A Thousand Times No

Tomorrow is slated to be the city’s coldest day yet in the new year, so I am working to finish my new scarf in time to for the deep freeze. (It will be mild by Minnesota standards, but I’ll take the incentive for what it’s worth.)

I was very surprised by how quickly the entire project has gone. Granted, I put in extensive hours knitting while home sick with a cold last week, but I still think this has been the quickest knitted piece I’ve ever put together. Simple scarves don’t require patterns, or extensive finishing stitches, just persistence. I’m also using chubby yarn and large gauge needles, which has made the process fly by.

To fringe or not to fringe? That is the question of the hour. Will I attach short, fuzzy tassels to the ends of this scarf, or simply leave it with a flat edge? I think that once I slip it on, the scarf will let me know what will work best.

Last fall, during a nighttime bus ride from the far end of town, I listened silently as the bus driver chatted with another passenger. The two of them were both middle-aged men, and they spoke with each other at length about keeping their kids on the straight and narrow when there was so much trouble to be had on the city’s streets. They were each fathers who put in a great deal of time with their children, helping to lead and organize group activities, taking an active interest in the well-being of their neighborhoods and their children’s friends.

At some point, their conversation turned to the city’s high homicide rate, and the public hand-wringing over how people were afraid to snitch on their neighbors. Both of them thought that asking folks to step forward was ridiculous.

“What they don’t understand,” said the bus driver, “is that if I say anything, my children are in danger. What are they going to do, send a bodyguard with them to school?”

“Yeah, next thing you know, a so-called accident will happen to one of your kids,” replied the other. “And nobody will have seen anything.”

“I’d be happy to say something if they gave me a reward and sent my whole family away to someplace warm,” the driver laughed. “Move us all out of here? Sign me up! I’d be lookin’ for something to snitch about if they offered us that.”

Of course, they were only joking. When it comes to settling Philly scores, even that wouldn’t be enough. Yesterday morning, a woman who had relocated from Philly to Florida under the federal witness protection program was gunned down less than eight hours after returning to Philly for a funeral.

Meanwhile, in the affluent suburbs of Philadelphia, parents and children are circling the wagons. Because, you know, owning up to bad behavior might interfere with your college prospects. Which, as we all know, is a matter of life and death.

Now the White House and Congress are a-twitter, trying to decide how best to prop up the sagging U.S. economy. Have no fear, some type of economic stimulus plan is just around the corner. To err is human, to bail out divine* federal.

In all likelihood, tax rebates will be coming to American taxpayers before the fireworks go off in honor of our national holiday. But a number of economists have expressed concerns that taxpayers will simply bank the money for a rainy day, or use the hundreds of dollars per household to pay off their ever-greater, pre-existing debts. How can we ensure that Americans will play their proper parts as consumers, giving our economy the lift it so desperately needs?

Simple. Don’t issue checks — or, horrors, electronic fund transfers directly into people’s bank accounts. Just dispense the tax refund in the form of gift cards. The $500 Uncle Sam Gift Card, issued by American Express, would allow you to make purchases at many fine establishments: Home Depot, Walmart, McDonald’s, or any Disney theme park. It could also be used as a gas card at Exxon or Mobil gas stations, or towards the purchase of any GM vehicle. What a better way to inject a little red bull straight into the veins of the Dow Jones Industrial Average?

In all seriousness, I wonder whether there is a way to provide a strong incentive for taxpayers to spend their rebates on new consumer purchases. What if retailers were to grant a 10% - 20% bonus for using a government refund check to pay for a gift card? Let’s say that a $500 rebate check, endorsed over to Macy’s, would result in the taxpayer walking away with $600 in Macy’s gift cards, all set to expire on December 31, 2008. Would that be enough to entice consumers to fork over the dough and get on with the national shopping spree?

It would certainly help ensure that the money isn’t vanishing into the wrong kinds of places — like, you know, drug corners or savings accounts.

* Sorry, it’s getting tough to keep them straight these days.

The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste
by Jane and Michael Stern, ©1990
Harper Collins (1990), 331 pages

Pet clothing? No. Lawn ornaments? No. Ant farms? No. Many items that appear in The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste have never been a part of my life. But there are several others that have already made cameo appearances in this blog. Vegas? Body building? Tom Carvel? Guilty, guilty, guilty. I even gave my friends their own personal Elvis as a wedding present. And you would need a serious amount of torque to pry me away from Jell-O with Cool Whip.

