Olympics Part 1

Not sure who’s behind this graffiti – Criminal Chalklist or Maximilian Holden Perchik.

The Olympics has seeped its way deep into my day.

A typical business call goes like this:

ME: Hello, It’s HH from blah-de-blah.

THEM: Hello….

ME: Oh wait, Tom Daley and the other guy are about to dive.

THEM: Yeah, we’re watching too.

…time passes, splosh.

ME: Hmm, not sure. (Or other learned judgement.)

THEM: I think little baldy went too soon. Anyway…

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Confession time: I deface books

It’s a cardinal sin to scribble in a book – for some people. I used to feel this way, but now I see them (the ones I own) as more interactive templates. I’m allowed to take notes, highlight, dog ear the pages if I find something wonderful.

Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and Jane Austen did it too. They annotated, or engaged in marginalia. Often gossip it seems in the case of Twain. But also comment on the text.

I’d want to read that marginalia. But it won’t exist in future once/if e-books kill off paper copies.

You see? You see! Bet you didn’t think of that in your headlong rush to the future all you developers. (Unless you in fact have already developed features to let us carry on with our marginal doodlings after all. In which case, drat, you’ve outsmarted me again.)

The defaced page, by the way, is from Lari Fari‘s charming and imaginative Wreck My Journal idea.

Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times article by Dirk Johnson on the romance of marginalia:

Some lovers of literature even conjure dreamy notions about those who have left marginalia for them to find. In his poem “Marginalia,” Billy Collins, the former American poet laureate, wrote about how a previous reader had stirred the passions of a boy just beginning high school and reading “The Catcher in the Rye.”

As the poem describes it, he noticed “a few greasy smears in the margin” and a message that was written “in soft pencil — by a beautiful girl, I could tell.” It read, “Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.”

Kissing the Gator

1. Do You Feel Free?? It was going to be the title of this post – but Kissing the Gator elbowed it aside. (You can find out why further down.)

How does this graffiti make you feel? Puzzled? Reflective? Called to action? Annoyed (especially if it’s your garage door)?

I saw it the other day behind some shops. It makes me think smugness. The person who sprayed it is smug.

What about this next one? A step or two too far?