monkey jungle

drink up, fight AIDS

First off, sorry for the crap celly photo.

I did a triple take when I saw this one bleary morning while munching Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds.

IS THIS SOY MILK TELLING ME TO USE CONDOMS AND/OR DENTAL DAMS?

This is a carton of plain organic Silk Soymilk (the lucky official soy of Starbucks). Red ribbon + an imploring to Please Be Safe, right there next to the Pareve. What???

You see pink ribbons at the grocery all the time... and breast cancer at least has an arguable nutritional tie-in. But AIDS? Is this some kind of guerrilla activism on the part of a packaging designer or some kind of curious demographics-based advocacy? Are other foods in on this safe sex messaging or is soy milk alone?

high times

I laugh way too easily. I smile probably more than I should. Two things that made me happy this week:

1) Striped socks (pictured right). I never had  them ever before last week and now I don't know where they've been all my life. That I get to walk on a similarly-striped carpet at work is just gravy.

2) This elevator scene:

[I get in push "16". Guy gets in, pushes "12".]

GUY: I see you're on the cool floor.
ME: [Nod.] I like to think so. what's on 12?
GUY: TPS reports.
ME: Really?
GUY: Really.
ME: Really?
GUY: Yes. Well actually they're TPSA reports, but I call them TPS. I ask people for their coversheets and they're like, huh? [Smiling. Door opens.] Bye!

nevermore

So, unbelieveably, I've only had to down three Ativan so far. I've got only 2.5 days to go, so the final count could go to 5 I'm thinking. Tonight's plan includes: burger night at DeLuxe on Broadway, the latest Daniel Auteuil French-flickery at Harvard Exit, then a quick escape by scooter before nightcap plans can be formulated. I just need to avoid emotional engagement. A. Little. Bit. Longer.

What are the 5 words that best describe your life right now?
Submitted by mojito.  

scooter, Nordstrom, chardonnay, sun, mary-janes

from The Economist's style guide:

The overriding principle is to treat people with respect. That usually means giving them the title they themselves adopt. But some titles are ugly (Ms), some misleading (all Italian graduates are Dr), and some tiresomely long (Mr Dr Dr Federal Sanitary-Inspector Schmidt). Do not therefore indulge people's self-importance unless it would seem insulting not to.

Have you noticed that, like, EVERYthing is these colors right now?

yay

At first I resisted. But now, I am hooked. My bathroom. My t-shirt. My online portfolio (minus pink).

For a short while there it was this:

bah

Ugh, I can't believe I ever cared about this palette. I'm glad the phase was confined to a few comps that never saw the light of day. Just looking at it I can feel pointy sticks jabbing into my sides. To think I was going to make these into a business card.  Oh my.

But now, sweet dessert of a thinky-pinky scheme, it's love love love. And it feels grand.

Chihuahua eats a pink cupcake

This is my sweet Paco, eating a "pupcake" from Railey's Leash & Treat in Fremont. Following the filming of this movie, he was promptly deposited in the bathroom sink to wash off his pink-caked little paws.

Speaking of cake.... DO NOT go see Marie Antoinette. If you really really wanna see Kirsten Dunst tarted out in lace and all doughnut-powdery, check out the website, which is far more entertaining that the flick it promos. If you liked Lost in Translation, you will hate this movie. If you liked Bring It On, you will hate this movie. In fact, if you have liked any movie, ever.. You. Will. Hate. This. Movie. I saw it immediately after seeing the plodding, plotless The Queen (Helen Mirren as QE) and was nostalgic for the relatively action-packed Brits while watching this Coppolan still-life. Ugh. What a waste of production access to Versailles!

I'm thinking of shaving down the Skills section on my resume, removing stuff from my Portfolio. Because right now I'm kinda into being what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was supposed to be a writer and editor. And I have been, but I have also been so many other things, because I love to learn and love to DO. And I, fairly constantly, find myself working in the hot-new-business-unit of the big-corporate-teat companies -- ergo, the 10-hat start-up thing. I design, I photograph, I code, I media plan, I media make, etc. My title is typically 'manager', but the truth is that I usually actually execute what I manage. Then I have these interviews where I can tell the person thinks I am lying when I say: "Yes, I 100% executed that. Yes, the brand extension strategy. Yes, the copywriting, image production, Flash animation, coding, maintaining partnerships behind all the offers."  Or they fixate on all the production skills. They're hiring for a 1-hat job. I want a 1-hat job. I just want to be a freaking writer, people!

When new employees are being brought around where I work, the other guys in my small department are introduced as Designer and Writer and then for me it's, um, This is Mojito. Because I do all kinds of things, including what the other guys do. People just assume that my work is done by Designer and Writer unless explicitly told otherwise. It's a constant struggle to exert my internal brand. 

I never thought that being able to do more things would not come in handy, that being a deep-vertical generalist would not be a cool thing. Most of my friends are too, ya know? How do you re-brand as mono-thematic specialist?

Again it happened! Everyday now it seems.

go!

When I pull onto the freeway on-ramp and see that the metering light is on, I am filled with dread. (If you, like me in more innocent times, do not know what this is: it is a stop light that keeps too many cars from clogging the nation's byways by instead creating clots of them on one-lane city streets.) Sure, being made to stop just when you're gassing it to 80mph is annoying. Sure, idling away your day is annoying. But the true source of dread is this: other people. Nearly every time I am at one of these lights at the front of the line, people start honking at me to go -- their cars sighing with exasperation and whizzing around me. HONK. HONK. They pull up for 6.5 seconds during molasses rush hour. HONK. Yesterday a huge Mac truck backed up dramatically and shot around me. This morning a lady a pounded away on her anemic little pony of a klaxon, then pulled up to my side, rolled down her window in the rain and said "It's stuck, it's stuck!" I mouthed, IT IS NOT STUCK. And this is Seattle, ferchrissakes, land of Polite People Who Don't Honk. I am tempted to zoom past also, and god knows I love to break useless rules, but I'm not interested in a $200 ticket in exchange for saving 10 seconds. Honk away, folks! I-90, South Rainier on-rampers, I'm talking to you!

odious beast

Oh boy, did I just blow it big-time! Wow... I've never been so nervous or stilted in an interview before. I am not a huge fan of phone interviews. I'd rather do the press-your-jacket-and-drive-across-town-in-the-middle-of-the-workday thing than the find-a-discrete-hidey-hole-with-4-bars-of-cell-reception thing. I talk with my hands and give great, great eye contact. Gah. I was in the Factoria Mall down the street, as I know far too many people on campus here, my own office walls are really thin, it's freezing and raining outside, people are still eating lunch in the cafeteria, etc. I know... Factoria... home of B. Dalton, Red Robin, mewling rug rats, and the roaming guy dressed as a giant bee. This is Bellevue, people -- there aren't that many other choices that don't have a cappuccino machine frothing violently in the background. Or the Lionel Richie + clinking barware combo that makes you seem like a melancholy lush. So I had my celly, copious notes, an iced drip with vanilla, a bottle of water, and a kick-ass job history. And a fresh hot bag of nerves. WTF? I am never like this. I'd done WAY too much homework. I was WAY too excited. The connection was really feedbacky and echoey, and contributed to my edginess. Could I use a landline, she asked? No, I said, I couldn't. I felt spastic. My words were Teflon-coated and I struggled to make them stick to each other. A barista on break sat *right* in front of me and made me feel as though I was shouting responses at her. Panic! Weirdness! I felt totally ESL. Okay, I am ESL, but still. Battle. Shuffle. Buzzy buzzing buzzwords trapped on my lips in heavy rotation. Dear readers.... it was a disaster!