Where The Wild Fonts Are

Oh, how I love to see people leave the box behind and embrace everything that can exist beyond it's boundaries. Simple, appropriate and really, really lovely hand-drafted type in the new trailer for Spike Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are.














I can't wait to see this. Full trailer here.

Liver Doodles

Many of you know that Bacon is still very much a boy — despite all our best efforts to remedy that — due to a little liver irregularity. After two solid months of blood work and three different vets' opinions it looks like everything is fine and all of this might clear up on its own with a little vitamin supplement. But for now, Bacon remains the other man in the house and this is his throne.

Maybe all that sunshine is more than his liver can handle...

Celebrating A New Beginning

Its been a busy year so far for *boy and I — busy and stressful. I now have three jobs in full swing (the part-time day job, the escalating blog job and teaching two classes) and next week *boy's teaching begins atop a very heavy workload at the office. All this and Bacon still expects serious play time when we are home (or at least serious lap naps while we work).

It's one of those times in life that I'm sure we will remember for many years to come — newly married, working like crazy, tight budgets and watching with mouths agape at the way the world is unfolding around us. But when I woke up this morning I had a different feeling. I wasn't anxious or tense, and I didn't feel stressed or overwhelmed. As I got ready for work this morning I felt excited, almost giddy. Today is not only a new day, but a new beginning — a fresh start for each and every one of us.

There's a reason why a few million people flocked to our national mall this morning before the sun was even up and why tens of millions more around the world will be watching Washington today at noon. That reason is so much bigger than one man placing his hand on a book and repeating a handful of scripted words. That man represents an idea — a hope — that we can begin again, we can start fresh, we can come together and work for a better future.

Today is not about watching a man take an oath, its about being part of a nation focused on a single moment that none of us will ever forget. In the same way, we must all remain focused after the moment has passed...

A Practical Compliment

Since starting our part-time gig over at Apartment Therapy, I've really come to embrace this whole reading-posting-commenting world that is the blogosphere. I read interiors blogs and graphic blogs, food blogs and, yes — for a large portion of this year — wedding blogs. I even email the writers from time to time. I only found a few nuptial sites that I could even stomach, but A Practical Wedding quickly became my absolute favorite.

A few weeks ago, Meg posted a few pictures from our wedding and wrote some truly lovely things. You can read it here.

V.O.T.E.

From our morning at the polls (click to enlarge).

Also, I'm handing over the political commentary to a guy who hit the nail on the head with his Election Day Post and this little excerpt from Lincoln's first inaugural:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Its even better in context: Sweet Juniper.

Just Another Married Couple

Real wedding pictures by the wonderful Francine Kontos are up at last.

Maybe these should be our Halloween costumes...

Red and Blue or Purple

After looking at so many maps of the United States lately with the typical red state blue state highlights that basically divide the country into what the red candidates have come to call "real America" and the rest that question them are somehow un-American or part of "Fake America". So much of the focus of the election from both sides is on small rural towns which make up a great deal of physical space but not population. Everything looks clearly divided along state lines and each state is characterized in one way or another. Fortunately things are not so clear cut and if you add just a little more information to the typical maps maybe you can see what real America is made of. Not something that you can just cut down to a single message or soundbite. Adding information such as a more generous scale to the subtleties of voting and population density to redraw the map, maybe this is more what America really looks like:

As Barack Obama said back in 2004 and this map shows, "there's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."

I do believe we will be either voting for or against America this election, it's just a matter of if you believe in red and blue or purple.

more maps here