From a former colleague, too good not to share. I’ve already run into 3 of these and it’s not even 9:00am on a Monday…

Murphy’s Graphic Design Laws

• Your fonts will default.
• If you have two versions of a photo, you will send the wrong one to the printer.
• Promises made by the salesperson never make it to the pressroom.
• The salesperson will promise anything.
• If the text consists of two words, one will be misspelled.
• Speed. Quality. Affordability. Pick two.
• If the run is wrong, it’s never the press operator’s fault.
• Spell checkers don’t.
• Grammar checkers don’t, either.
• Global search-and-replaces aren’t.
• The index entry you leave out will be the first one the client looks under.
• Optical Character Recognition is good comedy.
• If three designs are shown to a client, your least favorite will be chosen.
• If two designs are shown, a third will be requested. If provided, then one of the first two will be chosen.
• Blueline proofs reveal previously invisible errors.
• The best designs never survive contact with the client.
• You will misspell the name of the client’s spouse.
• Your best idea is already copyrighted.
• Creative inspiration flows in inverse proportion to the distance from the studio.
• Doctors, astronauts, and plumbers need training to do their jobs, but anyone with a copy of InDesign is a graphic designer.
• No matter how detailed the tech support FAQ is, nobody has ever heard of your problem.
• The number of colors in a client’s design will equal the number of colors in the original bid specs, plus two.
• The client’s disk won’t run on your equipment.
• If you purchase new equipment to read your client’s disk, it will be the last disk of that type you will ever receive.
• Your client won’t “get it.”

Ho ho ho! It’s Friday and it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas… The tree is trimmed, the packages wrapped, there’s 3 feet of fresh snow on the mountain and I have some music to put you in the spirit(s)! Cheers - Have a great weekend everyone!

I’d Like You For Christmas - Julie London

This Time of the Year - Etta James

I Bought You a Plastic Star - Michael Franks

Santa Claus is Coming to Town - Dave Brubeck

The Christmas Waltz - Nancy Wilson

Winter Wonderland - Ramsey Lewis Trio

Snowfall - Ahmad Jamal

Ho Ho Ho! It’s Friday! And it’s about time I kick-started the TGImp3F Holiday Edition. I’m in a funny mood today, so you get some funny tunes. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Gift Basket - Ethan Lipton

Little Drummer Boy - The Hoot Owl Boys Choir & The Okefenokee Orchestra

Feliz Navidad - David Hasselhoff (don’t hassle the Hoff!)

Is this thing still on?

Over the last two months I’ve received a number of emails from loyal Fishwrap readers, letters ranging from concern (”Are you okay? Are you trapped under a heavy object?!?”) to letters of condolence (”It’s okay MJ, my blog died too. When you’re ready, you’ll find a new blog. Just don’t get a puppy, they pee on the carpet…”) and of course there are the letters of encouragement (”Get off your lazy ass and post something!! I want my tuesday timewasters link monkey!”). And so I thank each and every one of you. Except you… and you know who you are.

Some of you folks have found me slumming around on Facebook and thus you know that I am still squandering time online on a daily basis, you also know how often my cats barf, in 30 words or less. But I feel an obligation to clue the rest of the Fishwrap Faithful in on what happened to the blog (if you want to know when I step in cat barf, you’ll have to join FB and look me up.)

Here’s the deal… In September I foolishly attempted to upgrade my old version of WordPress and surprise, surprise!! I broke the god damn thing. It may look okay on the surface but the back end is totally FUBAR. So after spending a week in October trying to repair the database I got fed up, said fuck it and gave up trying to fix things.

A few days turned into a week, a week into two weeks and here we are… I haven’t posted anything in almost 3 weeks now. So sad.

I find myself pondering what to do with a broken blog. I’d hate to lose 10 years of archives and comments but it’s either limp along on one bad leg until it dies a slow and painful death or pull the plug and start anew. And then there’s that whole ‘rediscovering my blog mojo’ issue… Sigh. Is there a pill for that?

I’ll promise you this: I will try my best not go another three weeks between posts, cuz that would be, like, 2009! So please stop back on Friday afternoon for some Hot Holiday Tunage… look at it as the online equivalent of buying you a drink and saying I’m sorry. Rest assured, if for some reason I need to pull up stakes, I’ll be sure to let ya’all know where I’m headed!

Cheers!

We interrupt this radio silence for a brief PSA on proper roomba driving etiquette. Always keep both hands on the wheel, 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock!

