Are we smiling yet?

Is there any symbol more ubiquitous, more engraved into the very fabric of the collective consciousness, than the simple smiley face? For people of my generation, it has simply been around forever. It adorns t-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers and a seemingly infinite array of other merchandise. Variations of the smiley face (or "smiley") run rampant throughout the Internet, whether it be on message boards, in e-mails, or what have you. It is, in short, everywhere.

Among the many, many companies that have incorporated the smiley face into their advertising and logos is mega retailer Wal-Mart. But surely they know that they can't actually claim any sort of ownership to the symbol, right? I mean, it's not like their version of the smiley face is even particularly different from every other version out there.

And yet, according to a recent article in the Contra Costa Times, this is exactly what Wal-Mart is attempting to do. They claim their lawsuit is in response to a French gentleman who claims to have invented the symbol back in 1968 and who has supposedly gotten a trademark on the symbol in numerous countries outside of the U.S. I'm not sure how valid a claim this gentleman has (I always thought the smiley face was invented by a Massachusetts graphic artist back in 1963), but if anybody has a valid claim of ownership it sure as heck isn't Wal-Mart. The whole point of having a logo is to distinguish yourself from the competition. That's why logo trademarks are protected so fiercely by corporations in the first place. But you just don't select the world's most common symbol, call it your logo, and expect anybody to respect your "exclusive rights" to use that logo.

No Lawns for Oil!

So anyway, my wife and I have started the painful process of looking for our next home. There's no immediate rush, but our son is now 16 months old and the town where we currently live doesn't have a particularly good school system. In fact, it has a truly awful school system.

The hard part, of course, is finding a house that meets all of our current "needs": affordable, in a good school system, and a convenient commute for both my wife and me. I've been browsing the Interet real estate ads and finally found what I thought might be a great candidate. My wife nixed it, though, because it had a large front lawn. You see, she doesn't want to spend the money to hire somebody to cut it, and she apparently doesn't trust me when I say I would be willing and able to cut it myself. After much discussion, I think I finally convinced her that I'm up to the task.

It did get me thinking, though....

If we were to buy a house with a large front lawn and I decided I really didn't want to mow it, I'd need a pretty darn impressive excuse to weasel out of my promised husbandly duties. And then it hit me -- the high price of gas! I'm not lazy, I'll tell her, I'm just doing my part to conserve gasoline in this time of crisis.

Hmmmmm.... Think she'll buy it?

Leading By Example

All right, so the latest hullabaloo on imigration reform has to do with whether or not the National Anthem should only be allowed to be sung in English or not. Apparently, a Spanish language version of the national anthem was recently released by a British (!) music producer who said he wanted to honor America's immigrants.

To be honest, I don't really care if the anthem is being sung in English, Spanish, or Swahili, although I do think it's important that the translation be as true to the original version as possible, poetic license aside. I mean, the National Anthem is the national Anthem because of what the words say, not because of the tune (which is actually based on an old English drinking song called "To Anacreon in Heaven" in case you didn't know), so care should definitely be taken when doing the translation. But as long as people are declaring their allegience to the good old U.S. of A., I don't think it really matters in what language they do so. It's the thought that counts, you know?

What cracks me up about all this, though, is when President Bush comes out and says that the National Anthem should only be sung in English because, "People who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English..." Oh really? Funny, I've always wondered whether President Bush himself really had a grasp on the basics of the language. Or maybe I've just been misunderestimating him all this time....

Why veto when you can just ignore?

So anyway, there I was, minding my own business, not hurting anybody, when I read something mind bogglingly disturbing in the Boston Globe.... Did you know that President Bush has been in office longer than any president since Thomas Jefferson without having vetoed a single bill? By itself, this isn't that big a deal I suppose. Keep in mind, though, that when the President vetoes a bill it goes back to Congress so that they have the chance to override the veto by approving the bill with at least a 2/3 majority. Once they override the veto, the President is Constitutionally bound to enforce it in his role as the Chief Executive.

No, the fact that Bush never vetoes anything isn't what disturbs me to the core of my being. The thing that sends the little screaming heebie-jeebies running down my spine is the fact that Bush has been busy appending "signing statements" to many of the bills he has ostensibly approved (more than 750 in total, which represents about 1 in every 10 bills he has signed). And just what is a "signing statement" you may ask? Well, apparently it's a statement of Bush's own interpretation of the bill he is signing along with, in many cases, his indication that he has no intention to follow or enforce the bill since it violates his personal interpretation of the Constitution.

Yes, All Presidents take an oath to "uphold the Constitution". But the Constitution grants Congress the power to draft laws and clearly charges the President with the duty "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." It doesn't say the President should enforce only those laws which he personally thinks are Constitutional. That's what the Supreme Court is for. Bush, however, apparently thinks that he alone should be the one to decide what is, or is not, "Constitutional", which is a clear violation of the separation of powers among the various branches of Government.

That's assuming he really thinks this, of course. Personally, I think he (or at least his advisors) knows full well that he does not have such power. But this argument gives him an excuse to ignore any law that he finds personally inconvenient. As long as he ignores the law on "constitutional grounds" it's OK, right?

Ah, it's good to be King President, isn't it?

Warped Earth Designs

Sometimes, as an artist, I feel the need to express myself on a slightly larger canvas. And what could be larger than the entire world? Maybe it's the megalomania that is inherent in all creative people, but something about warping the Earth to my own desires just makes me giggle like a little schoolgirl.

I didn't set out to create a whole section of "Warped Earth" designs, of course. My first experiment in Earth warping was my Christian Earth design, which I created for a Worth1000 contest entitled "Religious Shapes" (the point was to change the shape of something in a picture to that of a religious icon).

Next came my World Peas design, which was also done for a Worth1000 contest (this time for one called "Visual puns").

The rest of the designs, however, were not done for any particular purpose and just struck my fancy at the time. At the moment, in addition to "Christian Earth" and "World Peas", I've got Canned Earth (which I talked about earlier), Peace on Earth and Earth Cubed. Something tells me I'll be adding more designs in the near future, as I just can't resist the occasional temptation to play God....