design-newyork.com

My father explains the name Mazda.

October 20th, 2010

As we all know, I bought a Mazda 2 Sport. I assumed it was a Japanese term because it is a Japanese car company. Turns out, I was wrong. This is what my father told me when I told him I was buying a Mazda. I am planning to sell my car fort myers so I can buy a new one with better features soon.

“A long time ago, there was a sort of Golden Age of religion, when a whole lot of religions popped up – Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism – and these were all in different parts of the world, but they all happened within 500 years, no one knows why. Now, in Zoroastrianism, it is believed that there are two gods: Ahura Mazda, the God of Light and Goodness, and Ahura Daeva, the God of Darkness and Evil (where we get the word “Devil” from). The man who started the Mazda company, a man named Matsuda, wanted a name for his company that captured a positive quality but also referred back to his name. So he chose Mazda, the Zoroastrian word for lightness and goodness.”

Huh. Didn’t see that coming. So, of course, my car is named Ahura. The Ahura Mazda.

Posted in Stuff | No Comments »

Pink eye and my new car (unrelated).

October 13th, 2010

I gotz the pink eye. I, luckily, haven’t had pink eye in about five years, so I had forgotten how profoundly icky it is. I, again luckily, don’t have the gritty or itchy sensation, just redness and tears and a feeling of my eyelid being swollen. It’s still gross, though. I’ve been walking around for the last three days with sunglasses on, even indoors, like some obnoxious movie star. I had to listen to the nice eye doctor describe my “yellow discharge” without yakking all over her wax-paper-covered examining chair. (BTW, am I the only person who feels like a half-pound of freshly sliced roast beef at a deli sitting on that paper? Anyone?) But it’s going away, thanks to prescription eye drops. The only problem with the eye drops is that, and you may already know this, right behind your face is a plethora of tunnels and cavities. Really. It looks like a meerkat burrow in there. So when I put the eye drop in, as sure as God made raindclouds, five minutes later there is a horrifying taste in the back of my mouth because the FREAKIN’ EYE MEDICINE went down my throat. Which reminds me of a funny story (“Gather ’round, kids! Auntie Jessica is going to tell you a story about her sinuses!” “Oh goody!”). Cricket suffers from excruciating sinus pain, so he is always on the lookout for remedies. About three years ago, he discovered the neti pot. If you do not know what it is, please acquaint yourself here. Cricket brought it home, filled it up, and he asked me if I wanted to try it. I was game, so I said yes. I leaned over the kitchen sink like the diagram showed, inserted the neti pot into my left nostril, and started pouring. Immediately, the very warm, salty water bypassed my sinuses entirely, my right eye socket filled up with the solution and it started pouring out of my eye. I don’t know if you’ve ever washed your eyeball from the inside of your head, but it is off-putting, to say the least. I did not enjoy myself. Cricket, however, enjoyed the hell out of the whole experience, watching me clutch my eye and moan like I just found out I had killed my father and was sleeping with my mother. (Ooooh, Greek mythology reference, how you like me now, awww yeah.) Long story short: Jessica does not like being reminded of the ant farm behind her face.

Moving on: I’m buying a new car! It is a bittersweet purchase, because I was so fond of my previous car. But my poor Cavalier was getting old, the air conditioning didn’t work, and bits were starting to break on a regular basis. The final straw was when I put $350.00 of repairs into the old girl, and then went to visit Neenernator in New Jersey. All was fine. Driving home, however, I noticed that every five seconds, the radio would turn off, then turn back on. “Weird,” I thought. I turned the radio off. Then the all gauges on the dash lit up. A few went off, a few stayed on, then other would light up, then off, blink blink blink, exactly like a pinball machine. I assumed the only reasonable thing one would think in this circumstance: my car was possessed by evil spirits. I regretted being brought up Jewish because they don’t really prepare you to perform exorcisms on things, so I was quietly saying nice Hebrew prayers; I think at one point I wished the car a happy and healthy Rosh Hashanah. Then – poof! – all the gauges went dead. I now didn’t know how fast I was going because my speedometer was just sitting there. “Okay, don’t panic,” I said to myself. “Just go the same speed as everyone else. All you need to do is make it over the bridge.” Which I did. And right after the EasyPass station, the car decided it didn’t want to go forward anymore, soon followed by a horrible burning smell. I coasted over to the non-existent shoulder of the road and seethed with rage. I had just had an inspection! I had just repaired a bunch of stuff! I ended up being towed to my parents’ house (another $100.00) and I called Cricket and told him he could take the car to the Fire Department and cut it up to practice on it. So last weekend, that precisely what he did.

