- the corn maze/pumpkin patch on the side of the highway on the way back from St. Louis. neither of us had been to a corn maze before, so i made us stop. turns out it wasn't so much of a maze as it was a scavenger hunt... it was in the shape of Missouri with the arch, the state bird, a honeybee and a mule carved out of it and we had to go in and find answers to a list of Missouri trivia questions. Ian did most of the navigating because i was a little distracted- i had never seen corn up close and personal like that before (and when i've told people that, i get the same "wait, how long have you lived in Iowa?!". also, they had tons of cute pumpkins. also, cute goats.

-pumpkin pie lattes in the ped mall at 9:30pm....hilarity....

-apple picking!! yes, i finally went apple picking! after all these years it finally happened! but not without a little challenge... we went to the orchard right outside of Iowa City, the one everyone goes to, and we go in the shop and grab a basket and the girl at the counter told us to have fun and we were off. and it was beautiful! the hills, the rows of trees, the little creek and the cute bridge over it...gorgeous. but the apples... not so much. everything looked diseased. really really diseased. we finally went back to the car, got rid of the baskets and drove over to Swisher to find the orchard there, and boy was it worth it! the apples looked and tasted amazing! and the view from the hill was so beautiful and dreamy. even bought a little white pumpkin when we were done.

- mustard yellow coat and a new soft hoodie...mmmm....

- my cousin's autumn wedding in St. Louis... family time to the maximus. my sister kicked everyone's ass three times at croquet. also, forgot my to bring my id to the open bar reception at a casino. real smart Abby. real smart.

so yesterday it dawned on me- Obama has a logo.

of course, duh, etc. anywhere you go (at least 'round these parts) you see signs in yards that say "HOPE", with the "O" as the Obama logo. in fact, i see those signs so much that i've stopped noticing them. they have become part of my life, my routine.  if i saw a sign in someone's yard that "HOPE" without the Obama "O", i'd probably still associate that word with Obama's campaign and that house with Obama supporters.
and even with his online ads i don't think twice when i see the lone logo. i know what it stands for, and even associate the words "Hope" and "Change" with it.
so yes, Obama has a logo.

i repeat: OBAMA (the Democratic Party's presidential nominee and an elected government official and politician) has a LOGO (a symbol designed for easy recognition of a trademark, company etc).

so what's the big deal? well, i can't really think of a politician that has a logo as effective as Obama's*. in fact, i can't think of a politician besides Obama that has a logo that DOESN'T include their whole last name*. i can't think of a politician whose campaign signs display a word (like "hope") and NOT their last name*. the fact that the public can associate Barrack Obama with a sign that says "HOPE" and his "O" logo is quite amazing. and isn't...

it's simple ad strategies and designs that are not too different than the Nike "Swoosh" and the phrase "Just Do It.". the "HOPE" sign is rather genius in the sense that we are not bombarded with the candidate's name (as we are in the media) rather a simple word that conjures up positive feelings. and like the Nike "Swoosh", we associate that "O" with Barrack Obama. but the big difference: Obama is a man and an elected government official and a politician, not a tennis shoe.

Obama is selling himself to the public like a Nike tennis shoe, and i don't mind.

it's a great strategy. since the beginning of his campaign, Obama has utilized every aspect of the media and has seen the rewards, so it's not really a big surprise that he would utilize this style of marketing. but in the greater picture, the history of political campaigning, it really matters. future nominees will follow his example, so it's important for us to notice this now and keep it in mind for the future; a future of sorting through the best looking logo on the ballot.


* i haven't done much research on presidential campaigns so if i'm wrong about any of this, PLEASE let me know!

