Designer unknown (UK edition)

There’s nothing about this cover that I don’t like. The Guardian review glows; I’ll have to keep my eye out for this when it’s released in the States.

And by the way, just so that you don’t pick this up and think it’s actually a self-help title, the American edition will be called Pravda, because that won’t cause any confusion either 😉
Self Help

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“I started to think that NC-17 movies perhaps shared a common visual string in their marketing materials — dark and provocative… I started with R and pulled up the top five movies’ posters. Less provocative but very dark. I moved on to PG-13’s five. Not provocative at all but dark nonetheless. PG’s five? Much friendlier but, yes, dark. It wasn’t until I got to the five Gs that I started seeing some bright colors in the movie posters.” (Thanks HOW Blog!)

Dark and Fleshy: The Color of Top Grossing Movies

Making the baby girl happy.

Best Use Of My Art Ever

How many more times will someone suggest this book in the comments section of this blog?  I like this book and I think it offers a real contribution.  Nonetheless I feel no need to suggest it in the comments sections of other peoples’ blogs.

I do not treat this book as foundational because of personal experience.  I’ve spent much time in one rural Mexican village, San Agustin Oapan, and spent much time chatting with the people there.  They are extremely smart, have an excellent sense of humor, and are never boring.  And that’s in their second language, Spanish.

I’m also sure they if you gave them an IQ test, they would do miserably.  In fact I can’t think of any written test – no matter how simple – they could pass.  They simply don’t have experience with that kind of exercise.

When it comes to understanding the properties of different corn varieties, catching fish in the river, mending torn amate paper, sketching a landscape from memory, or gossiping about the neighbors, they are awesome.

Some of us like to think that intelligence is mostly one-dimensional, but at best this is true only within well-defined peer groups of broadly similar people.  If you gave Juan Camilo a test on predicting rainfall he would crush me like a bug.

OK, maybe I hang out with a select group within the village.  But still, there you have it.  Terrible IQ scores (if they could even take the test), real smarts.

So why should I think this book is the key to understanding economic underdevelopment?

IQ and the Wealth of Nations

Superman #7
Superman #7

As a reader pointed out recently, the latest issue of Mad contains a three-page article that Sarah and I provided the artwork for. This includes the two-page spread of doom which I’ve mentioned here several times before, and which put my hand in a wrist brace for a period of time after I finished working on it. The biggest problem with the job was not so much my decision to really amp things up (I was asked to take out some business and figures, this was actually a little denser in the pencils/roughs), but with  my choice to draw it on a fairly small scale, certain circumstances led me to draw the spread on a piece of 12" by 19" board. Not as large as I would have liked considering the detail work. So there was a lot of time put in with the Hunt 102 nibs and the .30 rapidograph.

Below is what most of the left-hand side of the spread looks like, without Sarah’s colors or effects on the various monitor screens.

Not the keenest draftsmanship around, but I’m happy with the way things came out. It printed a little dark, color-wise, but Sarah and I got what we were going for; a two-page spread that fries the eyeballs, but keeps them on the page so the reader can find all the Will Elder-style chicken fat background gags. More bang for the buck, as it were.

Anyway, the latest issue is #480 (!), and it shipped to comic shops last week, and, I believe, should now be available on newsstands. Please feel free to check out the issue. The Usual Gang of Idiots this time around includes Tom Richmond, Peter Kuper, Paul Coker, Bob Staake, Herman Mejia, Al Jaffee and the inimitable Sergio Aragones. And us. Crazy! Er, I mean, Sick! Cracked? Forget it. Lame joke.
Mad #480: Meet The G(ig) That Killed Me

Mark Frauenfelder:

The wonderful Mitch O’Connell has designed a set of stitching patterns for Jenny Hart’s Sublime Stitching. They look great! Link (Via Craft)

Previously on Boing Boing:

• Interview with artist Mitch O’Connell

Mitch O’Connell’s Sublime Stitching patterns

Mark Frauenfelder:

Someone created the obligatory animated GIF based on the photo of Homer Simson and the aroused Pagan deity I posted yesterday. Link (Thanks,
minifig!)

Animated Homer tosses donut onto Pagan deity

I’ve often said that one of the best ways to find out what you really want is to start with what you don’t want. I’d like to explore this theme a little further in this posting.

There is something about asking for what we want that attracts a lot of negativity in our present-day culture. Many of us remember childhood sayings like “Those that ask don’t get”, or we remember that we were made to feel selfish when we expressed our wants. So it is not too surprising perhaps that for many people it is incredibly difficult to come to a satisfactory answer to the question “What do you really want?” When we do succeed in answering the question clearly and without reservation it has the effect of bringing a much greater focus to our energy.

However the effect of this childhood and cultural conditioning is that most of us find it much easier to identify what we don’t want than what we do want. The secret is to take what we don’t want and then turn it into the positive opposite.

So, to take an example, at work you might find yourself saying: “I am always getting interrupted when I am trying to concentrate on my work.” And sometimes we can go on saying that for years without doing anything about it!

The first step is to identify what you don’t want. This is pretty obvious: “I don’t want to be constantly interrupted when I am trying to concentrate on my work.” However note that this is a much more powerful statement than “I am always getting interrupted.” Once you have identified it as something you don’t want, as opposed to something you are merely complaining about, there is a much greater likelihood of your doing something about it.

Step two is to identify the positive opposite. What is the positive opposite for you of being constantly interrupted? Note that I said “for you” — we are not looking for the exact grammatical opposite but what it would mean for you. So you might say “to have a uninterrupted couple of hours every day during which I can really concentrate on my work.”

Compare the effect that each of the following statements is likely to have:

“I’m always getting interrupted when I’m trying to concentrate on my work”

“I don’t want to be constantly interrupted when I am trying to concentrate on my work.”

“I want an uninterrupted couple of hours every day during which I can really concentrate on my work”.

Which statement is most likely to result in your being able to concentrate on your work without interruptions?

What You Don’t Want