Impulse

In a sta­tus update, my friend Niff pon­dered the dif­fer­ence between insan­ity and stu­pid­ity. Inspired by that sta­tus update — and the fact that I’ve had my nose in aca­d­e­mic books for the last sev­eral months — I decided to come up with my own lit­tle tax­on­omy of stu­pid­ity, insan­ity, and rationality:

• Stupidity = doesn’t know what’s rational
• Insanity = can’t be rational
• Bravery = doesn’t care what’s rational
• Adolescent = hasn’t yet fig­ured out what’s rational
• Adolescent = doesn’t want to be ratio­nal (see Stubbornness)
• Genius = under­stands the ratio­nal­ity bet­ter than you
• PMS = too upset/uncomfortable to be ratio­nal (see Insanity)
• Stubbornness = doesn’t want to lis­ten to what’s rational
• Engineer / Scientist = annoy­ingly rational
• Policy = devoid of ratio­nal­ity (see Insanity)
• Blondeness = con­fused by rationality
• Oscar Wilde = humor­ously rational
• Robin Williams = humor­ously irra­tional (see Insanity)
• Wisdom = dis­cov­er­ing the ratio­nal the hard way
• Zen = there is no rational

Feel free to add more in the com­ment thread below.

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While work­ing on projects for my typog­ra­phy class, I got hooked on re-creating Constructivist and Modernist posters. I find it a great way to learn about design. Here’s my take on a Bruno Monguzzi poster (orig­i­nal here).

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Here’s a lit­tle exper­i­ment: to cre­ate a typo­graphic illus­tra­tion using a pair of antonyms, choos­ing a type­faces and arrange­ments that com­ple­ment the con­no­ta­tions of each word.

Typefaces: Mrs. Eaves italic and Superba RR Bold.

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I always wanted to make a typo­graphic poster…  So I did.

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Team OC Quattro, the team I filmed three years ago for my doc­u­men­tary, will be cross­ing the fin­ish line again in the Race Across America 2009.  They’re cur­rently in third place, and have main­tained an aver­age speed of 19 MPH (and that includes the Rockies & Appalachia!).  Not only that, they’ve raised over $100,000 for their char­i­ties.  By the time I wake up tomor­row, they’ll be cel­e­brat­ing their fin­ish (prob­a­bly by going to sleep!). 

I’m psy­ched that they’re doing so well, and really wish I could be there with them.  Congratulations to the team & crew! 

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As thou­sands hud­dled in win­ter coats & hats in D.C. yes­ter­day morn­ing, I shiv­ered in lay­ers of blan­kets in my liv­ing room (no, it wasn’t an act of sol­i­dar­ity – my heat’s been out for a week), glued to the TV to watch Senator Obama become President Obama.  It was a great moment that I’d been look­ing for­ward to for a long time – espe­cially the inau­gural address.  I’ve long been a fan of great ora­tory and had high hopes for this speech from an excel­lent ora­tor on a momen­tous, long awaited day. 

I was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed.  It was a scat­ter­shot speech.  He was solid on each of the myr­iad points he made, but there was no over­all mes­sage, no guid­ing prin­ci­ple that drove every­thing else.  It was an oppor­tu­nity lost.  I think William Safire nailed it on NYTimes:

‘

Our 44th president’s Inaugural Address was solid, respectable, uplift­ing, suit­ably short, superbly deliv­ered, but — in light of the tow­er­ing expec­ta­tions whipped up that his speech might belong in the com­pany of those by Lincoln, F.D.R. and Kennedy — fell short of the antic­i­pated immortality.

[…]

A good speech has to have a mem­o­rable theme, stated early and reprised at the end. It did not emerge in this address.

To mobi­lize peo­ple to col­lec­tive action, you have to have com­mu­ni­cate a sin­gle guid­ing prin­ci­ple.  Taxation with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion; “Free at last”; man on the moon by the end of the decade – that sort of thing.  This not only gives peo­ple a frame­work for under­stand­ing your pol­icy, but guides their own deci­sions.  It gets indi­vid­u­als excited because they under­stand how they can change things.  If any­thing, Obama’s cam­paign was about change and grass-roots action.  Having a guid­ing prin­ci­ple in the speech would have been a per­fect method for launch­ing grass-roots change in sup­port of his policy.

Shisol was glad that “there was no swing­ing for the rhetor­i­cal fences”.  I agree.  You win more base­ball games by con­sis­tently hit­ting solid base hits than gam­bling on home runs.  Happily, Obama’s team demon­strates a lack of self-grandeur.  Still, you don’t have to have Lincoln-worthy rhetoric to ignite a move­ment. You just have to make a clear point.  If Obama had done that, I would’ve felt much, much more inspired by his speech, mak­ing me for­get my unfair expec­ta­tions of immor­tal ora­tory (my expec­ta­tions are my mistake). 

All that said, I still can’t say the phrase “President Barack Obama” with­out a big ole sat­is­fied grin spread­ing over my face.

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A recent sup­port call proved to me a few things about ser­vice.  I called to start the trans­fer process of my domains from register.com to another reg­is­trar.  The oper­a­tor con­vinced me to stay:

Everything is nego­tiable.  My rea­son for switch­ing reg­is­trars was price: Register.com charges $35/y/domain; the com­pe­ti­tion charges $10). Talking with the oper­a­tor, it turns out that there’s some flex­i­bil­ity in pric­ing. Now I’m renew­ing at $8/y/domain. 

Small talk goes a long way.  The oper­a­tor didn’t put me on hold while she was work­ing – she asked about the weather. We chat­ted about grey win­ters & snow­storms between trad­ing infor­ma­tion for the domain renewals. The net result: I felt like I was being treated as a real human by a real human instead of being a par­tic­i­pant in a machine-like, protocol-driven trans­ac­tion. It made a huge dif­fer­ence and all it took was the age-old con­ver­sa­tion tac­tic of talk­ing about the weather. 

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After almost two and half years, I’ve finally com­pleted my Race Across America movie.  No, really!  It’s done, fin­ished, fer­tig, finis. It’s ready to show. 

Wow!  It’s still sink­ing in that it’s done.  I’ve been work­ing on, think­ing about, wor­ry­ing about, and fuss­ing over this thing for over 2 years.  It’s defined my think­ing for that entire time.  The idea that there’s noth­ing left to do feels kind of alien. 

And extremely free­ing.  I’ve got so many projects I want to start. 

This time: No projects big­ger than one week. I think I’ll be stick­ing to week­end projects for a lit­tle while. 

There have been sev­eral times that I thought I’d never fin­ish this thing.  Heck, I didn’t think it was even pos­si­ble, for a while there.  Thanks to every­one who kept encour­ag­ing me.  You’ve made my life bet­ter by help­ing me achieve one of my big goals in life. 

And a word to any aspir­ing feature-length film­mak­ers out there: don’t try to do every­thing all by your­self. True, it makes the cred­its really easy, but every­thing else takes a lot longer.

What’s next for this project?  I’m going to make copies for all those who helped out, enjoy the hol­i­days, and have a big party in January.  No plans for fes­ti­vals right now; I’ve missed all the fes­ti­val dead­lines for this sea­son, and there’s a bunch of legal leg­work to do first.  Meanwhile, I’ll just bask in the glow of hav­ing accom­plished some­thing I’ve wanted to do for years, and see what the future brings.

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(poster designed by the tal­ented Jonathan Hoefler)

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