David Malki ! Just a reminder that I’ll be in San Francisco today and tomorrow for the Edwardian Ball Weekend (great shows both evenings; free browsing on Saturday afternoon). Please come by and say hello! I’ll have some shirts, posters, books, and Valentine cards…
VALENTINE CARDS???
Valentine cards are on sale now! There are five different designs currently available, and I’ll be shipping orders all next week.
This coming weekend, I’ll be in San Francisco at the Edwardian Ball Weekend, a “magical outdoors-indoor symphony of music, theatre, dance, art, storytelling, circus arts, fashion, technology, and, of course, the art & stories of Edward Gorey.” Also: the perfect environment for me to test out my brand-new bowler cap!
The event will feature super-fancy stage-show extravaganzae on both Friday & Saturday nights (tickets & information available at their site), but in addition, the Vendor Bazaar & Croquet Gardens (where I will be) will be open all Saturday afternoon for free browsing, gawking, and lollygagging.
Plus, if you’re a San Francisco local with nothing better to do, and would like to hang out in your finery and help me vend for the weekend (in exchange for free tickets, meals & merch), drop me a line (dave at wondermark dot com) ASAP! I’d like to have one person there to help out, if possible. It could be you. Also, it should be said, it might not be. We shall see!
Over at Tweet Me Harder, my co-host Kris Straub and I have launched a new blog feature we’re calling Junk Me Harder. Inspired by a bit of conversation from TMH Episode 31, Junk Me Harder aims to examine, dissect, and review junk mail in a manner that’ll be familiar to readers of my (now-concluded) series The Comic Strip Doctor. Here’s a taste of Junk Me Harder:
We’ve all experienced the thrill of receiving mail followed by the crushing sadness of realizing it’s junk mail. Marketers are no dummies, however; they want to prolong the former reaction and forestall the latter for as long as possible — preferably until after you have returned the enclosed paperwork and applied for credit from their company. Thus they go to great lengths to make their missives appear “official”, as if dispatched from some Agency of Import or Bureau of Relevance sequestered deep in the bowels of the International Government Totally A Real Thing. […]
“UPDATE BASED ON CURRENT ANALYSIS” — an overreliance on thesauri and subsets of a previous phrase’s definition seem to be the hallmarks of junk mail copy. Has anyone provided an update based on outdated information? Hearsay? Is this intended to put the recipient at ease, knowing that Discover® did not fill an envelope with raw data on reams of copier paper for the customer to interpret? That, hopefully, it has been analyzed for the purposes of a fully-current update?
NONSENSE CLAIM TO SIGNIFICANCE: 14 points
Fake rubber stamp reading “IMPORTANT”: imagine a Discover® financial adviser, having carefully considered and personally chosen You, the Preferred Customer, as a candidate for this special offer, stuffing and sealing this envelope with satisfaction. “I hope this offer comes at a good time for this Preferred Customer,” he sighs, inclining a wrist to check a fancy watch below a rolled-up sleeve. “I hope they understand the importance of this information.” Then, taking another long, hard look at the envelope, already emblazoned by stripe and slogan, he rummages through a desk drawer, fingering through a collection of rubber stamps. “Aha!” he crows. Casually but firmly, he presses the stamp onto the kraft-paper surface, leaving the outlined word IMPORTANT shining in red ink in the dim, after-hours light. “That,” he thinks, “should do the trick.”
Can you plausibly imagine this scenario? No? That’s ‘cause it didn’t happen.
FAUX APPEARANCE OF MANUAL HANDLING: 12 points
Read the full entry here!
And we are also soliciting your hilarious junk mail. Really! Send it to us for review! Mailing instructions are at the link. You can also feel free to subscribe to the TMH blog or follow TMH on Twitter to be sure of never missing an update.
BONUS LINK: If you’re jonesin’ for more of my ramblings, you should also know that I write most of the missives on the TopatoCo house blog! In between the talk about all the cool stuff we’re doing at TopatoCo, I try to be kind of entertaining as well. It’s a good thing to keep an eye on ’cause I’ve got some pretty cool plans for it soon!
You remember my immensely talented, wonderfully creative wife Nikki — she of the calendars, the pins, the Slügs and Doughboys, she of the special-effects makeup and many strange costumes, and even of many special future projects unrevealed as yet. Well, this spring she’ll be teaching an adult class at Santa Monica College entitled “Arts & Crafts to Share With Kids”. Here’s the course description:
Make the most of the time you spend with kids! Come learn about some fun, creative, and very appealing arts-and-crafts projects you can share with kids, whether you’re spending a quiet afternoon with your family, or having a lively meeting with your neighborhood youth group. Find out about the steps and materials you need to create sand candles, melted crayon pictures, Jacob’s ladders, ‘stained glass’ windows (no glass involved), and other awesome projects. You’ll leave this workshop with instructions, materials lists, and even a finished piece you create yourself, ready to share with others.
It’ll be a great class for parents, group leaders, or even just strange and crafty individuals. The class runs four Saturdays in April and May, and enrollment is open now!
I hope you’ve been listening to my weekly comedy podcast, Tweet Me Harder! If you haven’t, there’s absolutely no better time to start — the latest episode that’s been posted, Episode 30, may be our best yet. I’m super-pleased with how the show’s been progressing and developing over the last few months, and if you like the voice and temperament behind Wondermark, I’m confident recommending TMH to you as well.
In fact HERE IS THE EPISODE IN QUESTION for your listening pleasure:
We’re engaged in a concerted campaign right now to get noticed by the folks at iTunes who decide on the “staff picks,” which are podcasts that are given special precedence in the iTunes directory. If you’re an iTunes user, and you enjoy the show, there are two things you can do to help:
– You can subscribe to the podcast using this direct iTunes link, which is what determines our popularity ranking;
– You can rate and/or comment on the show in iTunes!
And, of course, there is one thing that you can always do, iTunes user or not, TMH fan or not… you can give yourself a big ol’ hug. Why not? (Unless you are spiky)