I wish more Mormons could look at life the way this guy does. The comments are rather reassuring as well…

On Gay Marriage: It’s official - I don’t care, Robert Kirby, Salt Lake Tribune

Despite the shocking and unfortunate passage of Prop 8, which is a huge constitutional and civil rights setback for California (and the entire nation really), I still feel like I am walking on air… Someone pinch me!!

Here’s a great post from Paula Poundstone that pretty much sums up how I feel:

It is two days after the election, and I still feel like I’m walking around in a Burl Ives Christmas song. I’m pretty sure a guy doffed his cap to me today. People seem full of hope.

This is America, though, it can’t last. Pleased and proud as we are, it’s nothing compared to how happy the Europeans are. After all, Obama seems great, but he hasn’t been on American Idol. That’s why President Elect Obama needs to waste no time in harnessing this feeling, and ask something of us.

Obama could ask anything of us right now. We’ll collect rubber. We’ll wear sweaters. We’ll spend. We’ll save. We’ll do laps. He just has to ask.

My parents are a part of the greatest generation. My generation rode out the Beanie Baby crash, ran up credit card debt, brought us reality T.V., and the S.U.V., but it’s not all we can do. We’ve grown up collecting box tops. We’ve earned free donuts by getting our cards punched with every dozen purchased. We can do stuff. We’re the “a-thon” generation. We’ve jogged, walked, and pedaled thousands of miles, because someone said it would cure cancer. Just ask us. We’ll bring an unwrapped gift. We’ll bring canned goods. We’ll collect flip tops. We’ve adopted freeways, and been up all night with night feedings.

What do you need us to do, President Elect Obama? We could each take a shift at a bank. Our sheer numbers should do something. We could collect Band-Aids (not the useless little ones) and hand sanitizer for the health care system. The entire country could hold a progressive dinner party to feed the homeless. We could all commit to wear the same clothes two days in a row to save water, energy, and time. We can carry road mending materials in our cars and fill pot holes during traffic jams. We can put a wishing well on wall street.

So far our leadership has often told us that we have a long, hard climb before us, which I would welcome, because I love the outdoors, and could use the weight loss, but I have a bad feeling it has nothing to do with climbing.

I’m waiting. I’m punching my glove. It’s oiled and ready. Pitch it in here sir.

Yesterday MM and I went Zeppelin Hunting. Yes, you read that right, Zeppelin Hunting!

Airship Ventures purchased and is transporting the first Zeppelin on American soil in 70 years from Texas to Northern California and they had a scheduled stop right here in the Coachella Valley. There was no way these two aviation geeks were going to miss this opportunity

All morning we were tracking their progress and plotting out the right time to make the drive to Thermal to watch this big, beautiful ship come in for the night. I had figured it would be sometime around 3:00. So around 2:00 we hopped in the car and headed down valley.

Cochran Airport in Thermal is nothing but a bunch of hangers really and we had no idea where to go. After driving in circles we finally went up to the Signature gate and hit the call box. A very nice woman said “Sure, c’mon in!” so we parked and again wandered aimlessly through hangers trying to figure out where the hell the nice lady from the call box was. We finally found the right place and settled in with a couple local news guys for a what we thought would be about an hour wait at most… that turned to 2 hours.

[airfield where the ship was scheduled to land]

Then we got the bad news: the weather conditions were perfect for the Zep to make the run through the Banning Pass so the pilots were opting to skip Thermal and head straight for San Bernardino. Bummer!

We dejectedly collected our things and left, totally disappointed that we weren’t going to get a chance to see the Airship. But as we were driving out of the hanger area I happened to glance to the East and lo and behold! What did I see? The Zep! WooHoo!

So we pulled over and whipped out the binoculars and watched in awe. This thing is HUGE and just beautiful.

After about 10 minutes I said “Why don’t we see if we can catch up to it?” And off we were, feeling like storm chasers, speeding down I-10 (well, if you consider 78 mph to be speeding, but still it was twice as fast as the Zep!).

We could tell we were gaining on it and eventually we caught up and got some great pics out the sunroof.

What a fun day! I highly suggest that if you are anywhere on the rest of the route to its new home at Moffett Field, check this baby out! It’s simply stunning. I’ve already started saving up for my first Zeppelin flight: $500 for 1 hour. Ya know I gotta do it!

Bonus: Last night CBS aired a news story on the Zeppelin