I’m a little late to the party here, but I’ve recently been listening to the podcast titled I’ve Had It hosted by Jennifer Welch and Angie “Pumps” Sullivan. Although they get into a lot of political shit, there is nothing too sacred that can’t be dressed down on their program. Recently they’ve slammed oblivious cell phone talkers/walkers, misbehaving children in public places, and manly-labeled products for insecure men who need validation of their masculinity.
I suspect the reason I love listening to these two Oklahoma-raised women is the title of their podcast could easily be the title of this blog because when I sit down to write something here, it’s pretty much me coming to that moment of, “I’ve had it with this or that.”
In the spirit of Welch and Sullivan, I thought I’d do a little of my own I’ve Had It in this post—hopefully as well as any 65-year-old White dude can pull it off.
Living in a small Wyoming town, it’s safe to say that most folk here are conservative—very conservative in my opinion… as in outright stupid conservative just for the sake of being a conservative. Without any doubt, White MAGA has a solid foothold in Powell, Wyoming and throughout Park County which includes the tourist-based town of Cody.
It’s common to hear various leaders and high-profile members of Powell talk about how friendly it is here. I suspect there’s some truth in it, but after living here for over 30 years, there’s a little more to this friendliness than just pure unadulterated congeniality.
My suspicion is rooted in one continuous experience I have in this town on any given day—it’s the dreaded four-way stop sign intersections.
As a regular cyclist around town (and occasional driver) there are numerous four-way stop intersections throughout this town. Given how “nice” people are in Powell, Wyoming, if you’re on a bicycle, they typically wave you on even if they arrive at the intersection well before you. And that’s the part that gets me.
As a bicycle commuter, I am observant of the rules of the road which apply to both cars and bicycles, including the proper protocol for a four-way stop sign. There’s nothing worse than being on my bike approaching a four-way that has a vehicle already stopped. Instead of proceeding through the intersection as I’m clearly slowing down in my approach, these Powell do-gooders will stay there and watch me come to a stop. And after I have stopped, they do that Powell thing and wave me on even though they were there way before I arrived. I call it “The Powell Standoff.”
So, consider it safe to say, I’ve had it with this Dudley-Do-Right shit. No doubt and in their defense, they would likely tell anyone that they are simply being kind to the cyclists, but I’m not buying it. If they had simply proceeded through the stop sign after coming to a complete halt, thus establishing the right-of-way, I would have only had to slow down as they proceeded through the intersection.
And here’s my theory… I don’t think they wave me through because they are being nice. I think their over-the-top Anita Bryantness is simply a ruse for being nosey so they can see who the crazy libtard is on a bicycle when it’s barely above freezing outside—because liberals are the only ones who really ride bikes around here beyond the summer months.
I can feel their indifferent stares as I proceed slowly through the intersection, only because I had to come to a complete stop waiting on them. If they had just followed the rule, both parties would have been through the intersection sans a “Powell Stand-Off.” If you’re a pedestrian, it’s almost worse because they have that much longer to stare at you as you cross any given intersection where you might be—it doesn’t even have to be a four way or a pedestrian crossing! Their facial expressions say they are doing you a big favor, but inside they just want to mow you down—reduced to a giant grease spot on the asphalt.
Lastly, I know there are other bike riders in this town that think it’s their right to blow through stop signs because they are on a bicycle. I suppose this could be another occasion for Powell drivers to hesitate at a four-way. However, these lawless cyclists give other riders like me a bad look. So my advice to drivers who encounter bike-riders who ignore the rules of the road is to simply run them over when they go flying through stop signs.
While doom scrolling the other day on Instagram, a guy popped up in my feed who I’d never seen before and proceeded to insist to the Instagram community that single spacing after periods was “fucking bullshit.”
This grabbed my attention immediately because what he was saying flew in the face of the most basic rule in typography I learned way back in the summer of 1977. It would also become one of the first things my graphic design students would learn in the first semester of their first year—it was that basic.
Like anyone, I can get pretty worked up when it comes to politics and other things that divide our country. But, there are a few other topics that will rub me the wrong way even if they lack the attention of the general public—bad typographic advice is certainly one of them.
