You want to know the real reason I'm voting for Obama?

Because he uses Gotham in his campaign.

My vote will be swayed by typefaces.

To be honest, I've been obsessed with Gotham for way too many years. It is just truly beautiful.

One of these days I'm going to get back to creating fonts. I still smile a little when I see one of my fonts in use. Target was the last place one of them popped up.

I can never decide what I find more unsettling in certain books: seeing my fonts or seeing my hands.

Planet Claire: designer, font creator, Bible typesetter, hand model.

I gots pretty hands.

I would love to chat about politics but am trying to refrain from doing so (unsuccessfully apparently). The Republican ticket seems to be tanking any shred of credibility. Whether or not they get elected (and I fear they will be—and have felt that way for many months) I have a really sinking feeling about the whole shebang.

Whenever anyone says, "Oh hey, Palin may not be my cup of tea, but she's so well spoken!" I don't get it. She seems sort of... over-scripted. And I can't accurately describe my feelings about her when friends ask my opinion. All I can muster up is, "She's hairspray".

And I don't even know what that means. But she's hairspray to me.

In other news: I was driving home and heard on the radio some familiar twangs, as it were, and thought, "No way. They're not playing... ."

No Depression. Uncle Tupelo.

In other other news, regular rant readers may or may not know that I have wished serious ill will on my old company. And for so many reasons. You think you have horror stories about past employers? You have no fucking clue. But I drove past it today and their building (a testament to overblown egos) is for sale.

Anyway, I didn't actually think anything bad would happen to my old company. But I am so secretly happy they're tanking. Those assholes are getting karma shoved up their ass. They're shallow tacky hypocrites.

When a 15 year old girl can suss you out as assholes, you have problems (although, to my detriment, I worked for them 12 years after I figured out their bullshit).

So I'm just putting this out there in the ether. Because if one person reads it and is helped, I've done my good deed for the day.

I upgraded to the new iTunes 8 a week or so ago. And after I did, trying to download free episodes from the iTunes store stopped working completely. I'd always get "Not Available" and it would be grayed out. And it did this whether I tried to download the HD version or the standard definition version.

Flummoxed, I did some searching and found the answer: switch your store settings to One-Click instead of Add to Shopping Cart in preferences and it'll download the episode every time. Once you grab what you need, just switch back to the shopping cart.

Oh, and after downloading all the free episodes I was curious about, I think my new favorite TV show is Life. How did I miss this one? Brilliant.

Well I watched the Emmys tonight. What a suckfest. Dear lord.

However! Zeljko Ivanek got one for Damages. Yay! And he thanked Tom Fontana in his acceptance speech.

If I ever accept an award for anything, I think I might thank Tom Fontana. Just because.

Thoughts:

1. I'm watching Clear and Present Danger. I love this movie.

2. I used to have some incredibly beautiful scars running up and down my legs. A legacy of playground dust-ups childhood mayhem. I thought scars stuck around for life. But they're all gone. The only ones I have left are around my eye: one from a rather unfortunate collision with the rear wheels of a semi truck (seconds earlier and my car would have gone under it, most likely killing both me and my best friend), and one from a bad trip on office carpeting that split open a large portion of skin above my eye. But that's it. Terribly dull, those.

3. I have finally decided to face reality. Death Cab for Claire is apparently no longer in this world.

It went missing a few months ago. I figured it was still stalking me and hiding out someplace, ready to pop up and freak me out (as it has done numerous times over the years). But no. And am surprised to admit I miss Death Cab.

And so I did a quick search for pages that I mentioned Death Cab for Claire in, and some chick is using that for a lameass blog name that has been active for like a year. Nice try, but that's mine. And just for grumpiness, I'm grabbing the domain name.

Bitch.

Gram Parson died 35 years ago today. Strangely enough, I was watching Gimme Shelter last weekend, which my first exposure to Parsons.

When I was 12 my stepfather at the time sat me down and we watched the documentary. He was a lot more excited about explaining who the Flying Burrito Brothers were than about explaining to me about the impact Altamont had on society. And that always stuck with me.

