Afishionados,

I’ve been trying to get my dear ol’ grandmother so sign up for some oil painting classes at the same college I attend. Not because I want her to be in my classes, though. No, fuck that, I hate painting, especially oil painting. Who has that kind of time and patience to wait for the shit to dry? No thanks. But I’m getting off topic. I’ll have to complain about oil painting some other time.

Anyway, the real reason I want my grandmother to do some oil painting classes is because the courses are completely free to her. Senior citizens can take any class they want at the college at no cost. All she would have to pay for is her painting supplies. Another reason is because all my grandmother does all day is sit and watch television and order complete shit from QVC. (She also has the habit of watching political pundits and taking everything they say personally. She also can’t keep political facts straight, so it’s impossible to carry on any kind of political conversation with her.)

Now, my grandmother is really good at coming up with bullshit excuses as to why she doesn’t want to paint or take art classes but they’re all poor excuses. First off, I know she likes to paint because she’s taken classes with her sister and has a bunch of her own paintings hanging up in her condo. She’s no Bob Ross or anything, but she’s not the worst painter I’ve ever seen. But that’s beside the point. Even if she painted completely abhorrent pictures, it would still be a million times better than sitting on her ass and buying stupid junk from QVC like “washballs”. Yes, that’s a real product and yes she ordered it.

The excuses I’ve heard the most are that she doesn’t have time, she doesn’t want to drive down to the campus, she can’t see that well, and she’s concerned about the cost involved. I’ve tackled each and every one of these on multiple occasions.

As for the drive down, I’ve offered to drive her the whopping 15 minutes it takes to get to campus and help her register for classes myself. I’ve also suggested she take classes that meet the same time as my courses so that we can carpool down there. So that bullshit excuse doesn’t fly.

So then she says she doesn’t have time or money and can’t see. That’s because all of it is spent on the couch ordering stuff from the television. My grandmother absolutely refuses to learn how to disable the alarm at the house, but she’s more than capable of reading those small-as-shit product numbers from her TV and speed dialing the QVC folks. How someone can phone in a long fucking product ID but not punch in a simple code to turn off an alarm boggles the mind. She could spot Gary Coleman crouching in the dark a hundred yards away on a foggy night if he was tagged with a QVC product number, I swear it.

My grandmother is getting crankier and crabbier the older she gets, and I hate to see her turn in to such a bitter old lady that never leaves her house. I wish she’d do something, even if she doesn’t want to paint or take classes for free. But I guess there’s just no changing some people.

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My latest Typography project involves Onomatopoeia. Simply put, onomatopoeia means a word is spelled the same as it sounds. Ironically, the word itself it hard as hell for most people to spell properly.

As with any of my Typography assignments, there are guidelines. They’re not nearly as limiting as the rules for some of my earlier projects, and for that I am glad. The rules are pretty straightforward and simple. First, find a sound on the college campus, describe it in detail (what time, where were you, what created it, how was it created, etc.). Then spell it out as you think the sound would be spelled. Using select fonts (there’s a list of about 7 or 8 and includes both serif and sans-serif), create a 9 x 9 image that portrays your sound.

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The project is not due yet, and we are still very much in the early stages of it. These are two of my concepts so far. They are very, VERY rough concepts, so don’t go by the [lack of] quality of them.

This design has to be black and white only, and shapes can only be used in association with the text (You can’t just stick a circle or square anywhere you’d like, you have to use it with the text somehow. Kinda like the arrow formed in the Fed Ex logo by the negative space of the letters). Changing the fonts or the size can help emphasize the sound (or parts of the sound) as well. Also, while color is not allowed, black and white can be used to symbolize emotion (For example, if you were going to do a sound of rubbing a balloon, you might make the background white with the text “floating” within the design like a balloon would float. Or bold text could symbolize a louder sound). I’ve got about twenty rough ideas, but these two are my favorites so far. While the project is certainly not the most interesting that I have ever done, it’s certainly not the worst, either.

