isoglossia

Merlin Mann at 43folders points out this fantastically addictive Official Seal Generator. Choose your border (wheat is nice, but who can resist laurels?), color scheme, emblem, motto, font, etc, and you’ve got a custom seal faster than Photoshop can even load. Command+Shift+F4, or the site will automatically save it to your computer.

Get yours before it goes completely viral.

Oops. Too late*.

UPDATE: I’ve just learned that this marginally useful device comes from the same people who brought you the much sillier Church Sign Generator, which should already be bookmarked in your “Art Acts/Anarchy” folder.

* When I first read Mr. Mann’s post, Google returned 22 results for the string <Official Seal Generator>. Twelve hours later, it’s increased tenfold. This will be interesting to watch…

…and it is! Three days later, 64,600 returns.

Just below the summit I look up at the somewhat sketchy pitch of trail Andrej is negotiating and say, “I love that you have a newspaper sticking out of your rucksack.” Just a few weeks ago I met this Canadian son of a Slovenian emigrant. He’s recently arrived in the Old Country and today we’re on Kanin, whose ridge defines the 1947 border between Slovenia and Italy. We pick our way into the fog shrouding the subsidiary peak of Prestreljenik and the dramatic views disappear. An hour later we’re sipping beer in the lodge and he’s telling me about how he works on improving his vocabulary.

“I read the paper every day, and I look up every word I don’t know.” Andrej smooths the back page, where one can find the fluffy celebrity pieces. “Here, for example, this article about Juliette Lewis. I can get almost all of this, but I’m dying to know what this word means. ‘I love long predigro ’, she’s saying. That’s the only word in the whole piece I don’t know, and I can’t wait to get home to look it up.”

At this point, Andrej realizes that the cheerful barmaid is eavesdropping and he catches her eye. “Oprostite, kaj pomeni ta beseda, ‘predigro’?” he asks her.

With a pitying look, in beautiful English she says, “Foreplay’. Don’t worry, most men have difficulty with this word.”

In retrospect, it was ridiculous we hadn’t worked it out through morphology and context. But men feeling stupid was a key ingredient of the success of this bilingual humo(u)r-candy.

At left, I’m standing in Slovenia. Andrej is in Italy, and in the background is Venice. I don’t usually make a habit of hiking with Canadians, but any port in a storm.

A photo essay (with better weather) about this peak is back here, and my antipodean cousin and I skied it somewhere around here.

They’ve been gone eleven days now and it’s no longer funny. Both have been ill during this absence and knowing this makes me miss them more.

I am tired of technology. With Magda and Adam away (I miss you!) I have been spending too much time at the computer and my right arm has contorted into a grotesque wizened claw which no number of gel-pads can soothe or solve. Also? Switching over from the feverkilled cable modem to ADSL internet, phone, and TV has turned out to involve monumental friggery. Last night, my third evening of shamanistic dancing whose objective each day has been to get the Mac to talk to the wireless router to talk to the modem to talk to the Windows machine to talk to the Slovenia On Line television box to talk to the DVR to talk to the television to talk to the amplifier etmotherfuckingsnakesonamotherfuckingplanecetera. I was reduced to weeping like a sad clown by the time every one of these demonic boxes, as they had done every evening before, suddenly and entirely inexplicably decided for some obviously voodoo-related reason to play nicely together with no apparent help from me, unless my bitter tears of frustration and bafflement count as help.

And finally, as I wait for the graphics people to release Photoshop or Paintshop to run on the new Mac, I am once again trying to learn the free open-source image app known as the goddamn bloody bastard GIMP. I have spent many sweary hours trying to do the most basic things with this program, which is as non-intuitive as it is powerful. This makes me feel ineffably dumb and gives me almost irresistibly strong urges to smash things to tiny tiny bits. Anyway, here are a few pointless pictures which it has taken me four hours to crop:

Dawn this morning, looking east from our balcony

Last night’s lightning

Ljubljana’s clear blue sky and Urseline Church

Looking northwest from our balcony over Mount Sabotin (Italy)

A view to the east during one of August’s rare clear days

A storm forms to the west. The isogloss runs between the houses and hills: the houses are Nova Gorica, hills in Italy’s (Stara) Gorizia.

I am both surprised and vaguely proud to be able to join Jason Kottke in the camp of did not mention the motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane. In writing. On this blog. I know I’ve mentioned them elsewhere at least once. Apologies if I’ve besmirched any readers’ comments sections with this four-word pitch, title, synopsis, and symbol of tired viral marketing all in one.

Kottke is distributing this badge of restraint in the face of excess, as well as a slightly sanitized version, on his site freely, here.

This was something that did not have to happen. It only needed to go as far as an early outline that is far funnier than the film could ever hope to be. After that everything was downhill. I will not be rushing out to view this particular oeuvre. Assuming it comes here. Which I fear it will. I’m afraid its best joke, all of whose words are included in the image above, will not translate all that well.