(image under creative commons usage from Laineys Repertoire)

Here's a few observations about the word "copywriter."

1) Copywriter is a weird word. Actually, it's the "copy" part that is weird. In the marketing/advertising biz, the text is called "copy." But the text is not copied, it's original. "Copy" never made sense to me.

2) You'd think that by now a copywriter out there would have thought of a better name for their profession. They are WRITING after all.

3) Chicagoans say it "CAAAA-PEE." I'm gonna make a concerned effort to say it "coo-pee." As in, "Darling, is the coo-pee prepared yet?"

4) If a copywriter writes copy, does a staff writer write staff?

Thanks to Gapersblock.com for featuring this photo in the April 27, 2007 Rearview! More details about this photo available on its flickr page. And a high-resolution prints are available at: www.deviantart.com/print/923690/

It's really cool how a soaking wet umbrella will get dry in like, an hour. What did they use 100 years ago for umbrellas? Cloth? Man, that would su-uck.

If you carry more than five bucks in coins out of the country, you could get fined $10,000 per incident. The U.S. government doesn't want people melting pennies and nickels into raw material. (source: coins blog.)

What about when people make statues out of melted pennies? Although, I couldn't find any on the web.

In Superman, Kryptonite is called sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide. And that's what was found in this Serbian mine.

From the BBC:
The mineral cannot be called kryptonite under international nomenclature rules because it has nothing to do with krypton - a real element in the Periodic Table that takes the form of a gas.

Instead, it will be formally named Jadarite when it is described in the European Journal of Mineralogy later this year.

Jadar is the name of the place where the Serbian mine is located.

So will the Superman comics now call it Jadarite? Not as cool sounding as Kryptonite, but it's still sounds kinda cool. Jadarite! (say it in a loud deep voice). JADARITE! And oh, don't pronounce the "J" as a "J," say it as a Y. Yah-dar-ite!.... Superman, I will destroy you with this Yah-dar-ite!!!

You've heard of website addresses with ".com", ".org", ".edu", ".net". But now get ready for ".snap" I can't wait to say, "Hey check out my website at spudart dot SNAP"

Of course, this is not real. When visitors to my site leave a comment, they have to leave an email address. It doesn't have to be a real one. For instance, someone recently left a fake email address of dudeimawesome@blah.snap

Oooooh SNAP!

Chicago Outdoor Film Festival-Grant Park
Butler Field, Grant Park
100 S. Lake Shore Drive

July 17, 2007, 8:56pm, Young Frankenstein
July 24, 2007, 8:50pm, Double Indemnity
July 31, 2007, 8:42pm, Written on the Wind
Aug. 8, 2007, 8:34pm, The Awful Truth
Aug. 14, 2007, 8:24pm, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Aug. 21, 2007, 8:13pm, Sweet Smell of Success
Aug. 28, 2007, 8:01pm, The Sound of Music

Check out a handy guide to 2008 Chicago's Movies in the Park.

I have never been stuck in an elevator. I like elevators. I want to experience this. Please share your elevator stuckedness stories in the comments.

A search on flickr for elevator stuck results in some interesting photos, such as the following:

(photo courtesy of thearchigeek under creative commons license)


(photo courtesy of joeltelling under creative commons license)

I'm both excited and scared at the same time!

Trader Joes Coloring Contest!
Color the Chicago bean and get your drawing on display in the downtown Chicago's Trader Joes grocery store. At the front door of the store they have sheets of paper with an illustration of the Chicago bean done by Travis Clement. I took one and scanned it in, so anyone online can color the Chicago bean. Hooray!

Download this pdf file, print it out, color it, and bring it on down to the Trader Joes at 44 East Ontario, Chicago, IL.

Please note, this is not one of my Sticky Note Comics. This is a "Savage Chickens" comic.

This guy Doug Savage really takes drawing comics on sticky notes to a whole new level. Such a nice border treatment. Nice use of lettering. Very legible. Nice drawing. And it's HILARIOUS!