See if you can figure out what the sound is, because I’m not going to tell you. I will, however, give you a bit of a clue. The image on the top was done long before the image on the bottom with the black rectangle, and I think the black part of it it helps in deciphering the sound it’s supposed to represent. I’m still playing with what fonts best represent the sound, so you’re kind of at a disadvantage in guessing since I haven’t yet decided on which one(s) to use. Everything else in the concepts is intentional, though, so have at it.

Or maybe it’s just a complete failure. What the hell do I know?

It’s absolutelty frigid here today. According to the iPhone’s weather widget, it’s currently 9F outside. That, of course, does not include the wind chill factor. When you take that into account, the actual temperature is more along the lines of “colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra doing push-ups in the snow.”

The graphic design building is on the outskirts of campus, secluded from all the other buildings. You have to cut through the parking garage in order to get to it. To give you an idea how cold it is, whilst trekking from the cafeteria to my next class I put on my iPhone headphones and started listening to some music. The journey from the cafeteria to the graphic design building is about a ten minutes walk, of which five minutes or so are spent in the parking garage. Within moments of walking through the garage, I noticed that my earbuds kept falling out of my ears. Now, despite the relatively poor design of the Apple earbuds (I hate them), they normally stay in my ears without too much difficulty. Why were they being such little bitches today, I wondered?

I’ll tell you why. Because it’s 9F fucking degrees outside, that’s why. As it turns out, the wiry part of the earbuds actually froze. Yes, froze. I held one of the earbuds out in front of me, and it ran perpendicular to my chest. The wire was frozen solid, which didn’t adapt well with my walking motion, hence the falling out of the ears part. Ridiculous.

Mom with her new iPhone

Speaking of iPhones, my crappily manufactured iPhone case ripped again because of the way it’s sewn together by small children in some third-world country. This warranted a trip to my local AT&T for yet another exchange. After my exchange and on the way to my car, I discovered someone had lost their iPhone in the parking lot. It was a little scratched and slightly dinged on the aluminum part, but the screen looked flawless and it still worked. The former user had a numerical password lock to get in, but that certainly didn’t stop iTunes from restoring the phone to the factory default. Long story short, after a simple format and SIM card switch, my mother is now the proud owner of an 8 gig iPhone. Hopefully no more whining about “I hate my phone” since the Samsung has been replaced. Hooray. The next step is to remedy the “I hate my computer” complaints. Ah, Dell, how you never cease to disappoint. Setting up and synching to an iPhone with Windows is a real pain in the ass treat. Outlook is a clustered mess. I want to meet the cold-hearted bastard who “designed” the interface and smack him. Which reminds me, did I tell you how cold it is here today?

I am taking a typography class this quarter and I’ve got another instructor who won’t allow the use of computers in her class. This rule continues to drive me insane, and I continue to flex it in my favor when I can get away with it.

The professor has a reputation for being the most difficult instructor in all of the graphic design instructor, and I often think that she’s let it go to her head. So far, my impression isn’t that she is difficult at all, just demanding and fast paced. She also looks exactly like Cuba Gooding Junior. I don’t mean that she looks a little like him. No, she looks JUST like him, sans the mustache (at least, as much as I can tell from a distance).

Our latest project is to take a photo of ourselves, trace a detailed outline of it (think coloring book) and come up with 20 or so words that describe us and the message about us that we wish to portray. Then, using various fonts, align the letters and characters to create a realistic image of us based on the tracing.

The catch is, you can’t use a computer, which includes finding and using your own fonts. No, you have to go to the library and find books with fonts and photocopy them. Or you can find fonts from magazines or other printed materials. No computer? Photocopies? Haven’t we already done this in 2D design?

I have more than 2000 fonts in my collection, WAY more than ANY book is going to show you. I tried to plead my case to Cuba, asking only if I could print off the font and then lay it out by hand. I didn’t even mention using the computer other than to find fonts that I liked. Her response was this:

“No, because it has to be a level playing field for everyone. You might have 2000 fonts on your computer, but so and so might only have 200. It has to be fair.”

