Are non-Western cultures conversations peppered with trite, colloquial sayings?
Like, in Kapushi, Zambia (population: 26 people per mile) — does one friend say to another (in Kaonde) upon receiving news that their baby was trampled by antelope, “Everything happens for a reason”?
These condensed and optimistic phrases are woven into our chats and unless you are a hermit or deaf, we are all guaranteed to hear at least one per day.
Sometimes a man’s manliness must be recognized. Manly is a term often reserved for a lumberjack, firefighter, or bounty-hunter. A narrow and unfortunate caricature. Why not a goatherd? Or glass-blower? Or gemologist?
Anyman* that strides confidently into their chosen arena (office, field, arcade, classroom, rubber raft, bowling alley, butcher shop, grist mill) and owns it is, in my opinion, a beast.
Give them this small token: (They will grunt, nod, excuse themselves, and go into the bathroom to shed a single tear.)
*Did I make that up?
I’m talking about leap day. Don’t even bother trying to explain it to me, I don’t actually care. The important thing is that I milked one more day out of this prudish month.
Zeichen Press would be nothing without self-imposed deadlines (and cake) and our card-release was set for March 1.
It was a real pressure-cooker situation around here — and because I don’t have enough intensity in my life, I locked myself in the linen closet and reenacted Apollo 13’s return journey. Just me, my laptop, both cats, and toilet paper tubes. We got home safely, God Bless America.
Anyway, we can thank the ground crew (Kim & Fred) for jury-rigging up product photos:
There once was a Frenchman that could, and would, eat large objects. He ate them bit by bit and was able to digest bicycles, televisions, shopping carts, chandeliers, and even an airplane. This took patience and, reportedly, gallons of mineral oil.
Bit by bit.
This wasn’t some sort of performance art piece — he never meant for it to be a metaphor.
But he ate a plane.
Such deliberateness! I like to imagine that he carefully considered each piece as he pried it off and swallowed it.
Mister Eat All The Things (Monsieur Mangetout) could be an inspiring mascot for an economic philosophy.
I’ve been told that a printing press in the shop is just as good as three acres and a cow. We’ll see. WE’LL SEE.
Anyway, I made this card for the president of The Society of Distributism because he has a fancy book signing coming up — 150 lucky people will receive the card. Oh, and a signed book.
The Epilepsy Foundation needed a new look for their fleet of trucks and The Carney Group contacted me (via telepathy) to see if my brain was available to think of ideas. I’m not just a brain. Geez.
I rescheduled my ice-pick lobotomy and put on my thinking cap.
What if the trucks were bright red and had big white letters with a line like, THIS TRUCK CONTAINS TWO TONS OF HOPE??
Yes?
Okay.
Do I have to write the script myself? The script that tells the tale of an experiment gone horribly wrong — a pharmaceutical company hot on the heals of developing a drug that ends all pain and suffering forever??
The drug, nicknamed “Bozo” does so well in animal testing… So well, in fact, it is released to the general population of prison inmates.
Death row no longer feels like a death sentence, cold concrete cells feel like a day spa, “relationships” feel special.
Until… The unexpected “side effects” begin to develop… Oh, it’s too sick. Just imagine a zombie movie but replace the zombies with clowns.
Here’s a birthday card:
I won’t try to fight it – and why should I?
My youngest sister 
(why is she so angry all the time??) is getting married this weekend and I designed/Jen printed some invitations for the blessed event.
The event will be very celebrity-heavy. By “celebrity” I mean “family.” It will be full of family. You can crash the wedding if you want – but no pictures. Just kidding. Take pictures – I can’t stop you.
Pat Carney stumbled into our dimension on Friday for the Gute photo shoot.
Edmund made latte after latte while Loretta babbled in the background. We think she was talking about Pam the kitten/her prisoner. Anyway, I had to punch Pat in the face to get one latte away from him for a prop. He took it like a man. Except for the tears.
It was only a matter of time because we were standing outside their office.
METRO home is a new special section in METRO. The cover of this months issue is intriguing and frightening. It might be a photograph of a bedroom/torture chamber. What’s behind those curtains?
Yikes! This room comes with shackles and nightmares.
Urban Living Manifesto sounds really serious. Do people really take themselves that seriously?? Two words for them: settle. down.
Oh, but here’s something cheerful - it’s about Zeichen Press:
Those Room & Board prints were sure worth all of the sweat I dripped on them last Summer!
I was right in the middle of a dream where both of my eyeballs were, curiously, weeping blood. This was, of course, followed by an intense search for a public toilet and, AS USUAL, the only available toilet was in a high-traffic area of the Southdale Mall.
Thank God Jen called and woke me up. But not before I reluctantly (why do I always do it??) sat my bare bottom on the toilet.
If I’ve learned anything in my life it is how to be wrenched from a sound sleep and into a car in under 5 minutes.
It’s not pretty but neither is childbirth.
