“Sweet, ’cause my hands can use a break. My hands look like a Polish potato farmer during, like, the famine.”

—Top Design contestant Eddie Ross, from Greenwich, CT

First I learned about the Chinese and the Hiroshima bomb, and now this. By the end of this season I’ll have a whole collection of alternafacts about the world. Tune in next week when the designer who wins the challenge describes herself as feeling “just like Lance Armstrong did when he stepped onto the moon.”

People often say that war-themed first-person shooters are completely unreasonable. No one person, they point out, could really do what your in-game avatar does.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Major Robert Henry Cain, recipient of the Victoria Cross. His weapon of choice was the Projector, Infantry, Anti Tank (PIAT), an early rocket-propelled grenade launcher. During the Battle of Arnhem, on Tuesday, September 19th, 1944, tanks killed many of his men. After that, he made it his personal mission to destroy as many tanks as possible.

On one occasion, two Tiger tanks approached the South Staffords position, and Cain lay in wait in a slit trench while Lieutenant Ian Meikle of the Light Regiment gave him bearings from a house above him. The first tank fired at the house and killed Meikle, while the chimney collapsed and almost fell on top of Major Cain. He still held his position until it was 100 yards away, whereupon he fired at it. The tank immediately returned fire with its machinegun [sic] and wounded Cain, who took refuge in a nearby shed from where he fired another round, which exploded beneath the tank and disabled it. The crew abandoned the vehicle but all were gunned down as they bailed out. Cain fired at the second tank, but the bomb was faulty and exploded directly in front of him. It blew him off his feet and left him blind with metal fragments in his blackened face. As his men dragged him off, Cain recalls yelling like a hooligan and calling for somebody to get hold of the PIAT and deal with the tank. One of the Light Regiment’s 75mm guns was brought forward and it blew the tank apart.

But it’s okay: half an hour later his sight returned, so he ignored medics’ advice, grabbed a PIAT, and went to town. At one point he found and used an anti-tank gun instead of a PIAT, but its recoil mechanism broke. He fired so many rounds that by Friday his eardrums burst, so he shoved scraps of field dressing in his ears and kept going. When PIAT ammunition ran out, he switched to a two-inch mortar, at times firing it nearly horizontal.

By the end of the week-long battle, he had destroyed or disabled some six tanks, four of which were Tiger tanks, the most feared in the German arsenal. Oh, and he was thirty-five at the time.

Doesn’t that make you feel like a complete slacker?

Sometimes our non-Christian friends ask us what our church services are like. It’s always hard to describe them in words, which is why I’m glad a friend of ours pointed us to the video below. Our services are exactly like this.

Zap!

When I was in middle school, I was–well, “pudgy” would be the kindest word for it. I weighed about what I weigh now, but was half a foot shorter. I resembled Jerry O’Connell in Stand By Me. When I went to Space Camp, staffers took a picture of me in the Moon gravity chair. I look like a young Old Elvis, all pasty white and bloated in my blue jumpsuit.

Unsurprisingly, I was not great at sports. The bane of my existence was Physical Education. The PE instructors didn’t help. One coach made us play a version of dodge ball where all of us students ran around the gym’s perimeter while he hurled balls at us. The last person standing won. Given that the coach once knocked a student unconscious, I guess what you won was freedom from a concussion. Later on he was fired for making advances on 12-year-old girls, so he was an all-around good guy.

One day we ran relays. Our whole class was divided into teams. I don’t remember if the coaches running the class did the dividing or if they picked relay leaders who in turn picked their teams, but either way, my team wasn’t happy to have me on it. I was fat. I was slow. I was not going to help our team win.

We were all sixth graders, with the social skills that implied, so my teammates were happy to tell me that I’d better run fast, that I’d better not lose the race for them. Eventually something snapped inside me. I smiled at all of them and, when I was handed the baton, sauntered down the length of the gym and back like a debutante strolling into a ball.

One of the coaches pulled me into his office. “PE may not be a perfect example of how life works, but it’s the best one we’ve got,” he told me. While I was still puzzling out what he meant, he spanked me with his fiberglass paddle.

I’ve thought about this episode a lot while watching Eli play soccer. In games, especially those played in the morning, he loses focus. He’ll run vaguely in the direction of the ball, or stop and hope the ball comes somewhere near him.