What? Fair? So Sally Suckemsilly can go to the library, check out a book, therefore preventing me from checking out and using said book, but I can’t use fonts on my own computer? And, honestly, if Sally wanted the same font and couldn’t find it, I’d GIVE her a copy of it, too. What the hell? And how is photocopying a layout of a font ANY different than printing off the same layout on a laser jet printer? How many graphic designers out there photocopy fonts, lay them out by hand, then Photocopy them to produce a final piece? Can ANYONE explain this to me? Seriously, I want to meet a graphic designer in today’s world who doesn’t use a computer and only uses books and photocopiers.

I had hoped this quarter’s classes would provide some kind of challenge. Instead, they’ve proven the professors are mentally challenged.

Well, folks, as I had hoped correctly assumed, Oprahnomics has yielded more blogging material. I even took notes so I would remember to cover everything that Harpo has been spewing out from her loud, obnoxious mouth.

I’ve only had the class for two days and already I want to take a bat to her head (Note to school staff and authorities: this is meant as sarcasm) Or maybe to my own head, to put me out of my own misery. It’s amazing the things you can get a degree in these days, not to mention the fact that you can then go on to teach it, too.

The first thing that Harpo “taught” us this week was how to use a phone. Amazing. I don’t mean this as a metaphor for something more. She literally explained how to use the telephone. My head still aches from smacking it on my desk. And the class only gets better from there.

Harpo attempted to get the class involved in a discussion about various ways that people communicate. Of course the easiest and most common ways, such as talking and writing, were shouted out immediately. But then, it seemed, my classmates were at a standstill. Harpo, however, still sought answers. She offered up a clue.

“How am I communicating with you right now?”

I normally don’t get involved in discussions for dumb classes at school, but it seems to be the mentality of the average student to simply sit like a bump on a log and to never answer a question or offer an opinion. This makes already dull classes that much more boring, so once in a while I have to step up to the plate and offer my own take on things.

I placed the pointer and middle finger of both my hands on the sides of my head and offered Harpo an answer to her question. “By means of your psychic omnipotence?”

Turns out I was wrong.

I have no idea if the right answer was ever given out. I stopped listening to Harpo ramble and instead starting thinking about my graphic projects in my other classes. That is, until Harpo started showing us slides from her missionary work in Africa.

“Can you tell which one is me?” she asked us, giggling.

“Yea,” I thought. “You’re the only white, fat Christian among the whole group of black, tribal women.” But I didn’t say it. Instead, I went back to working on my other projects, at least in my head.

The last thing I head Harpo say before class was dismissed was that she used to ride her bike in the summer time and pack it away for the winter. Then, once summer came round again, she forgot how to ride her bike and had to learn all over again.

What kind of idiot forgets how to ride a bike? Whether or not she knows how to ride a bike today isn’t clear. But there’s no arguing the fact that when she used to, she obviously forgot her helmet.

I don’t know how much more of this class I can take.

A new college quarter begins for me, and with it new classes. One of which is required for my major and is entitled “Interpersonal Communications.” I was under the impression that the class was designed to teach you how to get your ideas and points across, but it seems that is not entirely the case. It’s highly possible that this class will provide for more interesting stories, so just in case, let’s call this professor “Harpo”.

Harpo has promised the entire class that her course is THE most important class of our LIVES, as well as our major. I’m not making this up, I swear. She really did say that, and it was in that particular order. Unfortunately for her, I don’t believe her for the following reasons:

1.) She is WAY too excited about her class.
2.) She’s happy in that Chicken Soup for the Soul kind of way.
3.) She’s wrong.

Today’s class was spent harping (no pun intended) on how important the textbook is and how there is NO WAY that we will pass without it. Apparently, just possessing a copy of the book is not enough, though, as reading it is also imperative in attaining a passing grade in the class. A double whammy, if you ask me.

To make matters worse, the tests that she’s going to give us are multiple choice. But this ain’t yer mama’s multiple choice test. These multiple choice tests are going to be (and I quote) “hard.” The course material can’t be memorized and spit back out, you have to understand the material. You know, “To bend the spoon is impossible. Instead you must realize the truth” kinda thing.

After beating this horse to death for about 45 minutes, Harpo switched gears and grabbed a bowl of M&Ms from her desk. The M&Ms were of the dark chocolate variety, and were the colors of Fall: red, maroon, yellow, and brown. Harpo instructed everyone in the class to take a handful (I’m sure everyone washed their hands, right?) and continue to pass the bowl around until everyone had some, but not to eat them until she gave the okay.

