I'll show you my blog.

Pittsburgh Subway Transit by pittsburgh2050 on Flickr.Still a...

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:56:24 -0400

Pittsburgh Subway Transit by pittsburgh2050 on Flickr.

Still a very soft spot in my heart for this project we did a few years back. Just stumbled across the old posters in our flickr stream. I love this vision of actual mass transit in Pittsburgh, SO HARD.

Yeah, yeah, I know. But John- you really don’t want to...

Tue, 29 May 2012 09:11:34 -0400

Yeah, yeah, I know. But John- you really don’t want to know how close we came, in reality, to naming the dog after you. As in, you could measure the closeness in milliliters of beer. Not even sips. It was really close.

Call him "Winnie"

Mon, 28 May 2012 22:43:15 -0400

You can call our new dog “Winnie” for short, in case you have something against using the full “Winston Severus Barnes” every time you address, or refer to, him in conversation.

Winston.

Just like some of you suggested.

Moron dog names

Fri, 25 May 2012 10:05:00 -0400

Thank you for all your dog name ideas.

They were fantastic. Some of them were horrible. You know who you are. (In case you don’t know who you are, or if you don’t know who someone else is, I recapped everyone’s responses below. All you have to do is go to the bottom of this post and then you can read what everyone suggested, and then you can make fun of people’s fantastic and horrible ideas or you can just not make a big deal out of something like this that really doesn’t matter - your choice. But I digress.) A few thoughts…

First of all: The Informer? This was the name of my high school newspaper, for which I was the art editor for a few short months until my ahem disciplinary standing threatened to undermine my ahem chance of graduating and I was compelled to step aside and yield the reigns to some junior who didn’t have a clue about anything going on in the world. I don’t remember who it was. He’s probably CEO of Northrup Drummond by now, but that’s not important. What’s important is that I just can’t name my pet The Informer, and I wanted you to understand why.

Second: Moltz? Jason & Beth, I don’t know how you could possibly have known this, but Moltz was already our number one candidate. Amazing.

Pablo. Well, I’ve already had a dog named Pablo. He was a wonderful Dalmatian and I miss him, may he rest in peace.

Basil Davies-Campbell. Hot DAMN is that a distinguished-sounding name. It’s going on the list, Steph. Hot damn.

Oliver: This was our original first choice! How did you know? But we can’t use it because my ex has a dog named Wallie, and if we named ours Olliver, we’d call him Ollie for short and well that would just be very uncomfortable for the children. Think of the children.

Winston: Yes, yes, yes. He even looks like a Winston, doesn’t he? And somewhere, I already have a corncob pipe he can inherit to complete the look. Winston’s going on the list.

Good lord do I love Wokka but I had a difficult time selling it to anyone else on the naming committee. Stupid committees.

“We named the dog ‘Indiana’.”

Satan’s Hammer & Vermeer. I like them both. Maybe together as a single name? C’mere, Satan’s Hammer & Vermeer. Here boy.

Buckminster!

Bailey, I don’t understand why you suggest Andrew. Please respond.

Jason, I understand why you suggest Jason. In fact, “Jason Permenter AKA Jasper” is now on the list.

Fr. G. Of course.

There were also thoughts and comments about many of the other names here, but I can’t go into them all because I need to get some work done today. That said, I present to you, without further ado, our current list of finalists. Here they are:

Sir Harvalot, AKA Harvey

Bernard (nickname: Bernie)

Chester, but his friends call him Chesty

Wrigley

Moltz

Basil Davies-Campbell

Charlie

Sullivan, AKA Sully

Winston (nickname: Winnie)

Jason Permenter, AKA Jasper

openareas answered: Boozehound.

joeks answered: Max

jburdeezy answered: Bernard the Faithful.

sniffyjenkins said: SNOWFLAKE THE DESTROYER

monkeyfrog said: Emil. Clennon. Francios Le Scowl. Sinclair. Frank. Fluffy LaRoue.

kellydeal said: I vote: THUNDERBOLT BEAUREGARD THE FIRST. Or Freckles.

do-over said: He strikes me as a Clarence.

journo-geekery answered: Jehosephat.

faneffingtastic answered: The Informer

anthonycloskey answered: Abominable (Abby), Yeti, Dyson, Zinc, and +1 for Freckles

atsween answered: I said, “Moltz.” Beth said, “They’re not naming their dog Moltz.” So then we came up with Art, Robin, Pablo, Sam, Ripley, Fozzie, and Angus.

