Ah Monday morning. The monday after University Graduation, and in point of fact, the monday after a weekend visit from the ol' parents, cargoed in by plane from Ontario. Our first day as an official University graduate - what some would call our first day in the "real world". And how, you might ask, is one spending one's first day as an "adult"?

We're at work. Our boss is away. And we're decorating bottles of glue with sharpies. We are so very ready for real life.

What can we really say about this, besides "Good lord, the scientists have gone mad with power!!!"

From BoingBoing:
"scientists report that they can control fruit-flies remotely -- by shooting lasers at their neurons. Cool enough, but then they tore the heads off a few flies, and found they were still able to stimulate the remaining neurons -- and even induce them to fly. That's right: Remote-controlled headless zombie flies."

Creeeeeeeeeeeepy. (watch the linked video. Ewww.)

EDIT/DISCLAIMER: Looking over this post... it may come off a little harsher, or mean-spirited than was warranted. We would like to play the 'heat of the moment' card here, but that doesn't mean we're retracting our statement. Think of it this way - We're not proposing an examination of the before/after covers to decide who flexes the best art-muscles. It's not a matter of design-smarts, or colour-scheme skills. And we understand that editing happens in all realms. But it really truly in this case does come down to being considerate. I mean, yeah, the end product isn't drastically different. But it's not ours. And we weren't told or asked. That's the point. We understand that some at the Coast might have read this and taken it personally. We apologize. But really, sometimes you gotta say how you feel, and sometimes you gotta hear it. With that, here follows the post in question.
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Ok, for real The Coast. When you tell a designer artist, or really anyone on the phone that "We're not going to fuck around with your cover or anything, don't worry." well, usually, one would hope that would imply that you're... I don't know.... not going to fuck around with our cover or anything. Y'know? Maybe we're being a little to hard-nosed about the definition of "not fucking around with"... but we just assumed.

This is not the first time The Coast has taken suspect artistic liberties with our work, and it gets increasingly less charming each time. Readers may be interested to see what we submitted to them last week for the cover of this weeks issue, as compared to what was actually printed on the cover of this weeks issue.

Optimuscrime is willing to admit some naivete surrounding our agreeing to sending the artwork in the form of an unflattened photoshop file. (in case anything needed to just be bumped slightly, to fit any extra text, you understand.) Though we feel that it was not unreasonable of us to assume that your promise not to make any major alterations to the design itself would hold at least some water. No dice. And don't get the wrong idea. We're reasonable people. Colouring in the illustrations for the inside story, that was just fine. Even fabricating a larger illustration from our smaller ones for that same article.. it was kind of weird, but we didn't sweat it. But really, there needs to be some level of self-control. Lets take a look at the comparison, and see how many differences we can count:

1. From black to purple? Was that meant to be subtle? Were we not supposed to notice it? Or maybe assume a printing error? Is purple meant to look cooler? We assure you, purple does not look cooler, The Coast.
2. Notice how the logo on the left is darker, dirtier, scrappier. There is more scanning dirt, and shadow in and around it. Just so we're clear, The Coast, that was not an accident. We don't do things like that by accident. Thanks for 'cleaning it up' for us though.
3. Hey, wait a minute.. didn't that guy used to be transparent, or something?.. Yeah.. yeah I think he did. But he's not now. Weird.
4. Speaking of that guy, remember when his head was actually lined up with the flame, and not an awkward 5mm to the right? We do. We miss those days.
5. On a serious note: Thanks for fixing the text circle. Slightly rotated clockwise is just stupid. Slightly rotated counter-clockwise makes a lot more sense. We can see that now. Phew, that could have been embarrassing.

Now look, it's not so much that changes were made. That is the plight of the illustrator, the designer, the writer. But major changes... well, you'd think they would at the very least be run by us. Or even better... ask us about them... we could change things for you. Because here's the problem, The Coast: When people open the paper, and read "cover by YoRodeo!"... well, that's no longer true. We didn't make that cover. And frankly, it's not really very fair to attach our name to a finished product that we didn't sign off on. It's not a matter of your changes looking good or not, it's that when you change it without asking us, it's not ours anymore, no matter how good it looks. Which raises the question: Why hire artists and designers to design things, if you don't trust their ideas? Y'know?

A phonecall would have been nice. Or failing that, an email warning us of the changes. (Which would still have been a little sketchy, but more polite.) Or, if even that is too much.. just try not to outright lie to us on the phone, when you're asking for a PSD file instead of a TIFF. I don't see any extra, space-eating text there. Do you?

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And Speaking of misrepresentation:
The Literati liked books a lot. The Illuminati is from Toronto, are all left-handed, and just kind of suck.

Wednesday, as some may know was my last day at the good ol' Loomis Art Store. Your tired editor woke up on time, plowed through my morning routine, walked to work, thinking I had 15 extra minutes to spare, in which time I obtained a coffee, and then arrived at work, to find that I was in fact a half hour late. How I managed to forget my schedule (which has been fairly constant for the last 4 months) on my last day, I will never know. Hey, at least I couldn't be fired, right?

The day brought mostly everything I could have hoped for to finish it off right; one obnoxious customer of the highest caliber, (whom I thoroughly enjoyed NOT taking crap from, as it was my last day. "Well ma'am, you could at least TRY being nice.") a sweet, charming old man, who told me stories about being a military graphic illustrator, (pronounced 'yes man', he added.) and Susan, an eccentric regular, sold me two postage-stamps for cash, so that she could take the bus home.

Not only that, but Chris, my manager, called me into his office and told me he had something special for me. Special didn't quite cover what he had for me. What he had for me was nothing short of incredible. Picture if you will, (or, just look at the actual picture) an elaborately decorated Hot Wheels themed tin can, containing a stuffed rabbit in Hot Wheels racing gear, and Hot Wheels candy. "I know it may seem funny. But I thought you'd like the Hot Wheels tin." he said. Chris, you were more than right. I thank you. It was actually pretty cute. And there was also a box of fancy chocolate. Jon helped me out with those.

And so, my time at Loomis came to a close. With a High Five from Jon.
(Jon is featured in the photograph. Photo credit: Laura Dawe)

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