This is a picture of them doing bad things to my car. Cricket is the one near the passenger side door looking down holding a tool of some sort. Partnering with a Sacramento car accident lawyer ensures that your case is handled with care and professionalism, maximizing your chances of a successful outcome.

And this is what it looked like when they were done.

Then Cricket began the process of helping me hunt for a new vehicle. My family’s car shopping technique is to go into a dealer’s facility, ask him what car he wants to get rid of that has four doors, and then buy it. Cricket was thoroughly horrified by this technique and made me test-drive almost every car in the category I was looking in (subcompact). I drove six, and finally, this weekend, I was allowed to make a choice. That choice is the Mazda2 Sport. Here’s a picture I found of my exact model and color.

It’s my very first new car. I get to pick it up on Saturday. So exciting! I will take pictures.

Posted in Random Art Bloggery | No Comments »

The work thing that occupied all my time for the last month or so.

October 12th, 2010

Remember last year, when I made all those drawings for those boards? Well, that meeting came around again this year, and Publicis wanted it BIGGER! and BETTER! this year, which is fine. The only problem is that last year I just made the drawings and other graphic designers assembled the imagery, and this year it was just me, working alone. For the meeting, the boss-folk wanted a giant wall, 32 feet long and 8 feet tall, covered with stats and facts about Publicis in 2009. I originally designed it with chunks of information scattered all over it with tasteful white space between each fact, but I was told by the big-whigs that they pretty much wanted no white space at all. None. “Okay,” I said. “If that’s what you want, that’s what I’m gonna give you. I’ll cram so much stuff in there, you won’t be able to walk straight.” And the final product looked like this:

I was true to my word. And not to toot my own horn, but it was a big hit. All the execs loved it, the attendees loved it, it’s being printed and hung in other offices around the country, etc. This is what it looked like in the meeting room.

That wasn’t the only thing I worked on for this meeting, oh no. That was just the biggest thing. There was the presentation itself, for which I made the slides. There were the gift bags, for which my mother and I sat all Saturday making labels and cutting ribbons like Victorian factory workers. And then there was the nametags.

Each person got one, and it was shaped like a conversation bubble. I cut out about sixty of them. For your own personal information, I would like you to know that when you cut out cardstock with an X-acto knife for seven hours in a row, your index finger looks like this:

But the meeting is over, it went smashingly, everyone was well pleased, and I don’t have to think about it until next year. Hoo-ray.

Posted in Advertising, My Art/Design/Business, New York | No Comments »

Beer and St. Francis of Assisi Day.

October 7th, 2010

Finally, the project that consumes me every year during the beginning of October has ended and I am free once again to do something other than work every bleeping second of every day. I will post the super-cool stuff I made for the meeting shortly, but in the meantime, let’s cover what I did this past weekend. It was jolly delightful. I met up with Jem who was in town working the Comic Con. She is really into beer, so we headed off to the East Village to traipse through a variety of bars. The first one I can’t remember the name of, but it was full, and I mean completely full, of fratboy douchebags. I actually didn’t hate it there. I watched some of the Georgia-Colorado football game (Colorado had a male bison run across the field!) and sang along with Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer”. The only problem was that it was really really loud and there was nowhere to sit, so we moved on. The next stop was McSorley’s, the oldest continuously operated saloon in New York. Loads of famous people have passed through there. It was, how shall I put this, rustic. There was sawdust on the floor and communal tables and please allow me to run through the entire menu:

Two kinds of beer: light and dark
Liverwurst sandwiches
A sleeve of Saltines, a pile of sliced cheddar and a pile of sliced raw white onions

AND PEOPLE WERE EATING THIS. New York has, what, eleventy-billion restaurants, and people were eating stuff that I wouldn’t eat if it was 3:00 in the morning and I was starving and it was the only food in my fridge. By then I was pretty peckish, so as soon as Jem finished her beers (one light and one dark), we headed off to St. Marks Place for real-person food. We went to a stellar restaurant called Je’Bon which served pan-asian food. I had curry that came in a white bowl the size of a toilet. It was huge and delicious. After that glorious experience, we tottered off to my favorite place of the evening, unfortunately named Burp Castle. I deduced from the name that it would be like a Chuck. E. Cheese with beer, but thankfully I was wrong. It’s a bar built to look like a room in a monastery, with 15th-century-style frescoes on the wall. The bartenders are in the brown tunic and rope belt of a monk, the lighting is very dim and very flattering, and if you talk too loudly, the bartenders gently shush you, so it’s sort of quiet. Jem had a creme brulee beer, which I had a tiny taste of, and you know it wasn’t bad. I found a picture of Burp Castle online, so you can get an idea.