spratt said: Basil Davies-Campbell. He looks British.

sandboxdiaries answered: Pippin or Oliver! Winston!

mathcat345 answered: Boomer! Buster! (Good names to draw out Boooomer!) [White] Fang! Wokka! He’s adorable!

redcloud answered: Nick Furry. Dragons-bane. Barktholomew. Marcellus Wallace. Shia LeWoof. Indiana.

angelablack said: Beezlebub. Satan’s Hammer. Buttmunch. Fargo. Vermeer. Anal Leakage.

petitchou answered: Northrop

pocketcontents said: Snacks

pomvox answered: Bo Diddly

chrisereneta answered: Stuart. Dan. Gary. Greg. Barring those, Aurelio. Or Jean-Claude. Jonah.

steelopus said: Diaper.

emersunn answered: Matthew McConaughey

calebsexton answered: Falcor

williamdawson said: Fr. G - just needs a collar.

goodjon answered: Van Slyke, Honus,Clemente, Warhol, Bradshaw

bailey answered: Andrew

jasonpermenter answered: Jason. Duh.

vmarinelli answered: SNUGGLEBUNNY-FOO FOO!!! (Too femme?)

natebishop answered: Ernesto. Or possibly Buckminster.

copycatr said: Dibbles. Jake Ruffly. Munches. Slim. Archibald Q Farthington. Little Jesus. Speckles. Specklz. Zpeklz. Puppy Lump. Dr. Pepper. Pepper, CPA. Pepper, ACE. Ace. Ace Pupply, Fart Detective. Feller. Fently. Puff Daddy. Optimus Prime. Jimmy Pee Dance.

lefauxfrog answered: Winston.

incorrigiblerobot answered: “Mister. Do not call this dog ‘Lifesaver’. Call him ‘Shithead’.” “Right. Shithead.”

Bifurcation, Maybe

Thu, 24 May 2012 17:36:00 -0400

TL; DR

If you’re interested in confining what you hear from me to my professional babblings, you can henceforth follow @gbarnes on Twitter. The signal-to-noise ratio will be very clean.

If you would like to receive my un-edited stream of often nonsensical, joyously contextless, whole-life mishmash, that’s @texburgher.

If you’re interested in what all this self-important jibber jabber means, here’s the deal:

I used to think I knew how this stuff worked. You had your “real” account, then, if you were so inclined, you had your fake/fun accounts. Texburgher has been my “real” account, and it’s been a largely unfiltered jumble of all things personal, professional, profane, and pathetic since its inception. That made, and still makes, the most sense to me. People are messy, I’m a person, and there you have it.

Now, of course there have been fake accounts. I’ve had so many anonymous accounts for fun, you’d be as embarrassed to learn about them all as I’d be to list them. None of them purported to be me, though. They were their own things - mostly fictitious characters - and none of them ever really felt precious.

And this has all been fine, perfectly fine, with two tiny exceptions.

The first exception occurred at a conference in 2010, when a friend introduced me to someone I respected and followed online - but who didn’t follow or, as far as I knew, know me at all.

“This is my friend Geoff,” my friend said. “He’s texburgher on Twitter,” and the guy I was being introduced to gave me a surprised look as we shook hands, and he said, “I didn’t realize that was a real person! I thought it was just a joke account.”

Ouch and fair enough. My avatar is a chess piece. My Twitter stream tilted pretty heavily toward poop jokes and puns. But still, “just a joke account,” was surprising and a little hard to hear.

The second exception unfurled slowly, over the course of the last few months. Late last year, I was able to get my hands on the twitter handle, “gbarnes”. I didn’t even know I wanted it until my ADD told me I did, and once I got it, I didn’t know what to do with it. But it was close to my name, and that comment about being perceived as a joke account was still clanging around in my otherwise vacant head from time to time, so I uploaded a picture of my real self as the avatar, followed a handful of my closest peeps online, and went for a proverbial bike-ride.

And I don’t think I would have come back, except that I’ve recently been writing regular posts for the Elliance blog, and every now and then I’d want to share what I’d written there, but something about sharing those on my big ole joke account felt off - off, in this case, meaning something between embarrassment and betrayal. And that wasn’t at all what I had expected to feel.

