Font Snob

Your weekend blog post assignment is open topic. Due at the decided upon time: Sunday 4:00.
What follows is NOT an assignment (but it could be).

I want you to write something of interest, something of substance. I want you to work on including images, links, videos, etc. Blogs have that capability -- make use of it! Also, I want you to spend a little time (I know, you don't have any time. Poppycock.) tweaking your blog and getting to know it better and looking for blogs that you like to read so you can link them and study them and copy certain features of them. Assignment: write something worth reading. Brownie points: become a blogophile like me.

What follows could lead you to your weekend blog post but it could also be fodder to a rip-roarin' good time and/or insightful rhetorical analysis, you know, for fun . Remember, I didn't share this piece with all of you because it is what school and most of society would consider inappropriate, obscene, and offensive. But, hey. It's a stellar example of rhetoric. 

See below for more.

Your little font-argument assignment mentioned a piece of writing by a title with a naughty word in it. It also contains approximately 512 more naughty words, but it's dripping with rhetorical technique so take a look at it if your sensibilities are not easily offended by the kind of language you hear in the hallway every day. It's found at McSweeney's  one of the greatest websites on the planet. They have a iPhone app...just sayin'.

Specifics to consider so this reading has an academic purpose:
Tone and how it is created
Devices and things (metaphor, hyperbole, allusion, etc.)
Syntax and punctuation
Diction choices (swearing, unusual uses of language, words that stand out, etc.)

Browse fonts so you're, at least, vaguely familiar with them and how they look. Otherwise some of what he says won't make sense. He names "Helvetica", "Eurotrash Swish", "Bauhaus", "Gotham", "Avenir", "Univers", and "Papyrus"-- I think that's all of them that he mentions. Does his depiction of these "characters" make sense? Are they (stereotypically, at least) accurate?


He uses language that you may or may not be familiar with from time to time. For instance, do you know what a Stratocaster is? Look it up. Know Johannes Gutenberg? Did you take Euro? What's a fascist and why does he use this word? What does fascism have to do with black turtlenecks? Do you know what "sans serif" means? Check this out. What does it mean? What is a typographer?


Okay. Why did you laugh when you read it?