Erica Lord takes Cyndi Sherman's work to another level. While Sherman would photograph herself in many cinemaesque shots, it was always apparent that it was Sherman behind her shots. But Erica Lord's portraits are just straight up head/shoulder portraits and they all look so much like different people--some thin and some fat (Erica sticking her neck out to look thin or pulling her chin in and down to look heavier).

The show is worth the trip to Schaumberg just to see this one collection of 12 photos. But there are a couple other artists on display that hold interest as well.

The Trickster Gallery, at 190 S. Roselle Rd. in Schaumburg's Town Square. Gallery hours will be from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday. Admission will be $5 for adults and $2 for children, seniors and the disabled. 773-275-5871. Dissipating Indians will up until August 19, 2005.

I know of two who sell stuff on deviant.com: dan-yell and spudart (me).

Neenah has some great prices on 8.5x11" paper. For 500 sheets, it costs between $17.95 and $24.95
http://www.neenahpaper.com/OnlineProductList/ProductListResults.asp?ft=Designer

You can order swatchbooks to see what the paper looks like at:
http://www.neenahpaper.com/ItemListing/index.asp?b=00&s=opp&ft=Designer
I couldn't believe they were charging $5.95 for each swatchbook. At all the companies I've worked at, these swatchbooks were given to us for free. So I would say call up Neenah, say you are with XYZ company, and they should mail them to you for free. I'm assuming the $5.95 is just for consumer customers, not for business customers.

We've all heard of contintental shift where supposedly all the contintents were one big mass called Eurasia or something. What if we were to use Adobe Illustrator to align all the countries. Here's the starting map of the world:



Here's all the countries aligned vertically. Russia is totally huge!


Here's all the countries in a horizontal alignment


And all the countries in one big stack, aligned horizontally and vertically.

If you want to see all these images bigger, click here.

It would be really cool to get a wooden puzzle of all the countries and stack them up. I would take a spreadsheet of all the countries sizes and sort them from biggest to smallest. Then I would put the biggest country and put that on the bottom (Russia, of course) and then take the 2nd biggest country and glue that on top of Russia... working my way up to the smallest country on top.

The trick is finding a wooden puzzle that has each country as its own piece. Some of the pieces will be really small.

As Gapers Block pointed out, the Democratic National Party still has not updated their website to reflect that Barak Obama is one of Illinois's senators, not Peter Fitzgerald. It's been four months since Obama was elected in.

Gapers Block is encouraging everyone to email the DNC about this. And you know how i like to email people...

========
subject: why is barak obama not listed on your website?

Why is Peter Fitzgerald still listed on your website as the senator? Shouldn't it be Barak Obama? Are we still living in 2003? Helloooooooow it's like 2005 here people!
========

Don't get me wrong, I love argyle. But it's a sad fact that when Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig wears argyle, it can no longer be cool. Selig is the antithesis of all things cool. If he was cool, he would:

A) In 2002, he would not have cancelled the All-Star Game in the 12th inning. He would have had a homerun contest. Or brought in some fans to pitch. Or something.
B) He would put a strict steroid policy in place. period.
C) He would eliminate the DH.

I wonder how Selig got his hands on an argyle sweater. Does he really follow fashion trends?

Don't ever write your name and address on a fifty dollar bill.

It looks like someone was going to write their name and address on the back of a 50-dollar bill. This person was perhaps imagining that MAYBE someone might find it and actually return it to him/her.

But then common sense probably struck this person that it might not be a good idea to do this, because someone might get this big bill and see that this person has large bills and show up at this person's place to rob him/her.

It wasn't someone else who scratched out the name and address, because it looks like the same ink and pen used to write "THIS BELONGS TO" was the same pen used to scratch it out.

One of my goals this summer is to talk to the infamous "Walking Dude" in Chicago. What would be some good opening lines? I'm sure others have tried talking to him. Like that Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times, and Walking Dude turns them off cuz he doesn't want the attention.

• Do you know what time is it?
• It's a nice today, isn't it?
• Your shoelaces are untied
• I like your coat
• You have really nice hair!
• What hair product do you use?
• Do you have a comb i can borrow?

Noel's conversation starters:
• Do you comb your mustache?
• Didn't i see you on (any Chicago Street Name goes here) the other day?
• How 'bout them cubs?
• Where do you get your hair done?
• Excuse me. Do you know where (any Chicago Street Name goes here)is?
• What's your sign?
• Did anyone ever tell you you look like Yanni?
• Did you know Richard Roeper wrote about you?
• I'm a big fan! Can i get an autograph?!