Here’s the transcript of his post on two-spaces vs. one-space…
“When you type a sentence and you put a period… I’m being told that you can only have one space afterwards. And that’s fucking bullshit, and I’m tired of it because you put two spaces after a sentence. White space on a paper attracts your eye. Look at any Apple ad that you have and all you see is one image, right? It is two spaces. It’s designed for the eyeball and I’m tired (again he’s tired) of people saying only one space. So, if you see me in the courthouse, don’t fucking come and talk to me about one space—cause it’s two.”
And there you have it—no exceptions—just pure fact according to mild-mannered criminal defense lawyer Jeremy Rosenthal who apparently moonlights as a graphic designer or typographer given his extensive knowledge on spacing after sentences. In this age of Trump where “my loud opinion is as good as your facts,” his rant is spot on. Imagine, a lawyer spouting off about typography as if he’s some kind of expert or authority on the subject. Better yet is the pure, unadulterated stupidity as he doesn’t even cite any sources to back-up his moronic claim, just a blind decree, “…don’t fucking come and talk to me about one space… cause it’s two!”
Imagine how bankrupt Rosenthal’s working vocabulary must be when it comes to typography—using secretarial language like “linespacing” for leading, “three-dots” for em leaders, and likely doesn’t know the difference between a hyphen and an en-dash.
Is this what happens when one becomes a lawyer… you suddenly think you’re an expert on anything beyond the practice of law? For God’s sake, Jeremy, you’re out of order!
Someone should send his tirade on spacing after sentences to whatever law school he attended. My bet is they won’t be surprised. I can almost hear one of his profs saying something like, “Yeah, that’s old Jeremy alright… shoot first and ask questions later. That’s a true testament that he wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box.”
There are certain things we do (whether deliberate or unaware) that illustrate to the world that we are undoubtedly stupid—wearing a red MAGA hat surely comes to mind. But there are other discernible means of accomplishing this too—Rosenthal’s rant here is definitely one of them.
Further, is this how he operates in the courtroom too… just goes off spouting diarrhea all over the courtroom without presenting any evidence backing his claims?” All I could think about in watching his post was, “What a fucking idiot. I pity the parties he represents in court.”
Basic Typography 101 I never thought I’d find myself fighting this fight again. After 30-plus years of covering this basic typographic practice in the classroom every year, here I am one last time trying to silence another clueless moron who believes they are an authority on the subject. Fuck me.
So, one last time—as a professional and educator in graphic design, prepress, and print—I’m going to clear the air on this subject. I hope to never speak of this again.
I learned in a high school typing class my sophomore year (1975-1976) that two spaces followed all sentences. I never asked why that was and simply followed the rule. This class met everyday for one hour and we only worked on manual typewriters. During my junior and senior years, I was enrolled in a vocational graphic arts program, and as a result became curious about design, publishing, and typography. During the summer between those two years, I found my first job in the field working as a typesetter for a weekly newspaper (The Signal of Canal Fulton, Ohio) on a Compugraphic Jr phototypesetting system—the same system used in our high school graphics program. On day one at The Signal, I was instructed, “No double spacing after sentences.” Like that typing class, I never ask why this was.
Reporters in our newsroom would type up their stories/manuscripts on regular typewriters and upon editing, the manuscripts would be sent up to composition where I would rekey each story into our phototypesetting system. Of course this rekeying of any given manuscript opened me up to possible typographic errors, but it also allowed me to edit out the various typewriter practices that weren’t suitable for publishing—omitting two spaces after sentences was one of them.
It was only in college that started learning the basic dos and don’ts of typography, and more importantly, the rationale behind them.
When the typewriter came on the scene in the early 1900s, many different practices were introduced that addressed the device’s poverty of characters (think the limited number of key strikers that crash against the ink ribbon and transfer the mark onto the paper). Many of the characters that we take for granted on our PCs were impossible to produce on a typewriter such as choosing between roman, boldface, italic, and bold italic. There were no options for real quotes, apostrophes, or prime marks—just the straight, up and down prime marks (that were used interchangeably as quotation marks and apostrophes, often called “straight quotes”). Other characters unavailable on a typewriter were real fractions, dashes, diacritical indicators, etc. So, the practice of double spacing after sentences was simply another way of accommodating the limitations of the typewriter, such as—and here’s the important part—the generation of monospaced characters, where every character takes up the same amount of space (even a period or space takes up the same width as a capital/uppercase W or M).
