You. Must. Go. See. This. Movie.

I don't mean to build up expectations for it, but Disney/Pixar's WALL•E may just well be the best movie of the year. That's right, I'm predicting that every other movie this year will not surpass WALL•E, because it has more heart, soul, and flat-out emotion than any movie I've seen so far this year. And I've seen a lot of them. Sure, I'll give you that Iron Man is still the movie to beat as far as Summer flicks go, but ultimately WALL•E far and away wins the big race. It may not have the gorgeous visuals of Finding Nemo, nor the whimsey of Monsters Inc., but where it might lack in those areas, it makes up for in its ability to grab a hold of your heart from the very beginning and never let go. The most emotionally investing and emotionally satisfying Pixar movie so far. Stop reading this, check your theater listings and then GO SEE THIS FILM!

Oh, and the short film serving as an appetizer to WALL•E's main course is equally wonderful. Pixar is at the top of their game. I'm so relieved that they are still living up to their mission that story is king.

It's like my insides are trying to escape

Apparently the use-by date is not always a good indicator of when food is about to spoil. I made some stuffed chicken breasts for dinner last night, a few days left before their expiration date, and clearly, I should have used them much sooner. Unless they were bad to begin with. Either way, my insides feel like they're trying to get outside anyway possible…unfortunately most of the time it means I'm trapped in the bathroom, and the rest of the time I'm in bed with brain cramps, a fever, and stomach cramps that remind me of when my nephew jumped on me like a trampoline. Good thing I only had two bites and stopped (they turned out so dry) because I'm just imagining how worse off I'd be if I'd eaten the whole breast. I knew I should have made the corn dogs instead.

I hope this stomach bug passes soon (no pun intended) because I've got a crap-load of work (no pun intended) to do at the office this week and when I'm forced to squeeze it (no pun intended) all into a shorter work-week, well, I get a bit burnt out. I'm keeping the Jell-O cups down for the moment and the Gatorade G2 is keeping me more hydrated than not. Bleh. Ok, that's about all I can muster to write about tonight.

Dreamescapes

Maybe it's the heat, or the long hours at work, I'm not sure but something has been toying with my dreams. A couple months back, I started having some pretty weird dreams. Mostly they've been good dreams, relating to travel and trips. Some have been so interesting that I don't want to wake up from them, no matter if they start getting a bit twisted or unrealistic. My alarm will go off and I'll hit the snooze. Turn over and hope to jump back into the dream in the same place, which rarely happens, and when it does things usually start morphing and the plot turns into a different story than I was originally staring in.

In the last couple weeks, though, I've been having a hard time sleeping all the way through the night. I've been waking up at odd hours as the last resort to get out of a dream I didn't want to be in anymore. There's been two kinds of dreams that have been responsible so far. Working at a job I've never done before, without any training, no one around to help me out, and worst of all, no information available that explains what I'm supposed to be doing. Worry. Panic. Nightmare.

The other kind is where I'm being chased. The baddies run the gamut from wolves, to intruders/robbers, to zombies. Yes, zombies. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as why these dreams happen, no pattern that I've noticed. But they've been happening with such a frequency that now I know to wake myself up upon recognizing exactly what kind of dream I'm in, or when it starts to get too dicey. Running. Cold sweat. Terror.

I wish I knew what was causing these dreams, both good and bad. I'm a little concerned that I wake up remembering them so clearly. On the bright side, I usually don't remember them beyond my morning shower. Maybe I should start keeping a dream journal? It would have to be a tape recorder or something like that because I really don't think I'd be able to legibly write down my dreams seconds after waking up.

Some dreams I want to escape into, others I want to escape from. Maybe my brain is trying to tell me something about my waking life?

Bedtime story

Angel has been especially needy when it comes to constant attention recently. I don't know if it's the season, or the weather, or just his part of his cycle of feline moods, but whatever it is it can be a bit of a challenge as he seems to always be underfoot, literally. And if I'm sitting then he must, of course, be sitting on me. Usually he restrains himself to sitting on my lap, but sometimes he likes to mix it up and attempt cozy up on my stomach, or chest, and once, my face (don't ask). It usually cute and I like to cuddle with him when watching TV and such, but when I'm trying to eat dinner after a 10 hour work day, it can also be a nuisance. Especially when it comes to cat fur ending up in my mojito salmon with brown rice. Ack!