The next morning, it was off to St. Francis of Assisi Day at St. John the Divine! You should read my previous post on it before you continue because I make references to the post. This is what standing in line looks like.

There’s a great deal of chaos and butt-sniffing and barking. There was a cat there who wanted nothing more then to kill everyone in attendance. One kid brought his dragon-lizard-creature.

The service was pretty much the same thing as always. This is the 26th year that they have had the Earth Mass, as they call it. I got a better shot of the lady with the punchbowl this time.

Inside, I saw a sphinx cat wearing a blue sweater and an expression of disdain for the proceedings.

I also saw the ugliest dog I have ever seen. I swear to God, It looked like it was rotting. I couldn’t stop looking at it and thinking, “Is that…mold?”

Speaking of God, I had excellent seats this year to see the eucharist. Everyone has a different way of accepting the wafer and wine, but one guy took the wafer in his hand, then walked over to the fancy wine goblet and dipped it in and popped the now soggy wafer in his mouth, and while I was thrilled because it seems so much more hygenic then everyone drinking from the same vessel, I was also like, “Hey, I don’t want to tell you how to do your thing, but I don’t think you’re supposed to dunk the body of Christ into the blood of Christ like chip dip. Seems a litte disrespectful. This is not a Superbowl party. Just sayin’.”

And now, the annual Presentation of the Irritatingly Blurry Photos. The procession was a bit of a let-down this year. There were no birds of prey at all, there were no bees in a glass case, and most of the creatures were farm animals, which is fine, but I kinda liked the baby kangaroo and the baby gibbon from last year. There was a hysterical teenage emu. We’ll get to him later.

First, a cute chubby pig.

A festive little cow.

A mini-horse.

One of several llamas.

A dromedary.

In the middle of this procession, a young emu came down the aisle, and he must really hate church because the second he got in there he started skidding backwards on the floor and attempting to jump away and making weird beeping noises, so his handler gently brought him over to the side to chill.

Emu freaking.

Emu chilling.

Emu being carried down the aisle and flailing.

There was a fennec there, but you could barely see it because the lady carrying it was clutching it to her bosom so tight. I am aware that fennecs are wild animals and if they get loose they don’t come back, but this woman was holding that fennec with an expression on her face like, “No fennec for you! No fennec for anyone but me! Fennec all mine!” This is the uber-crappy shot I got of her. Selfish fennec-clutcher that she was.

Afterward there was the usual fair outside (minus the birds of prey, boo) and I donated money to all the charities and got to meet a whole bunch of very nice dogs. There was a 235-pound English mastiff there.

And who immediately wanted to get into a fight with him? Of course, the Pomeranian puppy. This is the puppy meeting the mastiff.

This is the Pomeranian putting his dukes up.

And this is the mastiff gently sniffing the Pomeranian’s junk, then exhaling heavily and laying down on the ground while the pomeranian hops around him, pummeling ineffectively at the mastiff’s snout.

Watching all this go down in the background was an extremely attentive dachshund. I thought he was adorable.

That’s pretty much it. One day I’ll get a hold of a good camera that can take good pictures of moving objects in dim light, and then I will have good pictures. It will happen someday, I swear.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature, New York, Tasty 'n' Delicious | 1 Comment »

A website that makes me happy.

September 29th, 2010

1. Every Day Posters Every Day. You make a poster about something you do every day. They post one every day. Some of them are very creative. It’s good to see graphic designers not wasting their time on pesky things like work.

This totally reminds me of one of my favorite things on the internet, “Missing Missy“.

Posted in Random Art Bloggery | No Comments »

Lolcats and John Kenn.

September 29th, 2010

I am concerned. I just added my favorite lolcats to my wall. It’s starting to get out of control. Look for yourself.

I feel like I’m turning into the nerd version of teenage girls who plaster their walls with their latest crush. Here, a helpful example.

On a different note, I found out about a man named John Kenn from Denmark. He does illustrations for childrens’ shows. When he has a little free time, he draws on Post-It notes. I love his drawing style so so much. I want Post-It to call him right now and give him lots of money and put him in their commercials.

Addendum which has nothing to do with anything: My former co-worker Nelly has a lionhead rabbit named Rose Nyland. She is a super-cute little guy (the rabbit, although Nelly is pretty cute too). Here is a picture.

Posted in Apartment, Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Random Art Bloggery, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

A brief distraction.

