fonts I fancy

sometimes you like things and you don't even know why.

that's how it is with fonts & me - I just can't get enough, and Lord knows where that love came from. But for as long as I can remember, I have been instantly intrigued by designs/advertisements/websites/magazines/books/etc. with good-looking, uniquely engineered, creative fonts. I also tend to feel this strange internal repulsion when faced with ugly or unoriginal typography. It matters, you know?

So for all you font-nerds, here are some links I think you'll really dig:

1) some cool free fonts you can download

2) I am actually obsessed with this company called Veer. I get their catalog in the mail, although I've never purchased anything from them (but it does make PERFECT collaging/craft material). They've got loads of fun fonts.

3) this is really fun. It's a cute little diagram that will assist you in finding a typeface for all occasions.

p.s. speaking of fonts, something is wrong when I publish my posts and my selected fonts go all screwy....it's miserable & driving me insane.

rainbow Christmas

color accent = Merry Christmas to meeeeee :)

Happy Christmas!

hope it's a cozy-comfy-wonderful-miracle-filled day!
with love,
emily

(oh and this is just another adorable picture by the adorable Ellen Picker)

no, really.

"and the moonbeams will shoot out of your fingers and your toes and the ends of your hair..."

this is absolutely my favorite movie scene ever.
I don't even care that Kay Jewelers took it and made it all cliche in an "every kiss begins with Kay's" commercial, or that this is potentially a zillion other people's favorite movie scene.
mmm it's just wonderful : )

just one of the many reasons I adore Leigh Anne Piercy

is that she shares my love for playing songs over and over again for extended periods of time.

For example, she would never judge me for that fact that I have this mix CD in my car and I literally can't stop playing it. Well, can't stop playing the following four songs on the mix CD. If you've driven with me in the past few weeks, you have heard these tunes on constant replay. It's gotten to the point where I know every word, every drum beat, every crescendo, every subtle nuance. ugh. I just love them so much. so. so. so. much.

from Winter Garden (get your hands on it if at all possible)

I am a book of snow,
a spacious hand, an open meadow,
a circle that waits,
I belong to the earth and its winter.

Pablo Neruda

how poetry is teaching me the importance of being honest

(this is new. as in 20-minutes-ago new. I don't have a title yet. It is also currently writing me, not the other way around, if you can understand at all what I mean by that. and there might be a lot of drafts. and there might be a lot of tearing apart (of me, not just of the poem, if you can understand what I mean by that, too) and this poem is why I love writing - because it makes me honest with myself, and that's not an easy place to go to most of the time, but it's probably a really important place to be)

There was a floating woman

on the median of highway 29.

A cardboard sign in her palms

proclaimed she was down

on her luck, cold, hungry,

have a happy holiday,

and she smiled like a banner,

or a flag from some abandoned

nation waving in black permanent

marker. and she levitated there,

wind beneath worn brown boots

while minivans passed her, a school

bus full of prying faces,

exhaust enthralled with the details

of her cheekbones,

covering the air around her

and carving deep into her lungs

in the center of the highway.

I passed the floating woman

with the heat on full blast,

some sweet singer-songwriter voice

spewing from my car speakers,

a latte resting in my left hand

and felt heavy, the way it feels

to be underwater when things

are never seen straight,

or where you’ll scream and

the sound is wrong, or weep

and it makes no difference,

already covered in water

and I was sick to my bones,

anger from pore to

muscle to spinal cord sifting

through me, relentlessly

coursing, relentlessly coursing

and rising and filling

until I could hardly stand

to live inside myself.

and she is sloshing around

behind my eyes,

that floating woman – a ghost.

When I drive on, I think of how

I love the clouds –

all shifts and shapes of them

through the sunroof,

and I could stare at them for hours

but then pick up the phone

with a clear voice.

and I love this world too much

to stop the car

and embrace her,

the waving flag of my humanity

that is floating on exhaust wind

in the center of the highway.

and I love my fears

too much to roll the window down,

to let my life seep from me to the median

where it wants to go,

or to scream to her

in the deepest guttural howl you can imagine

the thing she might never know:

that she is the poem that I'm writing.

things people think are debatable that are actually just obvious

There are few things people often debate between because they think both options are equally desirable. The people who debate these things are, in fact, stupid.

Below is a brief list of things people like to argue between that really just have a clear-cut winner. If I've offended you in this post, I apologize. But not really because I'm an expert on everything cool so I obviously know what is better.

1) window v. aisle seat: obviously window

2) Backstreet Boys v. N'Sync: obviously N'Sync

3) fiction v. poetry: obviously poetry (kidding Cole, KIDDING.....but not really)

4) table v. booth: obviously booth (cozier)

5) chocolate v. vanilla: obviously chocolate

6) cats v. dogs: obviously dogs (surprised? Don't worry...I still love cats, but no cat could be as cool as Chance)

7) beach v. mountains: obviously beach

8) staying up late v. waking up early: obviously staying up late

9) country music v. all other types of music (including yodeling): obviously all other types of music (including yodeling).

10) Step Up or Step Up 2: the Streets: obviously Step Up 2: the Streets

11) Blogger v. Wordpress: obviously Blogger!

12) G-chat v. Skype: obviously G-chat

13) English v. science: obviously English

14) pancakes v. waffles: obviously waffles

15) Lord of the Rings v. Star Wars: obviously Lord of the Rings

16) Scarlet Takes a Tumble v. The Nervous Kid: obviously the Nervous Kid

17) coffee v. tea: obviously coffee

18) homemade v. store-bought: obviously homemade

19) Alderman v. Clemons: obviously Alderman

20) blogging v. studying: obviously blogging.

obviously.

something I love from the Adrienne Rich poetry reading I just watched

"I think that there is probably some kind of movement, certainly there was for me, from writing poems when you’re young and starting out. [Those poems]come out of your life, your subjective experience and they are in certain ways pretty enclosed in that. The movement is then the opening up to a larger and larger and larger world- being able to hear more voices than your own voice, or your own voices, because we have many voices in us. It's about hearing voices that couldn't possibly be your voices. They are around you and they enter you. I’m talking about a trajectory of a career of a poet’s development toward maturity. I think of maturity for a poet as being able to see more people in the world, not just yourself and your loved one, yourself and your father, or mother, or brother…but seeing yourself as part of a stream of human life that is various, diverse."

it's a day for Extrovert Emily

Today I am: giving a speech in the style of the Israelite prophets, performing a group dance to Whip my Hair in front of my whole class, and participating in a fiction reading where I will share a satirical story I wrote that is based on the lives of two zombies.

Oh, life. Hello, crazy-finals-nothing-makes-sense-world.

p.s. something is wrong with the fonts on Blogger. ugh.