Sitting alone

Every time I'm in a public space equipped with tables, I think about the inefficiency. More often than not, tables for two or four are taken up by solitary people. Every table in a given food court or coffee shop can be occupied, with none fully or even half occupied.

Sure, there are existing solutions. There's the raised bar with stools. But the bar has its own issues. For one, it turns the diner or drinker into a spectacle, raised and placed on the periphery. It also falls prey to what I like to think of as the subway problem: if there are three seats next to each other on the subway, the middle one is invariably the last to fill. Strangers just don't want to sit next to each other. The same goes for bars in eating areas. Half the seats go unfilled because solitary diners are loathe to make contact with each other.

Today, I've got two solutions to attach to this problem. The first is the half table. I'm talking about tables that are half the usual width, maybe two feet. Line them up in rows, like a classroom, with one chair each. You'll get rows of solitary eaters, staring at each others' backs, taking up less space and (hopefully) leaving quad tables for larger groups.

My second solution addresses the sitting together issue. Even if there are four seats, even if there are no vacant tables, people are unwilling to plunk themselves down at the table of a stranger. But that can be fixed. Imagine a large, square table with the usual four chairs. The difference is that this table is divided on its diagonals by thin walls a few feet high. This divides the table into four separate, triangular eating areas. Think of it as cubicles for eating.

Of course, all of this does nothing to address the underlying issue of isolation. Maybe it's a problem that people don't want to be together, want to pretend no one else is watching them eat. Even so, I think that problem is too big to be solved in a half hour food court lunch break.

Postcards and Coping Mechanisms, on Etsy

In the aftermath of Expozine, it turns out that I have some quite excellent overstock. Copies of Coping Mechanisms for the Young and Ambitious, as well as some fine postcards, are now available for your perusing and purchasing pleasure, on my Etsy page.

Mall brands for hipsters

I had a bit of a revelation this morning. As we know, purist hipsters, by nature, eschew anything particularly popular or common. They favour, instead, the obscure and unique. This is why they can be spotted at craft fairs and seconds hand stores. This means that hipsters must take precautions to avoid mall brand clothing, clothing from popular, mainstream retailers.

But what if a hipster, for some reason, finds him/herself desiring, for whatever reason, a mall brand garment? Purchasing something common and popular goes against the grain. In order to maintain status, the purchase must be hidden or downplayed. But there is a solution.

Most manufacturers maintain outlet stores. These outlet stores are stocked with leftovers, unsuccessful garments, items from previous seasons and the holy grail: samples. Samples fit the hipster bill beautifully. They're generally one of a kind, or at least incredibly uncommon. They have entertaining idiosyncrasies. They epitomize process and experimentation. Most importantly, they cannot be found in malls. Thus, a hipster with the desire to purchase mall brand clothes may safely wear samples, secure in the knowledge that the garment is not only unique, but also has a story (however short) to go with it.

Postcards

Just got a load of postcards back from the printer. I, for one, am pretty happy with them. They'll be making an appearance this weekend at Expozine. There's a pigeon, a hightop running shoe, the island of Montreal and Jean Drapeau. Not necessarily in that order.

Commercial Web Services as Courseware

Setting up an account with any web service provider means a lot. It means agreeing to terms of service, buying into their framework, playing their game. These services are not provided for free for the benefit of humankind. They serve ads and gain revenue. Some of them sell personal information to third parties. At the very least, when you sign up for a free web service, you enter into a legal agreement with another entity and also into a business relationship, wherein you allow them to sell your attention to others. While most people don't view it as a choice, it is. And it is an individual choice. It should be made, in an informed way, by an individual, without coercion.

Educational institutions decide what their students will learn and which tools they'll use in order to learn. Traditionally, this has meant deciding which textbooks and articles will be read. As any educator bombarded with textbook samples knows, this is not a strictly academic decision, but one with profound financial implications for many different stakeholders. It is in the power of the educator to decide which textbook all her students will have to purchase.

