putative.com

Happys New Years

"Happys" is my single most favorite new word, as it is Silas' corruption of the A-B-C song and the word "happy" (which is also, coincidentally, his name for Yo Gabba Gabba, thanks to a YGG song about being happy). So he will often go "HAP... EES... CEE..." before trailing off. Someday, I'm sure, he will make it to "DEE." 

When I'm not basking with utter, cellular delight in my son's mispronunciations, I'm lurching back and forth between feeling hopeful and fucked, just about the economy and the environment and $50B Ponzi schemes and the fact that I heard someone on the radio yesterday talking about "*cleaner* coal," as opposed to "clean coal." (That's a sure sign that a marketing euphemism is on its way out, when the retreat towards superlatives begins.)

I was getting down after reading Ebert on the evident unraveling but then I felt better after reading Tweetian ("Tweetian" in that it is smart and counterintuitive, but it is also literally from Tweet) advice on why and how you should be spending money right now.

On balance (today at least), I'm feeling pretty good. One advantage that we Bush-sufferers have is that we've felt utterly defeated before. And right now, we really have a lot of reasons to be fundamentally hopeful. I think a lot of what's happening in the short term is a feedback loop from collective fear and uncertainty, with perception becoming reality. Consumer confidence is low because every day we're told how low consumer confidence is. Companies are laying people off, and those people are in turn the customers of other companies, who are then also forced to lay people off. And so on. (But I'll tell you a secret as a freelancer: Those companies are still getting work done—they're just hiring us freelancers to do it. Thanks and sorry about that.)

The really good news is that the government—led by President Mother-Fucking-I-Never-Get-Tired-of-Saying-It Obama—is about to spend an ungodly, literally unprecedented amount of money on stimulus, hopefully mostly smart stimulus, and there really is nowhere to go but up. If *that* fat, $1T chunk of change doesn't do any good, then I'll really be worried. Get back to me at the end of 2009. (And clip me if we're fighting back-to-back, picking off scavengers swimming across from Medina with our night-vision scopes.)

In *any* case, Happys New Year's, folks! We are off in a couple hours to the coast for a few days, to play games and drink beer and look at the rain and the water. With any luck we won't accidentally end up at a buffet in a rez casino, and with even more luck the rain will break long enough for some fireworks on the beach....

(image from this very cool Flickr set of end titles, check it out)

Props to the words in the Beasts

The Seattle Times had an all praise-y write-up of Beasts 2 today! It really is an art book, as we always remind folks, but it was nice to see the text singled out for such love:

The visuals range from striking graphic design to standard comic-book gothic, goofy or gross-out. More unexpected are the finely written informational entries which blend fantasy, pseudoscience and macabre wit to savory effect.

Readers will recognize some of these creatures from classical myth and legend. In "Beasts! Book Two" (Fantagraphics, 207 pp., $34.99) they'll find mermaids, shapeshifting selkies and those monstrous hazards to Mediterranean mariners, Scylla and Charybdis. But they'll also come across a host of less familiar creatures, described by writers Heidi Broadhead, Paul Hughes and Rob Lightner with pithy panache.

It's quite a coincidence, but Rob noted that Savory Effect is also the name of our rap crew.

"G.M. is us"

Thomas Friedman got all bummed coming back to NYC from a trip to Hong Kong—Hong Kong with the shiny airports, perfect cell service, bullet trains with flawless wifi, etc.—and wrote this editorial about how we need a "reboot" not a "bailout":

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.

For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.

That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

Sledders vs. drunk driver on Queen Anne

Welcome to the future of asshole documentation:

Who's the "Associated Press"? A guy named Lou.

I do think Fallout 3 is a solid video game, and it will surely win the top spot on many award lists this year, but I just had a nice moment of feeling sorry for PR as a profession because they are all so going to hell. (I helped write a press release just last week, so don't worry, I'll be there with you.) 

This is from the top news on the Bethesda Fallout 3 site:

The Associated Press has ranked Fallout 3 as the #1 game for 2008 saying, "With its powerful story, memorable characters and morbid comedy, it's a compelling journey that leaves you wanting more even after 100 hours of play." 

So I say to HB sitting next to me, "Hey, Fallout was just named the top game of the year by the A.P.! That's cool." Of course, then I go to the site and I have to say, "Oh, wait, never mind. It's not the A.P., it's just some guy named Lou." After which she can't stop laughing.

Because there is technically "ranking," in that, say, I generally "rank" ramen with dumplings as being better than a quesadilla for lunch. But if you read the story, it's written by a lone reporter for the A.P. who says, literally, "Here are my favorite games of 2008." And they're good picks! Braid at number 5! Kudos! But "The Associated Press ranked..."? Uh-huh.

Snow even in Pioneer Square

And it's still coming down, just a few feet above and away from the water (which usually means we don't get much snow at all, but not today!). I'm at Zeitgeist, which is cozy—and surprisingly crowded—looking out from the window counter over to the National Park at 2nd and Jackson.

Hambut Grubb of Little Delving

I haven't blogged for a week (wtf?), so here's four cool things to make up for it, a hat, a periodic table, a list, and a name generator.

The hat:

Said periodic table (of "Awesomements"):

The list, a list of things that Vladimir Nabokov "detests":

• italicized passages in a novel, which are meant to represent the protagonist's "cloudbursts of thought"
  
• background music, canned music, piped-in music, portable music, mix-room (?) music, inflicted music
  
• concise dictionaries, abridged manuals
  
• journalistic cliches
  
• "the moment of truth--the moment of truth!"
  
• "humility"--ha, splendid word
  

And the name generator, a hobbit name generator ("YOU HAVE A SECRET NAME. DISCOVER IT."), which I am convinced was created by someone who was wronged by a Paul Hughes somewhere down the line. At first I thought all the hobbit names were ridiculous and insulting, but then I tested Dalton's name and his is awesome—especially, frankly, for a hobbit:

Grigory Hardbottle

Best headline ever (at least for Seattle)

From KIRO, as identified by Jessie via Blighty ("paralyzed"!):

Beasts 2 party this Saturday in Georgetown

Kept meaning to blog this! I hope everyone reading this can make it to the big Beasts-2-palooza and 2nd anniversary Fanta store party this Saturday from 6 to 9. (Beasts 2, by the way, really would be a bad-ass xmas gift.) And if, say, you're more of Bagge or Woodring fan than a Beasts fan, you can actually choose from *two separate posters* for the same event to inspire you. That's targeted marketing!  

Dataporn: great S&P 2008 graphic

From DailyKos, of all places:

A little background:

The chart (the idea for which comes from a similar chart prepared by Value Square Asset Management, Yale University) has a wealth of interesting information. Because the S&P is a much broader index of market activity, it's not quite as prone to crazy moves as the Dow. It's also not as easily manipulated by the "let's just trade out these exhausted brands for a couple of up and comers" means by which the Dow's value is sometimes inflated.

On the chart you can see that the decline that began in 1929 didn't really reach it's nadir until 1931, following which there were wild swings bringing a record positive move in 1933 and a second crash in 1937. The movement of the market from there through the mid-40s is series of gradually dampening swoops más y menos. How helpful that will be as a model for what happens post-2008 isn't clear. But short of 1931, there's no other year in the S&Ps history comparable to 2008. Let's just hope that we're at the 1931 (or 1937) stage of this downturn, and not in 1929, okay?