Monospaced vs. Proportionally spaced
In an effort to break up the monotony of monospaced characters, double spacing following a sentence was introduced to improve the “readability” of the copy (look that definition up, there’s more to it than you think). These typewriter practices were very appropriate for the limited-characters the device could generate, but when the typewriter was phased out, sadly some of these practices were carried over to the PC—in particular desktop publishing. But the PC was never about emulating the typewriter even if it had the same keyboard layout. Contrary to that the PC offered all of the features that had always been available in traditional and modern typesetting systems, but at a cost that many could afford. When tools/equipment of any profession become democratized like this, there is always the chance that training and knowledge of the processes are ignored or simply overlooked. The same thing happened with plumbing when PVC was introduced. So, anyone could be a plumber as long as they had a hack saw and glue (so we thought). The same is true in owning a PC and having access to professional software (fonts included). Just because one has the tools doesn’t make one a publisher or graphic designer, although that is the route that many have taken. In the transition from typewriters to PCs, many people have assumed that the lessons they learned on a typewriter were just as valid on the PC. However, limiting typography to the practices originating from a typewriter is akin to limiting architecture to only using cinder blocks.
The storage area size of each character relates directly to its frequency of usage, including the 3-em space.
When it comes to word spacing (including after sentences) typesetting systems used for printing and publishing, going back to hand setting individual metal characters (see diagram above), have always used a 3-em space between words and after sentences because the typefaces available were elegant and smart in their designs, and more importantly were proportionally spaced (google that). Look closely at any publication worth its salt, you won’t see double spacing after sentences because it isn’t needed. Also worth noting is that double spacing between sentences can hobble some justification if it falls at the end of a line.
Most don’t know this, but the holy 3-em space is what you always get when you hit the spacebar on your PC. Type designers and foundries would surely protest violently if they knew typewriter practices were being used on their proportionally-spaced type designs. Most fonts on PCs are proportionally spaced fonts—Times Roman, Helvetica, Arial, Garamond, etc. But, there are a few monospaced fonts available on a PC as well. The font Courier is the most common. So, as I would tell my students, if you use Courier (or some other monospaced font), by all means double space after sentences. Otherwise, it’s single spacing for everything else—it always has been!
A Dimwitted Rebellion The only exceptions to these tried-and-true typography standards appear to come from various unrelated disciplines that have adopted conflicting standards such as double spacing after sentences no matter what kind of font is used—think English/grammar folk, or the law community as in the case of Attorney Rosenthal. Many of those who defend these “commandeered rules” will say things like, “It just looks better and is easier to read,” or “that’s how I was taught.” But I have yet to meet up with anyone who can cite any legitimate, and widely accepted research that defends their stance.
The irony in all of this is that we now have this incredible system of hardware and software in front of us that can be transformed into a powerful publishing tool. And despite all that, there are some of us who treat it as if it’s still a typewriter. These typographical luddites lack any sense of curiosity or imagination about how today’s PCs can do so much more while failing to circumvent those old practices that were derived from the shortcomings of their early-20th Century typewriters. This is akin to having a Formula One car and only using it to go to the market to get groceries.
I have no push-back for these roped-off cases of bad typography practices in specific professions. If they want to be isolationist in their dumbed-down typographical practices, I say, “live and let live.” But, what I do have a problem with is when some, let’s say, jackass lawyer, with no background in typography, publishing, or graphic design foolishly declares that double spacing after sentences is some kind of universal standard.
There’s a great deal of information that one can easily find on this subject if they’ve made it to this far and aren’t convinced or just want to know more. That’s admirable or just downright crazy—maybe both. Given that I’ve been so outspoken on this topic for years, perhaps there is an abbreviated way to say all this so that it fits on my tombstone. I’m open to suggestions.
If you live in Powell long enough, sooner or later you’ll hear someone tell you how friendly, how neighborly our town is. That being the case, I think this is a good time with summer approaching to challenge the dog-owners of this community to zen on that word “neighborly.”
Having lived here for over 30 years now, I think my experience and viewpoint regarding barking dogs has been rich to say the least—especially in the summer when the windows of the house are open at night. Air conditioning is nice, but there’s nothing like sleeping with fresh air coming through the window, unless that fresh air is accompanied by the sounds of a neglected dog barking in the wee hours of the night.
