Studies

Incomplete thoughts and irreverent tales of art, cinema, design, food, love, media, millennials, music, nostalgia, objects, photos, politics, spaces, travel, and wit. You can also enjoy it as an XML/RSS feed.


Being vindicated is the most fun a person can have without taking their clothes off.

I’m going to keep my mouth shut and let (inter)national news media do the talking. House Works on a Bailout — for E-Mail -New York Times (includes a small screen cap of my work). House of Representatives’ Web site overwhelmed -CNN (#1 most viewed story earlier today).

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A designer’s guide to bar fights.

As my conversation with Kristy and Patrick at the bar last weekend turned to politics, two other patrons within earshot expressed their disdain with icy silence proportional to our increasing application of decibels. It became clear that their body language was expressly directed at us, and we considered the possibility that continuing our conversation would lead to the necessity of physically incapacitating two men larger than either of us. In short, we began preparing for a bar fight.

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Bag the box.

When I came across the packaging for HP’s Pavilion dv6929 laptop, I was stunned. Not for what it is, but because it hadn’t occurred to anybody, myself included, before the year 2008 to actually do this: ship the laptop in a messenger bag.

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Ultimately violet.

Like an obscure band that high school kids you once mocked now call their god, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about purple entering the pedestrian American fashion lexicon. In an attempt to spur myself to introduce myself to strange women and simultaneously spare myself inevitable humiliation, I’ve made it a point to approach women wearing aubergine overcoats.

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On the crescent.

I’m back from An Event Apart New Orleans and after a good night’s sleep, much like Chicago before it, I am not only prepared to be a better web designer but inspired to be a better person.

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Salad days and poutine foie gras.

Had I visited Montréal when I was 19, buying too much second-hand music, attuned to markers of soi-disant hipness through vodka hazes, and leading a life of dissipation, dressed in dubious vintage, it would’ve been the place I would’ve liked to grow old. It strikes me as a stubbornly unique place, the one city in all of North America that acknowledges its European colonial heritage as integral to its identity — Vieux-Port cobblestones, haute cuisine, and all things vintage — under a Francophone umbrella.

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Pathetic to absurd to disheartening in 97 queries.

While we had anecdotal evidence from our customers and the general public that the House search engine is below-standard, even the barest of data sets now indicates the degree of antipathy we apparently have for site visitors. After manually searching the most frequent queries on House.gov (see a table of the terms and top-ten results of each), I have arrived at the following initial conclusions.

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Code monkeys like us.

When I was first in Chicago, I was five years old, between a bus from Toronto and a train to Los Angeles—though not my official point of entry into the United States, it has defied its own insignificance—a mere fingerprint on The Bean, if you will—and, with Burger King French toast sticks, become an integral part of this immigrant’s narrative. My memory allows little more than that I was there, but this time, two days in the august company of squared-shoed and trapezoid-spectacled enemies of my enemies, I know to take pictures, to take notes.

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Ursa major.

2008 November 11

Some families set their dramas on the stage of a castle, a city apartment, a suburban bungalow. Mine was wed to the four wheels of a 1990 Toyota truck.



Echoes

  • Pink Martini - Tempo Perdido
  • Pink Martini - Taya Tan
  • Pink Martini - Song of the Black Swan
  • Pink Martini - Hang On Little Tomato
  • Pink Martini - Let's Never Stop Falling In Love
  • Pink Martini - Taya Tan
  • Pink Martini - Song of the Black Swan
  • Pink Martini - Hang On Little Tomato
  • Pink Martini - Let's Never Stop Falling In Love
  • Pink Martini - City of Night

Data compiled by Audioscrobbler.


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