David Malki !

Valentine Cards & Discounted T-Shirts

It’s almost Valentine’s Day! If you’d like to order some Wondermark valentines, such as the above or any of the below, well that can be done right here. Maybe I should have mentioned this weeks ago! But wasn’t it just Christmas???

Also, I’ve just put a big stack of misprinted T-shirts on clearance! Not just my own designs, but also a few from my fine friends Kris Straub and Ryan North (who will get paid for these sales, of course).

If you’re more interested in VALUE and SAVINGS than SHIRTS WITHOUT INK SMEARS ON THEM, OR HOLES IN WEIRD PLACES then perhaps this is the deal for you!

Kris and Ryan and I are working on something else big, too — a Machine of Death card game! More info to come about that in the next couple of weeks.

[Wondermark Valentine cards • Misprinted T-shirts]

P.S. I just remembered that TopatoCo has a few of my shirts on clearance as well! Where is my Elephant and Everything is Fine are both priced to move right now. I really like both of those shirts and will miss them when they disappear!

Fiction: A Few Words From Leonard Ramirez, First Co-President of the United States

The latest from my ongoing interminable series “Rejected by McSweeney’s.”

Good afternoon, Mr. President; Madam Secretary; members of the press corps; ladies and gentlemen.

When I first received a call from the election commission informing me that, due to an obscure and little-understood bylaw in our nation’s founding documents, the Supreme Court was, for the first time ever, Constitutionally obligated to name a Co-President of the United States, I was, to say the least, surprised.

When the gentleman on the phone went on to say that, due to the ratio between the popular vote total in the Northern states and the balance of party power in the Senate, divided by the number of property owners in the state of Virginia, this rare and never-before-executed provision had mathematically selected me, Leonard Ramirez, assistant general manager of Penn Hills Radio Shack in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to serve as co-president alongside Barack Obama, I was extremely surprised.

We need not review the curious and protracted process by which I came to actually assume this office. I urge us to put the partisan rancor of the last several months behind us. The many slanderous statements and incredulous, stammering protests uttered in the Supreme Court challenge that I survived will forever remain a part of that Court’s permanent record; let us keep our high spirits by not repeating them here.

I did not ask for this unprecedented position; I did not expect it; but I see no option but to rise to it. And so, as co-president, I would like to offer my assistance to President Obama in any way that I can.

Mr. President, please let me know if there’s anything I can do. My desk, just on the other side of the hastily-erected cubicle wall in the Oval Office that you have no doubt noticed, is very close to yours, so you should be able to just speak loudly, or come over and ask whatever you like. If you’re out of the office, or on Air Force One or in another country, I’m told that you have been given a special walkie-talkie that can connect you to me at any time. It looks like this one. Do you have it? Okay. It’s okay if you don’t have it with you. I’ve got mine, so, whenever you need, just hit the Talk button. Mine’s set on Channel Two, but if you prefer a different channel, just let me know. I’m happy to accommodate.

I’ve been asked if I plan to sit in on Cabinet meetings, or visit foreign dignitaries, or address Congress. My answer to these, and every similar query, is the same: if I can be of help, then I am happy to. Mr. President, if you are busy with your family, and you’d prefer me to go visit troops in Afghanistan or have a meeting with Hugo Chavez, all you have to do is ask. I am no longer married, and I only have my daughter on alternate weekends, so I have a lot of free time. I’ve also been in touch with my general manager over at Penn Hills Radio Shack, Nancy Ranmuller. She has agreed to allow me as much time off as I need. So, again, I am at your disposal for that.

I do speak a little bit of Spanish, but not very much. Mainly just greetings, curse words, and the names of foods. If Hugo Chavez wants to talk to me about brunch, I won’t even need an interpreter! Just a little joke. I would in actuality be happy to avail myself of the services of an official White House interpreter. It would probably be for the best. I should also say that I am fair to decent at taking notes. I could meet with you after the meeting and we could go over what was said, sort of talk it out and make sure we’re both on the same page. I will try my best to keep any random doodles “president-friendly.”

Mr. President, I also know that it must be very difficult for you to split your attention among the many pressing issues facing this nation, including the economy, concerns about jobs and unemployment, health care reform, and rising tensions overseas. Again, I want to put myself at your disposal. If you want to think just about unemployment for a while, I’m here to run interference for you. I can hold a press conference, or conduct an interview with 60 Minutes. Or, I can discuss one issue with the Cabinet, while you meet with leaders in Congress about something else. Later, we can compare notes, and that way in case the other person has to go to the other meeting the next day, we’re both up to speed on everything that’s been discussed.

The last election was among the most divisive in our nation’s history. Mr. President, I feel I should come clean and admit that did I not vote for you. I did not vote for anyone, because I forgot what time the polls closed, and also I did not have a ride. Nancy Ranmuller was supposed to take me after work, but she had to go pick up her kids, because of some mix-up with her husband that I do not know the details of. As co-president I am willing to be flexible about things like that, because I do not have a family of my own, except for alternate weekends when my daughter and I read books in silence. I almost got remarried once, but it did not work out for reasons too complicated to explain. I do get Secret Service protection, though, right? In case she shows up at the White House?

Just another little joke. I think she is unlikely to show up at the White House. Even I had to take a cab because I could not find it at first. Anyway, because of my family situation I can always stay late at the office, or run to pick something up if you and Michelle are busy or need an extra hand. I am not much of a cook but I can do simple things like rice and eggs pretty well. I also don’t snore and usually have clean towels on hand in case you need to crash at my place for any reason, or if I have to stay overnight at the White House I’ll try not to be a bother. I do sometimes like to watch television in the evenings, but if you would rather go to bed early, it’s okay if I miss an episode of something. It’s really not a big deal; I can always read a recap the next day. Although I think you would agree that it’s not the same.