Increasingly, the tools of education are more than just textbooks. The new tools include courseware and software. Academic institutions decide whether to tie their students to Blackboard, Moodle or any other courseware system. What's more, those institutions decide how zealous they will be about the enforcement of their courseware standards. Will they allow one faculty/department/professor to diverge from the norm?

The issue, of course, goes far deeper than courseware. And this is where we come back to the initial discussion of free web services. Educators in less zealous institutions may choose to abandon standard courseware in favour of a third party solution, often a service already favoured by students. A professor may, for example, choose to conduct course discussions in a Facebook group devoted to the class. This decision presents problems. Sure, most students are probably already Facebook users. But it can't be taken for granted that they all are. And what of those who don't already use the service? In order to engage with the class, these students are forced to enter into a legal and (effectively) financial agreement with a third party service provider. And if they don't, they lose out. That dynamic smacks of coercion.

I don't mean to be negative. I am, in fact, all for the idea of using accessible, available, ostensibly free tools with which students are already comfortable. But it bears thinking about. In an attempt to make learning accessible and integrative, an important element of choice may be lost.

Open Colour Standard properganda

Something from the Open Colour Standard project that I feel is worth cross-posting here: my ever so lovely OCS properganda (not propaganda) poster. It sells Open Source graphics programs the easy way: by explaining how cheap they are compared to the proprietary stuff. Enjoy.

EDIT (12 May 2009): Here's a new version of the poster with better kerning. And I'm replacing the downloadable one on the OCS website with this newer, more correct version.

White tissue boxes

I had a cold recently. The box of tissue is still on my table. It doesn't match the rest of my kitchen or even look interesting. Being the customizing sort, an idea has occurred to me: white tissue boxes made of uncoated cardboard. A white tissue box with a slightly less slick texture would make an ideal canvas. Ship them with crayons and you've got the perfect sick day activity.

Print has problems

I'm catching up on my reading, going through a textbook about advertising and promotion, reading the bit about social networking sites as promotional tools. As is so often the case with textbooks, the information is out of date. Here's the problem: the book was published in 2008. Important news for textbook publishers: It's impossible to write about the internet in print. By the time the books gets to print and into the hands of readers, what was good, current information is out of date and outmoded. Print isn't fast enough.

What's the solution to this problem, then? A couple things. Thing one, I'd like to see my purchase of the textbook give me access to a pdf of the book as well. (A good example of a publisher doing this is The Pragmatic Bookshelf. Ubuntu Kung Fu, for example, offers a pdf option, as well as couple other neat things that I'm about to talk about.) Offering a pdf version means giving readers something searchable and easier to navigate than a physical book. That's important when the book in question isn't a novel. Thing two, I want to see online errata and updates. I know it's impossible to expect publishers and authors to constantly revise their books, but I'd really like a little community and challenge to build up around textbooks (for an example, look again at Ubuntu Kung Fu). Give me an errata section that users can contribute to, give me updates on the subject matter, give me a discussion board. In short, give me an online portal for the textbook. Make it relevant and timely. For marketing especially, things don't lie still. Timely subjects need timely textbooks, not a new version every couple years.

Head Turner

This one goes along with a review of Ted Turner's book. Initially, I wanted to have two Ted Turners facing off against each other, but graphics that are wider than tall don't play very nicely with newspapers and I didn't want to upset the layout guy.

eWaste iWaste

Yet more illustration backlog. Reasonably self explanatory title. Two page graphic for a feature article about ewaste.

Unbranded grocery stores

Assumptions: Food is a necessity. Without food, human beings can't live. Most people do not have easy access to farmer's markets or community shared agriculture schemes. Most North Americans shop in supermarkets.

Observations: It's impossible to look anywhere in a grocery store without seeing invasive brand messages. Okay, that last sentence was a tiny exaggeration. The ceiling is almost always free of brand messages and in most cases, so is the floor. The remainder, on the other hand, is generally quite thoroughly visually cluttered.

