Launcher dispenses up to eight cards at a time.

One of my hobbies (now that my main hobby has become my main source of income) is reading advertisement fine print - especially television ads. Occasionally, this blog will focus a magnifying glass on such tiny print, such as this ad (which runs around the Christmas shopping months)...

"Launcher dispenses up to eight cards at a time. "

Fine print from a UNO Attack TV advertisement. Besides being shocked to discover that the UNO brand is now owned by Mattel (at least it's not Hasbro - the giant corporation which absorbed all of our childhood toys), I was puzzled that this limitation with the game warranted a fine print mention commercial - fine print usually being reserved for safety warnings and legal disclaimers. Sometimes a fine print message is required because of a lawsuit or potential lawsuit. Toy commercials always have great fine print because the commercials are usually misleading and kids are so naive. Fine print with toy commercials range from "Some assembly required" or "Faces on cards do not actually talk".

I went to the UNO website to gain some insight about the eight card warning. I found line in the UNO Action description: "This frenzied unpredictable game features unique rules and electronic card shooter that may shoot no cards or might shoot up to 8!"

Germaine suggests that the fine print was present to counter the visuals in the commercial where it looks like more than eight cards are being launched. Even the song in the commercial mentions that you might get eight cards. So all this energy was spent to clarify that while it looks like the kid is being pummeled by countless cards, he really is only being hit by up to eight at a time. How many meetings and conference calls took place to ensure that the this concept was clear?

An aside. My prediction is that Mattel is going to use the UNO brand like Nabisco uses the Oreo brand and release numerous different versions of card games with the UNO name. UNO Texas Hold'em, anybody?

Underarm marks will be lighter.

I just saw a commercial on Lifetime TV. It was for Degree anti-antiperspirant. Here's some of the fine print:

Do not attempt. (Woman does somersaults from the bathroom to her bedroom - trying to dry her underarms.)

Secret is a registered TM of Procter & Gamble. Forearm white marks. Underarm marks will be lighter. (Screen shows Secret being globbed on some woman's forearm.)

Little black dress approved.

Just baffling...

Now I can talk about it...

I had to keep quiet about the NASA and Internet Archive relationship until it was publicly announced. It was finally announced here. I hoped there would be a bigger fanfare, but maybe it's early.

So NASA HQ in Washington DC looks just like any other government building surrounding the Mall. Very nondescript except for the NASA logo (the classic one, not the "worm logo"). I don't know what I was expecting - maybe some Jetson-esque structure or something along the lines of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center. Something that would tell the world - "this place is important! It is where we plan to get our species off this clod of dirt and onto another..." However the actual style of this building could just as easily claim - "this is where you get your teeth cleaned and renew your car insurance".

Nonetheless, entering the building is very exciting. Getting a security badge and going through the metal detectors all make the visit seem so important (although going through a metal detector nowadays is so commonplace). Immediately, however, it is clear that HQ is truly just a big office building on the inside too. No flashy sci-fi, high tech stuff - only the occasional NASA space poster or informational flier about the Heimlich maneuvers. I remember going to Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, MD a couple of years ago and was struck by how much it looked like a community college campus - totally unremarkable. In my mind, NASA is a real no-frills type of organization - no need for the flash of sexy and futuristic, the standard issue office building will do...

While riding the elevator to the conference room, I saw a piece of bright pink chewed gum stuck on a rail near the back. I had to say something. "This is why I like NASA. All this high-tech stuff and here's some gum stuck on the elevator." Our good-natured NASA liaison quipped "That gum's probably been in space!" For some reason, I really liked seeing the gum. Here is an organization who is primarily known for their forward-thinking, extraterrestrial endeavors and yet their headquarters has all sorts of signs of how humans really are. Sure we can put a man on the moon, but can we keep chewing gum out of the nooks and crannies of our lives...? (Although, the recent discovery of 5000 year old chewed gum in Finland reminds me that chewing gum predates most aspects of Western civilization, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised of its pervasiveness).

So the building wasn't amazing, the people were your run of the mill folks, and yet, I'm still in awe of the achievements of this organization. This is why, in spite of all hurdles ahead, I'm so excited about this project.

Sound of the other shoe dropping...

Long time no post. (I'm reminded of Jeff Koyen's rant in his zine Crank against zine writers who would waste a page apologizing for not having published an issue in a while). I'm new to this and don't know the etiquette for being a slack blogger. So here it goes...

Haven't posted in a while because everything related to the giant project was mired in a giant glacier of legal and bureaucratic ice. After announcing to close friends, family and about two hundred folks at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences that was going to be working on this project - nothing really happened.

For those of you who don't know, here is the project. NASA Headquarters wants to unify all of their websites (of which there are a couple thousand) under one big umbrella site. They want all the imagery and video that is currently online all under that umbrella. Next, they want all of the imagery (stills, slides, etc.) that isn't currently online to be scanned and placed online. And finally, they want all of their film and video holdings to be digitized and placed online.

This last phase of the project is where I come in. NASA picked the Internet Archive to do this project. I have a great deal of respect for the Internet Archive and its founder Brewster Kahle. The Archive has also given me a great deal of work in the past which has helped me pay the bills. Over the years, I've digitized many video collections for the Archive - over a thousand of the Prelinger Archive, hundreds of episodes of the Computer Chronicles, Deep Dish TV, over 600 public domain feature films and a hundred or so films from my own A/V Geeks archive. Lots of work but ultimately very rewarding - since this material is now freely available worldwide without advertising. So as the primary video/film digitizer for the Internet Archive, I've been tapped to help with this NASA project.

