Polished Scrawl Productions: The Blog

While toweling off today, I bent down to dry my shins and promptly proceeded to whack the top of my head directly into the corner of the bathroom counter. Some blood was drawn, and there was much profanity.

It wasn’t actually all that bad. Just really painful for a little bit. The worst part about the whole thing was that I did not, immediately thereafter, sit down and invent the flux capacitor.

Dangit.

I am by no means, a wine conniseur. I’m not even sure if I’m spelling “conniseur” correctly.* This is not to say I’m not a wine enjoyer (enjoyeur?). I just couldn’t tell you the difference between a sommelier and a sommelflange.**

There is one type that I am curious to try, though: Norton. In 1873, Norton wine was deemed the “best wine of all nations” at a competition in Vienna. It is described as “dark in color with big fruity flavors, firm acidity, and a sweet taste that does not deliver typical ‘foxy’ flavors and fragrances.”***

The main reason, though, is that if history had played out differently, Norton wine may have been called LeMosy instead.

The gist of the story is that Dr. Daniel Norborne Norton developed the ”Norton” grape on his farm in Richmond, Virginia in the 1820’s. In 1861, though, an article was published by a certain Mr. Francis William LeMosy (my Great-great grandfather) stating that his father, Dr. Francis Augustus LeMosy (my Great-great-great grandfather) had, in fact, originally found the grape growing in the wild on Cedar Island in the James River.

The whole history of the thing is a bit murky. It’s pretty well established, though, that Dr. Norton did, in fact, develop the grape himself, and wine historians tend to paint my ancestors as a pack of loons.

So, the moral of the story is: Horticulture is a cutthroat business, man.

More info: American Wine Society Journal - Fall 2004 - Volume 36, #3 (2.64 MB PDF)
Chrysalis Vineyards // Wannabe Wino: The All American Grape

* Spellcheck assures me I am.
** I know what a sommelier is, but even the Thundercats don’t know what a sommelflange is.
*** And, I’m guessing, it’ll get you wicked crunk.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death Saturday afternoon television, and Hell followed with him.

- Revelation 6:8…ish

Or any daytime/afternoon TV for that matter. Admittedly, I usually have the TV on in a background noise capacity, but for the past couple weeks I have been forced to confront this scourge head on - - applied directly to my forehead! - - as I have been unable to buffer myself with work, due to the unfortunate absence of young Penfold.

A very wise man once wrote:

“In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you’ve had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.”

- Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul. This is where I am, at present, firmly ensconced. One could posit that when I once again have a fully-functional computer, that I might be able to watch the hands move to five, maybe even six o’clock, knowing that more entertaining and enlightening hours are shortly to arrive. Truth be told, though: it’s been teatime for a long time. I know that until I can find a job with other real, live Homo sapiens sapiens (or, heck, even Homo sapiens superior; I have no mutant bias), that it will more than likely continue to remain time for NBC Sports coverage of the Professional Bull Riding 2007 “Built Ford Tough” Series, Presented by Wrangler.

I wish I had more news to report, Internets. Unfortunately, I have come upon a period of fierce languidity, instigated by my severe lack of computer power. I have felt a small, wispy cloud of neurotic floating around in my brain ever since I sent my laptop to Kansas to be repaired. It’s a little disquieting how dependent I am on such a tenuously reliable machine. It sucks that I find myself at what amounts to a grinding halt without it. There is a sizeable pile of things that need to be resolved, and the only tool for the job is “waiting on a part.”

This sort of reliance on a computer can’t be good. It is exactly this sort of thing that will bring about our eventual Terminator and/or Matrix apocalyptic future. Something must be done about this before it’s too late!

But, man…I really hope they can fix it by this weekend.

In other news, here is what I would look like, were I an M&M:

It’s all very scientific, with various sliders and color swatches and dismembered body parts. The end result is nothing short of delicious…in a creepy, self-consumptory way. Click here to create your own candy-shelled, chocolate-filled doppelgänger!