Solution: There needs to be a completely unbranded grocery store. I don't mean that there needs to be a store that sells only their own brand of food. I mean packaged goods in the unbranded store need to be blank except for the name of the food, the country of provenance, the nutritional information and the ingredients.

Think: Many of the necessary foods can already be found brand-free. Vegetables and fruits, more often than not, aren't branded (although there seems to be a trend towards branding them). Some stores have bulk sections which allow for the purchase of ingredients like flour that aren't branded.

Implementation: The unbranded grocery store needs to take advantage of the existing private label infrastructure. In the same way that Loblaw has food sold under its own name, the unbranded grocery store can implement a private label brand. The only difference is that this brand isn't a brand. It is instead the complete absence of a brand. Of course, it also makes a kind of good business sense to stock a store entirely with private label products. Margins are higher on private label than on national brands and prices can be lower.

Of course, the store would be a promotional disaster. Many consumers take comfort in familiar brands. A store that offered a reprieve from visual noise might not be widely welcomed, even if the prices were lower. But, just at this moment, having grown tired of too much visual clutter in supermarkets, I'd jump at the chance to shop at an unbranded grocery store.

Blogs in print

I've just thought of one of those ideas that qualifies as stupid-smart. So: Blogs use tags. Tags are what allow readers to check out other posts similar to posts that they like. Sometimes, reading things on paper is nicer than on a screen.

My stupid-smart idea: Make little zines or books or magazines of specific tags from blogs. If you were to do that to my blog, for example, you might make a zine based on the "clever ideas" tag. The whole thing would be a compendium of things that I classify as clever ideas.

I'm trying to decide whether this idea has enough merit to actually do. Of course, in the free market spirit, I could just make up a few copies of such a thing, take them to Expozine with me, and see if they have merit.

A flock of pigeon stickers

New! Exciting! A variety of hand made vinyl pigeon stickers.

Grocery Lists Quarterly

A set of assumptions and an idea:

1. Copyright is automatic. Authors do not need to register their work, they simply need to publish in order to be protected by copyright.
2. Publication can mean all sorts of things, not just books (in the case of print work).
3. Grocery lists are original creative works. They are a product of the imagination given literary form. In form and content, they aren't very different from some types of poetry.
4. Writing down a grocery list constitutes publication.

All of the above has been making me think for a while that I should be making sure to release my grocery lists into the public domain. But then, the question is, what's the point? Other than whimsy, is there a good reason to release something as ephemeral as a grocery list into the public domain? If there's only one copy, and that copy will be thrown out after use, is there a point in releasing grocery lists? So, I've come up with the following idea:

Grocery Lists Quarterly will be a zine devoted to grocery lists. It will be packed full of scans of real grocery lists. Grocery Lists Quarterly will provide intriguing snapshots of life, the tiny stories told by grocery lists. If you feel moved to contribute your lists, do send to groceries@adaptstudio.ca

Very clever blinds

I had an idea, coming up to a month ago, that i absolutely need to do. While I was moving and had a front room full of boxes, I got to thinking about what people would see if they were to glance at my window. Wouldn't it be awesome, I thought, if I had blinds that had a great big picture of a beautiful, well decorated room printed on them? So that's the idea: a venetian blind with a large photo of a nice looking room printed on the outside. That way, any curious window glancer would see, instead of what's actually in your house (or a normal, boring pair of curtains), a room good enough to be in a decor magazine. Awesome? Of course.

Annual reports for people

People, if you think about it, are a fair bit like corporations. We all have shareholders, people who have an interest in how things turn out. Generally, we're each the majority shareholder in our own life. We accomplish things (and sometimes don't accomplish things we'd like), and set both long and short term goals. To this end, I've been working on my own annual report. Aside from the lack of financial information, it bears a pretty good resemblance to a normal annual report. Of course, mine may pay a little more attention to style than some corporate annual reports.

