Capitalism Stole My Virginity

(from Boing Boing)

Olympic logo cops enforce stupid rules with masking tape

Olympic logo police workers are tasked with vigilantly going around all facilities and putting masking tape over the logos for any product where the company is not an official sponsor.

7 To ensure that only the companies that pay millions of dollars to be official Olympic sponsors enjoy the benefits of exposure in Olympic venues, organizers have covered the trademarks of nonsponsors with thousands of little swatches of tape.

In media centers, dormitories and arena bathrooms, pieces of tape cover logos of fire extinguishers, light switches, thermostats, bedroom night tables, soap dispensers and urinals. The Taiden Industrial translation headsets in a large conference room have had their logos covered, as have the American Standard faucets in the bathrooms nearby, and the ThyssenKrupp escalators down the hall.

At the Athens games, people wearing logoed t-shirts were asked to remove them or turn them inside-out before entering the stadia. Nothing says "incorruptible international competition" like a bunch of bullshit rules about what your t-shirt is allowed to say and whether an elevator can display its manufacturer's mark. Ignore That Logo Under the Tape!

Second Intermission

A few things to mention today....

On the way to work I heard a very interesting discussion about a Vermeer forger named Hans Van Meegeren on Think (KERA 90.1). Forgery was not something that was covered in any of my Art History classes, and it was fascinating to learn about different aspects of it, and about the Van Meegeren story. He was a Dutchman, selling Johannes Vermeer forgeries to major museums during WWII and to Hitler and the Nazi party. He was arrested on charges of treason, but the paintings were so good that no one suspected forgery. The Dutch officials were horrified that he had sold the nation's beloved Vermeer masterpieces to the German opposition. Now he was in quite the pickle...if he was found guilty of treason he would be killed, but the only other option was confessing to forgery. He chose, of course, the latter. But when he told official that these were forgeries, not authentic Vermeers, he was laughed at. The officials began to wonder if he was telling the truth, and one of them came up with the idea of giving him a canvas and paints in his jail cell and making him "paint for his life." (I just love that phrase.) This was all researched for the book The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century (Harper Collins, 2008), written by Edward Dolnick. Library, here I come!


This post on the Wooster Collective cracked me up, especially given my Olympics Logo post from June 2007.


Finally, several friends and I were recently chatting about our least favorite fonts. Among the top hated fonts were (no surprise here), Mistral, Cat Scratch, and Comic Sans. I was searching online today for information on retinal degeneration (yesterday my greyhound Clive was diagnosed with having this), and this article, written entirely in Comic Sans, came up in my search. I have no idea if it even has any good information in it, because between the offensive font and the busy paw prints in the background, my eyes can't focus on it. Why do people love to abuse this font? Ugh. Two paws down!

logo oh no

It seems there is some serious (and well-deserved) controversy over the recently approved logo for the 2012 Olympics in London. It has even made the front of a gossip mag with the headline "Olympics Logo Triggers Epilepsy" (this headline referenced the animated version of the logo). An online petition has even been started demanding its immediate withdrawal. It harks a bit of Keith Haring in my opinion, but not necessarily in a good way. I can't imagine how hideous it will be on all that merch they'll be selling...just picture it embroidered on hats and sweatshirts and printed on everything from pencils to pins to thermal mugs. Ouch...that's a headache.