Jen and I stopped for our traditional latte at the May Day Cafe and then it was onward to the State Fairgrounds. The Fine Arts Building was our cold and unwelcoming host, its huge doors left open to remind us that April can be just as cold as November.
I’m sure the whole building was full of crafty-goodness but unless tables were set up on the way to the bathroom, I wasn’t going to see them. For eight hours, I did observe the folks running the Burlesque of North America table. They are screen printers – a craft that I have always had a crush on. Anyway, despite the sweetness of their prints, they were just as freezing as us.
Poor thing!
Our big experiment for this year’s fair involved a QR code
that led to our latest Watch and Share card.
It was successful. If you measure success in terms of wishes and smiles. Which I do.
Dynamite magazine was full of hard-hitting news for kids growing up in the 1970’s.
But the best part of the magazine were the centerfolds. I wanted the Hang in There! poster so bad. It would have looked sweet on my closet door – right next to my Jackson 5 poster.
Struck by nostalgia and surrounded by (more) kittens, I took it upon myself to recreate the magic moment of the earnest kitten:
When I was all done forcing the kittens to perform adorable stunts, it was time to make videos of people reading Zeichen Press cards.
Let me explain: Beneath various cards in our online shop, there will be a link to a video of someone (it could be you!) reading the card aloud. Why? Because even the lazy and the ne’er do wells have a right to Zeichen Press cards.
My grandma kept a drawer-full of greeting cards in her buffet. An entire drawer, devoted to spontaneous correspondence!
What a woman.
She also kept plastic on her sofa and carpet on her kitchen floor. She really wanted to protect her furniture and linoleum.
The Thank-You Note is a classic greeting card and should be the foundation of any collection. Receiving a thank-you note in the mail is a little bit like finding money in last Winter’s coat or a good hat in a snowbank.
Let’s write one together!
First, choose a card:
Now on to the writing… We’ll break it down into 5 easy steps:
1) Begin with a greeting: Dear Aunt Shirley,
She loves to hear her name because cats can’t talk.
2) This is the meat of the note and notice there is no appetizer. This is a “note” not a letter. Cut right to it: Thank you so much for the medical marijuana! If the gift from Aunt Shirley was cash, do not mention it. Speak instead of her “generosity.” Thank you for your generosity!
3) Say a little bit about how you use or will use the gift: I smoke it everyday!
4) Mention the last time you saw Aunt Shirley and hint at a future meeting: It was lovely to see you at Uncle Bob’s funeral, I hope to see you again before your funeral!
5) And scene: Love, Fran
Oh, and here’s another card that will be added to the line:
“It is finished.” She gasped as she crumpled to the cold, concrete. It was, by all accounts, glorious. The work would outlast the artist and elevate the art form to new and dizzying heights.
But she, exhausted and covered in ink, was oblivious. To her, this was nothing more than an exercise. A functional and fleeting piece, it would be handled roughly and discarded by Springtime.
Um, so, that poster for Craftsravaganza is, like, done:
There are a couple of things going on around here:
1) Our fax machine is spitting out orders faster than we (jen) can fill them.
2) We (I) are (am) making the poster for this year’s Craftstravanganza.
Just to make my load fair, I listen to a recording of screaming children while I work.
I think it really shows:
Today, I will put ink on that – it will be so spectacular there won’t be a dry eye in the room. (I’ll be the only one in the room.)
Remember when I talked about my naming skills? No? That’s okay, I barely remember it myself. Anyway, I did a project with The Carney Group - I named a product that debuted at the 2011 MacWorld Expo to much adulation. Wait, that’s a pretty strong word. To much curiosity. They made the Top 3 Happening Booths but I think that had more to do with the bearded CodeWeavers COO dressing as Cher (I think that’s Cher?? Yucky!)
than the name I chose for the product – which was, by the way: Impersonator. See, it’s software that let’s your Mac run Windows apps without running Windows.
So brilliant.
David Pogue of the New York Times called it “hilarious” and one of the most creative pitches he’d seen all year.
I wonder if he meant last year because otherwise it would just be one of the most creative pitches he’d seen in January. I also wonder if he meant it was one of the most disturbing pitches he’d seen.
I wrote a lot of funny lines and made some cool logos
BUT all of my creative was for naught.
For naught.
They wrote their own lines and made their own logo. That’s cool. I don’t even care. I don’t. I totally let it go. Totally. I’m fine. Oh, here’s a little video I made (rejected by them – which I’m totally fine with. I am. I’m fine. It’s cool. Whatever. It doesn’t even bother me.) to go with the name. Close the blinds and turn on the projector, here’s IMPERSONATOR:
I love the ladies of the Jelly Shot Test Kitchen. And when I say I love them it means I love that they trust us. Trust us to create business cards of the future. We’re not sure how lasers work but we all saw Superman II.
These days, lasers are used for more than just pulverizing concrete. And I can prove it:
The latest project for JSTK has nothing to do with lasers. Or letterpress - don’t they know we do LETTERPRESS?? They asked us to create some instructional films.
Naturally, I cleaned my bathtub and got to work:
Here’s what I made: