Friday, April 23

Presidential Plastics

An article reviewing the changing portraits of the presidents on our currency has an humorous twist. They are proposing that the artistic representations have been given cosmetic enhancements.
I'm not sure I buy this though. Some of it looks like they have been "cleaned up", but a lot of it just looks like the drawing is done from a different angle. Lincoln's portrait, especially, looks like most of the difference attributed to imaginary rhinoplasty and cheek implants is actually due to an artist changing the angle of the drawing.

Thursday, April 22

The Man Who...?

My dad has an enormous collection of Analog magazines. I should know, I had to put them back in chronological order when we moved. I would peek at them from time to time, reading a story here and there, or an article when it was passed on to me. Once I recall reading a story, and really loving it. Even re-reading it. I am reasonably sure I didn't dream it up. However, I have never ever again been able to find that story. Not with all my google-fu or through manually going back through the magazines. It has been about a decade since I read that story, I think, but the magazines go back to around the 80s so it is anyone's guess what era I may have been poking my nose into.
Just in case someone thinks this sounds familiar, or in case I forget as I get older, here is a synopsis:
The Man Who Once Made Bunnies (I am pretty sure that was the title)
This was about a man who loved children, and had a business of making stuffed bunnies. However he was sued, time and again, for "defects". A child bit off the nose and choked. A child was allergic to the fur. The glue was toxic when eaten. After years of being sued and changing the bunnies each time only to be sued again for something else, he was tired and cynical and had had enough. He started making a product called a "wire hug" that was basically a ball of razor wire. It was so obviously dangerous that he was never sued for it.
I don't know the ending, but I remember it being sad and thoughtful. A man disillusioned, and obviously suggestive of where our culture was headed (and now is).


Help! Cookies and Karma to anyone who can prove to me that this wasn't some haunting dream that I invented myself only to be tortured by its incompleteness.