Just in my neighborhood alone—on both sides of my house—I experience at any given time of the day (or night) barking dogs that are left unattended while their owners are often away, going in and out of a house via “dog doors” into a fenced yard to bark at anyone who happens to walk past the property. Across the street, it’s the same scenario, though I’ve never heard this dog in the evenings. In all of their barking in the daytime and frequently at night, I’ve rarely seen or heard an owner correcting the problem. What am I to make of this? As I see it, these are people of our community who are simply not good neighbors and are so lazy as dog owners to only care about their own self-centered lives.
I challenge anyone to take an hour-long walk on the streets of this town—especially the alleys—you’ll have plenty of dogs barking at you.
I should be clear here, that I’m not only talking about dogs that bark all night long—although that’s not an unusual thing to happen around here. But, if one is a light sleeper, it doesn’t take a dog to bark all night long to ruin a night’s sleep—ten seconds of barking is all it takes to disturb one’s sleep. At 63-years-old now, once I wake up from such a disturbance, it often takes up to two hours to fall back asleep.
In the past, when I’ve initially addressed some of these owners in a polite, but curt manner, rather than an apology and a promise to address the issue, I’ve experienced downright rude and even threatening responses. And, taking my complaints to Powell’s illustrious Law Enforcement is simply a waste of time as they have requested me to document the various instances of such disturbances and report back to them at a later time. God forbid they find out for themselves—getting out of their car and walking down the street or alley. Instead they just drive by and maybe they’ll stop by the owners and inform them that someone is complaining, but nothing ever comes of it—not to my knowledge. I know they have visited with one of my neighbors in the past on this matter, and yet the barking has never ceased. From a policing viewpoint, that’s just lame.
A barking dog next door should not be my problem to solve. And perhaps I’m the only one in Powell that objects… so it seems. My only reprieve is throwing an occasional firecracker out into my yard—hoping that the canine will stop its annoying behavior and perhaps run into the house and shit on the carpet. That’s probably overly optimistic. However, the coming of the colder months when windows are closed up and the barking dogs of Powell aren’t as likely to be left out all night—though sadly, some are—is when this problem is truly minimized.
I have this unproven and very opinionated theory that the frequency of any given dog’s barking is inversely related to the intelligence of its owner. Go ahead and prove me wrong. Until then, I’m convinced that Powell, Wyoming is below average when it comes to being neighborly.
Sometimes I simply love to hate. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve caught myself saying this regarding various subjects in my life. The latest resurrection of the phrase likely came about because I traveled to Las Vegas with a couple of friends for the SEMA car show, and Vegas is certainly a place that I love to hate. In fact, I love hating it so much, I couldn’t wait to get there.
Lots of Towels
Barry & Chairs
Airport Art
Leaving Las Vegas
Drift Fans & Smart Phones
Convention Center Backside
Drift Fans
Airport Advert
CircusCircus Jumper
Convention Room Dregs
Zen Society Jumper
LV Lite Rail Patrons
Convention Goers
On the Way2SEMA Fest
There’s much to hate about Vegas if one just thinks about it—especially from my rural setting of Wyoming. So, I always look forward to the newest Las Vegas particulars to hate that I never expected or considered. So, beyond the usual overcrowded and loud casinos, overpriced tickets for washed-up entertainment icons, and the ubiquitous, supersized LED displays, I was pleasantly surprised to add a couple of new things to what I love to hate about Las Vegas—all on the last full day of my stay there.
SEMA Fest On the second day of SEMA Fest not long after the gates opened, I was turned back at the entrance by security personnel because I had a “professional grade” camera with me—a modest Yashica Electro 35 (mm) film camera. At first, I thought they were just having me on because I had a camera that was built in the early 1970s. But, when I realized the security staffer was not joking, I reached around in my back pocket and pulled out my iPhone X and said, “You should be more worried about this camera.” The staffer didn’t budge only to tell me that the iPhone was permitted, while assuring me that I could not enter with my threatening 50-some-year-old 35mm, f1.7 fixed 45mm lens rangefinder camera.
I was sure there was some mistake, but once I realized they weren’t going to relent, I gave up and walked back to a friend’s car to squirrel away my humble Yashica. During that long walk back to the car, all I could think about was how ignorant the organizers of SEMA Fest must be when it comes to cameras and photography. I felt like I had been transported back to the entrance gates of Northeast Ohio’s Blossom Music Center in the 1970s. And so, it was during that walk back to the car and once more to the SEMA Fest entrance that my love to hate Vegas came screaming back like a Tom Brady, game-winning offensive drive in the final seconds.
