Good To Know

Oregon is passing a bill to ban semen-throwing.

MoCCA

If you are in New York this weekend, head to the MoCCA festival. CWA members Mikhaela Reid, Masheka Wood, Brian McFadden and Ruben Bolling will all be in attendance.

Tutoring

Investment bankers and other financial wizards should be forced to participate in a Billy Madison-style grade school program to demonstrate basic competence in math, physics and history before being allowed back to work. Friends don't let friends drive drunk and sane societies don't let morons run the global financial system.

Spittin' Darts

Larry King can flow. Lauren Collins, writing in The New Yorker, caught a freestyle rhyme from King and his views on something called "Twicker."

So I’m goin’ through the store / and I wanna go more / Up the stairs / Down to the room / What am I gonna do? / In the room / the room brings me gloom / should I go to the room if it brings me gloom? / Could bring me doom / Why go to the room?

Don't go in the room, Larry. I want to hear that with a beat and dripping with auto-tune.

Playing god

We humans have found some pretty clever ways to rationalize some pretty nasty things. Many claim our sense of morality comes from god, which I suppose makes sense given that he is the most murderous character in literature.

Will Words

George Will is famous for his use of alliteration and brainy vocabulary. Sometimes a lowly commoner like myself is left scratching their head at one of his verbal flourishes or heady comparisons between Beltway politics and obscure baseball facts. We'll be exploring them from time to time on this blog to show how dumb I am and how smart Will is.

His most recent column sent me running to dictionary.com: "State governments, too, are expected to accept Washington’s whims, but plucky Indiana is being obdurate." Will used this word a few months ago and I think Ben Hur used it. In both cases I merely pretended to get it but now I have to know...

ob⋅du⋅rate
–adjective
1. unmoved by persuasion, pity, or tender feelings; stubborn; unyielding.
2. stubbornly resistant to moral influence; persistently impenitent: an obdurate sinner.

Now I can use it in a sentence: "Blue jeans are widely considered to be harmless, but Mr. Will is obdurate on the matter."

New Video Game

Guantanamo: Rendition

Type A on Type 1

Sotomayor would indeed be the first Supreme Court Justice with Type 1 Diabetes. At least, the first one that's out of the closet. I'm sure Rush, Newt, Buchanan, and the rest of the angry white men lobbing RPGs at her will add it to their litany of complaints.

I don't go for the visual metaphor cartoons all that often, but Matt Davies has a perfect illustration of what the GOP is doing by bashing her.

Literally?

Today on "Face The Nation", Senator Jon Kyle said Sonia Sotomayor needs to be an impartial judge. Then he elaborated a bit: "And what that means is that she literally has to have a blindfold over her when she decides cases, not bring in her empathy for the poor person, for example."

Logo Refresh

The Times has an interesting little slide show of corporations doing a "logo refresh." That's graphic design speak for rehabilitating a corporate logo. Lots of market research is done to find the most pernicious way to trick people, er--I mean, communicate the essence of the company through bold, brilliant design.

A few years ago Wal-Mart's logo may have projected strength and stability. But in a recession where job losses are in the millions and corporations are (rightly) vilified, Wal-Mart's logo starts to resemble a Soviet force coming to town to hollow out small family-owned candy shops run on a modest profit for five generations. Time for a refresh.

Corporations need to soften their facade in this new era. Green and light blue are dominating as well as little explosions of color that clearly say "our corporate mission is fun, fun, fun."

How can anyone object to this family-friendly logo propagating across the land? Its lower case letters emit calm and modesty. This could be the logo for a daycare center or brand of low-fat yogurt. It puts a smile on my face.

Sometimes new logos are rolled out and fans reject it. So loyal are consumers to a brand, so successful the original logo in filling their empty hearts, that a company may have to backtrack and scrap the hip new design. How would you like to wake up and find your spouse had a completely new fashion sense? Would you still love them? Maybe if they were the same on the inside. Only time will tell if the lower-case Walmart can once again captivate shoppers.