For your edification and amusement, I present to you the cover of my 2008 annual report:

Barrel of hair clips

Quick idea, as found in my sketch book this morning (I don't remember writing it down, but I'm clearly the one who wrote it): Barrel of hair clips. i want to make hair clips with Barrel of Monkeys monkeys on them. Now I just need to get my hands on a Barrel of Monkeys. Pictures when the clips are ready.

An idea for a glossy zine

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous doesn't entirely appeal to me. It just frustrates me to see people who already have everything. It frustrates me because they have it and I don't. It frustrates me because I think it's pretty boring to look at what people do with their vast riches. These people have no reason to innovate or stretch. I have a better idea.

I've dreamed up yet another darn idea for a (maga)zine. I want to do something called Lifestyles of the Poor but Hopeful. I want to look at what people can do with less. How awesome can you make a cheap apartment on a low wage budget? If I'm to judge by some of the places I've seen, people can still do some amazing things with nothing. It strikes me as far more fascinating to see what clever people with less can do than what boring people can do with more.

I think I want to make a marginally glossy zine on this subject. We'll see how it goes. Maybe look for the first installment at Expozine this year. Maybe.

Bank Machines in a cashless world

I think that a cashless world is far more likely to happen than a paperless office. What, then, happens to all the poor bank machines when we finally give cash the boot? They'll be sad, obsolete, unemployed, junked. We'll have a glut of clever computers in great big boxes.

Then again, who am I to say that we'll ever have a cashless world? We've been promised that world for years, and it keeps not happening. Who wants to buy a pack of gum on debit? It's a clunky and inefficient thing to do. Loads of cash replacement schemes have failed over the years, and so many people argue that cash is a better way of regulating spending. But, in the event that it does ever happen, I can't help but wonder what will become of the thousands upon thousands of unemployed bank machines.

Very picky beer

Latest project that may never see the light of day: a totally wonderful organic, vegan, Reinheitsgebot compliant, pseudo-lambic beer. Also, it has a made up name and a pretty logo. The whole thing is meant to appeal to a young generation of picky, snooty beer drinkers. If it ever sees the light of day, I'll write about it in more detail. If it flops completely, I'll still write about it in more detail. Until either of those happens, I have a fun secret to keep.

Unions as personal shoppers

Some people like to buy North American cars. They think that by buying a GM or a Ford or some such, they're helping to keep jobs in Canada. There's no guarantee, though, that any given domestic car isn't, in fact, made in Mexico. This is the issue: how do you know which car is actually made in Canada? Would you, in fact, be better off buying a Toyota made in Cambridge? Enter a clever idea for a website that I know I'm never going to get around to doing.

If you ask the car salesperson where any given care is made, and where the components are from, s/he isn't terribly likely to have good answers. You could ask the company itself, but that means getting bogged down in automated phone system hell for every make of car you're interested in. It's probably easier to just ask your friendly neighbourhood auto workers union. That's a bit of a hassle, though. It takes a motivated consumer to do such homework. So, why not have a website that aggregates product recommendations from the people who actually make those products? The CAW tells you which cars are actually made in Canada, garment workers tell you which brands give them a reasonably fair deal. I think it would be a very useful little tool. And I'd totally use it, too. But do I look like I need another project in the pipeline?

This blog post may be recorded for quality assurance purposes

My phone company called this morning. That is to say, they called my cell phone at eight thirty in the morning. Let's remember, before I get on with the story, that they're supposed to have the best customer service of any mobile carrier in Canada. They enjoy mentioning that in their ads.