PS. here is a link to a post analyzing Obama's logo that i found interesting:
The Genius of the Obama Campaign Logo

My boss and I came in at 7am to open the store. This meant her doing the books and me dragging all the lawn ornaments (pink flamingos, canadian geese, blue herons, spinners) and flags and gazing balls outside to their designated spots. In the summer months we have a lot to drag outside, making the shop look delightfully tacky.
I started by grabbing the flags, and on my way to put them in their stand I noticed something odd with our sign- there were a lot of marquee letters on the ground below it. So I set up the flags and went back in to tell my manager.
We both came back out and looked at the sign. Actually, we mostly just looked at the marquee letters on the ground. We stood there for a couple of minutes thinking about what happened- maybe the night employees were told to change the sign then got distracted by a customer? Or maybe the wind blew them off? Then, at the same time, it occured to us that maybe we should REALLY look at the sign.

What once read:
Long Stem Roses
12.99 per dz
Green Plant Sale

Was now:
Long Ass Penises
12.69 per dz

This happened about 3 weeks ago and it still makes me laugh.

thoughts on The Rape of Europa (the movie)-

since 5th grade i've had a mild obsession with anything and everything World War II related, especially old footage and photos. it started when i first learned about the holocaust, and after reading tons of books on the matter, i enrolled in an art history class that looks at art from totalitarian regimes, a subject that's still taboo to write about. and no regime in the history of the world cared more about art than the Nazis. The Rape of Europa tackles the huge problem that was looting in World War II, mostly by the Nazis, but also by some US and Soviet forces. in all of my reading about World War II, not once did i really think about, or ever read about, the lengths at which the Soviets, the Polish and the French went to in order to keep their most prized works of art out of the Nazi's reach. unfortunately, the Nazi's loved collecting art as much as they loved invading other countries...
we're also faced with complicated questions, like do the Russians really have the right to keep the paintings they took from Germany? personally, i don't think so, but i understand the harsh feelings that many Russians still have towards Germany. one man interviewed suggested that the problem will be best solved when future generations can approach it with less emotions and more logic. but even still, there are tons of art works that are kept permanently on foreign land. it's a touchy subject; rarely is everyone happy with the outcome.

the photos and old footage in the movie are wonderful. pictures of Hitler obsessing over models of cities and film of museums being emptied to ensure that the Nazi's didn't take anything. sometimes it gets almost too grim to bear. i was on the brink of tears every five minutes. great interview with veterans, residents who witnessed the invasions and art historians, curators and museum directors. the music was a little off for my taste, but intense nonetheless. overall incredibly well put together!

it's weird to think that any of that even happened- that for many years most of Europe was in ruins and the United States was a hero to the world. now we're creating ruins as the world's super-bully. i guess i just romanticize that war, when good guys were mostly good guys and the bad guys were really bad guys and the whole world fought, not only with guns and bombs, but battled starvation and disease and the loss of family, towns and cities. everyone struggled to survive and beat the bad guys. most recently i've been getting especially emotional looking at photos and paintings of the Soviet soldiers tossing the Nazi standards in front of Lenin's mausoleum; i get choked up thinking about how much the Russians lost in their fight and how much they would've lost had they not won. we all would've lost had they not won.

i'm gonna end this with a thought that makes me happy to be an art major-
"Art is humanity. It separates us from the animals... art is what makes us human."

