Journal Entries
Captain Haddock
Posted Aug 13, 2002
While doing an internet search for "slubberdegullion" I discovered a list of all the curses used by Captain Haddock during the course of Tintin. Anyone who believes swearing is the important component of invective should be exposed to the rich and delicious melange perfected by Captain Haddock.
Blue blistering barnacles! Ten thousand thundering typhoons! Swine! Jellyfish! Tramps! Troglodytes! Toffee-noses! Savages! Aztecs! Toads! Carpetsellers! Iconoclasts! Rats! Ectoplasms! Freshwater swabs! Bashi-bazouks! Pockmarks! Cannibals! Caterpillars! Cowards! Baboons! Parasites! Blistering blundering birdbrain! Beast! Baby-snatchers! Brigands! Belemnite! Bougainvillea! Steamroller! Bully! Twister! Heretic! Slavetrader! Technocrat! Bucaneers! Vegetarian! Politican! Gangsters! Bandits! Filibusters! Pirates! Corsair! Woodlice! Turncoats! Shipwreckers! Moujiks! Rhizopods! Bagpipers! Gallows-fodder! Dogs! Sea-lice! Lubberscum! Saucy tramp! Centipede! Miserable earth worms! Black beetles! Artichokes! Vermicellis! Phylloxera! Pyrographers! Crabapples! Goosecaps! Gogglers! Jellyfish! Crooks! Sparrows! Doryphore! Gobbledegook! Bald-headed budgerigar! Blackamoor! Anthracite! Dunderheaded coconuts! Fuzzy wuzzy! Raggle taggle ruminants! Cushion footed quadrupeds! Morons! Weevils! Slubberdegullions! Patagonians! Kleptomaniacs! Harlequin! Hydrocarbon! Aborigine! Polynesian! Gyroscope! Blackbird! Anthropithecus! Roadhogs! Traitors! Bloodsuckers! Pithecanthropic montebanks! Gibbering anthropoids! Fourlegged Cyrano! Loathsome brute! Butcher! Anachronisms! Zapotecs! Pithecanthropuses! Sea-gherkins! Poltroons! Doryphores! Terrorists! Tin hatted tyrants! Misguided missiles! Nitwitted ninepins! Blackguards! Egoists! Polygraphs! Autocrats! Profiteers! Fatfaces! Anthropophagus! Highwayman! Rapscallion! Brat! Iconoclasts! Visigoths! Anacoluthons! Pickled herrings! Addle-pated lumps of anthracite! Viper! Duck-billed platypus! Jellied eel! Cercopithecus! Psychopath! Coelcanth! Vulture! Bodysnatcher! Ostrogoth! Vandal! Stoolpigeon! Nyctalops! Parasites! Miserable molecule of mildew! Wildcat! Spitfire! Blunderbuss! Whippersnapper! Cachinnating cockatoo! Terrapins! Two-timing Troglodytes! Orangoutang! Breathalyser! Bootlegger! Miserable miser! Purple profiteering jellyfish! Aardvark!
"Fourlegged Cyrano" alone deserves to be embedded in a brass plate and put above the door of Number Ten Downing Street as a reminder to all Prime Ministers of just where power ultimately rests (Marlinspike, that's where).
For other languages (fruitier still than English) try http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~jjuhne/COT/characters/char_h.html
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Latest reply: Aug 13, 2002
Double Bass
Posted Aug 12, 2002
All of which makes me anxious -- at times unbearably so.
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Latest reply: Aug 12, 2002
Everyone's head should have a house band
Posted Aug 8, 2002
The house band in my head mostly play cover versions of Who songs, these days. They used to play a lot of Jethro Tull, which was fun. They play Bjork, particularly on trains, and The Divine Comedy. But for some reason these days they're playing lots of Who. Not that I mind. I love The Who.
Occasionally they play a song I don't like, or more probably, its most odious eight bars. It's not always true that he who pays the piper calls the tune.
They've even started playing their own songs. While I was asleep once they even played me what they thought the new Radiohead album would sound like, and they weren't all that far off once it was released. But it came out first and was original.
I think I'm going to plagiarise the band in my head.
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Latest reply: Aug 8, 2002
I AM NOT EVIL
Posted Aug 2, 2002
This is just to say to newcomers that my page is being moderated for I know not what reason, but I suspect use of German, rather than, say, pornography. So please don't think I'm evil.
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Latest reply: Aug 2, 2002
Helvetica
Posted Jul 31, 2002
I have this weird typeface fetish.
Designer Massimo Vignelli said a designer should only use these 5 typefaces: Bodoni, Helvetica, Times Roman, Century and Futura.
I'd add another two to the list: Franklin Gothic and OCRB, the former because it is very well-designed and legible, and its serif font like forms make it a good crossover sans-serif font, and the latter because in modern design situations a monospaced font is often called for, and OCRB is the best, if you ask me.
However, Helvetica is a strange and beautiful beast. Its strangeness is partly that we use it everywhere, on everything, and never see just how lovely it is.
I just bought the entire set of Helveticas (thin, normal, bold, condensed and extended, and one outline version!) from Linotype -- a present from me to me as I left my last job with a lot more money from redundancy than I'd believed would ever pass through my fingers as a single chunk -- and I will never regret this. Designed in 1957 by Max Miedinger, followed shortly by Univers by Adrian Frutiger in 1958, it has become probably the standard sans-serif typeface, if such a thing exists. It is everywhere.
Don't ask me why, but sometimes as I write instant messages, the letters forming on screen, I suddenly do something -- like type "juice" -- which reminds me how wonderful it is. The austere descender on the j, almost a right angle bend without curve, and the almost perfect ellipse of the c or e, with the perfect proportion of the u ... I sit there and gasp. How can something so beautiful be used so casually every single day by millions without their even noticing? (Well, actually, if you're a Windows user you're probably stuck with Arial, which is a bit leaden. But you know what I mean.)
Before you think I'm an absurd trainspotter (I know ... too late) I am not advocating we all go around collecting typefaces and gasping at lettering, but perhaps something worth taking away is that many common objects we use every day and take for granted are elegantly and usefully designed, and that this is something to enjoy for its own sake.
As is the word juice.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a date at the water cooler.
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Latest reply: Jul 31, 2002
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Andrew Wyld [kt:'Burning Pestle', kp:'Mutamems, Ideodiversity', Zaph.]
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