Category Archives: gdhu

mornings, I goddamn hate you

Posted on by Ehren
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This whole before-8 thing is gonna take some hardcore getting used to. I’ve been spoiled by so many “early” shifts beginning at 9:30a that getting up at a quarter of six to get ready for school is a major pain. Even when I was at Century, my earliest class was at 9:30. Let me tell you, the world looks a helluva lot different when the sun isn’t quite up. I do believe that I will be taking some pictures late next week.

now playing on iTunes/iPod: silence

Coolvetica, I goddamn hate you

Posted on by Ehren
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Helvetica the typeface was created in 1957 from sheer awesome.  In fact, it contained so much awesome that it was used on subway signs, in corporate logos, on television, in the Mac and iPod GUIs, and even on the goddamn Space Shuttle!  In 2007, to celebrate the font’s 50th anniversary, Helvetica the documentary was released to attempt to explain its awesomeness.  The film opened to overwhelmingly positive reviews, and spawned a related exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art entitled “50 Years of Helvetica” that showed how one minimalist typeface was able to permeate life on this earth.  Whew.  That’s a lot of responsibility for one little font.

I first became aware of Coolvetica in 2004, being used as the titles for a travesty of a TV show called Wife Swap.  I tool a look at the odd lowercase ‘t’ and thought to myself, “That looks awful.”  Then that Godawful capital G popped up and I threw up in my mouth a little.  Who would do such things to Helvetica?  That’s like giving Larry King another hunchback, or making every Russian wear one of those red forehead spots like Gorbachev.  Then it started popping up more and more, being used on signage at my local mall and on covers of books.  Horrified, I did a little Googling and found that the font in question was created by Ray Larabie, the same “genius” that created ripoff homage fonts designed to ape corporate logos, like Pricedown, Crackman and Crystal Radio Kit.  Look, Larabie, I gots enough problems with awful foundry-designed fonts appearing everywhere, like Arial and such.  And the less said about Comic Sans, the better.  There is, however, one thing that Larabie did that I like: he named one of his abominations Libel Suit.  Fitting, because I think Larabie should be hit with one for calling any of these trainwrecks “fonts.”
And that, Coolvetica, is why I goddamn hate you.
Now playing on iPod: PMB “You and I”

Black Friday, I goddamn hate you

Posted on by Ehren
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fuck you I love the Christmas season, but not the hours associated with it. Thankfully, the worst is over; I put in fourteen hours on Black Friday and about ten on Saturday. I’ve done this for ten years now, so it is mostly routine, but one thing that never fails to amaze me every year is the volume of people who are willing to sit in the cold for hours on end just to save a few extra bucks on that television or other item they had their eyes on all year.

Now I’m no anti-consumerist; hell, I definitely own more than my fair share of shit, especially in electronics and DVDs. I even like to save money, so I look for deals whenever I can. But really, even 8 am on the day after Thanksgiving is a little early for me to think about buying Christmas gifts for people, let alone anything for myself. We opened at 5, and even then we weren’t the first; Kohl’s was open at 4 and Eden Prairie Center opened at fucking one o’clock in the morning. Outrageous. If there is any silver lining in this madness, these are the things that come to mind first: the extended hours I am required to work will 1) allow me extra funds for Christmas gifts and 2) allow me to watch Law and Order: SVU without the interruption of going home and cueing up the TiVo to the proper spot. Until then though, my free time will be in short supply (sorry, Alyssa) and I may be cranky during those times (sorry, everyone else).

Despite all this though, I still love Christmas. Preemptive happy holidays, everyone.

now playing on iPod: Chad Hollister “Spirit’s Waters”