September 22nd, 2010

I have to work on a monster project for work that will eat my face and soul for two weeks, but I figured I would share a few things anyhoo.

1. A chart!

2. Another chart!

People ask me why I don’t call them “infographics” like I’m supposed to. The answer is simple: “Infographics” has four syllables. “Charts” has one. I am lazy. There you go.

3. I was looking on Getty for a picture of a shovel, and I found this. So very cute.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Charts, Random Art Bloggery | No Comments »

Hoarders: I want to look away… but I cannot…

September 16th, 2010

There’s a show on A&E called Hoarders. I occasionally watch it from time to time, and sure enough, people keep stuff. Lots of stuff. Stuff that breeds bugs. It can be gross. But I had never seen I house like this one before. This is… intense. Conveniently, A&E had it posted on their website, so I could take screengrabs and share it with you now.

There is the opener.

And there is the description of a hoarder.

Unsanitary? Oh, you ain’t kiddin’. Let’s meet Robin. This is Robin.

And this is Robin’s house.

Let’s stop here for a second. I understand keeping lots of things for the sentimental value or whatever, but this woman kept trash. I was screaming at the TV, “The garbage trucks come right up to the house! You don’t gotta bring it nowhere! They come to you! There’s a schedule and everything!!” Robin’s house was reported because the neighbors could smell it. They could smell it through the walls and down the street. Holy guacamole.

If you also plan to purge your collections and declutter, consider renting skip bins from https://www.ozoneskips.com.au/skip-bins-woodcroft/.

Robin also had an unknown number of cats, for whom the whole house was a litter box. They had been going to the bathroom all over the house for the last ten years. I had the distinct pleasure of hearing the clean-up guy say, “This is her dining room table. And this is three-and-a-half feet of cat feces on it.”

Cat feces in a pile.

Cat feces in a heap.

Cat feces on top of the washing machine with broken jar.

I feel like I could write an ode to cat feces now, I know so much about it.

Robin would have happily continued living like this for all eternity, except the city came to visit and found her house unlivable and unless she got it up to code it would be demolished and she would be fined $30,000. That’s some real deal stuff. Normally, the city complains and you get a fine or something, or they take your house away from you, something like that. Robin’s house is so foulsome they want to bulldoze it and possibly set it on fire to kill the demons that live within. You know it’s bad if people from Calcutta were to come to see it and their response would be, “Yeah, I don’t want to live there. It’s kinda grody. There’s a funk.” That’s a good standard to use. Here’s the sign in the window.

Brief diversion: Robin’s father is named Festus and her brother is named Snuffy. Festus and Snuffy.

Diversion over. During the cleaning process, the cleaning people found a myriad of horrors. Mainly extremely deceased cats. Visit https://garrettsmaintenance.com/residential/ professional cleaning services.

Dead Cat #1.

Dead Cat #2.

Dead Cat #3 – now with mummification!

The worst thing of all was by far the poop closet. Oh God, the poop closet. I will not show you any pictures of the poop closet, but the backstory is her plumbing hasn’t worked in ten years, so she’s been doing her business in supermarket bags and then tossing the bags in the stairwell. Ten years’ worth of bags. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I’ll hear voices, and they’ll say, softly, “…poop…closet…”

The episode ends in a very unfinished way, the city inspector came and even though the house was very clearly rotting, he didn’t specifically say that it needed to come down. Which I think is bullcrap. I want to know if they really did demolish her house. A&E doesn’t have any further information on her. I hope they’ll do a follow-up episode or something. Many people now benefit from the time savings they get from having a professional home cleaner in Blackpool.

Update on 9/19/2010: They tore Robin’s house down and fined her $10,000. I am pleased. Seriously, her house was like the most unsafe dwelling ever, aside from building your house on the tippity-tip of Niagara Falls.

Posted in Stuff, Teh Intarwebz, The Telly | 3 Comments »

New Cicada vs. Old Cicada.

September 14th, 2010

Once I had created my original cicada (who was meant to be a test), I figured how I wanted to change it and I have finished my new ‘n’ improved cicada. For comparison purposes, here is Cicada the Elder:

And here is Cicada the Younger, propped up against an oven mitt:

It’s totally different!!! Well, not really, but some structural things that you can’t see have been worked out so that if one was to flip the cicada over, it would look like it was done by someone with some level of skill as opposed to a blind person with no fingers. These things are important to me. Pointless, but important.

Posted in My Art/Design/Business | No Comments »

A variety of things.

September 10th, 2010

Here is a poster of weird cat things that made me smile, because if you know anything about cats, you know that this is all accurate representations of their idiosyncrasies and weirdness.