Penfold is off being repaired again - - for the same, evidently not-uncommon, problem as last time - - after only five months. I spent, quite literally, all day Friday on the phone with Toshiba, trying to convince them that they shouldn’t get another $550 to re-repair my computer. Or, more accurately, I spent most of the day on hold to Toshiba’s “Customer Service” line, which I am instead going to refer to as their “Call Us and Listen to Muzak for 45 Minutes and then We Hang Up on You. Repeat Ad Infinitum” line.

Eventually, I was able to battle my way through a series of lowly tech support rajas until I was finally able to get someone to shirk the established status quo at the “Call Us and Listen to Muzak for 45 Minutes and then We Hang Up on You. Repeat Ad Infinitum” line, and actually (for the love of Merry Good King Wenceslaus!!) answer the freaking phone. This person agreed to extend to me a “one-time exception” to my long-since-expired warranty, allowing me to have Penfold repaired for free - - but the question remains: will the same thing happen yet again after another short period of time? If it does, I sure as sugar had better get another “one-time exception.” Of course, I’m sure I’ll have to trudge through another unending expanse of muzak wasteland in order to even come close…

Toshiba, you officially suck.

First off, let me just say one thing:

I predicted this would happen years ago. It was inevitable. I knew without a doubt that this would eventually come to pass. The only thing missing is that I didn’t write it into a cryptic, unnerving quatrain. Now, having said that…

Apple announced the iPhone today: an iPod/cell phone/web browser/email/messenger/probably-a-time-machine hybrid, touchscreen device that will begin selling in June.

This thing is quite possibly the swankiest piece of technology I have ever seen…and I shall have it as my own.

One thing you might notice, if you happen to look at the bottom of the sidebar to the left, is that I am a member of two of these new-fangled “social networking” websites: the MySpace and the Facebook. You may have heard of them on such TV shows as “Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator” or “The 700 Club.” The two sites serve essentially the same basic function, allowing networked groups of people to share and update information about themselves. The differences between the two sites are nuanced and varied, but ultimately boil down to this:

Facebook is clean, functional, easy-to-use, and is being continuously upgraded with new tools and technologies, whereas MySpace spatters a cold, brownish, liquid something on you, until, voila, you’ve failed to succeed in being able to send or post whatever it was you were trying to do…not that it cares one way or the other.

Today, I got two job-related phone calls in the span of one hour, one of which resulted in an interview on Monday…

It’s almost as if things are somehow going according to plan…

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

• Shrek
• Shrek 2
• Hoodwinked
• Happily N’Ever After
• Shrek the Third
• etc…

Can we all please agree to STOP making irreverent, computer-animated, fairy tale movies now? Please?! I’m begging you, Hollywood. Just, please…enough already. Insects are also off limits.

Time to play catch-up:

Employee-ment

I have come to the conclusion that I would really enjoy having a steady paycheck and maybe some health insurance, which my freelance design venture has, ultimately, failed to provide. With that in mind, I have begun the search for a real-life, capital-J Job. Now, I know… I’ve been down this road before, with mixed results. This time, however, I am limiting my search to actual established businesses, so I’m thinking things might work out a little better this go-around. So, if you happen to be a nice, respectable establishment in need of a full-time graphic designer, I invite you to look in my direction for an uncluttered view of yourself making a wise, Samuel Adams-caliber, hiring decision.

Happy Hollandaise

The Season (or “The Sizzy,” as the kids [probably don’t] call it) has come and gone, and has left me with an actual, lingering sensation of having eaten too much. Which I did. On numerous occasions. I am speaking, though, in a more metaphorical sense. I speak of a fullness of spirit, of family, and of life. I speak, also, of a fullness of presents, for I cleaned up like a villain this year. I am ripe with sweaters and DVDs. The might of my accumulated swag emits an odor–nay, a pheromone–of awesomeness, and attracts small planetoids into its graviton well.

New Year’s Eve was high on the Scale of Excellence as well, pictorial evidence of which can be found here. It was nice to put 2006 to bed, and begin to get to know its replacement, who has the potential to be everything the predecessors weren’t.