So I’ve been rethinking how I present myself online, and I’ve decided to try something remarkably uncomfortable: I’m going to use @gbarnes as a professional-leaning account, and let @texburgher continue being my social media id. The notion of this kind of bifurcation clashes with my sense of authenticity and my beliefs about what it means to present oneself honestly, and I’m not entirely sure why, so that discomfort and lack of understanding is driving the experiment.

My hope is that I’ll settle pretty quickly into a comfortable pattern of directing the right outburst to the right Twitter account without having to think about it for any measurable amount of time. If I do, wow - I’ll have surprised myself. If I don’t, if the whole idea turns out to have been dumb, and embarrassingly over-thought, and humiliatingly and publicly attached to my monstrous ego- well, maybe then I’ll finally realize my dream of selling everything, including my children, and moving to a cabin in the Vermont woods and living off of blueberries and hemp cheese, and really, finally, making peace with my inner child, that little snit.

“A Photo Titled ‘Meow Mix’”

Tue, 22 May 2012 19:45:57 -0400

“A Photo Titled ‘Meow Mix’”

This Puppy Again This puppy needs a name. The kids have...

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:27:00 -0400

This Puppy Again

This puppy needs a name. The kids have suggested names like Buttercup, Snowball, Malfoy, Feather, and Buttcheeks - all fantastic ideas (hi, kids!) - but I feel like our vision is somewhat narrower than I would like.

“How do people come up with ideas when they don’t have any of their own,” I keep asking myself. And you know the answer. The answer is, “Why not crowdsource it?” and everyone at the meeting nods in wizened agreement.

SO. What in the world should we call this (male) puppy?

Seeing the boys around the fire pit last night, I had one of...

Sat, 19 May 2012 08:21:00 -0400

Jack & Alex

Jack & Conner

Seeing the boys around the fire pit last night, I had one of those flashes parents occasionally have, wherein they see their kids, not as academic challenges or impossible appetites or addiction risks or spiritual teachers or creative muses, but as people entirely separate from the parents, roasting marshmallows and enjoying the world.

There’s no way Jack was more surprised than I was when he...

Fri, 18 May 2012 18:28:29 -0400

There’s no way Jack was more surprised than I was when he speared a crayfish with a sharpened stick. No way. (Taken with instagram)

Is moss the world's scary beard?

Fri, 18 May 2012 14:18:11 -0400

My wife’s bourgeoning practice now has a blog. Which she’s writing. Which I love. I mean, I know I married the woman, but her outlook is uplifting and inspiring and if I can get a tiny bit more of it by reading her posts while I’m at work, well, more power to us both.

relationshipspgh:

So, this was delivered to my inbox on March 15th:

“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find that it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882); Philosopher, Poet, Author, Essayist

And it spoke to me! Since then, every time I feel myself sluggishly procrastinating or resisting tasks that will get me closer to my goals, I reflect on this quote. And I specifically think of a huge face that is made of the earth and protruding from it (like the Nome King in Return to Oz- a movie that I was obsessed with as a child) and I imagine myself grabbing a huge beard of moss.

P.S. I don’t know if moss is the world’s scary beard, but that picture is this post’s scary image.

soxiam: Career Evolution - Motion Graphics (by work for...

Mon, 14 May 2012 10:01:46 -0400

soxiam:

Career Evolution - Motion Graphics (by work for food)

A comedy is a tragedy that almost happened. I think I’m gonna need to make one of these for the UX track.

sloganeerist: I see things like this and my first thought is...

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:57:48 -0400

sloganeerist:

I see things like this and my first thought is always, “At least I don’t work in this kind of advertising.

!!!!!!! (3 weeks) (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 13 May 2012 14:29:48 -0400

!!!!!!! (3 weeks) (Taken with instagram)

Whatcha drinkin'?

Sat, 12 May 2012 19:37:54 -0400

Frankly, not as much of anything, and that’s been a fine change. Lately, though, when I’ve made drinks, I’ve been into the Last Word. It’s a gin drink I was introduced to at local gastropub Meat & Potatoes, and it’s pretty amazing. Amazing enough to guarantee you that making a few for you and your lovey will land you in the hay shortly thereafter? Approximately, yes. Here’s how it goes:

The original Last Word is comprised of equal parts dry gin, fresh lime juice, Luxardo, and Green Chartreuse. Per drink, that’s 3/4 oz of each, shaken with ice, strained into a sexy cocktail glass, and served straight up. But Chartreuse is a spendy liqueur, and my skinflint ways prompted me to look for avenues of conservation. As it turns out, the drink can be improved by unbalancing the proportions and making it as follows, and as a bonus, you’ll save money at the liquor store.

