Intermission · Wrought Irony

I’m in the midst of sporadically typing up the second installment of my personal history of two-wheeled mishaps, but thought it’d be nice to insert a brief post.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the retail chain Design Within Reach. They have stores- excuse me, studios- in 25 states, the District of Columbia, and two Canadian provinces. Specializing in mid-century classics of furniture and decor by such design luminaries as Eames, Le Corbusier, Noguchi and Saarinen, DWR aims to make officially-licensed reproductions affordable (a relative term, assuredly) to the Not-Particularly-Great-and-More-or-Less-Washed.

The stor studios all have a similar design. Here are a few photographs of different locations:

 

Now, here’s the thing. Every time I see one of these stor locati studi establishments, I can’t help but picture myself (or some other chump) gamely leaping up, arm outstretched, trying in vain to reach the sign/logo/banner which is at least 10 feet off the ground. Grumble, grumble.

 

Waking up to smell the ~O)

It’s true. Sociologists and semioticians alike have been telling us for years that we are turning into a post-literate society. Examples abound and the trend is inexorable. From emoticons to WALK/DON’T WALK pictographs to the Hansel & Gretel-style follow-me-stickers in public institutions, they’re literally unavoidable.

I know, it’s ironic that I should be writing about this in a blog. And yes, I’m aware that blogs are on the rise; on WordPress alone there are, at latest count, 3,290,979 blogs with 109,974 new posts today (at 3:24PM EDT,GMT-4). Sounds impressive, but the truth is that traditional, old-fashioned blogs are on the way out. A growing proportion of those aforementioned blogs and posts are photoblogs and photoposts; 41.27699483% according to the most recent calculations. And soon these in turn will no doubt be replaced by scribbleblogs and etch-a-posts. Ha, ha. Laugh now while you can.

I for one, though late to blogging, am not keen on being behind the crest of this trend. Consequently, I am putting myself on a strict regimen to reduce my literacy calorie intake and production. It may incur some short-term sacrifices such as losing my job and getting lost more often than I already do, but it’s always the way with those at the vanguard; we are doomed to be misunderstood by our immediate contemporaries. Genius is only recognized belatedly. No pain, no gain!

My first exercise is to replace my current word-heavy shopping list with a more intuitive, graphical version. You can click on the cart to see it.