With my film camera receiving a red-card by the SEMA Fest photography police, I realized that whatever photography I would attempt that day would be limited to my iPhone. Now I had a new mission thanks to SEMA Fest’s draconian photography policy—I would shoot to my heart’s content with my iPhone and eventually submit images from the day to whatever paying, professional publications I could find while making sure that the SEMA Fest photo nazis get notified of my supplemental income from that day—with my iPhone!
I’m never very confident when it comes to my own photography, but spite can be a powerful thing, changing a person’s outlook in any given situation.
Circus Circus It’s not a stretch to predict that the next major casino to be razed on the Las Vegas Strip will be Circus Circus. It was a dump 20 years ago. Today, it is nothing more than an ugly and smelly eyesore on the life support of desperate, low-stake gamblers.
Because SEMA Fest was in the shadows of the crumbling 35-story Circus Circus, we walked over to the 50-some-year-old rundown infestation in search of a modest lunch. What a mistake that was as I was reminded of shopping at a crowded Walmart on Black Friday—not to mention the healthy menagerie of trashy and gloomy patrons filling up its corridors, restaurants, and gambling locations.
Further, while walking around in Circus Circus, I was certain that its dystopian interior and unhealthy-looking patrons was surely the place I would contract a bad case of COVID-19.
Lastly, like most of the other casinos in Vegas, Circus Circus is no different in its tolerance and accommodating environment for smokers. Say what you want about the casino high-tech ventilation systems, when I returned to my room that evening, I felt as if I had been walking through the smoke-filled 1970s all over again. It’s been a long time since my clothes smelled like a crowded bar full of smokers.
A FedEx Boeing 777 near Powell flying from Memphis to Seattle.
Most people would consider my hometown of Powell, Wyoming—whether they live here or are visiting—a pretty remote place in this world of eight billion humans. Certainly there are other places more remote, but in terms of averages in the United States, we’re pretty much in the boondocks, the sticks, the hinterlands… the middle of nowhere. Some locals call this part of Wyoming, “The Big Empty.”
Typical of remote locations, there is often a lack of diversity in the populations occupying them. And, Powell, Wyoming is no different. With the exception of a small body of international students at the local college, Powell is pretty much a “white-bread” community.
Yet, nearly every clear day I’m reminded that perhaps we aren’t that remote and maybe we’re a little more diverse than I think.
Thanks to a little app on my phone called Plane Finder, I can learn about the planes that fly overhead on any given day which are relatively many given we are in the middle of nowhere. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we are near a major airport, but I’m astounded in how many planes I see flying overhead on any given day—even if they are typically 25,000 feet or higher. And, thanks to Plane Finder, I know about any given plane’s origins, its destination, how high above me it is flying, how fast it is traveling, how long it has been in the air and how much more time remaining in its flight, its manufacturer and model, its flight number, and which airline it represents.
Real time image of FX17 in PlaneFinder.
Beyond the knowledge of these airplanes overhead, flying from all over the country (and world), it’s fun to think about the diversity of the passengers onboard those aircraft that are only about thirty-some thousand feet away as they transit the typical blue skies over Powell. They may look down and see an arid and sparsely populated land mass below—that is anything but inspirational—but I look up and think about the places where they are going to and coming from, and the variety of cultures on board, and suddenly my outlook on the day gets a little brighter.
For example, just today I looked up to see a plane heading almost due south. It was flying from Calgary/YYC to Dallas-Fort Worth/DFW. Not long after, another plane flying due east from Portland/PDX to Chicago/ORD. Other days, I’ve looked up to discover a plane coming from Frankfurt/FRA and heading to Los Angeles/LAX or Las Vegas/LAS.
Visiting with one of my students today—who happens to be an international student from Timor-Leste—I said to her, “You must see all kinds of planes flying over your home town.” Strangely enough, she said airplanes are pretty rare. I was in disbelief, so we looked at the current air traffic over Timor-Leste via Plane Finder, and oddly enough, she was right. There’s all kinds of air traffic in that part of the world, but the routes seem to circumvent her island nation for whatever reason.