So: eight thirty, having breakfast, getting ready to start working, the phone starts buzzing on the table. I pick up and get the standard period of dead air. They make sure that I am who I'm supposed to be. Next is the ridiculous part. This call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes. They've called me, and they may or may not record the conversation. When I call customer service lines, I expect that. I may not agree, and I may not want my call recorded, but I accept that they've got a bargain going: I call for help, they may record my call. I choose whether or not to call their line for help. When I call them, I decide that I'm willing to have my call recorded in exchange for the help that I need/want.

Where's the bargain in the phone company calling me to ask about my phone bill and informing me that I may or may not be recorded? The only choice I've made is in answering the call. That's not what I think of as informed consent. And what would they do if I said "no" to them? Maybe I'll find out next time.

Attention = Equity

My clever insight for today: Attention is contemporary equity.
It's fun to think about and it makes a great soundbite.

Adult deterrent retail

I was dragged into a Garage a while back. In case you don't know what it is, Garage is a clothing store aimed at tween, teen, and early twenties women. I think it's only in Canada, and, if I remember correctly, it used to be kind of retro gas station themed. Now, though, it seems that the powers that be at garage have taken a clue from Hollister. To put it bluntly, it looks like a beach house. It's all tiki and dim lighting, and you have to actually make an effort to go inside. Never mind having a store wide open to the mall hallway. To get into Garage, you need to actually go through a little doorway/atrium thing.

It's loud inside, too. I'm not old (heck, I'm in their target demographic!), but the place managed to give me a headache. To work there, you'd have to be the kind of kid who likes clubbing, or who can at least tolerate ridiculous amounts of noise pollution for an extended period of time.

Garage has, as far as I can tell, turned its stores into fantastic parent repellant. If we're to believe the common perception, loud, dim, and difficult to navigate are turnoffs for a lot of people over a certain age. Does this mean that perents are handing their daughters the credit cards and letting them go at it? Or are contemporary parents into this sort of thing? Or maybe I'm from an alternate universe and no child, ever, would let a parent take her shopping. I could do with some insight on this one.

Late night grocery stores

There's a late night grocery store on my way home. I hardly ever use it, but I appreciate that it exists. In that sense, for me at least, it's similar to a falafel restaurant. Tonight, however, I got the chance to use it. Wandering home from a late movie, I got a jones for orange juice. But where can I possibly get orange juice at one o'clock in the morning? Quite simply, I can get the orange juice about one block away from home, on my path from movie to bed.

Most of the time, the late night grocery store is a service I don't feel the need to use. Even though I seldom use it, it's something I like to have around, just in case I find myself needing it.

Autonomy for customer service representatives

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to terminate my mobile contract with Bell. I called Bell Mobility, in order to find out how much it would cost to break the contract. After being given the automation runaround, I got a fairly responsive human. The only problem was that she followed her script a little too closely. Even after a conversation about contract termination, even after I had explained that I was going to go to a different company, the Bell representative thanked me for choosing Bell Mobility. I was a little shocked at that. After a discussion explaining just why I'm not choosing Bell Mobility, she was required to thank me for choosing them. I asked about it. She told me that she didn't have a choice, she was required to thank me for choosing Bell. I think that in cases such as these, call centre employees should be afforded a little more autonomy.

Airport gum

Finally getting around to transcribing everything I wrote last time I flew. I find that I get a lot of thinking done on planes. It's a nice bit of escape from my normal routine.

What I'm wondering right now is whether or not convenience stores at airports sell more gum than normal convenience stores do. It seems logical that people would exit from planes, ears unpopped, and seek out gum. But do they actually? I could just be making silly assumptions.

At least two people

I was looking at a piece of design the other day that I just didn't get. It was a handbag with a graphic on it. It didn't speak to me. However, looking at that bag, something occurred to me: in order for a design to appear in the wild (that is to say, on a bus, in a food court, on a coffee table, whatever, as long as someone has bought it), at least two people need to understand it and believe that it is a good idea. The designer needs to think that it might be a good idea, that someone else might want it. Someone else (a consumer, for example) needs to agree with the designer and buy that design. I know that most of the time, far more than two people will believe that the idea has potential. I like this, though, as a rule. For a design to appear in the wild, at least two people need to understand and like it.