I was approached about the project almost three years ago - only a little bit before the first post in this blog - and got very excited. Everyone I talked to shared in my enthusiasm - although I could read a hint of disbelief in their eyes. Hell, I couldn't believe it. So, after the big announcement, I heard nothing and any inquiry from friends and family about NASA just added to the disbelief. I began to doubt that it was ever going to happen. Then the other shoe dropped. I got an email saying that the contract was signed and that there was going to be a meeting at NASA HQ in DC...

Dulles Airport - 1984

Besides blathering on about 16mm ephemeral films, I also enjoy blathering on about other things. I used to write/publish a zine named , Preparation X, which had many stories about my and my friends' observations about our culture (the zine's motto "We uncover the hidden mechanisms that drive society - and laugh at its shoddy craftsmanship"). Weblogs pretty much destroyed the zine community - so here I am spewing content in the latest "cool" format.

Anyhow, the immense project that I've hinted at above required a trip to Washington, DC. I was given about 24 hours notice and quickly had to book a flight to Dulles. That airport is pretty lousy - mostly because it is under construction.

I arrived at 7am, had my 90 minute meeting in DC, bummed around the Mall (bought an umbrella at the National Air and Space Museum, glanced at the conservative Stand Up for Marriage rally featuring young people carrying 8 ft tall wooden crosses, realized the umbrella I had just purchased was defective and I no longer had the receipt, went to the initially cheezy, but later interesting, International Spy Museum).

I glanced at my watch and realized that I needed to get back to Dulles. I had investigated online that I could take the Metro subway and pick up a bus that went to Dulles - total cost only $4.00! A cab ride would cost over around $50. I had already spent way too much on a plane ticket, a defective umbrella and a Metro pass (got off on the wrong stop on the way to my DC meeting and scrambled to get back on, ending up with a $15 Metro pass), so a $4 ride to the airport would help me cut my losses.

Well, the bus to the airport never showed up. I quickly hailed a cab and glanced at my watch. It would take 30 minutes to get to the airport, so I would only have 30 minutes to check in and go through security. Earlier in the morning, at RDU, this process only took 5 minutes. I didn't have any luggage and I had an e-ticket - really, how long could it take?

As the Beltway traffic thickened and the cab driver started apologizing for the delays, I decided to stop looking at my watch. No need to get anxious about something I had no control over.

We got to Dulles and I emptied out most of the cash in my wallet to pay for the cab, leaving only $6 and a Metrocard. I walked into the Main Terminal at Dulles and was engulfed by a sea of people. There seemed to be some sort of giant snaking line of folks. Anybody entering the terminal was immediately confused and asked the same question - "Is this line for checking in?" No, we were told, this was the line for security. A giant complex line with no discernable beginning or end. Everybody in the line had the same demoralized, vacant stare. Never before had I seen such an Orwellian event - masses of people waiting in tremendous lines just to be processed by the government. I immediately succumbed to the mass depression (mostly because I was exhausted - waking up at 4:30am to get to the airport). I found some e-ticket kiosks. Their lines were long and intermingled with the main security line - a line that really had no order to it. It seemed like the kiosk lines never advanced and I kept seeing flashes on the screen that "this kiosk was out of order". I waited in another line to try to check in - again no movement. People around me were looking at their watches - "well, there goes my flight". I finally looked at mine - "well, there goes my flight". I found an airline employee and told him about my situation. He had only heard this several hundred times today. "Go around to the other side to the ticket counter and rebook your flight."

I managed to book the last seat on the last flight of the evening to Raleigh, NC. It was leaving at 9:30pm. Waiting another, 4 hours at the airport didn't seem so bad, given I could have to spend the night there. Plus 4 hours would be plenty of time to get through the security line.

Below, the red line is the path that I had to take to get to the TSA security checkpoint x-rays. Note that the end of the line was inside a coil of people. At one point, I got very concerned that the line I was in was just going around in a long circle. It took me about 90 minutes to get to the x-ray machines.

Once I got through I was tired but happy. I ate some lousy airport food and sat at my gate, trying not to fall asleep waiting for my plane to depart and eavesdropping a "friendly" argument about weapons of mass destruction and the efficacy of the current President.

Moral of the story: Under no circumstances should you fly out of Dulles airport. I could have driven home from the Dulles terminal and gotten back hours before my flight arrived in Raleigh.

some backstory...

More than ten years ago, my roommates brought home over 500 16mm educational films from an auction. I had to work and so wasn't able to attend the auction. I had begged my roommates to buy me a film or two - secretly thinking that they would probably only buy films for themselves since we were all broke, post-college students working crappy jobs. I returned from my job and asked the roommates if they had bought any films. They both grinned and pointed at the large stack of films that I had just walked passed (truth be told, the front room of our house was packed with stuff - band equipment, printing presses, photocopiers, old TVs, etc. - and it was easy to ignore the clutter). Excited, we started watching the films. They had come from North Carolina's Dept of Human Resources and covered a variety of topics - personal hygiene, public health, drug abuse, nutrition, VD, etc.

As I watched each film, something inside of me clicked. It was easy to watch these films and laugh at their dated messages, corny dialogue and low budget production quality, but there was something else here that really stimulated a part of my brain. I would feel the same way whenever I would go to the NC State Univ. library - walking through the stacks and randomly stopping and browsing some arcane trade journal. I would study the beautiful illustrations and advertising and giggle at the trade-specific cartoons I would find in this journals. Here was a glance into an alien world - a whole field of expertise that I just barely even thought about and certainly would never consider being a part of. Watching the newly-acquired, yet obsolete, 16mm films gave me that same thrill - an irrational passion, if you will.

So now, I have over 14,000 such films in my collection. Most of them have come from schools and government agencies. Almost none of them are feature films (theatrical films). Most of them are industrial, educational and almost all are ephemeral (made for a specific audience at a specific time). I periodically show the films and I make them available on DVD and online. But you probably already know that...