Hark! Hail! Oi!
Look this way, most brutally humbled life forms of ill-defined shape and purpose, for it is I, the supreme steamroller of meetings, destroyer of the huddle, and relentless re-shaper of dreams. Behold the meandering, mashing magnificence of ME, the most fearless, shameless, and couldn’t-care-less-even-lesser-ness to ever accept that should-never-have-been-forwarded 9 AM Concept Review request.
You think that was a long sentence? Delusional Darlings—I’m barely even rolling yet.
Witness me! Lurching on in with my tandem drums a-blazing to rudely claim this meeting room as my own. It is well within my pissy purview—it says so right here on my invisible work order, issued to me a mere moment ago by my highly inflated ego. This is MY land now and I declare by decree all who reside upon it to be my trapped and soon-to-be bloodied-beyond-recognition minions.
Prepare to be rendered powerless by my crushing weight and confidence as I flatten everything in sight. You, them, that, and most definitely this whiteboard with its Post-its and jotted-down dry-erase scribblings. Ideas, opinions, conversations all—I will destroy thee painfully, gleefully, and without hesitation.
Shush! My meeting now! Gurdle gurdle gurdle
You there, meeting organizer with your concepts and your sketches and Options 1, 2, and 3. Enjoy this free show! Gaze upon my works and abilities with abject horror as I effortlessly roll on in to steal your focus, your drive, and squish the very spirit from your bright and motivated eyes. Ha! Your laughingly, innocently, painfully misguided eyes!
So cute.
Let me adjust this knob to full-flat, no foam. You seek to speak your words of wisdom, mapped out against this thing you call The Brief, but hush now, puppy, I’m really rolling now! Your world is now my world and I have put myself at the very center of it. I am the core, the lava, the face-melting ender of this once-flowing conversation. Me! The all-knowing, all-dominating decimator of earthly realms with a squawking, shits on everything seagull perched upon my shoulder. (His name is Anton by the way. He likes French fries and shooting for jute hats from on high.)
Where was I? Ah. I see you there, fleshy sausage of run-aground destiny. Look at you, barely three words into your first sentence and completely gobsmacked as I squeak my pneumatic drum upon the skin of your creative carcass. Cop a load of this! I am the gazumper of the paragraph, the squasher of verbs and noun-sense with my stuff and nonsense. Dominate! Exterminate! Meditate on my mega-hate at a later date!
Getting it yet? Are you picking up what I’m putting down with flat and steaming abandon?
This is my revenge on your talent, your ambition, and your drive. Feel the words dry up in the lakebed of your mouth as I take over and steamroll into a flattened paste the very thought that seeks to leap from your tongue. I am revving into a newly found gear and belching with choking smoke to pipe up the ass of my future promotion which I will heartily, ungratefully, and fist-pumpingly not deserve.
Lie down and take it as a delicate daisy pressed between the pages of a book while I pummel your form. Wilt, crush, succumb! May your recollection of purpose die along with your sad and desiccated, starved-for-praise petals. May the memory of your field of dreams live long enough to re-imagine it as a lifeless parking garage. I flatten you to fatten me. It’s just science. Don’t fight it.
Look on agape, aghast, askance, and a bunch of other words beginning with a, as the horror of my steamrolling presses the Enthusiasm (nee. Joy) from the very grape of your being to make a bitter wine no one will ever want to consume. I call this vintage “Unearned and Overvalued Opinion” and it rolls at a steady 6 mph—sometimes 4—from my clueless mind and right over the top of your well-researched, highly-considered experience and analysis.
Useless to me! I know what works. It’s in my gut. I like my gut and it likes FLAT AND FLAVORLESS THINGS! That’s what works. That’s the latest thing. NO, I don’t need to see the trends. Feel the weight of my blind confidence in my all-un-knowing being.
Smart? I say dumb it down! Flatten these ideas to the ironing board of mediocrity, which, as luck would have it, just happens to be the thing I excel at. The lowest common denominator is the only denominator of value. People can’t be trusted to rise up to meet your intelligence. They must be mashed into the earth of my taste. Mashed into the conglomerate tar of endless dark, a shapeless, formless tarmac with conformance lines painted on the surface of expectation.
This thing here has too many lumps, the colors are too vivid, and the swirls and bubbles are too distracting. Flatten, flatten, flatten!
Flattening is what I do best. Flattening is my strength. My raison d’etre. Squash! Destroy! Annoy! Why must I do this? You will never know. Maybe you ate my goldfish, maybe you didn’t. It doesn’t matter. My motivation for your slow and eventual destruction will never be clear to you. Revenge, pettiness, rage—who gives a shit. I am the steamroller supreme and I will devastate!
Please to enjoy. I am K-K-K-Ken and I am c-c-coming to k-k-kill all your creative Ottos. Step out of the cement or prepare to die.
*Author’s note: Be not a steamroller and seek ye not an operator's license to drive. Avoid all steamrolling fairs and traders of steamrolling equipment. Apply the same logic with sledgehammers, wrecking balls, and explosives peddlers.
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
This week’s amends…
“Usually the artist has two life-long companions, neither of his own choosing… — poverty and loneliness. To have a friend who understands and appreciates your work, one who never lets you down but who becomes more devoted, more reverent, as the years go by, that is a rare experience. It takes only one friend… to work miracles.”
- Henry Miller
Via The Marginalian
Cover of the week: “The Suburbs” by Mr. Little Jeans.
A 7/11 and crocs collab. Yup. That’s what I said. This image provides a mere taste of the possibilities. More at Core77.
Via John Freeborn Weekly Design Links
To keep on the shoe kick (ha! get it!), here’s some news from a couple of weeks back.
Someone paid $218,750 for Steve Jobs’ manky used Birkenstocks. According to Julien's Auctions, "the cork and jute footbed retains the imprint of Steve Jobs' feet, which had been shaped after years of use."
Woof.
Via Boing Boing