Now, I don’t care how crazy you are, if you offer me free chocolate, I’m willing to listen to you. At least until I am done eating it, or you run out. Whichever comes first. Naturally, I took quite a few M&Ms because they were free, right in front of me, free, I was told to, I like chocolate, and they were free. I think I ended up with the following colors: one yellow, one red, seven maroon, and zero brown.

Once the M&Ms had been passed around, Harpo brought up “the catch”. As it turns out, each of the different colors represented something. Like in a “New Age chakra” sort of way. I’d been swindled!

Harpo then wrote up on the board what each of the individual colors meant:

1.) Yellow - future
2.) Red - family
3.) Maroon - favorite
4.) Brown - nature

Harpo explained that everyone in the class had to share something about themselves, and had to share one thing for each M&M of that color that they had picked.

Before she’d even finished writing “Red” on the board, I’d wolfed down all but one of my maroon M&Ms. What the hell? I didn’t realize that I had signed up for Oprahnomics 101. Did she getting her teaching degree out of Cosmo? Had the room not been so small, I would have sworn Dr. Phil was hiding out in there with a hidden camera crew.

But if it was feelings she wanted to talk about, it was feelings she was going to get. My responses to each color were this:

1.) Yellow: I hoped that by behaving myself and finishing school that I would make my parole officer happy and keep the law of my back.
2.) Red: My family lost me in Mexico and I lived with a foreign family for several years before being reunited.
3.) Maroon: My favorite celebrity was of the naked female kind.

We’re supposed to keep a journal about all our feelings for this class, so I’m open to suggestions for more incredible tales to put into it. What other adventures have I embarked on that I should share?

I hope everyone enjoys the new header image at the top of the page. Yes, it’s very similar to the “old” one but I can assure you this one is brand new. “Why?” do you ask? What an excellent question!

Last night I thought I would change my screensaver for the first time in five or six years. I found one that I liked and tried to install it. Words cannot express how truly poor that decision was on my part. A part of me died last night at approximately 9:30 P.M. EST. There’s a good chance that you might have heard me screaming, too.

The screensaver devoured ALL the files on my desktop, including the Photoshop files and templates for this web site. All gone in the blink of an eye. To make matters worse, I didn’t have backups of everything and the REAL salt in the wound is that the screensaver didn’t work anyway!

This is why there is no God. God would not punish a Mac user like this, especially by trying to install a simple screensaver. Windows users on PCs? Absolutely. God would hate them. If he were real.

I have backups of all of my personal files, but I didn’t have backups of all the Photoshop files for the Ministry. Fortunately, there is a software program out there called Data Rescue II which I will vouch does just that. I was able to recover the majority of my files, with the exception of the header image and the Ministry logo file.

When I work on my projects, I save my files as I go. If I make a drastic change, I save it as a new file. This way, if I later decide that what I changed was bad, I can go back to where I started from. I consider most of my stuff (especially the images on my blog) to be works in progress. While I lost the “final” version of the Ministry logo, I was able to “finish” one of the work-in-progress versions that I had backed up. ::Whew::. And Data Rescue II recovered the parchment and cloth backgrounds of the Ministry.

So although God doesn’t exist, Santa had better because I need him to bring me an external hard drive so that I can back up my stuff with Apple’s new Time Machine feature.

And if Santa should fail in his quest to bring the Ministry a hard drive for Christmas?

Afishionados,

My sister, her husband, and their children are in town for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. My nephew is 4 and my niece is 1-and-a-half. I love them and usually it’s good to see all of them, but there are moments when I wish that the kids were still in Cleveland where they belong. For example:

My nephew, Austin, is mostly potty trained. I say mostly because he can do everything except wipe his own ass. A skill that, in my opinion, is essential to human survival and one that everyone should possess. Unfortunately, Austin hasn’t quite reached this milestone yet.

