Fresh Apples

mimi has been a hardworking girl for lo, these many years, and since this is the last year of National Board bonus money, it was time to upgrade. The nice people at the Apple store have sent me (courtesy of my credit card, of course) this lovely wee MacBook.

So shiny! So pretty! So fast! mimi is v. excited about possibilities and has already downloaded a fresh new copy of Scrivener so she can keep working on the book that is taking foreeeeeeeeeever to revise. Maybe revising will be more fun now that I have a new toy. Let's hope.

The Word Series

Props to Novel-T, which has created a lineup of American literature-inspired T-shirts. The baseball-themed shirts feature iconic characters and writers, like Hester Prynne, Moby-Dick and Captain Ahab, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and writers Whitman, Poe, and Thoreau. Each "jersey" features an icon befitting the player, like a whale (duh), a Captain's "C," paintbrushes, and a raft. My favorite is the international "no" circle/slash for Bartleby the Scrivener, who would, of course, "prefer not to." Clever, clever stuff. English teacher squee out of control, basically.

Even better, Novel-T donates $1 of the purchase price of each shirt to 826NYC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills. Now that's a team I can get behind!

It's About Danged Time

A friend sent me a link to this brilliant ad campaign for, of all things, tampons. The model in the first ad is actually a former intern at JWT who helped design the concept of the ad campaign. Clearly, she gets it (unlike the idjit who came up with the "have a happy period" tagline, who probably thinks we all dream of the day we can wear white during that time of the month and spin and go salsa dancing). The second spot just nails the American obsession with demographic testing. Funny stuff!