arbuckle

In 1978, Jim Davis began a newspaper comic strip called Garfield. For almost thirty years, this strip has endured, primarily because its inoffensive, storyless humour is immediately accessible. It is, if not quite the Lowest Common Denominator of the comic world, at least as close to it as one can get without being obviously mediocre.

The comic changes dramatically when one removes the thought bubbles.

Garfield changes from being a comic about a sassy, corpulent feline, and becomes a compelling picture of a lonely, pathetic, delusional man who talks to his pets. Consider that Jon, according to Garfield canon, cannot hear his cat's thoughts. This is the world as he sees it. This is his story.

"i was attracted to permanency"

Excellent profile in the NY Times on Manny Vega. I love reading and hearing artists talk shop. The slide show is the real treasure, though: the woefully titled, Manny Vega and His ‘Hip Hop Byzantine’ Art. Great work and insight. The printed article does have its merits, however.

“Everybody wants instant art,” he said. “This is old school. A good design, some good materials, and shut up and do the work. There is no shortcut.”

photo id required, pointless

From the New York Times slideshow coverage of the recent national elections in Pakistan. Note the woman on the left; now that's my kind of modesty!

And, yes! Semicolons are fun!

don't call it a comeback because it never left

One of the school system’s most notorious graduates, David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam serial killer who taunted police and the press with rambling handwritten notes, was, as the columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote, the only murderer he ever encountered who could wield a semicolon just as well as a revolver.

Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location, New York Times.

if you're reading this, you don't need to be reading this

The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place.

Susan Jacoby, 02-17-08 op-ed, Washington Post. The NYT reviews her book here, The Age of American Unreason.

best book i've read since the interloper

My friend, Antoine, kept bugging me until I finally read, Then We Came To The End. I wouldn't call it dead on in terms of what it's like to work in an advertising agency, but the characters and story are rich and wonderful and human. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Read it.

lisa can see you, now

The ticklish buzz of clippers on your neck, the chimpanzee satisfaction of being groomed.