An open letter to Facebook

Dear Facebook,

You have access to huge amounts of information about me. You know what city I grew up in, what activities I take part in, what parties I go to. You know what I study and when I'll graduate. You know what interests me and what causes I care about. You know how old I am, what my gender is, even my sexual preference and relationship status. You know where I live and who my friends are.

Why, if you have so very much information about me, do you insist on serving me ads that aren't relevant? You attempt to sell me foolproof scrapbooking supplies, on the assumption that I don't know thing one about design. You'd better tell the design school I've been attending for the past three years that you don't have confidence in their teaching. You'd show gay men ads for dating sites where they can meet great girls, wouldn't you?

Facebook, you have all the power and information in your hands. You have the technology. It's not a new idea. Why can't you serve relevant ads? You know what kind of music I listen to. Can't you give me pertinent ads from HMV or iTunes? You know what sports I like, and yet you refuse to advertise frisbees.

I cannot understand, no matter how hard I try, why a website that collects so much personal information is so bad at personalizing advertisements.

Extremely delayed negative post purchase perceptions

Today, for the first time in six years, I looked in the mirror and thought "maybe the stud should be a bit farther forward." It never even occurred to me until today that the stud in my nose should be anywhere other than where it is. Negative or positive post purchase perception is meant to happen rather more promptly after a purchase than this. Six years is a bit of a stretch. The strange thing is that even though I was the one who decided exactly where the hole would be, I did not, until today, ever think that I could or should have made a different decision. I suppose that speaks to a generally positive post purchase attitude. After all, many products don't even make it six years.

Food value of a t-shirt

Here's an idea I've been hoarding for a while: I want to take a t-shirt to a food testing place and get the nutritional value figured out. I want to know what vitamins it has, protein, calories, fibre, all that stuff. I like the idea of going completely overboard with labelling. So I'd really like to see a shirt that has a hang tag with nutritional info. It's purely useless information, unless you plan to eat the shirt, but still, I think it could be an entertaining gimmick, if nothing else.

A traffic shaping manifesto

Capitalism is supposed to be good because it provides consumers with choice and companies with an incentive to innovate. By traffic shaping commercial lines used by other ISPs, Bell is eliminating choice. I've tried Bell. I even used their internet for a year. At the start of that year, the delay in getting my internet running was truly impressive. During that year, my internet was spotty. I rebooted my modem more times than I can count. The support was bad and the service was expensive. Needless to say, I switched. I switched to an ISP I knew and liked. I switched to an ISP whose workings I know and who I can get help from without going through an automated system. I even had the BitTorrent discussion with my ISP. I found my new ISP to be both responsible and responsive. In other words, I switched to a small ISP, one of the ones Bell services. As a free market economy allows me to do, I made my choice.

That's why I'm feeling particularly irate. I have not contracted with Bell in order to get my internet. Traffic shaping their own customers is one thing. But I'm not their customer. I do not have a deal with Bell. Why, then, are they attempting to impose their policy on me? I didn't sign on for this. I am not a Bell DSL customer. I won't sit still and allow a party I have no contract with to decide what I may and may not do on the internet. I want to use BitTorrent in peace, for whatever legal purposes I may put it to (like downloading heavy files and perfectly legal movies like Good Copy Bad Copy). I don't want my bandwidth throttled because I'm using a protocol other than http. I do not want to be bumped because Bell feels the need to marginalize certain protocols.

This is why I say, to Bell, as a customer of an independent ISP:

You're not my ISP. Don't throttle me.


The above is in response to Bell Canada's new traffic shaping policy. Read more about it here.
I'm thinking of trying to go big with this. The groundswell is there and I'd like to see something a little more present than a facebook group. I've worked up the logo that I'm going to shove onto my website in protest, and now I just need to build a website/action to go with it.