i want to move to Kansas City or Austin right now. somewhere a little warmer. there’s still random piles of snow that still haven’t melted yet, even though it’s been getting up into the 50s.
the grass that covers the hills on both sides of the interstate are still very much brown... tan really. and i’d like to think the hills are trying their hardest to turn green; the trees are doing their best to blossom and sqeeze leaves out of their branches. but it’s that time of the year that feels so awkward- that time when the grass reminds me of the brown carpeting that my family’s first and second house both had. it reminds me of the rocks that filled the playground at my preschool that would in turn end up in my shoes after excessive amounts of recess.
i passed by an Earl May store off of Collins Rd and thought of my grandpa. he owned an Earl May in Des Moines and he knew everything there was to know about plants. everyone loved him. he was always smiling, even towards the end of his life. more old men should smile more often.
if one were to combind Bill Murray (with a beard, Steve Zissou Bill Murray) and Tom Hanks that man would be a lot like my dad.
more people should listen to NPR and less Nickelback.
the more and more i hear about how bad the economy is, the more anxious i get at the idea of graduating with a BFA in Printmaking.
i feel sorry for kids that live and go to school in Cedar Rapids- this town is excrutiatingly boring and plain. but i like it more than Iowa City most of the time.
i was reading Rules of Attraction at a coffee shop that was playing an awful medly of new and older alternative rock (Sugar Ray, Blue October, Evanessence to name a few) and i found myself unable to read anymore and just looked at the ceiling for about five minutes trying very hard to tune out the music and forget about how much the characters in the book annoy me. they annoy me in the same way that the characters in the The Sun Also Rises annoyed me. i also noticed that this particular coffee shop had tons of track and wall lighting. this also annoyed me because i imagined the manager walking into a lamp/lighting showroom and buying all of the trendiest-looking fixtures they had in stock. the bathroom smelled a bit like an old woman and had close-up digital photos of flowers signed by the "artist" and framed hanging on the walls.
i’d be happy if i never had to see anymore close-up photos of flowers every again.
at a friend’s opening in the IMU we joked about how the university should offer Print Gocco classes. the idea of "Intro to Gocco" and "Advanced Gocco", and even "Gocco as a Means for Abstraction" still cracks me up.
last night, for the first time in a long time, i had a Bloody Mary at the Deadwood. i was wearing Andy’s flannel shirt that makes me look kinda butch. an old man with horrible teeth stood too close to me and spoke drunken jibberish while Andy and i picked out songs on the jukebox. all i could pick out from the rambling was "Black Sabbath". i wasn’t sure if he wanted me to play it or what he was talking about, but i didn’t look at him and debated telling him to back the fuck off. flannel does that to me sometimes.

So every now and then I'll look through my high school yearbooks. I recently rediscovered this and felt like sharing...

Abby,
I'm so glad I got over my complete idiocy of initially thinking I didn't like you. I am so glad we got to be good friends this year. You are such an awesome person. Keep working on your music-- I think you have a lot of talent, and I'll always be more than happy to help you out on anything  you need. Sorry you cut off your thumb.

That was from a friend who I haven't talked to or seen in quite a while, but for a while we were really good friends. What I totally love about this is the first line- "thinking" he didn't like me. I knew he didn't like me when we first started hanging out, but I also second guess myself alot because I naturally over-analyze everything. And after hanging out with him a lot I forgot about it until he wrote it in my yearbook and I laughed out loud. That was also around the time that I cut the tip of my thumb off in art class, hence the last line. Oh, and I played guitar for a bit back then; I wrote a song and he and my other friend Nathan helped me record it. I have since forgotten how to play it, but I remember the lyrics. Let's just say I was a tid bit angsty... I was 16 living in the suburbs of Dallas, making tshirts with my friends and going thrift store shopping on the weekends. Life was tough.

I saw Persepolis last night and I'm trying to keep myself from spending more money by buying the books and rereading them. The movie was beautiful- the animation, the music (even he hilarious "Eye of the Tiger" montage), the French! It got me all sorts of emotional. The whole once-you-leave-home-it'll-never-be-the-same always gets me; you know home isn't that bad but you think you can upgrade, then you leave and you hate that new place even more than you hated your home when you lived there, and you keep grasping at ways to go back to that time but it never happens and you can never go back. And the leaving-your-family part. And it's probably due to my Nazi and Stalinist art history class, but the imagery of the regime changes in Iran really got me emotional and made me feel a bit hopeless. And that's not a bad thing.

But the sun's out today, and the melting mounds of snow are forming thin rivers and giant puddles- I feel like I can really breathe today.

