Artwriting

November 30, 2007


Handwriting as art

Tags: Writing |

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The Week at Misc. Asst. - 11.30.07

November 30, 2007


Until readership at Misc. Asst. gets off the ground, I’ll be summarizing the content over here at BMOWP. So get reading!

11/22
Misc. Thanksgiving thought asst. from Japan - rsanderson
-Thoughts on Thanksgiving in a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving.

Al, Give Me Absolution - Deane
-How do you know you’re doing enough to save the planet?

11/26
Guitar Hero — the game that defines our generation? - Tevin Steinke
-Rock on, friends. Rock on.

11/29
High definition, low quality - MrVilhauer
-Great presentation vs. horrible content.

There you go! And if you’re looking for the feed, it’s way at the bottom (or, click right here). Some things will be updated this weekend for a better user experience. And more blather!

Tags: Random Links, Misc.Asst., Blogging |

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ArtworkS?

November 29, 2007


This has been up all day as the main headline on ArgusLeader.com, according to Kerrie.

ArtworkS?
“Augie to get Andy Warhol artworks”

Artwork is a collective noun, meaning both a single piece of art or an entire group.

I tried to give The Argus Leader a break. I looked up “artworks” in three different dictionaries, both American and British. It’s not there. There’s an entry for “artwork,” but nothing for the plural.

Which makes sense. Since “artwork” means a collective group of pieces of art, an extra “s” is redundant.

I don’t try to pick on the Argus. It’s just that they always seem to do stuff like this. Either they made up a word, or it’s a pretty obvious and very embarrassing misspelling. Whoops.

—

If you’re actually curious about the article itself, here’s a snippet. According to the article:

Augustana College and its Eide-Dalrymple Gallery will receive a collection of about 150 original Polaroid photos and gelatin silver prints that Warhol created.

The gift, with an estimated value of $153,000, comes through the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program in connection with the Warhol Foundation’s 20th anniversary.

Tags: Journalism, Words |

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Research is fun

November 28, 2007


I know it might sound weird. But I kind of miss writing research papers.

There’s no logical reason for this. My job involves writing, much of which I have to do research for. I research a client’s needs, their competition and their current marketing materials and I put together a marketing plan that at times could run up to 15 pages. I conduct interviews and write articles for newsletters. Hell, even writing a billboard takes a small amount of research.

But there is something romantic, in hindsight, about writing a paper for a class - the intense need, learning for learning’s sake, staying up late or spending an entire day in the library discovering new topics or arguments.

It’s that discovery that I miss - the idea of filtering hundreds of thousands of articles and books and pieces of information, most of which were unknown to me at the beginning of the project. At my job, I deal with marketing and advertising - all the time, that’s all I research - and after a while, the answers are predictable, the plans common.

But a research paper was new territory. It was expansion; a manifest destiny of thought, my mind plowing through the basics and forming the new opinions that had always been mine for the taking.

And even more, it was the hard, cold facts - the books and magazines, microfilm and microfiche. The Internet was there, but even just 7 or 8 years ago it was limited in the vastness of information easily accessed, there for the deep search but not conducive to an intense, scholarly tome.

The actual act of organizing and developing thoughts, of spitting out knowledge that had been thought forgotten, the final spell check and read through. You would print out the paper, scan the words and feel incredibly proud, as if you’d just written a publishable pamphlet, something that could change the world. There was an excitement and thrill in spending hours and hours before the assignment was due, the first real writing deadline I ever faced. And pulling it out of the printer was a rite of passage, awash in the knowledge that I had just nailed it, presumably, and that I could rest easily for another few weeks, the adrenaline still pumping through my head as I handed it in.

I write every day. I write with purpose, and I write for pleasure. I write because I love it, and I write because I can. But I still miss the romanticism of the research paper. Just the words themselves seem scholarly.

And naturally, I used to hate them. Hindsight, right?

Tags: Writing |

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Mind the gap

November 27, 2007


Was it a misunderstanding? Or was it genuine slagging of her employer?

Regardless, Emma Clarke, voice of the London Underground Tube System, was fired.

From the BBC Article:

Ms Clarke, from Altrincham, Greater Manchester, upset her paymasters by allegedly saying she did not use the Tube because it was “dreadful”.

LU said it would not be offering her further work but Ms Clarke said she had been “wildly misquoted”.

She told BBC News: “What I actually said was that travelling in a Tube train would be dreadful for me, listening to my own voice and seeing the haunted faces of commuters being subjected to me telling them to ‘mind the gap’.

“I would find it quite an uncomfortable experience in the same way that when I call a company when I’m their on hold voice and it’s me saying - please press 2 for accounts - it’s a creepy experience to be honest.”

The voice is familiar to me - I remember it vividly from my short time in London, and though I’m not intimate with it as many London residents are, I do feel it’s quite too bad. Of course, it will be replaced, I’m sure, with someone similar.

She also posted some sample LU spoofs - which can be found here.

Mind the Gap, indeed.

Tags: Travel |

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