(for those who don't know "The Waking Dude" in Chicago, here's a page of images of him: http://www.spudart.org/chicagowalkingdude/)

This AP photo of a pilot cleaning the windshield to an airplane asks the question, do all pilots fly the same plane all the time? He's taking such nice care of his window it seems like this is his baby airplane. Or maybe he got frustrated by the last pilot who flew that plane and took such lousy care of it.

Surely there aren't thousands of airplanes in the lot. They must fly the same plane over and over. But is it the same one every time, or is there maybe like ten different planes they fly.

I know cab drivers have their own car they drive every day.

But how about buses or trains? When a bus driver gets to work, do they grab whatever bus is available? Or do they have their own baby bus that they drive all the time?

Pocket bikes or mini motos are being banned in communities across America. It's evident how they are dangerous, because they are so low to the ground, motorists may not see them. It shows how big our traveling has got in America--in a very literal sense.

Other countries have such a wonderful bicycle culture, those pocket bikes would fit in just fine. How about we ban all those monster SUVs instead?

Upon seeing this photo of the 2005 American Idol contestants, I immediately thought that the dude with the long hair in front (Bo Bice) and the girl wearing orange (Vonzell Solomon) were a couple. It's one thing when all the contestants are being friendly with each other. Putting an arm on someone's shoulder or knee. That's nice friendly fake stuff. "Look at us, we are so nice." I can see her putting her hand all nice and friendly on his knee. But then Bo putting his hand on top of hers is like some sort of confirmation of affection for one another.

Yes, I am reading into this too much. But this was just my first thought. I haven't watched the show at all, it was just my first impression of this photo. It's funny how fake affection can be transformed into confirmed affection when two people show the same exact friendly affection--like holding hands.

A color question someone asked me recently: What color are tennis balls?
I replied "yellow green."
But some people reply "green yellow."

The debate is... when you describe a color using two words, where do you put the major color? First or second? So if something has more yellow than green, do you say "yellow green" or "green yellow"?

I always thought that the first word is the dominate. But some may argue that the first word is merely describing the second word. Like the first word is an adjective.

8300 feet was the elevation of the cabin we stayed at just outside Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Before leaving there, I put an empty plastic bottle with the cap screwed on tight inside my bag.

Upon arriving at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, the bottle had collapsed down to this shrunken state due to the air pressure difference at different altitudes.
http://www.spudart.org/blog/images/2005/322-2292_IMG_300.jpg

Chicago: 660 feet
Colorado Cabin: 8,300 feet

It's really quite amazing to see how the bottle just shrunk down so much according to the different environments. Using this logic, would a bottle explode going from Chicago to Denver?

While I'm in Colorado right now, here's a little moutain trivia. It gets 5ƒcelsius colder for every 1000 feet you go up (called the lapse rate). Actually we don't directly get warm by the suns rays. The earth absorbs the sun rays, and the heat comes from the earth. The winds up on a mountain mixes the colder temperatures in more. That's why it's so cold in outer space. Even though you may be closer to the sun, there's nothing to absorb that heat and keep it in.

It's like God is saying, "see, I made this one wonderfully balanced place for you to live."

Here's an example:

Hi there Bob,
I hope all is well. When do you think I could get my yellow matter transmuter back?
-matt

It's kinda funny when people put hypens before their name when signing an email. Why is that? So your name is differentiated from the rest of email? Is it avoiding the use of a salutation?

The hyphen also functions as a minus sign. So it's like saying "matt out" or "subtract one of me." How weird. Maybe it would be more nice to sign emails with a plus sign "+matt" or even a MULTIPLY sign "*matt" No, that's more an asterick--especially how the asterick is at the bottom of the email. How about a divide sign? "/matt" that looks very programmie.

Chicago certainly has a plethora of restaurants with Golden in their name. Which is always fun, because gold has nothing to do with the restaurant itself.

* Gold silverware... goldenware? nope, standard stainless steel.
* Gold coins for change? Nope, regular USA currency. Although it would be fun to go to every Golden restaurant and use those quasi golden dollar coins.
* Perhaps their service is golden. Well, I wouldn't go that far. Usually these places are greasy spoon types.
* Their hearts are golden. Yeah, let's go with that... I guess.