Last night was warm here in the valley, and as such we were both restless. TV was worthless — nothing good on — and I wasn't in the mood for the commitment a DVD would certainly require. I also wasn't in the mood to contend with a cat that could not be satisfied with any amount of petting, scratching, stroking, or massaging. I turned on the air conditioning (a rarity as I'm a bit of an energy miser these days) and decided to finally crack opened the newest David Sedaris book, When You are Engulfed in Flames, I had picked up at my favorite Target over the weekend. I started to read, the familiarity of his writing immediately filling the void that was causing my mental restlessness. Meow? I keep reading. Meeeoow. I turn the page. Meeooooow! My concentration starts to shift. MEEEEEEOOOOOW! Right in my ear! With the book in my lap there was no room for Angel which was none to his liking. It was too hot to have 15 pounds of hot fur heating up my bare legs so I set him on the ground and proceed to read out loud in an attempt to regain my focus. Angel, apparently a closet Sedaris fan, immediately settled down, stretched out on the carpet and soaked in the first two chapters I read to him, quietly purring to himself into a peaceful slumber. Who knew all we both needed was a bedtime story.

Why aren't you eating this: Tofutti Cuties Mint Chocolate Chip

I've been addicted to these for quite some time. Dairy and I don't always get along so having such a delicious non-dairy frozen treat that tastes BETTER than many of the dairy varieties is a dream. I've enjoyed all the basic flavors of the Tofutti Cuties, but I have to say that the mint chocolate chip is my hands down favorite. They're also just the right size, which is good when you're trying to improve portion control in your eating habits. Then again, because they're so small, it's almost too easy to rationalize having a second or third in the same meal. (Don't tell anyone but I may have polished off and entire box in a single day before.)

I first became familiar with the wonder that is Tofutti because back in the day I was addicted to getting veggie sandwiches at Noah's Bagels and they used to offer Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese as a spread option. It was magical! In fact I stopped eating at Noah's when they stopped offering it.

My local TJ's (Trader Joe's) sometimes carries the basic flavors of the Cuties, but for the supremely refreshing Mint Chocolate Chip I have to slum it Safeway. The sketchy one away from my house. One day soon I hope to try their fancier flavors such as peanut butter (which could become my new favorite, I love PB that much!), Coffee Break, and key lime pie. Oh boy, I'm getting hungry just thinking about 'em!

So there you have it. I've awarded them my special "Luv this!" rating and suggest you go out and find some as soon as possible or your life will always feel like it's missing something.

Now this is what I call Summer Camp

What can I say, I'm a design junkie. Amazing typography can make me salivate. True, you have yet to see any drool-worthy typography here, but that's because it just doesn't match the whole white-trash persona. On the other hand, I don't suppose many (if any) of the posts here support it either. Oh well, it is what it is. And now I'm going to go wash my hands to clean them after typing that wretched phrase.

Imagine my surprise and delight to find that there's a summer camp up in Canada just for typography! Would you believe it's called Type Camp? Well, what else would it be called?! Mind you, with such an unassuming name it costs a pretty penny (especially with the US dollar as weak as a kitten these days) but holy kerning, it would be the summer camp experience of a lifetime. Well, for a certain type of folk I guess…no pun intended. Okay, pun intended, but only just a little.

I wish they had camps like this back when I was a kid. Back then the choices were the summer camp out in the woods with the horse back riding and the archery and ticks with their lyme disease, or you could spend your summer mornings at the local high school in front of an Apple II learning how to program in BASIC and such. Guess where I spent two summers between the ages of 10 and 12? Exactly. I wouldn't come to fully appreciate the art that is typography until I was in college and waist deep in it. Believe me when I say that it's easily one of the most overlooked and under appreciated forms of design in the world.

Well if I happened to have nearly $1,300 lying around and the flexability to take a week off in the late summer I would really consider going. Having to fling out the projects like I do these days, my typography skills are no doubt pretty rusty. And because it's so easy to just let the computer's defaults for leading (line spacing) and kerning (letter spacing) be good enough (even though they never are) because you're up against deadline after deadline and it takes time to go in and kern every character to look just right next the each other, how can one not get a little rusty? They also offer (or have in the past) a camp on information design…another one that I should start saving up for.