Two different ways to talk about shoes

When I give examples of types of conversation I enjoy, I usually use things like talking about shoes as negative examples. What I generally mean by that example is that I don't enjoy superficial conversations that go something like: "Hey, great shoes!" "Oh, thanks." "Where'd you get them?" "[name of shoe store]. They come in other colours, too!" "Really?"

Recently, however, I managed to prove that I'm a complete hypocrite. I caught myself having a conversation about shoes. But it was a little different. We were talking about different shoe companies, their business models, production standards, and the potential benefits of buying fewer pairs of more expensive but better lasting shoes. So, I'm a hypocrite. I'll have to stop saying that I don't like talking about shoes. It just turns out to be a matter of fine distinctions between different shoe related conversations.

Online ads get more obnoxious and depressing every day.

Facebook just asked me if I wanted to not be lonely anymore. That is to say, more specifically, that an ad on facebook asked me if I wanted to not be lonely. Funny thing, I didn't even know I was lonely. Facebook clearly thinks I am, though. Lots of websites also think that I might like to know who my soul mate is. These ads clearly think that I'm not happy as I am. Maybe they think that only frustrated, angry, lonely, desperate people view social networking and news sites. And all of that is without even bringing my SPAM into the equation.

My SPAM thinks that I might like a status symbol watch. Or that I might like to look at wild girls. Or that I'm having troubles with an appendage I don't even have. It's offering me designer shoes for cheap, too.

If I were to judge our social climate by the quality of advertising I see, I'd get the idea that most people are pretty unhappy. I'd get the idea that people are lonely, that they suffer from un-fulfilling relationships and bad sex. And that they don't own enough expensive looking watches. I might think that social problems magically disappear when certain pills and supplements are taken, or at least that people want to think so.

I find that things look fairly bleak, when you judge by the ads.

Capitalism for butterflies as retail concept

Give me a year, I'm going to do this: Capitalism for Butterflies could be made into a workable retail concept. Take a store, give it a consistent, overarching name, and then change what it does, how it looks, how the branding works every once in a while (when boredom strikes, when the inventory runs out). It would become a destination just because it would completely lack consistency. Look at the original Capitalism for Butterflies post to get a better idea of the model.

Talent agents for designers

Writers have literary agents. Actors and models and musicians have talent agents. Artists often have galleries to represent them with buyers. Why don't designers have anything like that?

Being the type of person who doesn't actually enjoy networking or constantly looking for work, I'm sick and tired of doing my own legwork. I've often thought that I what I need is a personal assistant to deal with people for me, but this morning I realized that I was wrong. What I really want is an agent. I want someone to round up buyers and show them my work if it fits the bill. I need someone to look after my interests in the creative industry, because I'm tired of doing it myself.

This all leads me to believe that there should be talent agents for designers. As far as I can tell, such a thing doesn't exist yet. In a case like that, I'd normally try to jump on the concept and be the first one in, but this time around, I'm not so sure. After all, this whole idea stems from my distaste for networking.

It isn't charity if you demand something in return

The grocery store I give some of my business to is doing a charity thing right now. They hit their customers up for money at the checkout, the money goes to disadvantaged kids or some such. Fine. I have no problem with that. The problem is that after you give them the money (the amount in this case is $2), they hand you a little slip of paper on which you're meant to write your name. Later on, they put all of the little papers up on the wall near the checkouts, so that everyone can see just how generous they've all been. That's the part I have trouble with. I have trouble with the idea that people demand recognition for their acts of charity. It's like the Livestrong bracelets that were so popular a couple of years ago. It's not enough to just give money for cancer research. People need others to know and acknowledge that they've given money. "Look at me! I'm terribly thoughtful, nice, and charitable." We're not giving for the sake of others. We're not giving to feel like we've done something good. We're giving so that other people will know how wonderful we are. That's my problem.