So in honor of Gram I thought I'd post some music this morning. And since I am currently sitting here waiting for them to finish work on my car, I got nothing but time. Yes, I do realize nobody that reads this on any sort of regular basis actually likes my taste in music, but I'm posting anyway:

Coffee Creek : Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man

Uncle Tupelo : Blue Eyes

Gram Parsons : Ooh Las Vegas

Emmylou Harris and Ryan Adams (Sessions) : Return of the Grievous Angel

Gram Parsons : Wild Horses

Son Volt: Song For You

I went out to dinner with moms tonight. She was craving a burger so we went to some chain that was supposed to have good burgers. And they did. But that's neither here nor there.

When we were done eating, we got up to leave and for some reason I stepped wrong on my shoe, tried to recover, couldn't, tried again to recover, couldn't, and fell straight down onto the floor.

Completely mortifying.

At first my pride was mainly hurting (who the hell falls down in the middle of a stupid restaurant?) but now both my knees (which are what smacked the floor when I went down) and my jacked up foot have taken precedence and hurt a hell of a lot more than my dignity.

And the impact has made my entire body all pissed off at me. And although my first instinct is to gimp along without bending my knees much (which now both sport huge lumps) I know that will only prolong my whining. And no one wants that.

Sunday Odds and/or Ends.

Dreary day today in the cities. I spent it working on a bunch of miscellany I wanted to get done before the week starts. I'm planning on focusing on one client for the entire week, and needed to make sure I wasn't leaving any client tasks hanging out there.

I think my left eye is getting even darker. I was washing my face today and for a second I wondered if I still had two different colored eyes (since I don't exactly know a lot about heterochromia). And I think the dark brown one is now even darker. Weird.

This is a shot from a few years ago (ignore the hack eyeliner job):


And now the left one is even darker. Like as dark as my hair. I just wish the other one was still green.

In other news: I think I just got a sliver. I hate slivers.

Apparently today was Take Your Mother to the Grocery Store Day. I went to pick up a few things and there were about a dozen middle-aged women with their mothers in tow. So in every aisle there were these pairs of women shuffling along and trying to decide exactly what mom wanted for dinner. And this necessitated a lot of weaving back and forth, completely unaware of other shoppers.

So I was ducking and weaving through the aisles, trying to avoid old ladies and wild walking canes. And as I was going along, every older lady I passed would clutch her purse a little closer to her chest and glare at me. At first I thought I was making things up in my head, but after the fifth time it happened I started to get annoyed.

And I'm not some 17 year-old hooligan or anything. I'm flippin' 30. I even looked at my outfit to see if I had accidentally grabbed my Bikini Kill t-shirt or something. Nope. Standard issue fitted black tee and khakis.

But there it was. Every little old lady found me a threat to their pocketbook. I wasn't sure whether to be flattered or offended. I went with flattered.

But the biggest laugh I had was in the checkout lane. I was setting my cart on the ledge thingie for the checkout person when something caught my eye. There's a little gift shop in the store and when their seasonal stuff goes on clearance it ends up in kiosks next to the checkout lanes. And I noticed this little cup of chocolate lollipops. But what really caught my eye was that one had a portrait of John McCain on it.

What the fuck?

Not the McCain part, mind you. But the fact that there were these novelty over-sized chocolate lollipops with politicians' faces on them. So I sort of pawed through the cup, but the McCain one was the only one that stuck out.

The checkout person noticed me looking at them and (probably noticing the quizzical look on my face) said that they used to have a bunch of McCain and Obama but now the only ones left were Paris Hilton. I nodded.

Because, she continued, "Apparently no one wants Paris Hilton on a stick."

Holy crap! Shhhh! You can not tell anyone about this. You have to pinky swear, okay?

I found some GIFs from my ex-employer online. Tell no one!

Eh, screw it. I don't work there and they're online. It's not a crime. It is however... well:



It's the animated part that is the most awesome.

Click for the full version.

I just spent the last hour or so updating a site for a client who is an activist and is actually doing something to bring about change in the world. Unlike me.

Anyway he had some updates he needed done. And so I was going through this and just marveling at all the things he's done and the people he's met and people's he's affected and just what an amazing person he is...

And then I got done and realized that before I had started, I was in the middle of quoting a TV show.

How useless am I?

Friggin' Geek Squad. If there wasn't a more poorly named bunch of maroons out there you've got me.

I went to take my recycling out and noticed the ladder and the truck outside my window. Which. Fine. Some apartment neighbor feels like hiring some dolts to install something? Be my guest.