I was telling a couple of my colleagues in the art department about this and wondering how we could do some kind of collaborative art project about this local, overhead anomaly. (If something comes to mind as you’re reading this, feel free to leave a comment, or just run with this idea and do something about the planes that fly over your community—wherever it is. I’d love to hear about it too.)
In case you are wondering, yes Powell/POY does have an airport, but no major carriers service our lone landing strip where (mostly) single-engine puddle jumpers land and take-off. If you want to get on a major carrier airplane while in Powell, you’ll have to find your way to nearby Cody/COD or Billings, Montana/BIL about 90-miles away.
Of course, now that I know more about these planes that fly quietly overhead, more questions have found their way to me, leading to more rabbit holes to go down on the internet. For example, I noted that FedEx flies their planes over Powell on a regular basis from Memphis/MEM to Portland/PDX or Seattle/SEA and back.
FedEx’s Memphis hub map of flights.
That got me thinking, “What’s so significant about Memphis/MEM to Portland/PDX or Memphis/MEM to Seattle/SEA? It turns out that Memphis/MEM is the main hub and the location of their headquarters. Everything that is FedEx seems to pass through Memphis/MEM. And, how did that come to be, I wondered? Because during FedEx’s infancy, they purposely chose Memphis/MEM because Memphis International Airport/MEM is near the mean population center of the country and inclement weather is relatively infrequent compared to other centrally located international airports.
While waiting for the oil to be changed in my truck at Right Choice Automotive Repair in Fairbanks, Alaska, I decided to hang around their modest waiting area rather than leave the premises (since I had no other ride). Instead of turning to my phone, I noted a disorganized pile of magazines and pulled the first one off the top because it appeared to be the newest.
The May 2022 issue of Vogue would be my muse as I waited for the ordinary yet necessary service to my rig.
The first thing that came to mind as I started to browse through the pages was what I often tell my students, “Stay up to date with as much as you can, stay up with current trends and fashion, the news, culture, art, everything around you whether it interest you or not. It will make you a better graphic designer.” Following up on that, I thought yes, a subscription to Vogue magazine would be a step in the right direction when it came to such advice.
As those thoughts went through my head, I pondered the last time I had picked up a magazine of this genre myself. It had been awhile—long enough that I couldn’t recall when. Mind you, when I was in my mid-20s, I had a subscription to Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ) for at least two years. So, there’s that.
Unlike my mid-1980s, young-adult outlook, I wasn’t looking through Vogue as a consumer now, I was looking at it as a graphic designer—taking note of all the techniques and treatments they employed in their advertising and editorial pages. With that keen eye dialed in on the pages, I didn’t find anything too cutting edge. In fact, many of the layouts were fairly pedestrian. I reckoned that this conservative design ensured that whatever typography and design was employed, it wouldn’t distract from the “high-end” photography whether it was on the editorial or advertising pages. And, isn’t that why people pick up magazines like Vogue… for the photography?
Omega watches model: she clearly doesn’t like wearing a watch.
Along with the above, here are a few not-so-graphic-design take-aways from my one-hour romp with Vogue in a Fairbanks, Alaska, car repair shop.
Regarding the skin care and make-up advertisements throughout the publication, I would like to challenge these advertisers to run disclaimers in their adverts akin to what the tobacco companies are required to post in their advertisements and products, but a little different… something along the lines of, “No Photoshop was used in the creation of this advertisement.” I mean, think about it, you’re advertising a skin care product that is said to make skin look smooth and youthful, but like most advertisers, (and most folk know this) you have post-production Photoshop work on the images to make sure the model’s skin in the advert is actually smooth and youthful. That’s hardly a convincing sale.
Speaking of smooth and youthful skin, where are the older adults? I never noticed their absence when I was going through GQ back in my youth, but it was glaring in this 2022 Vogue issue. I mean if you want to talk about how great your skin care product is, why not employ a model who is at least pushing 40 instead of 20? (Who cares if they do Photoshop work at that point?)
My recollection of 1980s GQ was that the models all appeared happier, or at least not miserable—even if they weren’t all smiling back then. Most of the posers in 2022 (assuming this issue of Vogue represents today’s average model facial expression) are simply expressionless, and come across as bored, even miserable as if they were some kind of indentured, rich punk. I have to wonder, was the photographer behind the camera saying things like, “C’mon, show me sexy, babe,” or were they saying, “Show me how excited you are about a weekend getaway with… (insert least favorite celebrity/politician here).”