Here's a comment I left on his post:

I'd wanna be one of these crazy trees:
10. Lone Cypress in Monterey
9. Circus Trees
8. Giant Sequoias: General Sherman
7. Coast Redwood: Hyperion and Drive-Thru Trees
6. Chapel-Oak of Allouville-Bellefosse
5. Quaking Aspen: Pando (The Trembling Giant)
4. Montezuma Cypress: The Tule Tree
3. Banyan Tree: Sri Maha Bodhi Tree
2. Bristlecone Pine: Methuselah and Prometheus, the Oldest Trees in the World.
1. Baobab
(list from 10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World).

See, HOW you answer this question is the real reason for this question. It's not WHAT you answer. I love your response in the cartoon, because it shows that you are funny. Most people are just cynical with their answers.

My response to the tree question shows my likes for the internets. :-)

One of my coworkers got me some vintage puffy stickers of Mr. T. They are so classic. Thank you kristi! Here's one of my favorites:

I want to do video tape a series called "Feats of Amazement in Chicago."

1. Somersault the length of Tribune Tower
   If I had me a video camera, I would have someone tape me doing somersaults across the entire length of the hallway of the tribune tower. First i would start with a video of the tower from the outside. Then it would cut into the hallway. That way people can see that i somersaulted across the entire width of the tribune tower
   
   A feat of amazement!


2. Virgin Music Store shortcut
   And then I would video tape me using the revolving doors in the Virgin Music Store on Michigan ave. They have revolving doors on both the michigan ave street side, and the intersecting street of Ohio Street. These doors are right next to each other, and i like to use them to cut the corner.
   
   It's amazing!


3. Climb the Chicago Bean
   Then I would have someone video tape me trying to climb the Chicago Bean.
   for the bean, i would attempt to climb it
   
   THAT WOULD BE FUNNY.

Once I get my hands on a video camera, I'm gonna record these. But why wait? It would be hilarious if other people recorded their own "Feats of Amazement in Chicago." Go ahead, I DARE you to try any of these listed here. Or be even more daring and make up your own!

Everyone seems to be buying in Chicago. It's THE thing to do. The New York Times released one of the coolest web apps ever called "Is It Better to Rent or Buy?" Just plug in your numbers and POW, it tells you if it's better to rent or buy.

And boy, do I ever learn the critical importance of Annual home price appreciation. Here's the graph with a 5% increase.

Oh wow. 11 years, it's better to buy. Sounds great, right?

Well, let's take a look at a 3% annual home price appreciation:

OUCH! It's better to rent, like, forever!

Now how did I get that 4% number for the rate of increase for renting. From 1988-1997 Chicago's rent increase was 4.0%. But that's ten years ago. The average rent nationwide was 2.5% in 2005. (And in 2004 the apartment vacancy rate was 10.4%, the highest level since the Census Bureau began keeping statistics in 1956.) Ok, so putting down 4% for apartment rate increase should be a very liberal amount that favors buying.

Back to annual home price appreciation, buying a house or condo REALLY depends on this annual home price appreciation. What's the history of this trend? Read below the fold to see more graphs.

Ironic sans had a funny post that if he were the leader of a foreign nation, he would develop a bomb and call it the f-bomb. Then, "Then I’d get a little giggle every time it was reported in the news that my country is threatening to drop the F-Bomb."

Next time I play croquet, I'm going to coin the phrase M-bomb (my name is Matt, and my croquet alias is the Mighty Mauler). Then I can say I'm gonna drop the M-bomb. Yeah, it's not as funny as the f-bomb joke, but it's funny to me. And I shall laugh maniacally every time I say it. muhahahahaha!

"Muhahahahaha!" Typically only villians would laugh like that. Are there any superheros that have a maniacal crazy streak?

The Mask was really crazy, yet a good guy. Sabretooth and Batman are kinda crazy, but not quite maniacal. They are just more of an anti-hero hero type. The Hulk was certainly mad, but he would never laugh like, "muhahahahahaha!" He was more like a, "roooooooaaaaaarrrrrgggggghhhh!"

Please don't tell me the Mask is the only maniacal superhero ever.

When: Weekend of April 27-29, 2007
Where: Chicago, USA (see Itinerary)
Cost: Free!
Why: Because it's fun to get together.

Let's go! I'm signed up. All you have to do is enter your name at: http://northamerica.photobloggers.org/

And you can get your photos shown at the Chicago Apple store! On Saturday night (April 28) at the Chicago Apple store they will announce the 2007 Photobloggies awards. They will also project attendees' photos on the wall. Just add three photos to the nap2007 flickr group pool by APRIL 9, 2007 11:50PM EST.