On the one hand, I want to tell him to keep his mind on what he’s doing and play as hard as he can. One thing soccer can teach him is the need to follow through on what you say you’re going to do — in this case, playing ball as part of a team. On the other hand, as my checkered athletic career taught me, there’s a big difference between intrinsic and extrinsic pressure. While I’d work as hard as possible if the sport interested me, if it didn’t, I wasn’t going to waste my time. I expect Eli to do the same. On the third hand, he’s four. As long as he’s having fun running around, he’s good. I’m stockpiling worries for the future, I suppose.

But if he ever gets punished for walking in a relay race, I’m going to smile and tell him a story.

The English translation on signs does not necessarily tell the whole story.

“Wall Street has rocket scientists creating securities…. A scientist sort of in the back room with lots of test tubes and bunsen burners–they’ve created monsters. They’ve created these securities that no one has a handle on.”
Nancy Kimmelman, former Wall Street economist

That’s right, it’s all our fault. We’re done creating V-2 rockets to rain down poorly-aimed destruction on England and Peacekeeper ICBMs with MIRV warheads bearing 200 times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. No longer are we content with splicing genes until we have glow-in-the-dark bunnies. Now we’re taking over the financial systems of the world! Mua ha ha ha!

I can’t decide whether this is the most brilliant thing I’ve seen in a while or the scariest, but either way, I wish I’d done this first.

(h/t to Nick Mamatas)

I am embarrassed to say that I was a little bit cocky when I graduated from college with my design degree. I didn’t understand why people (clients) wouldn’t listen to me when I would tell them what was best for their project. I thought that taking their input and making changes to my work was a corruption of my vision. I was angry about this a lot.

Working at an advertising agency where the sales guys wanted us to throw any old thing together as long as it had a big fat sans serif type on the headline didn’t make it any better. There were two guys there in particular that didn’t take any input from the client at all, came back to the office with the job and expected the designers to read their minds about what they’d talked to the client about. They refused to do even the minimal paper workup of the projects, wanted to cut in line in front of the other sales people to get their projects done and then expected us to drop whatever we were currently working on to do their revisions, which were always extensive because, surprise!, they hadn’t told us what the client wanted in the first place.

I beat my head against this particular brick wall for almost four years. I look back on it all and actually wonder how I didn’t burn out sooner than I did. Youth and stupidity count for something, I guess.

From there I started working for an Apple consulting firm. Nothing gives you better ego strokes than fixing someone’s broken computer. I felt appreciated for the first time in a long time and there was no subjectivity in the work I was doing. I loved it.

After the consulting job, I worked for Apple Computer for a brief period. While I didn’t particularly enjoy the sales aspect of the job, I did love working for Apple. What designer doesn’t want a peek inside the mother ship? The support I got and the team aspects of working at Apple were fantastic. In fact, I’ve only seen its like at the church I attend now. That sounds weird, I know. Apple has been called a religion and I think they have some of the better parts of religion. Also, the gadgets are freaking unbelievable!

After we moved to Alabama, we made the decision that I would not get a job because we knew we were going to try to have a baby. It seemed silly for me to get a job and then quit once I got close to the end of my pregnancy. It also seemed like a waste for me to have a bunch of skills and not use them, so I created Granade Graphic Design. I did this so I could work from home and pick and choose the jobs I wanted to take.

I had left the design world on such a sour note that I didn’t really know how I’d feel about doing design work again. I’d lost what little confidence I’d had in my abilities at the ad agency and felt that any work I did would be agonizing and frustrating on every level, ending in lots of contention with the client. I’ve had some work over the years–not a lot, but just enough to keep me in the flow. And over time I’ve actually lost that mentality. A few weeks ago I had a surprising realization that I actually like doing the work I do now. I enjoy meeting new clients and seeing what they are trying to accomplish and figuring out how I can help them do that.

So here’s a list of things I’ve learned about myself, about my work and about being a working designer. I think a lot of these are based on me becoming a more mature person. Part of it is just experience working. And it helps too that I don’t have to have any of these jobs to eat.