Only (and here's the fun part) not three minutes later my cable goes out. And goes into a weird mode I hadn't seen before (to be fair, new box) so I went out there thinking maybe it was Comcast that was doing the work. Nope. So I oh-so-politely asked, "Did you... mean to take down my cable?"

Oh no! He hadn't even touched anything like that! And what apartment was I in, anyway? Like I was actually having the work done and had plum forgot.

So apparently a brand new box that had worked great up until this moment simply chose to go completely out. Imagine that.

Whatever. I fumed off, tempted to call someone to vent about sheer stupidity. Thinking better of it (for once) I manually reset the box and waited an eternity for the thing to boot up.

But seriously? Don't fuck with a girl's cable.

So I actually ended up going to the RNC yesterday.

It was a little trippy. I have never seen so many people in suits before. Or flippin' flag-flavored outfits.

I was tempted to snatch a badge from one of the CNN guys wandering around, but thought better of it. Still, it would have been cool to get in there.

As it was, we ended up wandering the streets for a few hours. Not quite as crowded as I would have expected, actually. I was picturing throngs. Throngs!

I was also picturing more free stuff. Not much to be had.

But the 3M kids were out in droves. They were handing out these privacy filter thingies for cellphones. I have 30 of them now. Not sure what to do with them.

We also hung out at the MSNBC stage. Chris Matthews? Kind of foxy.

You know, in the beginning I thought "Hm. Big misstep choosing Palin." Because I think it was.

And as a sidenote? Bristol. Willow. Piper. You fail at naming your kids. Yuck.

I digress. I first thought it was a misstep. Now I think it was distasterous. If that moron-and-a-half gets elected with his lameass runningmate I'm out of this place. What a big tub of losers.

I hate Republicans and everything they stand for.

And HOW DARE they pretend to be pro-woman. Worthless pack of assholes.

You know what? You want four more fucking years of pathetic leadership? Sure. Elect McCain. He's done nothing and will do nothing.

I respect the fact that he was a POW. I do. My god, anyone willing to serve their country is just... beyond amazing.

But you know what? Not the only veteran out there. Stop flashing that as your calling card. In my limited experience people who served in the military don't constantly bring it up.

HATE HATE HATE.

Oh I am so angry. Fucking bastards.

McCain is NOT a reformer. He's the same old crap we've had for way too long. Worthless. And Palin is TACKY. Tacky and transparent.

Screw it. I'm heading over to St. Paul to bust some heads.

So. Right. I get that Comcast is the Evil Empire. No, totally. I'm there. I get it.

But I am apparently the one person in the world who has never had an issue with them. If I knew nothing about their record I would tell you that they're all a bunch of saints.

Take today. I called because I am finally—FINALLY!—done with my DVR box. I've been suffering through stilted TV for too long.

Of course now it's fine, which is annoying. But hopefully it'll go bad before the tech dude shows up.

So I got a woman who seemed sort of by-the-book, "Here's what you should try" "This is how some people fix their DVR".

Twenty minutes later and she's telling about her entire life. She was completely awesome. And apologized like eight times for how long I had to wait to get a person on the line.

So you know what? I love Comcast.

I was watching CNN and saw a clip from Sen. Obama talking to Anderson Cooper.

And I got it. I just got it.

Call it a moment of Zen.

Obama as president of the United States needs to happen. Really it just whacked me in the face. I mean, I was already voting for him, but this moment just really gobsmacked me.

The man should be our president.

Bush appears to be on Spring Break. Every time I see him I get this "Dude. Being President ruled. But I'm not running again. So let's party."

It's quite disconcerting.

I called complete bullshit on any stupid person that would claim that the RNC would be scaled back in St. Paul. Complete bullshit. I told every single person that there was no way they would pull out on such a grand scale for an event that's been in the planning for ages.

So I'll eat crow on that one. 'Cause shit is toned down. I was hoping for budding Republicans wandering the streets looking for cheap hookers and blow. I remain disappointed.

I'm thinking Gustav will die down and things will pick up in a few days. I'm still planning on heading over to St. Paul for the RNC. Right now the plan is Moscow on the Hill for some amazing Russian food. And from there we'll follow our nose toward the tear gas.

Just because the RNC is toned down doesn't mean the friggin' morons aren't out.

Someone felt the need to break out the windows of Macy's in downtown St. Paul.

What does that do? What does that prove? That you break shit when you're angry? Congratulations. You're ten.