This weather reminds me of my first winter in Chicago, December 2003. It was exactly like this -- light, dry snow that was powdery and sparkly, with the air turning sharp. I saw Bad Santa at the Biograph Theater, and knew right then that I would be watching it for years to come.
Oh, the treasured memories.
Likely not by itself. But Gary Schwitzer, editor of HealthNewsReview.org, is having trouble staying calm about these shows and the health claims they make. The facts in the stories range from the extremely buried to the completely missing. He's worried not only about people's health, but about the effect this may have on support for health care reform. As he puts it, if you've seen a miracle cure on the Today Show, but a government-sponsored agency tells you that it's not a miracle, then what is the government hiding? Why are our miracles being rationed?
Not at all incidentally, this is my favorite NPR show, my favorite current events show, and a more-than-fairly-journalistically-responsible program.
It's such a nice day, I think I shall dance around the living room.
I rather proud of my first ever upload to YouTube. No, it's not original content. (Thank you, Allah.) It's just a great old song.
I have been addicted to Chrissy Murderbot since a Facebook friend linked me to his year of mixtapes. It's not to be missed -- every week, at least an hour of seriously hot shit. A lot of it's from the past, and more importantly, a lot of it's from MY past. He also has a recent Chicago Reader writeup that, among other things, reveals what a dork he looks like. That's super extra bonus points.
Some faves:
There's treasure here. No, really.
These closeups of a particularly juicy mango rank among the filthiest pictures I have ever taken. It's all just so... sticky. :)
(Technical note: this was all made with Adobe Bridge CS4, and was easy as all heck to put together. Hooray easy!)
The Mango Gallery
I believe I have decided that this will be my official photo for the winter of 2008-2009.
GIMP is the rather unfortunate name of the photo editor that comes with many Linux distributions (and, obviously, is free to download for any Linux distro), and has many of the same functions as Photoshop. I run two machines -- an iMac with a proper, respectable copy of Adobe CS3 installed, and a PC with Linux. (Each of which also boots into Windows XP, but that's another entry.) I have not learned the ins and outs of GIMP the way I have of Photoshop, since I have only been using it for a year and a half or so, but for certain filters and effects, I have come to depend on it.
Happy Holidays from here in wonderland.
For a couple-few years now, I have been counting Otl Aicher's rotis among my favorite typefaces, in particular the thin sans-serif font. I had also been spelling it with an initial capital letter, but I broke that habit.