I’ve discovered that when you work with clients directly, it’s a whole lot easier to understand what they are looking for without the middle man of a salesperson between you. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to the advertising environment for many reasons, but this is number one. As my mother-in-law often says, I’d rather be a greeter at Wal-Mart.

I finally figured out that I won’t get every job that I try for. This used to make me feel personally rejected. On a few occasions it may be a personal rejection, but usually people make decisions based on other factors. They didn’t feel like my work was right for the job. They didn’t like my fees. They felt that working with a freelancer was unstable. They woke up cranky with their spouse that morning. Who knows? And at this point in my life, I feel good enough about my work and who I am (and I’m busy enough already) that I can say I don’t care. There will be another job and another client that loves my work. I look forward to working with them.

I’ve found that when you approach people in an upbeat, considerate way and you are honestly trying to solve their problem, they are pretty open to what you present them. Maybe this just boils down to people wanting to feel like they are being heard. (Are my psychology roots showing here?)

I’ve realized that most people who need a graphic designer have no idea what one does or how they accomplish the task. Part of my job is to educate those clients about the profession and the practice of graphic design. Most of the time it’s about sitting in one spot, putting as many ideas on the page as I can and then editing them down to what will work for any given situation. I take the psychology and art background I have to generate ideas, and then start refining those ideas into something that is both attractive and usable. Hopefully by the time the client sees it, I’ve made it look easy.

I’ve learned that I won’t ever be the next Paul Rand and that’s ok. I can still do good work. I can still help people with their businesses and their dreams, and help them reach their goals. That is as fulfilling as fame, maybe even more so.

I’ve learned that when you place monetary value on your skills, don’t act apologetic for what you charge and look people in the eye when you quote them a length of time it will take to complete the project. That helps clients understand that you mean business, that you are a professional person doing a professional service. I think this is much harder for women to do than for men. I’ve certainly had to work on this skill a lot and occasionally if I haven’t coached myself before hand, I’ll falter at this point in a meeting.

I don’t take it personally when people do want to change things around. Maybe they knew what they wanted in the beginning, but it didn’t turn out like they thought it would in the end. Maybe they had a brainstorm in the shower that morning and realized that it must be like THIS instead of that. I’m happy to work on the new thing as long as they are paying the bills. That doesn’t mean I’ll do anything they ask. I do have a few personal lines I won’t cross, but my idea of what “design” is supposed to be isn’t one of those lines anymore. The reason the old adage the client is always right is an old adage is because it’s true. There are a couple of jobs I’ve done over the past few years that I didn’t think turned out all that great. The client wanted something that I didn’t think was the best solution for the project, but they wanted it the way they wanted it and they paid their bill. You just won’t see those jobs in my portfolio.

The last thing I’ll say (Geeze, this has turned into the longest post ever. If you’ve read this far, Thanks!) is while watching Top Design, Top Chef and Project Runway I’ve seen that the people who’ve won those shows have these skills figured out. They know how to get along with others, they don’t talk about compromising their artistic vision–at least not much–and most of them are mature people who’ve worked in the real world. Watching them has done a lot to solidify my thoughts on these topics and, believe it or not, convince me that I’m on the right track. I’m pretty sure Bravo didn’t have that as a goal for their shows.

Calling the United States “too big to fail”, the People’s Republic of China today loaned the USA up to US$1 trillion in exchange for a 79.9% equity stake in the country. The country’s management will also be replaced, though President Hu Jintao has not yet named the new leaders.

“The collapse of the United States would have sent ripples through the entire world,” said Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China. “We had this giant pile of cash — Euros, thankfully — and thought, hey, why not rescue the US?”

A visibly shaken President Bush addressed the nation this morning. “This deal is good for the economy. It’s good for America. It is the best deal for all parties, Republican, Democratic, and Communist.” He then said, “They said if I was good I could keep my job through January.”

Speaking in a rare joint appearance, the current Democratic and Republican presidential candidates denounced the move. “While I have been a strong proponent of change, really I meant changing things so that I was President,” said Obama.

McCain added, “Have I mentioned that I was a P.O.W.?”

Sources within the campaigns have since confirmed that both candidates have begun negotiations with top Chinese officials to be the next Governor of the Republic of USA.

Drink Boss Coffee, or Tommy Lee Jones will cut you.