This book is thoroughly researched and endlessly fascinating, with photos appearing in every single page spread. Ever wonder where those goofy poodle clips came from? Back in the day, poodles were bred as gun dogs for hunters.

In fact, the most familiar fey poodle look, known as the “lion” cut, was developed to help them slog through rugged swamps. Poodles needed their thick coats for warmth in the cold water, but it was a hindrance when they swam far, and it caught on brush; so only the hindquarters were sheared, with cuffs left around the ankles and hips to protect from rheumatism.

Which state consumes the most Spam per capita? Where do maraschino cherries grow on trees? Which church founder had a private bowling alley in his home? Whose wardrobe caused the price of leopard coats to triple in value almost overnight? (Hawaii, on marasca trees along the Adriatic coast, Martin Luther, and Jacqueline Kennedy.)

The Sterns clearly have great affection for their subjects, which fills the book with spark, not snark. In their Introduction, they throw in references to David Hume, Baudelaire, Clement Greenberg, and the Armory Show of 1913. They also affirm the virtues of bad taste, concluding:

We hate to think how drab things would be without bad taste. It is a powerful seasoning; sometimes it is so spicy it makes you gag. But consider the alternative: a world without Roller Derby cross-body dunks, Las Vegas lounge acts, blubbering globules of Tammy Faye Bakker’s mascara, and the grandeur of Dolly Parton’s breasts. Life would be just too damn polite.

I’ll raise a flaming tiki drink to that.

If This Book Were A Food, It Would Be:
Aerosol cheese, consumed straight from the can. (Open wide!)

The Elements of Typographic Style
by Robert Bringhurst, ©1992
Hartley & Marks (1996), 350 pages

When I was a child, one of my elderly relatives once said of the Roman alphabet “It’s all the same. There are only 26 letters, and they don’t mean anything. They’re just a collection of shapes.” On the other hand, she pointed out, every Chinese character carried a story inside it. Tens of thousands of tiny pictures and symbols blossomed and recombined to form a monumental written language rich in history, beauty, expressiveness, and proportion.

Are 26 letters too few to strive for those same qualities — or too many? DNA manages to get its job done with a mere four bases (Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine, and Thymine), and the complex patterns found in heavily cabled sweaters can still be achieved using combinations of knit and purl stitches. By those measures, working with a twofold baker’s dozen borders on irrational exuberance.

Bringhurst plumbs letterforms for their secret histories and their inner natures. “Letters have a life and dignity of their own,” he writes. “Well-chosen words deserve well-chosen letters; these in their turn deserve to be set with affection, intelligence, knowledge and skill.”

As for our current catch of the day, Bringhurst notes in a segment entitled “Quotation Marks and Other Intrusions”:

Typographers got by quite well for centuries without quotation marks…In the High Renaissance, quotation was generally marked by a change of font: from roman to italic or the other way around.

The other fish in the sea are plentiful indeed. The British favor single quotes, the French their «guillemets», the Germans their bi-level „Anführungszeichen“. All go well with white wine and the thoughtful application of seasoning.

Typography is not merely about seeing. Bringhurst examines the relationship between page proportions, musical intervals, and geometric shapes, and repeatedly writes of the rhythm of the text. Deep in its historical core, typography was literally a hands-on practice, with each letter being lifted from its place in a type tray. You worked a press with your hands, your back, and whatever you had in your gut, and stained yourself but good doing it. That metaphorical ink, once under the skin, is harder to erase than any tattoo.

If This Book Were A Food, It Would Be:
A soufflé: basic ingredients brought to a delectable, finely balanced, satisfying conclusion through attention to technique. Not for those who prefer to microwave or slam the oven door.

Apple is running another one of their two-part animated ads today on the New York Times website. It consists of a banner ad space running across the top of the page, synchronized with a skyscraper ad running down the right side. Our now-familiar friends “Mac” (Justin Long) and “PC” (John Hodgman) are discussing a quotation displayed in the banner space across the top.

“I’m just correcting this typo from the Wall Street Journal,” PC says as he climbs a stepladder. “Man, they do NOT proofread these things…Come on, that’s an embarrassing blunder.”

She Who Consumes Cupertino Kool-Aid Through An Intravenous Drip shouts, “Tell me about it! How did those stinkin’ tick marks get in there?”

