Tinotopia

So I like the Levenger catalog. I don’t actually buy much from it, because most of the things are either too twee, or they’re meant for people whose work is radically different from mine. I like the idea of most of the things, though, because I like office supplies.

There are a lot of notebooks and folios and briefcases and desktop hutches and so forth. They’re all very nice, and I have to admit that I’m tempted. The problem is that pretty much all of this is aimed at someone who doesn’t use a computer very intensively. Which means: it’s not really aimed at Tino.

I can’t put one of their cubbyhole hutches on my desk because there’s a giant monitor on it. I can’t use their briefcases because those are really aimed at someone who carries a lot of paper and, incidentally, a computer, rather than someone who carries a lot of computer and incidentally some paper.

The more geek-centric things that they do offer aren’t really up to my needs.

This thing is pretty neat, but it only really has room to charge four things; I need to charge six things.

This photo, though, makes me think that I might really not be a Levenger person:

This badly-photoshopped picture shows these twee notebooks laying on the center console of a Lexus. Problem #1, and something that I’d think the smart marketing people at Levenger would have caught. Levenger customers probably do overwhelmingly drive Lexi and S-class Mercedeses and so on, but they picture themselves driving the Austin-Healey 3000s and MGAs that sit in the garage 99% of the time because they’re so uncomfortable. You have to sell aspirations, not reality, and people who can afford $34 notebooks are not going to see a Lexus as an aspirational product.

This is why ads for things you want to get rich people to buy tend to include antique cars. Putting aside things like a $300,000 Bentley, most of the market for a $34 pocket notebook can afford whatever car they like. What they can’t as readily afford is the luxury of sitting on the side of the road, splicing burned wires using a pocketknife: this is the luxury of the vintage British Motoring Experience. They can afford to buy the Healey, but they cannot, in any practical sense, afford to drive the thing at all often. So you sell them on that: the people in the pictures should be wearing Barbour jackets, smiling maniacally, and if at all possible smoking pipes. “See how goddamned happy we are!” you should be able to imagine them saying, “Healeying around the countryside, smoking our pipes! You, too, could be like us, if you only bought the $34 notebook!”

Problem #2: automatic transmission. Good automatic transmissions are generally better than shifting it yourself these days, but the kind of people who buy special $34 notebooks that allow your to rearrange the pages at will are going to tend to be control freaks. Even if they do drive a car with an automatic transmission, they see themselves wearing a scarf and goggles and driving around in that Big Healey.

Problem #3, the real problem. It’s hard to see in this photo even at full size, but in the printed catalog it’s obvious. Written in the notebook is:

Music to download –
Norah Jones –
  Not Too Late
Dave Matthews Band -
  Smooth Rider

Now, I have nothing against Norah Jones; the only thing that bothers me about her inclusion here is that it’s a bit too facile. Levenger’s ideal customer is probably a big Norah Jones fan. He — most Levenger stuff seems aimed at men — thinks of himself as cultured, but as he’s too busy lawyering to pay much attention to music, he really can only listen to whatever the RIAA is pushing as Music For Educated White Adults right now.

But then: Dave Freakin’ Matthews. Our white male lawyer is an adult, so he listens to Norah Jones. But he still likes to kick back with some brewskis — this is how I imagine he’d think of it — on the weekend, so he also listens to Dave Matthews. And if the iTunes Music Store sample is anything to judge by, this is not one of Mr. Matthews’ better songs. Good God.

I mean: Good God. What. The. Fuck. ‘Music to download’??! Our $34-notebook buyer is making his $34 notes about — music to download? I really think that this photo must have been produced by an intern, or something. “Ah, yes, I’ll tootle about in my luxury Toyota, thinking about middle-of-the-road music I’ll download later.”

Idiocy. In the notebook you write “Rebuild carburettor” and “Arrange for hotel in Barcelona” and the like. “Music to download” my ass.

Elsewhere in the catalog that came in the mail today, they have another reminder card with “Music to download”. “Smooth Rider” makes another appearance, but Ms. Jones is replaced with “Daughtry — It’s Not Over”. A quick check shows that this Daughtry character is a former American Idol contestant.

Maybe I’m entirely wrong about Levenger’s demographic. Maybe it’s not for Tools who aspire to be Independent; maybe it’s for Schmucks who aspire to be Tools.

Let’s see: what else is in there? There’s this folio of to-do items written on color-coded cards:

Here are a couple of those cards, close up:

Idea! No — Concept! Line the interior of an L.L. Bean tote bag! You know — for kids! Christ. Thank God for that sketch; without it, all the nuance and detail would be lost: lost I say.

I love the repeated use of the word ‘business’ on this card: clearly, our Tool couldn’t infer anything about the to-do items themselves from the heading on the card. He might call this generic ‘sushi restaurant’ — which in my mind is lit with fluorescent lights and fitted out with tables salvaged from an old Wendy’s — and make reservations for something else instead! And he might accidentally send his job candidate on a vacation! He might need that conceptual bag for his head, he’d be so embarrassed. It’s almost as if he has to keep reminding himself: Business, Jenkins, it’s all about business! Keep focused! Business!