I'd be happy to never hear these sounds again:

My feet sloshing through slush and snow

Splashing into giant puddles that I try so hard to avoid (but somehow manage to leap into) resulting in my ice-cold soaked feet, shoes and socks. These conditions will, in the span of 15 minutes or so, turn my feet white and prune-y

Blaring sirens rushing to and fro, all over Iowa City, splashing the slush from the streets onto cars and pedestrians

Spinning tires that screech against the streets (however I do enjoy the screaming profanity that accompanies such a problem)

Sounds I think about to drown out the annoyance of the aforementioned sounds:

The sloshing of kozo (Japanese paper pulp) in the frame of the su (bamboo screen for papermaking) and the metal tub

Charcoal on newsprint that makes a Russian "ch" sound (sounds like a combination of "ch" and "sh" and for some odd reason reminds me of brightly colored cloth dolls like Raggedy Ann)

Tummies rumbling when they're hungry and burps when they're full (especially burps that sound like names of Presidents and state capitals)

The soothing British voices on NPR that so calmly deliver the news, be it horrible or quirky

they say "if you don't like the weather in Iowa, just wait five minutes." on days like these, like the retarded child of Seattle and Fargo, i could've just moved south by now. (needless to say, i hate that expression.)

that's what caught my eye in the "sponsored links" section of my homepage. hilarity! what items could they possibly be offering? tshirts probably...books... or even Manson-made scarves, with bat shit insanity in every stitch! oh, Manson...

it warmed up today, which was a nice change. i left my coat in the car when i walked into Village Inn (for their strawberry banana french toast...heaven, simply heaven!).

drove by the river on my way to the art building and saw footprints in the snow that covers the river. this really isn't anything new... happens every year... but i still can't get over it. maybe if i lived in northern Russia where they drive semi trucks over frozen rivers during the winter...maybe then would the concept of walking across what is normally a body of water seem commonplace... until then i'll firmly hold on to my belief that these midwest yankees are crazy and maybe need more traffic to keep them occupied...

but i guess i am one of those midwest yankees... the sight of snow doesn't thrill me anymore. if anything, when i hear the word snow, i automatically groan outloud. it used to be such a novelty. now i loathe the essence of meteorology for even acknowlegding it's existence. but then, the next time it snows and i'm walking home from whereever i am, and it looks like glitter falling from the sky, and everything starts to turn sparkly white, i'll forget how much i hate snow...until i have to drive on it... until i have to walk across slushy brown streets... until i arrive home and the bottom of my jeans are sopping wet...


on a completely unrelated (to anything!) note: i'm in love with Zappos.com! unfortunately Facebook isn't ready for the kind of relationship status.

you know that time of the year when it snows like an ice age?

when Iowa drivers refuse to SLOW THE FUCK DOWN in inclimate weather, like heavy fog or snow or sleet or the apocolypse?

when all you need is a cup of hot chocolate, warm smiling friends and the movie Elf to make you feel at home for the holidays, even when you're nowhere near your family?

when it's two days before Christmas and you still have no idea what to get anyone?

when you start to sing Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland to keep you from freaking out when your car starts sliding in the snow?

when you really meant to make cookies because it just felt like the Christmas thing to do?

when the simplest things involving snow (throwing a snowball, making a snow man, being the first to make footprints in fresh snow!!!
when the simplest things involving snow (nearly frostbit feet and hands after having to clean off your car, tracking snow in your house, your car getting stuck, horrible plowing jobs throughout the city...thank you City of Cedar Rapids!) can ruin your day?

when you realize no one really puts up Christmas lights anymore?

when you really want to celebrate Kwanza...even though you're white?

when you think about all of the wonderful people in your life and realize you're the luckiest person in the world?

and when you get the best god damned Christmas present ever?!

yeah...

i know...

i'm in quite the crafty mood as of late. even picked up a Martha Stewart Living magazine...

christmas really brings out the bored housewife in me.

i feel the need to make garlands, cards, cookies and brownies and blondies, gingerbread houses and ornaments...

my silkscreen is calling my name and ovens beg me to bake.

i want to start a craft club. the first rule of craft club would be to ALWAYS talk about craft club or craft related topics... as founder of the craft club i would painstakingly moniter every conversation any craft club member has outside of craft club meetings.


i'll probably never make any of the cute crafts that i say i will because, for me, december is a month of distractions and long to-do lists. and january is just a big lame.