demimonde : n. — 1a. A class of women kept by wealthy lovers or protectors. 1b. Women prostitutes considered as a group. 2 A group whose respectability is dubious or whose success is marginal

Drop Logos

Logo experiment and sketches.

salubrious : adj. — favorable to or promoting health

Felt like London.

Anyone who can drive below 25 MPH should be canonized

In these days of high gas prices and a failing economy, I’m trying out new methods to save a couple pennies. One of the best ways to save on gas is to simply drive slower. It makes sense—the less you accelerate, the less gas you use. The idea is to drive as if you don’t have any brakes—to stop slowly by losing momentum. Slamming on the brakes indicates unnecessary acceleration.

Since starting this practice, I’ve noticed a decent increase in my gas mileage. But the real story is in observation of my fellow commuters.

Once I started slowing down in traffic, I started seeing all this unnecessary acceleration. It’s amazing (in the negative sense). There has to be some underlying social regiment to simply move faster. I believe we have all been conditioned to drive at least 25 MPH at all times. This seems to be the magic boundary that every car should be . Think about it, how often do you see speed limits below 25 MPH?

What’s crazy is how drivers need to get to this speed no matter what. Accerating towards red lights, maintaining this speed with a stop sign ahead. Its rare to find a kindred slowsky like myself, coasting at 17 MPH towards the stop.

I myself am no stranger to this compulsion. Whenever I’m coasting below 25, I get this Jedi-esque sensory experience of the drivers behind me, fuming at the jerk in the blue car who’s taking his sweet time. I’ve witnessed people pass around me – in a race to beat me to the red light. I feel like I’m the crazy one for driving slowly and patiently and (as bonkers as it sounds) economically.

I hope that I’m just an “early adopter” to the new school of the slow—that more drivers will succumb to the you’ll-get-there-soon-enough mentality. But I’m lead to believe that we’ll all keep our lead-feet on the gas pedal. The impulse to get moving is just too great.

Serifa Type Specimen

Expressive exhibit for a fabulous slab-serif font.

Kitty Hawk, NC.

Wall-E

Finding the reins

Half-way through 2008 and two years after I originally registered nemoorange.com; It’s the perfect time for a State-of-the-Union address for this site. Personally, the past six months have been all about getting my life on track (not that it was ever off one). It’s about time I shared what’s been going on and what I see ahead.

New Moon and a new direction

The original intent of the new moon project was to re-acquaint myself with my creative side. In creating the entries, I re-discovered a part of my identity that I had neglected for far too long. Now that I’ve re-connected this piece, I have gained a whole new perspective on my life. I’ve found a purpose, an identity. Subsequently, I was able to set goals and take action towards a clear destination. I am going to be a designer. For the next year and a half, I’ll be going to school for graphic and web design. The goal is to be employed as a creative professional in one year.

This means that posting stuff to my website will have to take a back seat—although, now that I consider it, it’s probably just as important that I do put some content up. All the same, new moon entries will not come with every new phase the moon. So the bad news is that new entries to the new moon section are going to be less frequent and lighter in content. But the good news is that I’m on my way to happiness.

Blog

In the past two years, the blog has been especially under-developed. While I fantasize of typing passage after passage of fluent thought, the words have always been tough for me to put together. Putting together a sentence mostly feels like a game of Scrabble for me. I have the components set up on my little ledge, and I keep on mixing them around to see what works best. In shuffling around the key words and phrases, I stumble in expressing the original thought. For example, putting together this post took several revisions over the course of a week, flipping around sentences and paragraph structures.

Bread bag reins

Another obstacle in my writing has been finding a theme that would narrow the subjects to write about. Lately, I’ve felt mobilized to start getting everything organized. Simplified living is a bit hot-button topic these days. It coincides with the “going green” movement that’s become the story of the latter half of this decade. My aim is to write short—maybe 200 word—entries focused on the tips and methods to live simply and happily. Hopefully I can get into the habit of posting once a week. I’ll try not to sound too smug delivering what I think are tips. It’s more of a personal dialouge—how I continue to make sense of my universe.

Photo and Daily sections

The daily photo section has now been hidden away. It’s still available for you to peruse, but I hadn’t added a new entry to it since March. That month coincides when I started using Flickr seriously.

Since the beginning of my entry into blogging, my site has been primarily focused on posting up photos—typically of the previous weekend’s escapades. Nowadays, I’m less likely to bring the camera along for a night out. After all, how many pics of my friends at bars can one tolerate? Creating a photo post for this site requires several laborious steps. Instead, I’ve been spending more time devoting photo content to my Flickr account. With the Flickr Uploader, I can do the posts with just a couple drag-n-drops—very easy, plenty faster. Most important to you, Flickr is much easier to browse and search and discover and link my photography. Now that I’ve been using it for a couple months, I enjoy it more with each new submission. Eventually, the photo section might go away in favor of dedicating Flickr to all things photographic.

Now that I’ve declared this as a public commitment, hopefully I can stick to it. More content, different presentation.

Cut Out K

Experimenting with positive and negative space with typography.

Farewell to Plastic

I’m in the process of importing all my CDs into MP3’s, so I can keep the music and rid myself of the physical inventory. I found myself looking at these CDs I never play any more, wondering why I devote precious physical space to items I rarely touch. Yes, some meant a lot to me, but after a while, they just become clutter. The importing process gives me the chance to re-acquaint myself with some forgotten songs—music that meant a lot to me years ago. Of course, they are some I cannot bring myself to part with—namely my beloved Smashing Pumpkins discography. The nostalgia factor is just too great.

This act of getting rid of the CDs is just a part of a bigger plan. Ridding myself of clutter. More on that to come.

Wanted

Whoa.

This gorgeous Blade Runner poster created by Kako for the Wear It With Pride “Now Showing” exhibit. His site has lots more Illustrator masterpieces. More reimangined posters at the Flickr set

Mongol

We’ll have to touch off base on this one and drilldown on the granularity before we open the kimono. 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate via Neatorama

Mark Kozelek at the First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia. Hot as hell, but heavenly.

The Incredible Hulk

The Apollo 14 Moon Trees

Apollo 14 launched in the late afternoon of January 31, 1971 on what was to be our third trip to the lunar surface. Five days later Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walked on the Moon while Stuart Roosa, a former U.S. Forest Service smoke jumper, orbited above in the command module. Packed in small containers in Roosa’s personal kit were hundreds of tree seeds, part of a joint NASA/USFS project. Upon return to Earth, the seeds were germinated by the Forest Service. Known as the “Moon Trees”, the resulting seedlings were planted throughout the United States (often as part of the nation’s bicentennial in 1976) and the world. They stand as a tribute to astronaut Roosa and the Apollo program.

I’d like to visit a couple, do some serious tree-hugging. There’s one close by in Loudon County, but I think I’d have to do some trespassing.

nacreous : adj. — resembling nacre; lustrous; pearly.