Maybe I’ve got the whole idea wrong after all. This would explain why I don’t buy much from Levenger.

Both in the same vein:

Turnpike Sushi: something that’s needlessly posh or complicated, offered in place of something that’s humbler but better because it’s within the capabilities of the person or business offering it. The inspiration was sushi in the service areas along the Pennsylvania Turnpike; you might, if they put some effort into it, be able to get a decent hamburger along the turnpike. Instead of putting the effort into that, though, they put the effort into offering horrible sushi.
Metaphorical example: that guy playing the grand piano in the middle of the mall. Better that they should use piped-in music and use the space for sofas.

Banana Saw: a piece of technology that actually makes things worse, not better, when used as directed. Inspired by this Rambo-style knife Nicole handed me to cut up a banana.
Metaphorical example: electronic voting machines.

I was poking around eBay, and I found a sport coat for sale there that used to belong to Walter Cronkite.

It’s my size, but it’s pretty ugly, so I think I’ll pass. But I’d like to get it anyway, just so I could wear it and bore everyone with the story about how it (allegedly) used to belong to Cronkite. And while wearing it, I’d be sure to constantly say ‘That’s the way it is’ in any situation where the phrase could possibly apply.

Q (waiter): Can I get you another round?
A (Tino): That’s the way it is.

Q: Why are you wearing that terrible jacket? Are you blind?
A: That’s the way it is.

Q: You want fries with that?
A: That’s the way it is.

Etc., etc.: you get the idea. And then it occurred to me that I could buy other celebrities’ clothing and adopt their catchphrases while wearing the stuff.

This is an even better idea than the one I had a few weeks ago that involved having dozens of different hats for different activities: each one would be a standard collapsible top hat, but with, e.g. ‘Breakfast’ written on the front in red felt letters. I came up with a whole bunch of them:

• Breakfast
• TV
• Lawn Mowing
• Brushing Teeth
• French Circus

Well, it was funny at the time. I could hardly breathe, I was laughing so hard.

Opening the cream of celery soup for some terrible casserole that I don’t eat. These days, most soup cans have this ‘easy to use’ pulltab thing, which means that you don’t need a can opener.

What the Campbell’s people apparently forgot was that the can-opener method is close to failure-proof. And that the old steel cans could be opened at both ends, meaning that no matter what went wrong on one end, you could open the other instead.

Today’s can can only be opened on one end, and it can only be opened with the tab, because the rim on the top is too tall for a can opener to actually pierce the top of the thing. Now there’s thinking at work.

Eventually, it was possible to open the thing with a Swiss Army knife.

What appears on Scripting News now:

The ‘him’ there refers to Adam Curry, former MTV hairstyle and current Podcasting mogul. Winer has a good claim on having come up with much of the idea behind podcasting, and he’s been getting bent out of shape on a regular basis lately, feeling that he’s not getting enough credit, particularly in the mainstream media.

What was originally written and posted, according to NetNewsWire‘s ‘Highlight Differences’ feature:

I really don’t care who’s a tool or who’s a dickhead, though I suppose I can understand the frustration someone like Winer must feel seeing Adam Curry get all the attention largely because he’s better at self-promotion.

What Winer doesn’t seem to realize is that part of the cost of self-promotion is not being able to publicly call people dickheads and tools in public — or at least not being able to do it quite so often. Businessweek, the New York Times, Wired, etc. go to other people instead of to Winer because when they ask around they’re told that Winer is a nut. Winer wants the luxury of telling people exactly what he thinks is wrong with them, but he doesn’t seem to like paying to price for that luxury.

It’s interesting that he changed his tune here after initially posting a pretty nasty blast.

Saturday night we came home in the sleet to find that two large trees had fallen across the bottom of our driveway. This isn’t particularly unusual, as what we have here isn’t so much soil as it is rocks with tiny bits of humus between them here and there. An 80-foot tree might have a root ball that’s about four feet across.

When it rains a lot, as it did last weekend, the ‘soil’ softens, and down go the trees.

In this case, a mostly-dead tree fell over — that’s the one closer to the camera — and it knocked over a healthy one (or a mostly living any much, much harder and heavier one, anyway) on its way down. What was truly unusual was that neither of these took out the power or phone lines. Had they fallen straight across the driveway instead of diagonally, we’d still be running off the generator tonight.

As it was, it took us about an hour to saw the things into pieces small enough to be moved off the driveway. Before too long, we’ll have to move those pieces somewhere else so they don’t kill the grass.

And I thought I had problems.

Though it would be worse if he ate it and didn’t like it, I suppose.

A Washington Post headline:

Robots May Allow Surgery In Space. It’s a good start that the robots are at least considering allowing surgery in space, but I’d also like to see them considering other important issues like stem cell research and underwater hairdressing.

How did humanity sink so low? It used to be that we were in charge of the robots.

I have to go now: the Roomba wants a massage.

Wait — did you say implosion?

A little movie of this afternoon’s implosion of the Avex Fibers boiler house in Front Royal:

If you don’t like embedded movies, you can download it here. It’s a little over 2 MB.