Perhaps the exception in fashion magazines: an older model who is clearly happy for Dolce & Gabbana.
I know these kind of publications are known for their advertisements and that’s one of the top reasons people purchase them, but I counted 27 pages of advertisements before I reached part one of the table of contents. Following that, more ads and then part two of the table of contents. The first editorial piece was listed on page 49.
A few things that I noted that haven’t changed at all since the 80s is the advertisers. There is still an abundance of jewelry, clothing, make-up, skin care, and perfume ads (and their fragrant pages), but only one cigarette ad in the entire issue and it wasn’t even a cigarette one would associate with fashion—Lucky Strikes, the cigarette my father smoked when he was a young man.
I suppose my grumblings here are somewhat expected given my past 60-year-old status, but I did find one very nice and refreshing feature of this 2022 periodical—it’s cover featured a pregnant, Black woman named Rihanna. I hear she’s very talented and popular.
The other day, I put together a list of things I needed to accomplish for a trip into town—you know, errands.
Most important was a visit to Costco and to have a meander in some of the Fairbanks charity shops. I also considered finding a new place to have lunch and perhaps consider an early afternoon movie.
It’s a little over 20 miles from the house to Fairbanks, so I always put a list together to make sure I get as much bang for my buck—especially when gas is well over five dollars per gallon.
After driving all the way into town and making it to the Salvation Army thrift shop, I realized my wallet wasn’t with me (but my phone was) and I had only been in the store for a couple of minutes. I was dead in the water as far as achieving the goals for my excursion into town. In short, my jaunt into town was a total failure resulting only in a waste of precious time and fuel.
So, home I went thinking I would just get an early start on the second part of my day—weeding the garden. I couldn’t bring myself to return to the house and retrieve my wallet and then do it all again. I felt as if a little self-imposed punishment was needed. Besides, when I do this back home, it usually relates to forgetting something that is work related, but in those instances, we’re only talking about getting back on my bicycle and riding the one-third of a mile back to the house to correct my forgetfulness.
So, one might be saying to themselves about now, this seems like a pretty innocuous event to even write about here; and perhaps it is. However, the following day I made sure I had everything I needed and made the drive again—successfully completing all of my objectives (sans lunch and a movie).
Coming home, I started thinking about the previous failed trip. Anytime I do-something-for-nothing (as I like to call such events), I start thinking about everything that transpired and challenge myself to find something that might have been meaningful in my folly… you know, a message or lesson that perhaps the universe was attempting to convey to me that I initially didn’t note.
All I could think about was the Fresh Air story on the radio coming home. Terry Gross was interviewing Kelly Lytle Hernández discussing her new bookBad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands. It was very engaging as I drove home—making me forget my forgetfulness—and realizing this was a bit of American history that I’d never, ever heard about in any of my history-related formal education courses. Here I was, almost 62-years-old and I was learning about something that we should all know.
Without getting too much into it, I’ll just say here for the reader, that Hernández’s book is about Ricardo Flores Magón and his magonistas that played a pivotal role in early days of the Mexican Revolution that started in 1910, including the role our government played in the event’s outcomes and the impact it had on our country.
So, upon realizing what that non-productive round-trip was really about, I purchased the book and have added it to my growing summer-reading list.
All I can say is that the next time you “drop the ball” regarding some task or objective you’re out to complete, look around you, there might be something else there worth picking up.
I’ve been struggling lately with the following: I love to kill mosquitos. Truly, the only good mosquito is a dead one… or at least one about to be eaten by a creature that feeds on them.
There I said it (i.e., “…forgive me Father for I have sinned”). It seems wrong to admit this. It seems wrong to say that I enjoy killing anything. But, there’s nothing like having a mosquito alight on your forearm only for it to be squashed rather than sucking your blood. It’s so satisfying. Or even if he does start to partake of your precious bodily fluid, to smash it before it can lift-off in time is pretty rewarding too—in a vengeful sort of way.
I suspect I’m far from being alone in this frame of mind.
This started me thinking about why it is so many of us truly love to kill them and, why—in my case—I don’t like to kill anything else.
Perhaps it is their small size. The smaller something is, and the simpler it is as an organism, and thus the better it feels to kill it. Yet, I don’t go out of my way to step on ants or squish a spider, but I don’t have much guilt when I consider all of the various splattered insects on the grill of my car or truck after a long road trip in the summer. If I hit a bird or run over a small animal, that will bother me—sometimes for days.
