Just let people talk, listen to what they have to say, know when to stop listening. Do whatever you want to do and do it for the right reasons. Wear what you want to whenever you want to. If you border too close to a stereotype well tough shit because there are way too many to avoid all of them. It's inevitable that you're going to be associated with one, just stay out of the center of it and mix shit up every now and again. If you were devoid of all stereotypes you'd be wearing a potato sack in the woods. And I bet even that has it's own stereotype out there somewhere. There are those who live and breathe their fashion and choices of style and there are those who accept that they're going to dress like other people in the world and spend their time with more contemplative and lofty pursuits.

Just some good old fashioned motivated mind-puke.

I have this box where I keep every physical note ever written to me. They come from everywhere and they're written on everything. I have at least a hundred. Looking through and reading handfuls of them was pretty cool. I have drunk notes, foreign notes, birthday cards, "just wanted to say hi" letters, love letters, postcards of every origin, post it note scribbles, back-of-receipt "I'm stealing your pen and a cigarette" notes, and every other kind. One at a time, they come off as kind of random and disposable, but after collecting them for years and looking through them for an hour it's apparent I have amazing, supportive, passionate friends and relatives. It's not so often I just think back and say "My life is and has been so good" because I'm always dealing with the present and its issues, but really I'm very lucky. Today has been brought to you by nostalgia. I hope I see everyone who is reading this sometime soon, because I miss all of you and would rather be talking with you than doing anything else.

I still miss you David. For someone I barely knew, you've had a pretty great effect on me. I still spend hours thinking about the circumstances surrounding everything and why you had to leave while you were having such an influence on so many people, people who looked up to you and respected you. It's not fair either way, to anyone involved, yourself included. I leave it to speculation, but my mind can't help but wander.

http://www.greatexpectationsorlando.com/

So this office is next to ours in the building I work in. It's a dating website, dedicated to hooking-up Orlando's singles. Needless to say the hallway outside/men's bathroom perpetually smells like douchebag.

Thought of this while eating breakfast this morning. Kind of funny, right?

Even in the most significant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people. Even the simple act which we describe as "seeing someone as we know" is an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principle place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curves of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognize and to which we listen. -Marcel Proust

Some sneak peaks from my internship. This is the kind of stuff I work on all day:

Best solstice ever! Because I remembered it was the solstice. Today has consisted of:

1. Dressed in my best work clothes, felt really good about it.
2. Venti Americano at Starbucks.
3. Everything with cream cheese and tomatoes at Einstien bagels.
4. Good, productive day at work. A lot of positive stuff going on.
5. Bike ride to celebrate the solstice:
A. Went downtown and cruised around there
B. Went to Park Ave to get the Microphones "The Glow pt. 2" They didn't have it but the woman at the counter had one copy
which had been on hold for a month and sold it to me.
C. Went back downtown for dinner at Pizza Planet. It was only me and the workers and they were pretty entertaining.
D. Rode until it got dark.
6. Had a good talk with mom.

And now I'm back home, sooper excited to listen to that new album. This day has been one to remember.

SingulariTee was kind enough to blog about my t-shirt design for Threadless. Much appreciated! This day just keeping betting better.

So I'm redesigning the homepage for http://mpechicago.com/, a huge factory in Chicago that sells grinding machines for anything you would ever need ground. These machines are bought by companies so they can put them in their own factories. Very powerful things. Among the list of things you can grind with their machines:

Bones (unspecified)
Animal Bones
Aspirin
Candy
Cookies
Frozen Eggs
Glass
Ice cream cones
Swimming
pool chemicals

Crazy stuff. WHY WOULD YOU EVER NEED AN INDUSTRIAL GRINDER FOR ICE CREAM CONES??

Last banner for a long long time. Sorry. For all the banners.

I need to begin working on something that takes me more than 5 minutes to draw. Something bigger, with color. Not really sure what or what for. Maybe a stencil I can put at the top of my street. A stencil that says "KEEP GOING!" since people ALWAYS feel like they have to stop at that intersection even though they don't have a stop sign. Something that's functional in some way would be nice, something public that draws interest. Eh, we'll see. And by "we'll" I mean you and I, of course.

Owen Pallett covers Guided By Voices

So good. One of my favorites to date.

I feel bad for this guy. Dude's stuck in a van. Sry bro, tough luck.

Just ordered a whole bunch of 2.75"x2.75" of these stickers. I *might* sell them 10 for $3-4, or maybe not. Just an amateur entrepreneurial thought. Hopefully I still like this after the 3-8 weeks it takes for them to arrive at my doorstep. Finally, an quick and efficient way to leave my mark on dive bars and photobooths.

Click here to rate.

So I just submitted a design to Threadless. It's an old doodle, just re-drawn with a little more detail. Now that I see it on the site, it might come off as a little aggressive. It's funny to see how a stand alone doodle usually viewed by itself turns into a message directed at the person who is in front of the person wearing the shirt. Once "directed", it seems somewhat offensive, but whatever.

I do like the personality of the banners though. The rather quiet yet bold first one. The annoyed second one. And the sickeningly sweet last one that makes you want to punch it in the face. Vote if you'd like (though I know if it's been given the okay from the website yet. It should be available for your harshest criticisms in the next day or so.).