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I may not be the designer of the family, but I know crap when I see it. (Even their “BR” Banana Republic logo pales in comparison to Baskin Robbins’. What can I say, I like clever, even borderline-cheesy.) Not that it really makes a difference to the consumer such as myself, to whom the fit of their clothing is more cause for concern, but surely they must have considered how well the new concept will translate on their once-mall standard navy bags, which plastic or not, must be credited with much of their success so far. They gonna change them to supermarket white ones now? Obviously marketing is lost on me.

I’m liking orange these days. Again: was my favorite color as a child. If ever there was a zigzag shirt for my cartoon character, it’d be the orange one mom onto which sewed a black cutout of a tyrannosaurus I drew.

Designer Olly Moss also conceived this awesome bookmark.

Reminds me of this one time I took the bus back home from school and an otherwise sheepish-looking Asian girl, completely out of character for her I’m sure, began talking to me and told me she recognized me from campus as the guy who always wore black. I wonder how you come to earn such a status in someone else’s mind, and if I took that into consideration when further supplanting my wardrobe.

Look through my closet (seriously, that’s no metaphor; my DEVO radiation suit and Lupin III green jacket are still there) for ample proof that I’m less fashion faux pas than fashion fuck quoi. I was for a time determined to get a duffle coat like I had when I was a child, but couldn’t justify wearing it anytime after boarding the flight from Heathrow. It’s the hood, I think, and that it’s European only makes it respectable, right? Well, more on the wearable side comes the inexplicable twice-as-pricey goggle jacket, that is, if I stay in my car, and don’t mind looking like Dumb Donald from Fat Albert.

Only me. My hoodie’s pockets aren’t very deep, and can’t be relied upon for the securest support of their contents, but as it’s become my trademark garment lately (much as my surplus store pea coat was in my senior year of high school), I’ve taken to removing it only in the two places you’d expect a cartoon character to divest—the shower and the marriage bed, as the zipper might disfigure 老婆—and the tight office bathroom stalls are certainly no exception. The likely result of the combination of these factors is, of course, an aquatic disaster the kind which struck me this afternoon and may have been worse if not for the intervention of two more coincidences: that I had just finished reading up on the latest in Apps on the iPhone and returned it, instinctively with firmer placement, into the opposite side, loosening the BlackBerry’s position; and my meal-and-a-half at Chipotle had produced such a stink that I re-flushed to respect the afternoon traffic and the water was fresh. Not that it even crossed my mind as I plunged my hand in for the rescue and rested the wet case on my lap as I swabbed off every accessible surface with all the paper off the roll. There wasn’t any power loss, at least until I pulled the battery, and although the red X’s on its moisture-indicating sticker do seem to have bled slightly, thank goodness for the excuse that rainy season makes. And an abundant supply of extras from downsizing.

I guess it’s like getting old itself: I don’t remember when exactly it happened, but it’s been some time now since I began feeling I’ve outgrown them. Then came telecommuting and the House charity shirts. And however disappointed I may be that those schizophrenic Republicans are allowed to stymie economic recovery (much less live), how can I resist this blast from with the past, although I would’ve preferred one of those Wu-Tang name ones with
Mark&
Jerry&
Bob 1&
Bob 2&
Alan.
on it instead.

Update: Or better yet,
Golden Arm&
Silver Spear&
Iron Robe&
Brass Head.

That third-person videogame-like shot yesterday was begging for the treatment, but who knew how good the turn out would be:

Could’ve sworn I brought this up before, too, but I can’t seem to find a journal entry and a quick search of what old e-mail I have with me turned up no matches. Maybe it was a passing remark in rambling pre-blog website material? Anyway, I’m not sure what I was hoping to gain reading an interview of an actor from a spinoff series that failed to win my viewership (and looks to be going the way of the Trek franchise, as far as I’m interested), but this bit stopped me mid-scroll:

And I tell you never try to tie your shoes in front of an astrophysicist. What happens is they’ll tell you you’re doing it wrong.

All my life I have apparently been tying my shoelaces wrong, there is a much more mathematically beautiful way of doing it, that I was shown by Bill Nye [the Science Guy].

Happened to me back in college, and while I still wasn’t convinced that the single-loop knot was any superior to mine (tied correctly), it was the frightening idea that I could go that long with the mistaken impression I was right about something. Like my definition of the word “sycophant.” You know, this may be what’s hurt my confidence all my life.

And lest I forget, while we were on the subject of shoes:

Too bad Bush is on his way out. He just may have returned us to a barefoot society.