The Last Last Word

1/2 oz lime juice
1/2 oz Luxardo
1/2 oz Green Chartreuse
1 1/2 oz Bombay Dry Gin

Combine in a shaker with ice, shake, strain, serve up, and enjoy.

One more thing: If you try this recipe tonight and it performs to spec, I expect at least a birth announcement when the time comes.

"Let everything happen to you Beauty and terror Just keep going No feeling is final"

Fri, 11 May 2012 08:36:46 -0400

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Possibly… (via If Time Magazine’s New Cover Was...

Thu, 10 May 2012 17:17:00 -0400

Possibly…

(via If Time Magazine’s New Cover Was Honest | Happy Place)

"But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240 thousand miles away..."

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:53:58 -0400

“But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240 thousand miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25 thousand miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun—almost as hot as it is here today—and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out—then we must be bold.”

- President John F. Kennedy, Rice University, 1962

Closer To Monkeys Than Gods

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:23:18 -0400

For about ten years, I’ve made kids oatmeal for breakfast, several days a week. Steel cut oats topped with brown sugar, milk, and cinnamon. Additional ingredients come and go, but the base has remained essentially unchanged.

For just as long, I’ve waged the sugar war, wherein the boys skim the sugary layer off the top of the bowl and ignore the rest, I rebuke, they resist, I insist, they submit, and, in a manner of speaking, we all fall down.

This morning, I had an epiphany: I put the sugar on the bottom of the bowl and buried it under the oatmeal.

The war is over.

To think it took my brain ten years to have this idea.

The Beastie Boys weren’t the first rappers I fell in love...

Fri, 04 May 2012 23:09:00 -0400

The Beastie Boys weren’t the first rappers I fell in love with.

That distinction belongs to Run DMC, seen here performing ”Proud to be Black” on Soul Train. Soul Train was the sole importer of black culture to my corner of white, suburban Dallas in the early 80’s. Friends and I would stay up at sleepovers so we could watch it - quietly enough in the den to keep from waking our parents, but loud enough to apprehend those lyrics that could get an auditorium of hips gyrating. Like a lot of white, suburban kids in the 80’s, I wanted to be black. Not actually black - I had no idea what that really meant - just black enough to rap. Because DAMN, just listen to that shit. Makes you want to ~~curse~~ ~~think~~ be better, doesn’t it?

White, suburban Dallas didn’t have a lot of room for white, aspiring grade-school rappers, though, so that dream was early stuffed. At least until Licensed To Ill came out and Raising Hell came out and the Beastie Boys WENT ON TOUR WITH FUCKING RUN DMC. HOLY. SHIT.

Licensed To Ill opened up the world, as far as I was concerned. I looked at those guys and yeah, I knew they were Jewish and I really only knew one Jew, but a difference that tiny was nothing. They were close enough, and they erased the line. If those dudes could go on tour with Run DMC, then motherfucker I could rap. I could rap in my parents’ house if I wanted to. At the grocery store with my mom? Rap. On the bus to the prep school? Rap. At Sunday School? Fuck yeah. RAP. I learned to beatbox the backward rhythm track from “Paul Revere,” and spat beats at my little sister in the bathroom before bedtime. It was pretty sick, and by sick I mean of course I was terrible at it, but that made, and makes, no difference whatsoever because the point was liberation and liberation doesn’t much care about perfection, unless you’re talking about “Perfection” in which case, my friends, I had that shit nailed.

I’m not exaggerating to say I owe something big to the Beastie Boys, and it’s a pretty big something. I owe them the birth of my belief that it’s a very good thing to cross lines and jostle norms. If I hadn’t gotten comfortable sometimes being thought ridiculous, I don’t know that I could have loved Duchamp as openly, or done a shameless amount of performance art as an undergraduate student, or been able to become childlike again to enjoy my kids and encourage their own creativity.

Impersonal though it may be, that’s a pretty big debt of gratitude. Rest in Peace, Yauch.

Just told him how much a fifth of mayonnaise actually is. (Taken...

Fri, 04 May 2012 19:54:46 -0400

Just told him how much a fifth of mayonnaise actually is. (Taken with instagram)