A few days ago, I found myself alone in the house with just Austin and Kevin, my other sister’s fiance’. Kevin and I were sitting at the kitchen table surfing the Internet when Austin decided to run like hell to the bathroom (which is just outside the kitchen) and shut the door. Aside from the speed at which the child had moved, I didn’t think much of it. And then the door slowly creaked open, and the a small, squeaky voice announced, “Uncle Atlas, I pooped!”

At first I thought that perhaps Satan was just a soprano and was playing an evil trick on me. And then the voice spoke again. “Uncle Atlas, I said I poooooooooooooped!” I looked at Kevin and he looked at me. His ashen face was like that of a deer’s just mere moments before a van drives into it at 100 MPH.

“Not it,” he said to me as Austin continued to stand in the doorway, pants around his ankles and continuing with the updated status reports of what he had just accomplished.

Kevin is a doctor and a future pediatrician. Apparently, the noxious fumes from Austin’s festering floaters had permeated his brain, causing cell damage and creating a momentary lapse in memory and judgment. Clearly, Kevin was misinformed. And so I took it upon myself to correct his misguided outlook.

“I’m a graphic designer. You’re the pediatrician. If Austin needs crayons or coloring books, I’m there for him. But if there’s chunks in his cheeks, that’s your line of work. Start wiping.”

In the end (no pun intended), Austin wiped his own ass and Kevin gave a thorough inspection. Austin had done just fine by himself, washed his hands, and stepped out from the bathroom. As he approached the table, I congratulated him on his success. “Good job, Austin. Today, you became a man!”

I had a similar experience with Austin this past summer, when I really was the only one (besides him) in the house. My sister and my mother had gone out shopping, and Austin told me that he had to poop. So I did what any paranoid man would do: I sent a text message to both their cell phones.

“Austin has to poop. Come home soon.”

Thankfully, my ingenious plan worked and they arrived within minutes. Of course, I was prepared and had a backup plan in place. If mom and sis had not returned in time, Austin would have been stripped naked and placed safely and securely in a bathtub full of water until someone (anyone) came home.

Afishionados,

Don’t be fooled by the photo above. It’s not really AngryMan’s offspring, so don’t worry.

Have you ever seen the movie Critters? I think it’s the reason that I am so fucked up today.

Critters is like Gremlins, except that it’s less comedy and way less cool. The lack of plot involves evil space alien “hedgehogs” called Krites that come to Earth and eat people on a hillbilly family’s farm. Two bounty hunters (also from space) come to Earth to help save the planet. It’s got to be one of the worst movies ever made.

My parents let me watch Critters when I was 5 or 6 years old. There are really only two scenes that stick out in my mind but they’ve forever fucked me up psychologically.

The hillbilly family’s son (He’s like 12 years old or something) rides his bike through the field at night to try and get help from a neighbor or something because his dad is hurt by the Krites. The Krites, of course, are also in the field and bite his pant legs and bike tires. As a kid, I always thought of this when I rode my bike at night, and to this day I still refuse to drive my car through cornfields.

Another scene has the Krites inside the hillbilly house and they’re chewing E.T.’s head off. A pleather doll of E.T., anyway. And they tear that fucker to pieces. Perhaps it would have been better if they had instead chewed off Drew Barrymore’s head, sparing us countless films with her terrible acting.

Critters spawned three sequels, but Critters 5 was unfortunately canceled. The sequels, while naturally worse than even the horrid first film in the series, were not a complete loss.

Critters 2, for example, did have two excellent points.

Afishionados,

Day one of school for me. Remember this guy? He taught my first class of the day. He spent an hour and a half rehashing his “sign the clipboard” attendance policy and going over the departmental policies on attendance and grading.

Notice I said “departmental”. He even talked about rules, regulations, policies, and stipulations that didn’t apply to his course. For an hour and a half. For example: His class meets twice a week. He discussed (quite thoroughly, I assure you) the attendance policies for classes that meet only once a week as well. And at night. And on weekends.

Then, as I felt my brain melt and drip out of my ear to my chin, he discussed, at length, every full time staff member’s departmental job, where they came from, what they do, what color underwear they had on, and what they had for breakfast.

Okay, maybe I made those last few up, but I’m willing to bet he knew the answers anyway.