I would just like to conclude by saying that I am really very excited for this opportunity. There has never been a co-president in our nation’s history. But our Founders must have written it into the Constitution for a reason.

Mr. President, I know this is an awkward situation for the both of us. Believe me, I’m as nervous as you are. And since we have to work together, I hope we can make the best of it. I’ll try to remember to bring headphones to the Oval Office and if my music is ever too loud, please just let me know. I’ve already labeled all my food in the fridge so there should be no confusion. I will now take questions.

Check out: A Period Literary Corpus

A quick followup to last week’s post about anachronisms in period storytelling. In the comments, Howard pointed out this undertaking by author Mary Robinette Kowal, whose novels are set in the world of Jane Austen:

There are a lot of words which are obviously anachronisms but there others which aren’t. Short of looking up every word in a novel, there’s no way to really know if a seemingly innocuous word like “hello” exists yet.

So here’s my plan for Glamour in Glass.

I’ve created a list of all the words that are in the collected works of Jane Austen to use for my spellcheck dictionary. It will flag any word that she didn’t use and I can then look those up to see if it was in use in 1815… [read more]

I love this idea. I wish it were easier to dial up, say, the corpus of 1910s-1930s adventure stories, or whatever you wanted. Another tool among many to help writers approach a period-accurate feel if desired. I’d love to hear about things others have done along the same lines — leave a comment if you know of any more examples! [Comments]

Two Videos on Photography and Painting

Here are a couple videos I came across in the last couple of days that I thought you might enjoy! Both are a little on the long side but well worth it.

First, portrait photographer Peter Hurley offers one simple way to make your pictures of people much more flattering: emphasize the jawline. Blog post (including video) here:

So since this one area means so much to me, I thought I’d share some tips on it in this little video. In it you’ll see how adamant I am about having my clients bring their jawline towards my camera day in and day out. This simple technique instantly improves the images I’m taking of my clients, and I hope you gain a few insights here that you find helpful and can implement on your next shoot.

Second, illustrator Quentin Blake demonstrates his drawing and painting technique for the camera. Write up (including video) here:

On the light box I put the rough drawing I am going to work from, and on top of that a sheet of watercolour paper, normally Canson or Arches fin. Ready to hand is a bottle of waterproof black ink and a lot of scruffy-looking dip pens… What happens next is not tracing; in fact it’s important that I can’t see the rough drawing underneath too clearly, because when I draw I try to draw as if for the first time; but I can do it with increased concentration, because the drawing underneath lets me know all the elements that have to appear and exactly where they have to be placed.

BONUS LINK: Last week’s comic about the faucet inventors reminded some readers of an Eddie Izzard routine about toast and faucets. I hadn’t seen this video before, but I love Eddie Izzard and I think there’s a deep well of faucet-related frustration we can all tap into together. Here’s the clip!

Identifying Anachronisms in ‘Lincoln’ & ‘Mad Men’


Image: The Dictionary of Americanisms

I enjoyed two articles in The Atlantic by historian Benjamin Schmidt: one looking at the movie Lincoln, and the other at episodes of Mad Men, in which he used computers to compare the language used in each by characters to a corpus of actual published works from the same era, with the goal of flagging any modern terminology or phraseology that snuck into supposedly period-accurate works. (For example, “snuck” is a word he cites as becoming common decades too late to be accurate to Lincoln’s time.)

From the Lincoln article:

It turns out Kushner didn’t reach for that OED as much as he could have. Mary Todd complains about Thaddeus Stevens’s “prosecutorial” interest in her accounts, but the word wasn’t used at all until 1934, and not widely until Watergate. As others have noted, everyone said “sneaked,” not “snuck,” until the 20th century, and the “barrage” of artillery Edwin Stanton plans for Wilmington only entered English around 1900. And the “bipartisanship” at the heart of the movie’s narrative? The dictionary says the term only entered the language in 1909, although I’ve found a few occurrences from the 1890s.

And Mad Men:

What seems to be the most ubiquitous mistake in Mad Men is so frequent as to be invisible: the phrase “I need to.” Modern scripts set in 1960s, including Mad Men, use it constantly: it’s about as frequent as everyday words like “good,” “between,” or “most.” But to say “I need to” so much is a surprisingly modern practice: books, television shows, and movies from the 1960s use it at least ten times less often, and many never use it all. Sixties dialogue written back then used “ought to” far more often than modern imitators do.

I love this type of stuff. In Dispatches from Wondermark Manor I of course tried to affect a quasi-Victorian style of writing, but completely absurdly and with a deliberate disregard for accuracy…and yet, when I went back to assemble the complete edition, revisiting texts that in some cases I’d written years earlier, I absolutely made changes based on my improved understanding of Victorian language. Stuff just stood out to me as wrong.

I remember replacing tsunami with cyclone and zeppelin (as a generic term for airship) with dirigible. I also snuck, er, sneaked in some particularly juicy turns of phrase that I’d come across in period literature that charmed me with how different they sounded from something written today.

But I rather love the mishmash, as well — obviously someone striving for period accuracy would do well to try to use the language of the day in the manner in which it was actually used, but there’s something charming to me about adopting the trappings of a different era but putting a little bit of a modern voice into it. It becomes new; it’s something we couldn’t have gotten from the real era. It’s science fiction: traveling back to the world of Kennedy or LBJ or Queen Victoria or Abraham Lincoln, getting to put on those clothes and talk about those issues, but bringing a little 2013 with you in a way that they never would have done. It’s inventive.

Oh no you guys this was an accident but I — I think I just invented steampunk