links for 2008-06-28: Squid
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Guess I have to memorize this page now.
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Day before my tattoo, a giant squid is found on the coast of my old home town, Santa Cruz. Providence!
My New Friend
So after 2.5 hours in the chair, a lot of jaw-clenching, and couple of white-light-angels-singing moments, I have a new friend on my right arm. He’s a giant squid. I like him a lot.
The lines are done now. In a couple weeks, I go back for shading.
I know I’m going to be asked about him for the rest of my life (at least until I move out to that cabin in the woods and start my shotgun collection), so I thought I’d start keeping a list of answers to the “why” question. Here are a few I’m toying with.
- Squid? What squid?
- I just love calamari. Don’t you?
- My parents were killed in a freak squid accident.
- That’s between me and the squid.
- I got suckered.
- Get it off. Get it off!
Truth is, it’s not about the squid. Tattoos are symbols, not to be taken literally. My new friend is a reminder that I am connected to many things, that there’s mystery in the deep, and that if I really needed to, I could take on a whale.
I plan on making up new meanings for many years to come.
See also: On Permanence and Scars of Choice
On Permanence and Scars of Choice
The thing that gives me pause about getting a tattoo is all the awful things I would have gotten tattoos of earlier in life.
Think of photos of yourself in the 80s. Imagine if, somehow, that powder blue Don Johnson suit you loved, the one you wore with a white t-shirt and the sleeves rolled up, imagine if it never came off. It just stayed on your body, year after year, getting fuzzier. Tattoos are like that.
We all have tattoos already, of course. They’re our stories, our mental scars. The things we carry around with us, just under the surface. Your first breakup is always there, just around the corner in every relationship that comes after. Tattoos like this may not be seen, but they’re just as permanent.
The difference is, a tattoo is outward. It’s going to be seen, depending where it is, of course. At the very least, you’ll see it, and so will people you love. For some, it is quite literally wearing your heart on your sleeve. It’s a small sign to the universe that says, “This is me.”
Even if you have no intention of ever getting a tattoo, ask yourself, if you did, what would it be? How do you see yourself? What would be on your sign? It’s an amazing mental exercise.
Tattoos are even more complicated for my people. I have family members who had tattoos forced upon them. Their signs were a row of numbers on a forearm.
For many years, I said I couldn’t get a tattoo until my grandmother passed. She’s still with us, thank goodness, but her memory is shattered. Last time I saw her, she asked who’s son I was. If she saw me with a tattoo now, she’d forget a moment later.
When I met Heather, she had a few small tattoos. I thought they were hot. She always talked about getting more, and I was, to be honest, a little uptight about it.
Then we had the miscarriages. And I turned 35. And something changed in me. I could rationalize it as “taking control of our bodies” or some other hippy shit, but the truth is, I don’t know what changed. It’s still too recent.
My birthday present to Heather this year was a pair of tattoos. They’re amazing, and she’s not even done yet. Watching her go through the process of choosing her symbols, working with the artist, and committing them to her skin has been an inspiration.
I’m still scared of the permanence of it. But now I see it like this: Life is about collecting scars. Some of the scars are internal, some are external. Some you show to the world, some just to the ones you love. Some are forced upon you, and some you choose. It’s the collecting that’s important. If you don’t have scars, you’re not living.
I spent too many years avoiding risk, as if the goal was to leave a pristine corpse. Now I think, maybe it’s time to stop waiting. Stop avoiding. Go out there and get a scar to be proud of.
Our tattoos will be different. They will not be forced on us. They will not mean what they meant to my grandparents, or my parents. They will have a meaning that we create, and it’s okay if nobody else understands.
My first tattoo will begin this afternoon. It will be my sign to the universe. A scar of choice that I will wear on my sleeve. I still don’t know what it means, exactly, but I’ll have the rest of my life to figure it out.
And what is it? You’ll see. Soon.
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UPDATE: Please give a warm welcome to My New Friend.
Fray Loves Threadless
I loves me some Threadless, so it’s a thrill to collaborate with them on Fray. Along with our buddies at Blurb and Stephen Tobolowsky, we’re sponsoring a design competition: Threadless Loves True Stories. In addition to some great prizes and a pile of cash, the winning design will appear on a Threadless shirt and on the cover of Fray Issue 3.
For our third book, we’re doing a special double issue tackling two of the biggest themes in life: Sex and Death. We’re looking for illustrations that take on one or both of these themes in a breathtaking design. Submission tips: The best designs don’t literally illustrate the theme, they play with it. The cover of the “Busted” book, about getting caught, featured a red hand. (Get it?) You can include words (sex, death, Fray), but it’s not necessary. The design can include both themes or just one. If you need inspiration, just think about a time in your life when you lost someone, or got some, and go from there. And most of all, have fun!
To submit to the contest, go here. Story submissions will open in July.
links for 2008-06-25: Doh
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So much to like in this.
Special Fray Mini-Issue: Wild Life
I know, we’re behind schedule with Fray issue 2. We’re working on it, I swear.