1) Only add photos to the pool if you're planning on attending.
2) You can upload up to 3 photos.
3) Please tag each photo you add with "nap2007-show".
4) Only photos added to the pool by 11:59 PM Eastern April 9, 2007 will be included in the virtual show.

Here's the three photos I'm submitting:

(view the entire gallery of 8 photos)

A week after ArchitectureChicago Plus posted about the ducks returning to the fountain at the AMA building in Chicago, I run across these same ducks. Celebrity ducks! I felt like the paparazzi shooting these starlet ducks with my zoom lens. Only thing is that I wouldn't need the zoom lens, because these ducks were so incredibly friendly. As soon as I set up, they came over to me asking to get their photo taken. "Please please take our photo!" they told me.

Now as it happened, I was just coming from Jewel with a couple bag of groceries including CRACKERS! (whole wheat crackers at that, I hope ducks are alright with eating those) Now I felt like a baby photographer getting the attention of the ducks with a cracker in hand. "Look over here! Over here! Smile! Good job!" (yeah, I was actually talking with the ducks.)

And then the female started to poke into my grocery bags, which quacked me up! (If you want to ruffle your feathers, check out the rest of the duck photos from this set, it'll send you to the loon-y bin!)

The idea of living in a micro compact home sounds appealing. Extreme efficiency. Just what you need. People laugh when I say this, because they think I could never do this with all the stuff I have. But in eighth grade we had a reading time every day where we could pick any book we want to read. I selected a book from the school's library about this boy who left home and lived inside a tree. That struck a cord with me then and still does now.

Then again, maybe I should just stick to having a treehouse in the backyard. Treehouses rock!

Say, I like how they have a smart car in this photo. :-)

While at work on the 14th floor of the Tribune Tower our copywriter spotted a woodpecker outside our windows! The little birdie was just hanging onto the outside of the wall. So I carefully walked over and snapped some photos. He was quite the photogenic bird, not flying away even when we opened the blinds.

While shooting our happy (yet confused) bird, I climbed on top of the heater to take some really close shots. But then I wasn't watching where my feet were I fell through the heating vent! Luckily only about half my leg went through. And the woodpecker still didn't fly away! As I continued to take more photos, he got fed up with me and moved away thinking, "what a silly man."

According to the Animal Totem:

-----------------------
When a Woodpecker totem enters your life,
it indicates that the foundation is there and it is safe to follow through.
It will stimulate new rhythms.
It reflects a wakening of new mental faculties.

You may be so wrapped up in mental and spiritual activities
that you've neglected the physical.
Listen to your body's rhythms and sounds and heed what it is telling you.
-----------------------

Yeah, I guess I was too wrapped up in taking photos, because I neglected the physical location of my foot! :-)

Here's some ideas of projects I'd like to take in my next ceramics class:

1) Funny trophies
There are absolutely no trophies in the world with a statue of a croquet player. That must be fixed.

2) Chicago molds
It would be fun to make quick molds of certain things that are very chicago-esque. L stations have plenty of cool things to take molds of. i.e. On every L car there is a one-inch by three-inch metal plaque by the doors with the car number. Take a quick mold of that, and then you can use those numbers in any ceramics piece. The numbers could make for a cool decoration treatment on a bowl or mug.
The image on this post features the ceramic containers I created to hold my paintbrushes. The water emblem on the container is made from a plaster mold I made of a water cap from the sidewalk outside the original Location of Lill Street Studios in Chicago.

3) A set of dishes
Actually to produce this in a wheel class would be enough for an entire term.

4) A statue of a small figure praying
I'd like to place these in corners in public places. Just a little reminder to people to say a prayer.

5) A nice plant box
It would be neat to make a container that is the exact width of the window by my desk at work. (Well, my future window, i'll be moving seats at work soon).

Once I get enough ideas, I'll jump back into another class at Lill Street.

If Chicago gets the 2016 Olympics, it would be very interesting to see the olympics in another city first. That way you know what to expect when the games come to Chicago. Plus then we could meet that weird block-shaped person in their logo. What is that!? And why is it that their official logo? "Hello! I'm rock man!" As it slowly moves along crushing everything in its giant rock body path.