Ragtag grab-bag
Every single one of these covers from old Arabic editions of Superman comics is exquisite, somewhat surreal, and perhaps a nice reminder that Superman only started fighting for the American way in the 50s during the thick of the Cold War. Up until then, a couple of Jewish teenagers just wanted him to fight for truth and justice. Frankly, I think we could all use a little of that, not just the US. Recontextualization FTW!
My brain shuts down over webfonts. I can’t muster the will to care. Partially it’s because I really hate designing and building websites and I just don’t want to know more because then it will be easier to avoid it altogether. Partially it’s because I’m waiting to see how much hideousness will result from this incredible race to make a gajillion fonts available for the web, when the browsers, the users, and the fonts themselves just don’t seem to be up to the task yet. Oh sure, there’s potential, but it all seems so familiar. Or, as summarized very neatly by John Hudson in this Typophile thread:
To me, the rush to the web fonts market looks pretty much identical to the rush to the desktop publishing market, so I’m expecting a lot of bad typography and difficult to read text, and the better part of twenty years to clean up the mess. It isn’t good enough to say that ‘if somebody chooses a font that … stinks, that’s their choice’, because typography serves first reader, then the text, and only then the author/publisher.
Oh, nothing to fuss about. that’s not “May day!” as in, “Help!”; it’s “May Day!” as in, “It’s the first of May and after a solid four months of working almost every waking hour, money has last started to flow back into my coffers, allowing me to rejoice, pay many bills, and indulge in some long-overdue infrastructural upgrades.” So you can understand the need for the exclamation point, clearly.
So that picture can be considered a bit of a status update. I just took it with a new camera that is making me squealingly happy, now that I can at last retire my trusty but aging point-and-shoot and switch at last to an SLR. In that photo I’m wearing new glasses (well, some 10-year-old frames, but with a new prescription) that allow me to see clearly again for the first time since I smashed my old ones three months ago. And I’m not scowling, despite the absurb workload of the last few weeks, which means I must be in a good mood overall, probably due to the onset of longer days and the seasonal readjustment of my energy levels.
So yeah, it’s Saturday and I’m working, but I think I may be out of the woods soon, and I’m practically starting to function like a regular person again.