What is this, a Renault? (Nope: Mercedes 180/190 [W120/W121].)

Shouldn’t the driver be wearing a boler?

(UPDATED)    I have been saying for a couple of years that the PDF/Universal Access Committee (slash in original, sadly) is a happy ship, stewarded by an erudite and urbane chair and staffed by a small core of constituents with good skills and an actual sense of humour. The goal is a standard for PDF accessibility that extends beyond the simplistic dictum “Only use tagged PDF.” [continue with: ‘International perspective’ →]

From an interview with Coupe and (former) Ray Gun editors (more than one speaker, intermingled):

My boredom with [Monocle (q.v.)] lies in its very nice design. The look is so grid-based, so thorough, so devoid of spontaneity[, so overformatted] that after four or five issues of the same, the desire to fork over $12 for Issue Six just isn’t very strong. I think editors and publishers need to remember that people like spontaneity, and surprise in their lives — and in their magazines. Basically, editors need to accept the fact that… design has become content. Readers look for it and should expect design content change from issue to issue beyond new photos and spot illustrations. […]

If design is content, if fonts convey emotions and if synergy between word and image are true, and we know they are, this resistance from the people who could gain the most from strutting their stuff substantively is mystifying to me.

It may be the one place, oddly, where you see no 1990s nostalgia. Someone showed me a young adult book called So Yesterday that had a lead character, a girl who wanted, to the amazement of her friends, to work in magazines. She talked about a magazine that was clearly Ray Gun, and how it had crazy fonts and messed with things. Her friends thought she was kidding, but she just shrugged off their reactions, saying that people back then thought it was cool. It has made me want to come up with a start up that would hit the same mark today that Ray Gun did then, just to see what the response would be like.

Did you know I actually wrote for Ray Gun back dans la journée?

Not, in fact, Contempi.

Or: Fake Ouimet shitcans self

I started writing the Tea Makers blog on the CBC in July, and as of today I stop. Only part of the reason is external, i.e., it is due only partly to the epic incompetence of current CBC management, which will surely result in the decimation of the entire organization should the Tories win a majority government. Frankly, it is difficult to argue for the continued existence of public television in a multi-channel environment when its programming is indistinguishable from private broadcasters’. CBC does other things well, but they are never held in its favour. According to right-wing assholes, the CBC costs “the public” $1.1 billion a year and all of that goes into CBC Television. Who needs a state broadcaster in this day and age, they ask?

I wrote over 100 posts of generally excellent quality. They were certainly well researched. Nonetheless, people wanted Old Coke. Teatards™ tuned in to their own Price Is Right and expected Bob Barker standing next to the wheel. I am not Alphonse Ouimet and didn’t pretend to be, two facts that truculent readers pretended not to understand.

There’s a reason I don’t have comments here, and the reason is self-protection. I foolishly let my guard down in writing the Tea Makers, where I was routinely pilloried, even to the extent of anonymous cowards’ publishing confidential details that only a couple of people ever had access to. They weren’t just objecting to my presence or disagreeing with what I wrote or my writing chops; they were deliberately trying to hurt me. They succeeded. And now they win.