“Everything he touches turns to excitement!”
– poster for the James Bond movieGoldfinger
Tag Archives: posters
Radical Ideas
Not much going on right now. School is sneaking up on me, and I suddenly feel an urge to finish tweaking websites. I’ve finished many miscellaneous fixes to my existing websites, and I have several more to complete, including a complete overhaul of spaceninja and reworking the interface for pdxhookup. Hopefully I’ll plow through these before school starts.
I was watching Fiddler on the Roof with Annie the other night, and I noticed something. In the movie, there’s a character who’s just come back from college in “the big city.” He comes home with radical notions such as “women are people” and a strong belief in the proletariat. He ends up leaving to help start the revolution. I noticed that the common stereotype that people who go to college get revolutionary ideas in their heads, and never return to their ordinary lives. To some degree, this must have been true back then. Some people, given a taste of life in the city probably didn’t want to return to the farm. But the stereotype still lingers today, to a degree. Have I picked up on any radical ideas in college? I don’t think so… Maybe I’m just too involved in my life to be able to view it objectively and see my “radical” ideas.
I’m going to order some posters from www.obeygiant.com. They’re awesome russian constructivist/propaganda-style posters. I’m going to hang one up in the tek room. It’ll be great. Steve heard the idea and asked if I’d be interested in designing some Pokey posters in this style, so I’m going to. He said he’d print them if I’d design them.
I’m wearing my Mr. Yuck t-shirt today that Ryan gave me. Mr Yuck rules.
I’m also going to try and start drawing regularly again. I’m going to try and set a regular time two or three times a week where I will sit down for about an hour and just draw. Hopefully this will help me regain my atrophied illustration skills. Now if only I had a darkroom, then I could develop photos.
Beach Trip
Well, I haven’t made an entry in two months. That’s a bit too long for an update, I think. Hmmm… what’s been going on with me… Annie and I are still getting along great, and life in our apartment is awesome. We’ve finally gotten over the debt that accompanies a move, and have gotten to a point where we can start splitting the bills equally and still have some spending money leftover at the end of the month. We had enough money this month that I finally hooked up cable. I’m so sick of bad reception, but there’s really not much you can do living in a concrete box. The cable company hooked us up with digital cable. The cable box has a modem built-in to contact the company (not sure why it would have to do that… maybe they’re keeping track of what we watch?). The first month we get everything free, so I’ve been having a blast flipping through all 500 channels (still nothing on, though). It’ll be nice when X-Files starts and I can actually read the little readout that says where they are.
I got hired for the job on the tek team! Not sure if I mentioned that before or not. The job is awesome. They started us out doing grunt labor, but we quickly graduated to real jobs, and I’m enjoying myself. I’ve got cool coworkers, and a good boss. We do work in a concrete bunker underground, but it’s kinda cool… there’s no sunlight at all (no windows), so I’m going to buy some posters to hang up in here… a few Star Wars posters, and maybe a good looking nature shot. Speaking of posters, we finally broke down and bought some sticky tabs to hang up posters in our apartment. Nothing would stick to the walls, but I really didn’t want to get these tabs, since they hardly ever come off posters cleanly. But now they stay up, and I think it’s worth it.
We went to the beach for labor day, and it was awesome. Good group of people. KT and Annie, with myself, Jester and Miles. Jester and Miles, we just discovered recently KNOW each other! I was talking to Miles one day, and he mentions juggling… “yeah the little brother of one of my friends in high school was a really good juggler. He ended up at Princeton… probably on a juggling scholarship.” A little commotion followed, and we discovered that Jester and Daniel were the same person. A brief email later and Jester knew about it. I had already invited Jester to the beach, so I invited Miles too, and it was cool! We all got along great, and spent the whole weekend babbling about computer games to each other (much to the women’s disgust). The weather on the first day was gorgeous, and we spent a good chunk of time on the beach. The next day was horrible and rainy, so we went to the cheese factory, but it lightened up enough for us to have our bonfire and s’mores, and then naturally the day we left was beautiful. Still, a great weekend. We enjoyed ourselves.
I’m not sure where the summer went. I had so much planned to get done this summer, and I got hardly anything done. I’ve been working really hard, but I haven’t read the books I wanted, or beaten my computer games or anything. *sigh* oh well. Maybe next year.
I’ve been reading Whitley Strieber books lately. He’s the guy who wrote Communion, the creepy book about a guy who discovers that he’s been visited by what would appear to be aliens ever since he was two. I got the book at a yard sale for a buck, and ended up buying the next three books. They’re fascinating reading. I don’t think I really believe it, but it succeeds in creeping me out whenever I read them.
Okay I think that’s enough for now. I’ll try to write more frequently!
Obey Giant

Hmm. Well… I could write about all the stuff that has happened lately, but that seems like a lot to do, so instead I’m going to tell you about this kickass website Ryan sent me. It’s at www.andrethegiant.com, or if you prefer, www.obeygiant.com. They both go to the same place. This website, apart from hosting some awesome designs (very communist propaganda poster style) has some interesting ideas. They (He/She/It?) posted posters and stickers all over New York with Andre The Giant’s face on them, and the words “Giant Has A Posse.” The idea is that this is a completely meaningless phrase and that you could learn a lot by how people react to finding this in front of them (I recently did a similar project in Graphic Design class, which may be why I’m interested in this). Their manifesto is great, as is their poster gallery. They sell all their posters, and if anyone is ever looking for a good gift for me, that’s the way to go. I would love to have most of the posters they’ve done. I’ve posted a few examples down below.

You may have heard that I’ve moved. I just got all moved in with Annie at Goose Hollow. Things are going great right now. Annie’s a little restless because she’s got nowhere to go, and I’m at work all the time, but hopefully she’ll get a job soon, and that’ll take care of that. It’d be easier if we had TV reception, but with no money for cable, and no antenna on the TV (yes, I know I can make on with wire, but I don’t have any wire, either)… you’ve be surprised how bad the reception is inside a concrete box. I’m hoping to get my dad to loan me his digital camera so that I can post some photos of what our place looks like.
Since you’re reading this, you’ve noticed that I’ve moved servers. That went fairly smoothly, except for the send-mail bug that Steve’s trying to solve that prevents me from getting email at the spaceninja address. Hopefully that will be solved soon and all my woes will be gone! I’m pleased with the new site designs, and I’ve got a few coming. I’m going to get a great design up for the portfolio, and redesign the desktop themes page.

It’s kinda frustrating because all at once, everything in my life is being shared. I can’t just leave things as I want them because they impact other people. The PDXmart project I’m working on with Miles and Steve and Dennis is behind, due entirely to me, so people are kinda upset (rightly so), Annie and I are discovering the new stresses of sharing a living space, and Steve is upset with me because I can’t pay him. It’s frustrating because I just don’t have the money. It’s not there. I can’t borrow anymore from my parents because they just spend a bunch of money on me when I moved, I can’t borrow from Annie’s parents because they’re in a tight spot, I’m already paying $800 in bills on a $500 paycheck and Annie’s unemployed. I know it’ll all be good in a couple of months, but that doesn’t help when everyone’s demanding their share of the non-existent money now. Oh well. Things will work out. I get paid on Wednesday, and Annie’s hoping to get a call-back on a job-interview real soon.
