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.”
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.
I had a nice time in Marathon, and returned this morning. I spent a lot of time swimming in the ocean and a pool. It’s weird — I live only 3 miles from the beach but I never go there unless I take people from out of town. Every time I do that, I enjoy it a lot and think I should go more often, but then I don’t go again until another visitor comes.
This evening I’ll draw some new comics to turn in Monday. Here are the scripts. They’re numbered according to the publication dates. Usually I make a few minor changes translating from script to strip.
**MN090622
Banana belle (sad): It’s ridiculous to love someone who‘s never going to love you back.
Chip: Neither of *US* would ever be that stupid!
Banana belle (sadder): Nope. Not us.
Chip: I know Kranti will love me, once she looks past my dazzling wealth and glamour.
Bananabelle: Some people can’t see past anything.
**MN090623
Chip: Someday Kranti will realize how much I love her. Then she’ll fall in love with me. That’s how it works. I got an A in math.
Bananabelle: Chip, you live in a Hallmark greeting card dream world.
Chip: It’s more of a Victoria’s Secret fantasy land.
**MN090624
Bananabelle: Why are you so crazy about Kranti? She loathes you.
Chip: She *loves* me.
Bananabelle: She has multiple restraining orders against you!
Chip (enraptured): Her lawyers say no, but her heart says yes.
**MM090625
Kranti (walking, sweating under a hot sun, and thinking): I loathe Chip. And his evil SUV. With its leather seats and its air conditioning. And its bourgeois cup holder. A cup holder that might be holding a cup of iced tea right now. A wet, cold refreshing cup of iced tea.
(Kranti walks).
Kranti:I loathe Chip and his evil SUV.
**MN090626
Kranti (smiling gamely): Cars are evil. When you walk, you notice your surroundings.
Kranti (smiling in a strained way): Walking is great exercise. It’s good for the environment.
(Kranti walks and sweats, no more smile). If cell phones weren‘t evil, I could call Nikko to pick me up.
This should be the last of my late updates. I’m in Pennsylvania now, and will head back to Somerville once I’m all stocked up with scrapple and ring bologna.
Next Week: 24 Cent Book Bin
While gay rights advocates protested outside of a DNC fundraiser, Obama was inside with celebrities cracking jokes about not following through on his promises on gay rights. Not so funny to Lt. Dan Choi, an Iraq veteran and Arab language translator recently booted out of the army for being gay.
Someone brought their baby, sick with chicken pox, to the local Mall so they could shop for clothes and infect everyone.
This guy likes to neglect his daughter and dog while having sex the whole apartment complex can hear. Seems like every apartment complex has at least one couple incapable of having sex at a reasonable decibel level.
We live in an age where the kind of cheese you buy can be viewed as a political act so it comes as no surprise that even the pronunciation of Sonia Sotomayor’s name is contentious. Is there any aspect of life that can escape left/right argumentation?
A douchebag at The National Review says Sotomayor doesn’t know how to pronounce her own name. He says stressing the last syllable of Sotomayor is “unnatural in English.” Apparently, the best approach would be to mangle the hell out of it with some hillbilly twang: SO-TOE-MAY-ER! Slap in some Billy Bob Teeth and lay it on thick to show them minorities how to speak proper ‘Merican.
You have no doubt heard the correct pronunciation from the President and any number of talking heads in the last two days. Chances are, you are capable of accomplishing this linguistic feat yourself.
But there is a left flank to the pronunciation wars as well. It mostly consists of educated white liberals suddenly adopting a thick accent when speaking a Spanish word: “I’m glad Obama chose a Latina for the Supreme Court. One with roots in Puerrrrto Rico, no less. Hey, I’m hungry. Let’s go to Chipotle and get a burrrrito!”
They speak most of the sentence in a Midwestern accent. Then, on the Spanish words, try to sound as if they were raised in the heart of Mexico City. This is generally done to make their friends feel less sophisticated and worldly while showing solidarity with all the Hispanic people they don’t know.
So get off the fence and choose a side! Learn to roll the fuck out of your R’s or start hickifying Spanish. Get all riled up and flustered when people pronounce things differently. Call them names. The future of Roe Vs. Wade could depend on it!
Kevin Drum makes the same analysis of the meaningless showmanship that goes on in a Supreme Court nomination as I did, but throws out a really good offhand observation:
Conservatives, who seem constitutionally incapable of viewing any non-white nominee as anything other than identity politics run wild, have already decided she’s just a crass affirmative action hire.
Right-wingers, as always, are very adept at taking their own flaws and turning around as ammo against their opponents. Miguel Estrada, Condollezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales were all grossly incompetent at, and unqualified for, their jobs, and yet all three were defended instantly by the right with accusations of racism and/or sexism. Meanwhile, with the possible exception of the guy who played Kumar, is there a single non-white male in the Obama administration, including Obama himself, who was not immedately dismissed by right-wing punditry as being hyped because of that non-white male status?
Of course, the bigest irony remains in the right embracing the candidacy of Sarah Palin, one of the most stunning examples of placing identity politics over legitimate qualifications in the history of American elections. I can only dream that in 2012, the Republican primary candidates will be asked to defend her qualifications four years prior lest they admit that the GOP are the greatest practitioners of abusing affirmative action around.
Current page counts:
Screenplay: 82
Coloring “As the World Burns”: 93
Today I’m going to the Keys with friends, to lie around on the beach and do nothing. I’m looking forward to it! I’ll come back Saturday.
* * * * *
The current issue of Orion magazine has the first of a series of columns by Derrick Jensen, here: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4697/.
Excerpt:
“Think about global warming and attempts to ’solve’ or ’stop’ or ‘mitigate’ it. Global warming (or global climate catastrophe, as some rightly call it), as terrifying as it is, isn’t first and foremost a threat. It’s a consequence. I’m not saying pikas aren’t going extinct, or the ice caps aren’t melting, or weather patterns aren’t changing, but to blame global warming for those disasters is like blaming the lead projectile for the death of someone who got shot. I’m also not saying we shouldn’t work to solve, stop, or mitigate global climate catastrophe; I’m merely saying we’ll have a better chance of succeeding if we recognize it as a predictable (at this point) result of burning oil and gas, of deforestation, of dam construction, of industrial agriculture, and so on. The real threat is all of these.”
Isn't it great that taxpayers fund these new baseball stadiums, which are designed to ensure that there is no affordable seating?
