scribblista

Zoom Clouds

As we were cruising around M-Pyre [or was it M-Pyrical?] earlier today, we noticed a nifty-looking box of words in the margin. Turns out it's a Zoom Cloud and we started chasing it until we learned that a zoom cloud builds  a "tag cloud" or graphic representation of notable words that appear on any given blog.

As it turns out, the three most notable words on Scribblista lately are "corn," "beever" and "pencil." Yep, that pretty much sums us up.

Scroll down to check out our Zoom Cloud, which we hope will be as ever-changing as the real thing.

iPotty

At first blush, this iPod dock/TP holder struck us as a bit ... hmm, how should we put this? .... silly.

But then we remembered that, historically, people have been too quick to pooh-pooh genius when it involves bathroom paraphernalia.

For instance, a lot of narrow-minded, bourgeois folks once scoffed when artist Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal and called it art.

Yet, almost a century later, Fountain has been hailed as the most important work of modern art, beating out Picasso and Warhol, according to some 500 artists, curators and other assorted twits experts.

So, even though whoever invented this little masterpiece claims that it's merely a clever gadget and not a visionary piece of art, we refuse to believe it. We also refuse to go on the record and call it ridiculous.

In fact, we'd like to be the first to say that we believe it's worthy of a permanent place at the Smithsonian. At the very least, it's destined to become a collector's item.

Reason #284 To Wish We Had Graphic Design Skills

Slate recently commissioned pulp covers for classic books and honestly, we can imagine no better tribute to the great works of literature. You may think we're kidding or being smart alecky, but we're not. The idea totally appeals to our respect for things both high and low.

In fact, we're so charmed by the idea that if we were graphic designers, we'd be hard at work right now, crafting pulp covers for our favorite books. 

Imagine all the bodice-ripping, scandal-insinuating possibilties for titles that sound juicy [The Lover, The House of Mirth, Portrait of a Lady] or abstract [One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Speak Memory] or just plain dull [Housekeeping, In the Lake of the Woods.]

But Is It Art?

Is it just us, or does it strike anyone else that it's totally weird that the military flaks opted to put this photograph in a frame?

Or perhaps while we've been busy grousing about the war, bombing became an art form.

And We're Back.....

We apologize for our slacking of late, but we recently gave up a gig as a highly-paid bullshit artiste communicatrix and our time management skills are shot have been put to the test as we down-shift back into the life of a freelance writer.   

We realize that this development should mean that we have ample time to devote to the care and feeding of our blog. But to our complete surprise, the freelance life has proved to be both busy and demanding.

One new gig that we're happy to brag about is Lime.com, a exceptionally cool site devoted to the care and feeding of oneself. [We hear that is important, too]

Amazingly enough, this mind-body-spirit-focused site lets us write for them even though our exceptionally cool editor is well-aware of our penchant for dirty martinis, processed foods and our stubborn hope that an unexamined life is totally worth living.

On a personal note to Rupert: If you're reading this [and we know you are], you already know that we love you. So if you want to pay us slave wages the big bucks to write for you again, you just let us know.