Let me explain (before I hyperventilate). Many, many moons ago, I used to do freelance work for an ad agency that produced the materials Apple distributed to its own sales force during the year-end holiday sales campaigns. I can still remember art directors running around at 2am saying, “@$9*&@#$! Who left in the tick marks? Fix it, people, fix it NOW.”

There’s a clear distinction in typography between quotation marks, which curl inward at the bottoms and usually come to some form of circle or square at the top, and tick marks, which are simply vertical lines that narrow slightly from top to bottom. Double tick marks are used to denote things like inches of length, seconds of time, and double prime in mathematics. But they are not now, nor will they ever be, American quotation marks.

People have come to rely on software to convert their keystrokes from a standard keyboard into true quotation marks and apostrophes. Software designed for word processing or text-based activities generally defaults to some form of “smart quotes” or “curly quotes” so that people need not expend any effort to produce true punctuation. (In fact, WordPress will not permit me to conditionally override its quotation conversion hash, so Abe Lincoln’s height in English Standard looks like this: 6′4″.) But visually-based graphics and multimedia programs still require quotation marks and apostrophes to be entered by hand.

It used to be the case that Art Directors held the line against Tick Mark Creep in a sea of Illustrator, Photoshop, and Flash files. Clearly, this is no longer the case. I feel old now. And cranky, very cranky.

So, as a public service to all you young’ns, here is a quick and dirty keyboard combination guide for true apostrophes and quotation marks on a Macintosh keyboard (because we’re fairly confident that you’re not whipping up those Mac ads on a Windows box):

True right quotation mark ( ” ): Shift + Option + [
True left quotation mark ( “ ): Option + [
True apostrophe ( ’ ): Shift + Option + ]
True reverse apostrophe ( ‘ ): Option + ]

As for you, Apple Inc., I am very, very disappointed. Bad Apple, bad!

P.S. Would-be design professionals: If you can’t detect the difference between tick marks and true punctuation, I suggest you return to your soi-disant design schools and ask for a tuition refund. Clients, if designers hand you tick marks, please reciprocate by handing them their heads. On a plate. Side garnish of curly parsley optional.

– Update, 8pm Eastern –

It appears that some kind soul has attempted to ameliorate this issue.

Permit me, in my dotage, to repeat a rather ancient joke:

Q: What’s worse than biting into an apple and seeing something wriggly?
A: Biting into an apple and seeing half of something wriggly.

(Thank you, Mr. Hodgman, for your concern! I, too, worry for the hobos, to whom these obscure runes may represent a secret signal, redolent of fresh squid, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, and Maureen Dowd. How very disappointed they will be.)

– Update, midnight Eastern –
For a while, they reverted back to all tick marks, but before the day was out, they got it: true quotation marks from end to end. I failed to get a screen grab of the final product before they took the entire ad down, but take heart — if the previous two-paned Apple pitch was any indication, you’ll be seeing this ad again soon at a website near you.

Philadelphia Chickens:
a too-illogical zoological musical revue
by Sandra Boynton, ©2002
Workman Publishing (2002), 64 pages

A colleague stopped by my office at work today and noticed the large stuffed chicken perched on the bookshelf above my desk. “Oh, that’s a Philadelphia Chicken,” I explained. Phil the Chicken always sits at the ready, generously permitting himself to be waved over recalcitrant computer equipment when necessary in the hope of lifting various machine hexes.

If you’re old enough to have sent greeting cards in America the 80’s, then you know Sandra Boynton. Remember the cheerful, albeit sometimes slightly beleaguered animal crews on cards like “Hippo Birdie Two Ewes”? If, during either of the Reagan administrations, you received a group card that was anything other than a Boynton, then your celebration may have been a hasty, last-minute afterthought.

Given the ubiquity of Boynton cards in those days, it’s a good thing her work was presented by Recycled Paper Greetings. In fact, Sandra Boynton may have single-handedly preserved enough virgin forest to completely cover several small republics (or all of Antarctica, whichever is greater and cuter).

Later, with Workman-like flair, Boynton turned her attention in a more musical direction. As appealing as her drawings of jitterbugging “poultry in motion” may be, the highlight of this collection is the accompanying musical CD. Together with collaborator Michael Ford, Boynton serves up over a dozen delightful, completely original songs. A bevy of great musical performers, including many better known for their onscreen work (Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Laura Linney, Kevin Bacon), deliver one well-orchestrated tune after another. It’s been a useful, toe-tapping antidote for some overly long days here in “the pretty little city on the Delaware.”