Each of us should probably ask ourselves, how big does an organism have to be before we end up feeling guilty about ending its life.
To enjoy the killing of mosquitos might also have something to do with how one can’t reason with a mosquito. You can’t just say “NO!” to them like a dog or some other threatening animal. You can’t shoo them away either. They don’t listen, they just relentless keep on coming after you, and the only way to stop them is to kill them. Even the slightest physical force is likely to kill them given their tiny and delicate anatomy, so might as well be certain in their killing.
Oh, I suppose if you are a committed humanitarian, you can repel them with my favorite Alaska aftershave, Off! (the Deep Woods variety), but who wants to spray poison all over their skin everyday—even when indoors—just to repel a pest with a single-minded objective of drinking your blood.
The idea of being attacked must have something to do with enjoying the killing of a mosquito. No one likes to be attacked. Come to think of it, I like killing deer flies and horseflies too. Why? Because I’m being attacked in the same way. Something wants to bite me, I will likely want to kill it, and in the case of mosquitos, enjoy doing it. There’s no turning the other cheek to mosquitos or other biting insects in my world.
So perhaps that is it… the simple fact that we are being relentless attacked by a species that clearly outnumbers us, and along with all of that, carries a number of deadly diseases in their assaults on us.
Here in Alaska (for the summer of 2022) where there are so many mosquitos, they take the killing of them to another level. Introducing the electrically charged mosquito racquet. At first glance, it looks like a racquetball racquet, but with two AA batteries (or USB charging) and the push of a button, any flying insect in its way, gets zapped. If they get trapped in the metal mesh of the racquet and the operator keeps the button engaged, they are simply cremated. Again, it’s a bit disconcerting to say this, but this mosquito racquet is pretty cool as the blood-suckers are practically vaporized before your very eyes.
I overheard on the radio yesterday that during the Stone Ages, it is estimated that half of the population back then died from malaria-carrying mosquitos. So, consider the killing of these pests as payback for the death of so many of our ancestors.
On the brighter side regarding mosquitos, the gene-editing technology CRISPR is to be used to produce a gene-altered mosquito that would be released into the wild carrying an anti-malarial protein that would be passed on to offspring when mating with other mosquitos. Ideally, malaria could be wiped out or drastically reduced in the near future. For now it appears that this treatment is probably at least a decade out before full implementation. If that’s the case, you might want to invest in some good, old-fashioned mosquito protection (see above).
Last night, I awoke around 1:30 in the morning after retiring at 10:30—typical of my sleep patterns in the last three years. I restarted a YouTube ASMR video on my phone nearby—the same one that I fell asleep to at 10:30, but it would be another two hours later before I would fall back to sleep.
When I finally fell back asleep, I found myself in some large parking lot associated with a big arena or stadium—it felt like somewhere in the Phoenix metropolitan area. There was some event going on as the parking lot surrounding the structure was full. For whatever reason, I was outside of the structure (near its doors) hanging out and waiting for the event to conclude. It felt as though I was waiting for someone who was still in attendance on the inside, but I don’t know who that was.
While outside, it seemed as though I was carrying on in small talk with someone that I knew—it could have been Jerry Brown, an old friend I knew when I was working for ASU Student Publications.
Then suddenly, Jerry or someone else nearby shouted out, “It’s finally happening… Here it comes.”
I walked away from the doors so I could see around a portion of the building to where a person was pointing—a rising and colorless mushroom cloud on the horizon—akin to a giant jellyfish in the sky. There was no sound at that moment, and it was far away, but not too far to be seen, growing larger and taking up more of the sky. Perhaps it was on the outskirts of Phoenix like one of its Air Force Bases—Luke or Williams, I couldn’t be sure.
What I was sure of, more would be coming—perhaps at any moment.
I was hesitant in what to do next. Should I venture into the arena and throw myself into a crowd that was certainly going to be panicked by the time I was inside, finding the person I came with, or simply go to the car and wait for them—or wait for the next strike?
Knowing what I had just witnessed, I knew it didn’t matter. The end that was surely near was going to override whatever I would do next. And then I woke myself for another round of sleeplessness.
Meanwhile, Russia’s attack on Ukraine enters its third week with everyday reminders that this is a war no one can afford to escalate.
