GIBBERING CITY,  EAST YAMMERSTEIN -Feeling very Cornered
here in my little Corner of America tonight.

Not even a finger’s worth of this worthless rotgut in the
house to guard against the willies.  Talents all but wasted away…
mediocrity looming…

But who the hell put this fucking sign at the end of Ma
and Pa Money’s street down in the ‘Burg?

What is going on here?

...

I think this response— the methodologies, the rhetoric,
the bizarre off-topic ADHD, the AR-15’s, nail-biting about taxing
 sodas and killing grandma by committee, beating this uppity
half-breed just to beat him— I think this is the Real Issue at Hand.
 Look at it.  This is far more important than the debate about or
even getting healthcare.  And it’s ironic as this whole shebang has
proven just 

how very  

sick 

 this nation really is. 

The prognosis is dire.

 [Read more →]

Tags: Economics, Politics by Cash Money
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I’ve only heard about this recently, but I have to say, I’m really excited that one of our local galleries and all around primary downtown destinations Space has decided to host a Jelly in the upcoming days! For anybody that’s not familiar, Mashable has some more details, but basically its a chance to expand your work environment collaboratively with other folks with varied skills and interests, and I heartily encourage anyone in the Portland area to attend. I would love to see this become a regular event, as to me it represents a sort of intersection between Hackerspaces and your prolific-yet-boring Top-down enterprise arrangement (some of us put up with the latter for the sake of pursuing the former). I would be there myself in a heartbeat if I could swing the corporate leeway. But I’m at least hoping for some good twitter coverage throughout the day.

Launch date is June 9th from 10-4pm. Space is at 538 Congress (how appropriate!) St., Portland Maine . Also followable on twitter: @Space

And for my next trick; to rid myself of the various NDAs!

Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Economics by Etruscan
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The newest issue of Wired turned up yesterday; and leafing over it with my coffee this morning I came across a couple phrases that I found to be truly jarring. Below is the excerpt from Wired’s Creative Director Scott Dadich (I’d link to the full article but they haven’t updated the site with the new issue yet):

Constraint offers an unparalleled opportunity for growth and innovation. Think of a young tree, a sapling. With water and sunshine, it can grow tall and strong. But include some careful pruning early in its development- removing low hanging branches – and the tree will grow taller, stronger, faster. It won’t waste precious resources on growth that doesn’t serve its ultimate purpose. The same principle applies to design. Given fewer resources, you have to make better decisions.

This gets me on a couple different levels. Given the economic climate, we’re all attempting to do this in one way or another. On another, Neko and I have had this up in discussion a lot lately. But the thing is, I’ve never looked at it from a design perspective though. Taking a more expansive view; if you treat your own life as a design of your own making, doesn’t it behoove you to make it the most efficient (and therefore the most minimal) that you’re able to? Isn’t it such that our boundaries present the greatest opportunities for growth?

**Update** The websites been refreshed, so the full article is Here

Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Economics by Etruscan
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Thanks, Diesel Sweeties

Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Economics, Pictoriphilia, Zombiphilia by Gestalt
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For those of you that stop by here on a regular basis, you’ve probably noticed that over the weekend we’ve added a couple ad boxes to the site (hello, little ad boxes!). This was something we talked about a bit in our last Board meeting and in the end we set up Project Wonderful for the ad serving. This to me actually makes this more of a sociological experiment than an attempt at monetization. See, cool thing about this is that we’ll only serve ads that people intentionally bid to place here, which means that these sellers have something they believe a niche group like our readership will be interested in (actually, Neko’s been eyeing the wares of Etsy seller Sedruola all this morning). Net result? We all get to find interesting new things we may not have otherwise, the folks that advertise here get some exposure, and everybody goes home happy. And that was always our intent with this site; to celebrate the things we love and find interesting, and to find a way to bring that to an audience that we might not be able to reach otherwise. So by all means, check out the ads (I’ve already seen a couple cool ones crop up!), comment, send us ideas of note, and generally help us make this a space where we can enjoy one another’s art and oddities as it was always intended. We’re happy to have you, and we’ll all sleep better at night for it.

Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Economics by Etruscan
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