If This Book Were A Food, It Would Be:
“Chocolate chip cookies, so high on the shelf…” Wholesome, sweet, deeply addictive.

I took great interest in my friend Adam’s post today about his “spanking new,” old-school Mac keyboard. (Wow — check out the italics on that baby!)  He admits that he’s a keyboard snob, and notes: “I like keys that have a long stroke and solid action.” I chuckled at the inadvertent double entendre.

Then I was left to contemplate what my stated preference for the exact opposite qualities might mean…

365 Days of Nature and Discovery
Illustrated by Jane Reynolds,
Text by Phil Gates and Gaden Robinson, ©1994
Michael Joseph (1994), 394 pages

Now that it’s January 15th, I might as well confess to what’s been going on with the book business: I’m thinking about joining Blog 365, which is like National Blog Posting Month, but for duration of an entire year. (Well, almost the entire year. Everyone gets a day of rest on February 29th, otherwise it would end up being Blog 366.) I haven’t quite made the jump yet in terms of signing up, but if I can make it to Leap Day, I might officially get on board.

What does 365 days actually look like? If you’re lucky, it might be as rich, strange, and wondrous as the world depicted by British natural history illustrator Jane Reynolds. Start anywhere you like in this book: Beak Day, Armour Day, Water Lily Day, Abyssal Fish Day, Dodos and Extinction Day. There are beautiful, intricate illustrations of every manner of flora and fauna, with short text passages that detail the unique qualities of each featured subject. Many of the pages also describe informal science experiments suitable for children to carry out at home, allowing them to learn more about how to observe and understand natural phenomena.

Does it make me a bad person to say that even with the engaging, well-composed text and book design, I’m still partial to the illustrations? A diving kingfisher, a handstanding skunk, a mongoose taking on a cobra, a mighty baobab tree. If everyone realized that this too is what “science” really looks like, it might not be such a dirty word in contemporary American culture.

If This Book Were A Food, It Would Be:
Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. Magical, various, complete with “Eeeeew” flavors like Lice Day, Dung Day, and Poisonous Plants Day.

Me Talk Pretty One Day
by David Sedaris, ©2000
Back Bay Books (2001), 276 pages

After work today I found myself standing behind two Wharton MBA students as I lined up to withdraw money from an ATM. They were engaged in a discussion about household help. One made a passing reference to her housekeeper. The other said, “Do you like your…person?” The pause before that final word was slight, almost imperceptible. “Oh no,” replied the first, “I hate her. Hate her. Why? Do you like yours?”

Ms. Hate-My-Housekeeper than went on to comment about the cash machine. “Hah, it’s asking for multiples of five. That’s how you definitely know this is a college campus. Why doesn’t it just dispense twenties?” “I know,” replied the other sympathetically, “I was at a machine the other day that gave me a ten. Look!” She opened her wallet to quickly flash the naughty denomination like someone showing off a Brazilian wax. As they walked away, they began talking about their accounting class.

Somehow I knew these two young women could not possibly share my excitement in discovering the ideal toilet brush this weekend. I stumbled upon the OXO Curve yesterday and had to bring one home. Take a good look at the spring-loaded case. Who knew that taking on shit work could be so beautiful?

A really talented industrial design team, for one, with David Sedaris right on their heels. I’m sure this beguiling device would have spared Sedaris the indiginities of being faced with the eponymous “Big Boy” in the bathroom at his brother’s house. But adversity breeds character — and allow Sedaris to give us a rib-splitting tale of a unique type of identity crisis.

Sedaris toiled at many different jobs as a young man, and spent several years working as a housecleaner. To help pass the time while vacuuming, he would pretend he was being interviewed by public radio host extraordinaire Terry Gross on her show, “Fresh Air.” It was a dream that helped keep Sedaris going, despite the absurdities heaped on him by some of his clients.

Years later, after the breakout popularity of his “Santaland Diaries” on NPR, Sedaris was actually a guest on “Fresh Air.” When Ira Glass asked him how the interview had gone, Sedaris expressed his happiness, having finally grasped the brass ring. And then he added, in a small voice, “But what will I dream of now?”

I don’t know about him, but I dream that there are plenty of talented satirists picking through the dirty laundry of would-be corporate climbers everywhere.

If This Book Were A Food, It Would Be:
A full-on pig pick’n, with a saucy mess all over your face.