In the meantime, here’s a little snack to tide you over. Fray’s Wild Life is a special mini-issue about the pets we love with stories by Heather Armstrong, Lance Arthur, Ben Brown, Heather Champ, Jessica Donohoe, Susan McNeece, Derek Powazek, and Magdalen Powers, and illustrations by Goopymart. The stories are also online here
We’ll be sending a free copy to all our subscribers to thank you for your patience waiting for issue 2. Everyone else can buy one here.
The Longest Day of the Year
Saturday is the longest day of the year. When Heather told me this today, I thought it was a setup for a joke, like “your momma’s so fat.” We then spent the next 30 minutes making up punchlines.
- Saturday is so long, you can see it from space!
- Saturday is so long, Sunday had to buy a convertible just to feel adequate!
- Saturday is so long, pants! (Look, pants are always funny.)
- Saturday is so long, it could stretch to the moon and back and still kick you in the nuts!
Okay, some were funnier than others.
Think you can do better? Let’s hear it.
links for 2008-06-17
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The project that I’ve been working on with HP Labs has launched. If you can make a PDF, you can publish a magazine!
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FINALLY.
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Hey thanks, Rex.
Introducing MagCloud and the Future of Magazine Publishing
Short attention span version: For the last year, I’ve been working with HP Labs on a very cool new project. It’s called MagCloud, and it’s the future of magazine publishing. Go see.
Longer attention span version: If you know me at all, you know I’m obsessed with publishing. My mom tells a story about me, in elementary school, having to write a paper about confederate times. Instead, I wrote and designed an entire newspaper, right down to the editorial comics, that took place during the era. This was before I’d even learned the word “procrastination.”
Since then I’ve worked at newspapers and magazines, big and small. I even started a few. And they all had one thing in common: You had to print a giant pile of them, and then hope you could get rid of them all. In college, we once made a giant throne out of undistributed copies of the newspaper I worked on.
The web has changed our thinking about media in ways we’re still figuring out. Now we can make media without the bother of putting ink to paper. We can distribute it planet-wide in an instant. And the content can be customized to your tastes, personalized for each reader. It’s so obvious now, but it’s important to remember what a revolution this has been.
But there’s still something about paper. It’s not just because screens suck to read on (they do, but that hasn’t kept us from doing it all day). There is an intimacy about a good book, a pleasure to the glossy pages of magazines, and, ironically, a permanence to paper. (How many times has a website you really loved simply disappeared?)
So what if we could combine the best parts of the web (no waste, personalized content, open to all) with the best parts of print (sexy print quality, permanence, no batteries required)?
For the last year, I’ve been working on a project with HP Labs called MagCloud. The idea is simple, really. MagCloud enables anyone to start a magazine - a real printed magazine - with no giant pile.
If we were in my office right now, I could motion over to the giant pile of Fray Issue 1s. I’m so proud of the book. It’s a beautiful object. But every morning when I see that pile, my heart sinks.
With MagCloud, there is no giant pile, because every magazine is printed to order. Of course, there are other print-on-demand companies out there, but MagCloud is the only one designed specifically for magazines. And it’s the only one created by HP, the company that makes the Indigo printers that power the print-on-demand industry. (The guys behind the scenes here are smart … and I mean like white-lab-coat smart. They blow me away.) It’s also the only one designed by mister James Goode, who also designed Pixish, and did a brilliant job.
When I look back at all the publishing endeavors I’ve undertaken, one thing stands out. While I was working so hard to change the way content gets made (enabling people on the web to participate in the creation process), I still fell back into the traditional model of magazine distribution. And the traditional model sucks.
Did you know there are just a handful of companies that control which magazines get into which stores? And even if you do get in, you give them all your hard work for free and they only have to pay for the books they sell. How do you know how many they sell? They tell you.
Did you know the average sell-through rate for a magazine is about 30%? The sell-through rate is the rate which a given issue of a magazine will sell from a store. That means 70% of all printed magazines are just stopping by the newsstand on their way to the garbage dump or recycling center. All that time, work, and energy, just to make trash.
There must be a better way. And I think MagCloud is a step in that direction.
There are caveats, of course. The site is a pilot program within HP right now. And it’s in beta, which means things will break, get fixed, and change. And, of course, we have very exciting plans for how to expand the service. The site you see now is just the tip of a very big iceberg.
But after working on it for almost a year, it’s very exciting to see it take its first baby steps on the web. If you’re interested in the future of magazines, if you want to help make it happen, give MagCloud a look.
For me, I’m experimenting with publishing Fray there. I even put together a special “pet stories” issue to test the service.
If you can make a PDF, you can now publish a magazine. On behalf of everyone at MagCloud, I can’t wait to see what you make.
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UPDATE:
Got questions about MagCloud? Ask here.
You don’t need an invite to join - just sign up - but you do need an invite to publish something during the beta. Got a magazine you want to publish? I’ve got a few publisher invites left. Just email me and I’ll hook you up if I can. (Email address: Sew is to sewing as fray is to _______@gmail.com. Yes, it’s a test. I know you can do it.)
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Derek Powazek lives in San Francisco with his wife, two nutty Chihuahuas, a grumpy cat, and a house full of plants named Fred. More »
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