Here's the complete list of Golden Restaurants in the city of Chicago. I'm sure there are more in the suburbs, but for now this is the official chicago list:
Golden Angel Restaurant
Golden Apple Restaurant
Golden Bull Restaurant
Golden Chop Suey
Golden Crown Restaurant
Golden Crust Pizzeria
Golden Cup
Golden Duck Restaurant
Golden Fish
Golden Fish & Chicken
Golden Fish & Chicken
Golden Goose Catering
Golden Heart Restaurant
Golden House Restaurant & Pancake House
Golden Nugget Pancake House
Golden Nugget Pancake House
Golden Nugget Pancake House
Golden Nugget Pancake House
Golden Nugget Pancake House
Golden Nugget Pancake House
Golden Nugget Pancake House
Golden Nugget Pancake House
Golden Valley Liquors
Golden Wok
Saleem Golden Pan
To view their address and phone number, go to the comments below.

Here's an email I sent to Quark:

Subject: Quark's events

hey yo

I'ma lookin at yo events page at: http://www.quark.com/about/events/
How come you don't have no events for Quark in Chicago? Shy Town wants Quark conferences. Adobe InDesign is totally crushing you. Hello? Do you realize that? Yes, maybe you might need a little lo-down on the get-down of this InDesign-down.

There is another layout program out there that designers are going to. It's put out by this really cool company called Adobe. Maybe you've heard of them. They make that popular photoshop program. No no, not PaintShop Pro, but Photoshop.

Well, anyways this Adobe company in like April of 2000 released a program called Adobe InDesign. It's just like Quark, only better. Much like how cupcakes are ok without frosting, but add that frosting on there it's like soo-ooo go-ood! Who wants a cupcake without frosting? Only weird people who don't like cupcakes without frosting! Actually it's quite nice when there are sprinkles on there too. Oh wait... What are you saying to me? "InDesign... Quark... events." Ohhh, right. The point of this email.

Here's a tip. Just a friendly tip from someone who's been groovin on the Quark vibe for the past nine years. You should totally, like, make some events that say how great Quark is. Actually now that i type that it sounds kinda silly. Do people want to attend an event just about QUARK? Maybe the meeting needs a catch... Oh i got it.

Picture this... *holds hands up in the air* The cover of your next direct mail campaign to graphic designers nationwide...

In really big type: CUPCAKES!
in really small type: and quark

subhead in red: Get your free cupcakes!
subhead in gray: and quark

Dude, i would so totally go to that event. And it would convince me to stay with Quark instead of InDesign.

a quark user,
Matt Maldre

Source: "Moroccan Blue' Leads Top Fashion Colors for Fall 2005" on creativepro.com

And I made an illustrator file with the swatches if you want to import it into Adobe Illustrator. 2005colors_womensclothes_v8.zip

I'm wondering if anyone out there receives any sort of extra information/games/content on their cell phones. I have Verizon, and once I downloaded PacMan.

What is average size of a screen in a theater?

stove, oven
To this day, i still have a hard time discerning these two. The "ove" in both words is what probably gets me, plus the fact that the stove and oven are all in one unit.

colorado, arizona
It wasn't until last week when i finally realized that i think of these two states synonmously. Which screws things wup when i think of arizona being a cold state where you go skiing.

winterfresh, peppermint, wintergreen
I posted about this before.

which knob is hot, which is knob is cold
I'm pretty sure that hot is on the left. But i always have to test the water first to see.

wacker, wabash
Both are streets in downtown Chicago.

1) It's interesting to see how commercials before a movie translate over onto the big screen.

2) It's only two minutes of your time. If that two minutes will help the movie industry to make some more money, go ahead. You already set aside a block of time to see a movie. What's an extra two minutes? Now if it starts extending into twenty-minute blocks of commercials, that could be a
problem.

3) The commercials aren't interrupting the movie. They are just something on before the movie. Part of the reason for going to the theatre is to see stuff really big on a really big screen.

4) It's always funny to watch commercials in public. In 5th grade the teacher showed us an educational tv show, but he didn't edit out the commercials. It was quite funny to be in that social situation in school watching commercials. Maybe that's just the novelty of it (which might be related to point A above).

5) It's funny to hear people laugh at a commercial they see for the first time when everyone else in the theatre has seen the commercial 50 trillion times. (This fifth reason was added later as it was a comment made by unlikelymoose below)

Yes, there are some bad apsects to the commercials like putting your mind in the wrong frame of mind before a movie. But watching commercials is like many things in life. You can sit around and complain about it, or you can try to see the positive aspects of it.