February Linkfest

Does something called VerMints belong in your mouth? Jessica Stone Levy thinks not.

*

“The meaning of love in your dictionary is wrong. The meaning of love is the Jonas Brothers”: and other reader submissions to the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary, compiled by M-W lexicographer Kory Stamper.

*

Why nauseating diamond ads are here to stay. Gretchen Gavett’s article for the Harvard Business Review includes this boggling tidbit: Tiffany has had a lock on the top right corner of Page 3 in the New York Times for more than 100 years. (More on diamond marketing here.)

*

When words collide: Neal Whitman considers the “neat linguistic trick” that produces the movie title A Good Day to Die Hard, the portmanteaus netiquette and spork, and the expression sweet tooth fairy.

*

Designer Ben Pieratt has created a “brand in a box”—name, logo, URL, social-media accounts, website theme, and more—that he’s selling for $18,000. It’s up to the buyer to choose how to use it. The brand’s name is Hessian, which Pieratt says he chose to honor Richard Hess, an advertising art director who died in 1991. Until I learned that, I assumed it had something to do with the German mercenary soldiers who fought on the British side in the American Revolution, or possibly a type of coarse woven cloth. The domain included in Pieratt’s brand package is dot-tv, which may be a deal-breaker for potential buyers. Read more at AdFreak.

*

At the New Yorker blog Culture Desk, a gallery of weird stock photography from DIS Magazine, accompanied by an interview with DIS.

*

“To us, the unicorn symbolizes the never-ending quest for mastery”: a Tumblr of the absurd, pretentious, and just plain daffy things branding agencies say about themselves, from the understandably anonymous Agency Wank.

*

In a similar vein: Design Jargon Bullshit, ripped from actual websites. Sample: “We designed a series of bubbles that represented both the idea of the consumer as having options and the letter ‘o’.”

*

An unofficial campaign to change the Kentucky state motto from “Unbridled Spirit” to “Kentucky Kicks Ass” has more than 12,000 Facebook “likes.” “We certainly would not sanction or endorse that phraseology,” sniffed a state tourism department spokesman. Better buy the T-shirt now. (Via Patrick Cox.) (More ass news here.)

*

I’m betting some of the people who admired the “So God Made a Farmer” spot for Dodge Ram that aired during the Super Bowl had never heard of Paul Harvey, the right-wing radio broadcaster (1918-2009) who provided the soundtrack. (Harvey is credited with coining “Reaganomics,” “skyjack,” and “guesstimate”; he supported Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s and opposed school busing in the 1960s, but eventually opposed the Vietnam War and supported abortion rights.) It didn’t take long for GMaF parodies to appear. Here’s God Made a Factory Farmer, God Made a Realtor, God Made a Gay Man, and God Created Transit. And here’s some background on the Dodge ad. (This just in! So God Made a Banker, via MJF.)

*

I’ll wrap this up with something substantial: “102 Spectacular Nonfiction Stories from 2012,” selected by Conor Friedersdorf and presented in alphabetical order by author’s last name. Not only does the list contain a whole bunch of articles I missed last year, it includes several publications I’d never heard of, like Idle Words and Defunct. I’m looking forward to getting acquainted.

Comments

[rootlesscosmo]

Election campaign lingo includes "Hessians" for specialized staff people who aren't on any candidate's permanent staff but travel around the country--Peter Boyle's character in "the Candidate" is an example, and there are more in "West Wing," though some of them become permanent staffers in the Bartlett White House.