Hopefully after reading this you'll start to look at type as more than just letters on a page, and start to notice the spacial relationships they have with one another, and maybe even think twice before typing that next document in Times New Roman. May I suggest something in a nice humanist sans serif?

Scam artists…Fear my gay wrath!

This is Part 2 of my "I'm so in a gay rage right now!" post. If you haven't read the original post where this story began, you probably should read it now or the rest of this won't make a whole lotta sense to ya.

Yes I had no idea how deep my sweet li'l mom had gotten herself into this scam. But as we kept talking, I quickly learned it was even worse than I had imagined. Turns out the site link she had given me was her second online store, her first is what you can see below.



Mind you, it's tons prettier and more professional looking than the first site she had directed me to but it's still nothing but page after page of banner ads that was marketed to my mom as an online storefront. At this point I was speechless. Not only was one group of scammers after my mom, but there's a second set as well. (Just tonight I learned that the prettier site above cost her $7000. Good thing I had just parked my car or I would have driven off the damn road in shock.) Depending on the website being designed, it's not unrealistic to pay about $100/hour for quality work. Looking at the two sites my mom paid for, I simply can't see anywhere close to her getting her money's worth. As a designer myself, seeing this happen makes me physically ill.

My gay rage had mutated into a gay wrath. These assholes are going to pay. I told my mom — now quite overcome with regret and embarrassment upon realizing that she'd been scammed — to calm down and that I was going to look into this other company and then get back to her. Turns out this other company had actually contacted her first and set up the site, and then the she was contact by a second company who convinced her that the first company was run by untrustworthy people and convinced her she'd do better with them, which is how she ended up with that ugly-ass site from the first part of the story. Well I used my interweb research skills to be dead-ended because the first company used a proxy registrar to set up their own company's domain, and tracing them would be very difficult. At this point it was suggested that in addition to contacting her bank and the credit agencies, that she also contact the attorney general for advice on how to get all of her money back. I called her back and she with a crushed spirit said hello. I had her write down her "tasks" and tried to give her a bit of a pep talk as I was rushing into a meeting. She said she'd do what she could and to call back over the weekend when we'd have more time to talk.

During the meeting my mind kept drifting to my mom's predicament. I honestly considered at one point the scenario of hopping on the next flight to where these company's were doing business from (conveniently in the same metropolis) and confronting them in person. Then I remembered that I'm one of the least intimidating people on the planet so I put that in my back pocket as a "plan b."

Over the weekend I did a little more sleuthing to see if anyone else had fallen for this same scam. I've never heard of it before so for all I know it's something that's just starting. I wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to target seniors because of their lack of actual knowledge of how things work on the internet. My theory is that these scammers would want to do as little work as possible so they'd probably cut corners and just use a template for all of their victims websites. While I couldn't find a similar site to my mom's ugly site, I did find one that was nearly identical to the pretty site. Take a look for yourself.



I don't know if I should be thrilled or worried that I could think like a scammer in my sleuthing. I'll sleep better if I reason that it was just a solid use of logic and psychology. Anyway, I called my mom back tonight to get an update on how she'd come on her tasks, and give her the newest information I had found. She kept beating herself up for letting herself be scammed. I told her she shouldn't blame herself, and that what's done is done and now we need to focus on fixing it. She 's ready to tell them to keep whatever money they've spent and just give the rest back. I told her that's not an option, she needs to have all $12,600 returned but it could be a lengthy battle for it to happen. If the attorney general is a dead end (as I suspect they might be) I told her we need to go to the media, local and then national, and get them involved on bringing attention to this new type of scam…like 60 Minutes or Dateline. Yes I know it's sensationalistic journalism at best, but hell, if it might help my mom get her retirement fund back, and prevent other's parents from getting conned, then it'll be worth it.

Tomorrow morning she's going to call the attorney general for advice. We'll figure out the next steps after that. Something tells me this ain't close to being over anytime soon. And I've still got "plan b" in my back pocket. Stay tuned…