Showing posts with label boston. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boston. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Blues Traveller


I was reading Hue, a blog devoted to issues of color, and today they reported that Baltimore Washington International Airport (BWI) would be part of a pilot program for stress reduction in specific airport screening areas.



A description of the special screening area from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) states, “Mauve, blue and purple panels of lights glow, low decibel ambient spa music hums, and smiling employees offer quiet greetings and assistance.” How do you quietly greet someone you are about to perform a strip search on?

I immediately thought of George Lucas' first film, THX 1138-- a futuristic world where sex and violence are portrayed on televisions while it's citizens are drugged to control their emotions and behaviors. Where androids dream of electric sheep.

TSA planners have been tinkering in a warehouse near the Washington, D.C. airport testing these new techniques. "You can actually influence some behavior subliminally through color," said Catherine Lillie, head of the checkpoint-testing team. Can you imagine lavender tones and bloop bloop tones soothing you through long lines and shoe trays; where airport security wands zap miscreants into thinking twice about what they are packing.

About to depart from Logan Airport one day, I couldn't help but notice a wall display of what not to take on the plane. There was the usual display of knives and nail clippers and stun guns (joking on the stun gun, friendo) but one item fascinated me. A pizza wheel. My first question was "Why?" yet obviously someone at some point had attempted to bring a pizza wheel onto an airplane.

In the name of public safety and service, I'm here to warn you against the pizza wheel. You may find yourself being lead behind a mauve screened cavity probe wall while "There's No Place Like Ohm" pulses around you. Keep your Sbarro Supreme in the main concourse, and you should be fine.



Blue flower, red thorns! Blue flower, red thorns! Blue flower, red thorns! Oh, this would be so much easier if I wasn't color-blind!” ~~Shrek

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Snuff Pictures



Early this morning, I was cleaning off a pewter candle snuffer (made by Pewter Crafter of Cape Cod,) and I thought; "Now here's an oddity to share with my friends." How many people send out a text message or instant message saying, "I was just clearing wax off my candle snuffer." I double checked the web page for the company, and they are still in existence. My snuffer was depicted alongside a chamber stick, an item not to be confused with a device normally found in a bedside table.

Fire & Desire. "I'm Rick James, Bitch."

This chore followed a discussion I had last night with my friend Loralee who is currently living in New Hampshire. Lee is from Massachusetts, still owns property in Massachusetts, but she recently shifted states, taking her chocolate kitchen with her. While practicing another career, she has been establishing a chocolate business called DessertWorks, and she contains to focus her spare attention on being a chocolatier. She showed me her new license plate which echoes the motto of her company, "Very Good Chocolate."

Live Free And Eat DessertWorks Chocolate

Lee and I often have discussions about fonts and fountain pens and watermarked paper…. when she’s not showing me her new stilettos.

Miss Lee!!!! Ouchie.


When she was forming her chocolate company, I remember us going over fonts she might use, and the different papered boxed to be designed and ordered. Lee spent a lot of time thinking about these exacting concerns, and I loved her attention to such detail. She settled on a script called Zapfino.


Your grandmother wears army boots


Last night we were talking about copperplate calling cards. I had cards made when I was 17 in an old fashioned script; my name preceded by "Miss." Lee said the cards she had made only contain her name, leaving her the opportunity to add any other pertinent information on herself dependent on what is needed: address, telephone numbers or email contacts, and that seems the best way to go, given the changing nature of technologies and systems where we bounce between servers and locales, and by server I’m not talking porringer dish.

pewter@porringer.com

I realize I am the three blog woman who fusses over minute variations in html true color hues. I am also the woman who sends notes to friends on watermarked paper, using permanent ink, sealed with wax…or G.I. Joe stickers.


"I'll snuff something out for ya."








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