Ricotta Park

Electoral College Prediction Tracker

For you sadistic folks that are into politics and interactive charts: The Takeaway's designed a chart that shows a up-to-date summary of the major media outlets' guesses on where each state's electoral votes will go on November 4th. The states with more votes are represented by larger boxes. Play around with it-- you'll get the drift.

Spitz, We Knew Ye to Be Hard.

"Power is a gnarly socket." - Max Wood via IM

Icaro Doria: Meet The World

Killer infographica from Icaro Doria. Click to enlarge your perspective.

Thanks Max!

An Astronaut Over Uncharted Waters

I asked our favorite shark and sailor, Jonah Whalebelly, to keep us posted on his whereabouts - both physical and spiritual - while he's out to sea for the next few months. Here's his most recent dispatch and your required reading for the month. -Longlunch

We have had a week of moonless nights, which I didn’t even think was possible. Perhaps it’s the shifting place in time and direction we are sailing, or maybe I just never noticed before. Some nights have been cloudy, but most have been clear, with the whole clockwork of stars pushpinned into the canopy. Offshore, away from the lights of man, you can still see the Milky Way pouring across the galaxy. When the moon is gravestoned around the other side of the world, hidden from the view of midnight, and when it’s really clear, you can see satellites. Occasionally, meteors streak white, the spark and the stream as bright as the failing, trailing ends of the last flash of the 4th of July.

Out here, at sea, in the void between continents, a body can breathe as it’s meant to. There, the city, the traffic, the dull monotonous death of the mailman and the electric company, the clicking swerve of the looped newscaster, the same on every station, it all forces the choke and the retch down the esophagus. Where it is concentrated, the city leaks, the land is polluted, the citizens become as sewers for a vast social drainpipe, filling with bile and empty politics. Where it sprawls, it thins the blood down to grey water. A body can begin to feel like glue and gristle, animated meat, gut's peristalsis chewing on yesterdays’ unfulfilled expectations. Days alone can be hollow, yet heavy, awkward, thudding, and clumsy. It takes a city like Manhattan to be the closest equal to an ocean; everywhere in motion, everywhere some kind of vibrant happening. A city like Karachi is the same thing, viewed through the lens of apocalypse.

"Tie a key to the string and fly it in a fucking lightning storm."

I'm working on another recap post for later in the day. Until then, dig the new Derek Waters joint, Drunk History Part Two. It features Eric Falconer, some famous guy and Michael Cera's writing partner, Clark Duke. Warning: This one gets a little sloppy. Twice.

and here's v2.5:

"Alexander Hamilton shot a bullet right into Alexander Hamilton."

Hilarious, unsober meta-history from Derek Waters.

On Activism

As you'll soon find out, we asked our good friend Jonah for some words on a subject far too broad for one post. He's a wayfaring stranger, folks, and we hope to hear much more from him in the days to come. - Longlunch

“Because every thought, either philosophical or religious, is interested in perpetuating itself; because the idea which has moved one generation wishes to move others also, and leave a trace.” -Victor Hugo

I was born in the mid-Seventies, at the tail end of the marketing scheme that some slick jackass stuck with the moniker "Generation X." I didn’t really care about generational movements when I found out that they’d tagged us, and I still don’t. I think that was the core of our generation movement. Attempt to define us, and even if your definition is dead on accurate, we’ll act like we have no interest in whatever you’re talking about...at least until it returns to obscurity. I suppose it's a knee-jerk reaction to the über-consumerism of the Eighties. Or maybe it just looked cool. Who knows? And really, who gives a fuck, anyway?

See. It's still as easy as breathing.

When I look back at coming of age, I had no clear idea that that's what we were supposed to be doing. I was too busy trying to figure out if the drugs were really strychnine. I think like most kids of the late 80s/early 90s indie rock/skateboard counter culture, I got my politics from punk records and Public Enemy. I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X when I was 15 or so, and for a little while I got interested in social movements. I joined a few grassroots anarchist newsletters, I wrote blatantly political poems, I damned the Man and all of His tentacles. I don’t know. I seem to remember at least believing that deep down inside I cared about something. It almost felt earnest, whatever it was. At least for a little while, maybe I thought youth movements could affect a change on society as a whole, but nothing concrete ever really felt imperative. I wanted to find something to get up in arms about, but all of the causes just sort of seemed either hopeless or doomed to fashion.

Bad Copy: Insulting U

For those that don't know me personally, I'm a web copywriter for a startup in Atlantic Beach. Despite the fact that Ricotta Park makes me billions and billions of dollars a year, I really love my day job. I love wordplay, I love poring over details and I love to read good writing. I have a fantastic time collaborating with others, harnessing their ideas and synthesizing new ones.

I also take the craft very seriously. At its best, writing can move you. It can inspire. It can foster a new understanding of your place in the world. At its worst, it disorients. It distorts. It misinforms.

So, yeah...I'm pretty nit-picky about this stuff.

In the Jacksonville, Florida metropolitan area, we have a number of weeklies that provide local political and entertainment news. One of these weeklies has grown from the tiny, ad-centered black and white publication known as the First Coast Entertainer, to a very print 2.0-looking Entertaining U, whose purpose, as you might imagine, is to provide a weekly entertainment guide to Northeast Florida.

While Entertaining U's content provides a nice complement to the more politically-focused Folio Weekly, it is often baffling in its presentation. A few weeks ago, for instance, I came across a piece about a local record store that was both terribly disorganized and full of grammatical errors. The language of the piece was inconsistent, vague and amateurish, at best. By the end of the third paragraph, I was completely confused as to what the piece was about. And this is my way of putting it nicely.

I sent an email regarding the apparent lack of editorial presence to "managing editor," Jon Bosworth, and got a pretty horrifying response. My email, Jon's subsequent reply and the rest of my commentary follow after the jump.

Logo Power

Japan recently put a call out for a new defense ministry logo. Check out the winner below:

The dudes over at Coming Anarchy came down pretty hard on it, suggesting that it lacks the teeth of other defense departments and ministries. And while it's certainly a bit 2.0-ish, as these guys suggest, it's hardly as un-tuff as some others.

Ireland's, for instance, looks like it should be repping for a ballet company:

And The Netherlands' logo is more suited for a pharmaceutical company:

Lithuania, on the other hand, while not known for being a military powerhouse (remember, these were the guys who had Jerry Garcia design their Olympic basketball team jerseys in 1992) has the most ferocious and intense logo of them all:

That's right - a snarling dog holding a sword in one paw and the Lithuanian coat of arms in the other. The dog's pose suggests a confrontational and suspicious nature, which may reflect the nation's relationship with its two-time occupier and neighbor, Russia.

See more defense logos here.
Read more about the Vytis (Lithuanian coat of arms) here.

Thanks for the tip, Maia!

I Can See The Headlines Now...

Dick In Bush Position Until Shit Clears Up

Cheney Showing Home Colonoscopy Technique (thanks to my co-enemy combatant Speck!)