My house’s rush started this week, and as usual I’m doing the posters for it. :) I’m gonna be posting (haha) the ones I’m particularly proud of on here as the events go by. This one for the first day is definitely my favorite so far; big thanks go out to my Little for modeling for me.

The dinner posters are the same design as last year.

If any of you readers are around MIT campus, feel free to stop by for any of our rush events! :) We’d love to have you.

A while back I posted my incomplete design for a tattoo requested by a friend of mine. Well, now it’s done!

As you can see, we went with the spherical coil design, rotated the whole thing, and threw in some back legs just for good measure. (NOW try to tell me it looks like a seahorse. :p )

She’s still not sure on placement, but this is my suggestion. I love how it looks like it’s holding on to the ankle bone!

As always, I would love to hear your opinions!

Step 1: Order some of Starbucks’ “perfect oatmeal” and some coffee

(this is a tall, I think it works with all sizes)

Step 2: Place the oatmeal on top of the coffee

Step 3: Marvel at the perfect fit and how easy it now is to carry

OMGOMGOMG, I’ve just been informed that when you search “armadillo tattoo” in Google images my design is on the first page!!!

For some reason the sketches rank higher than the design that shows up, but that is a-ok with me!

This is definitely not the final design, btw. I’ll be posting some new developments soon. :)

I was originally going to blog the posters one by one as the events happened, but then I remembered I’m really fucking busy. So! Here, for your viewing pleasure, are all the rush posters I did for my house this semester.

I live in WILG, the Women’s Independent Living Group, and a lot of campus seems to think we’re all either housewives or raging lesbians. We don’t really help that first stereotype by traditionally having extremely girly rush events – spa night, cookie baking lessons, etc. Most of us actually dislike these activities and we’ve had very poor attendance, even by house members, at these events in the past. This year the awesome rush chairs and I decided to take a bit of a different tactic. We put together a marketing campaign that makes us seem cookie-loving yet tomboyish, feminine yet nerdy, womanly yet badass.

The super bowl one’s my favorite. :) I also updated our dinner menu posters, which used to include lots of sans serif fonts and clip art. This year they look like this:

We’re only 4 days into rush so far and we’ve already had a pretty good turnout. I can’t really say how it compares to last year’s rush, but I’ve seen a lot of awesome people walk through our door, including someone who has become near and dear to my heart. You know who you are. <3 If any of you are around MIT, stop by for dinner or an event (especially if you’re an undergraduate girl!). Dinners are always delicious, but this weekend will include our biiiig parties. And I promise, there will be no painting of toenails or baking of cookies, but neither will there be naked pillow fights. Sorry. You have to pledge to see those.

My house’s rush starts tomorrow and I’ve been putting a looooot of effort into preparing for it. I’m putting together most of the postering and also revamped the website, which is nice looking but not exactly finished, so maybe check it out now but definitely again in a couple of days. :p

I’ll be blogging the poster designs on here as the events draw closer, so check back for pretty pictures AND info on awesome things you should go to if you’re around MIT. :)

This has been a super fun process and I’m really psyched for this year’s rush! A big ol’ shout out to our awesome rush chairs for everything they’ve done this year, including being my willing, if giggly, models. <3 you guys.

I watched V for Vendetta recently (again), which is one of my favorite movies. Not only is it full of deliciously dark political criticism,  it’s absolutely gorgeous, from the cinematography to the graphic design. I’ve always been a big fan of the logo they chose to represent the evil regime.

It shows up whenever the party needs to make itself known, in speeches and meetings and badges. Oh, and all their 1984-esque posters.

It’s a quite attractive symbol, stark and memorable. Easily scrawled on walls and armbands, an essential feature for a representation of any uprising radical government. The shape, known as the “Cross of Lorraine,” was used by the Free French Forces during WWII as an “answer” to the swastika. Very fitting in a lovely twisted way.

Shortly after I watched the movie, I was headed over to Boston on the red line. I sat down, yawned, and then did a huge double take at one of the posters. It was an advertisement for the American Lung Association.

The double-barred cross has been used in a lot of ways through history, but usually as a symbol of some fighting force which presents radical liberation and patriotism, strength and unity. Not words that really come to mind when I think of the ALA, but then again – anything is possible. When our modern day terrorists start disseminating their very own St. Mary’s plague, watch for the ALA to step in to the election and capture our hearts and minds with the promise of health and order. Especially if the illness is an upper respiratory infection. (ba-dum, ch) Seriously though, when I was Googling for that logo I looked up some of the ALA’s posters, and a lot of their old ones are – well, militant looking.

Oh, some of them are sweet enough. Cute kids, caring words, showing how much “your” lung association is working for you.

Things change after they win the election – no smiling faces on the posters anymore, only words. Words of fear.

After that the curfews start. The night patrols are given free reign over civilians and the parts of the city not covered by surveillance dwindle ever smaller. It’s easy to control the news networks and keep the citizens in fear, all that’s left is a little nudging to keep patriotism strong. Keep our country united against the Enemy.

The ALA will gain ever tighter control until one day Hugo Weaving will appear and blow up the headquarters of the National Academy of Sciences, starting a new age of freedom and independence where we can all once again breathe easy.

A few days ago, I put this up as my Facebook status.

At the time this was just a silly observation, but then I started wondering: just how connected are all of the big media-sharing sites? For which sites can you make a complete graph? How about a complete bidirectional graph? Is it possible to create a loop of automatically updating connections between these services? How many internet users do you need to sacrifice to open that wormhole? I put on my sleuthing cap and went to Google.

I searched for connections among all the services mentioned above and I threw in SMS because while I don’t use it I know a lot of people do (Oh, and it takes 5 points to make a Pentacle). Here’s what I found. For many of these there are multiple applications that can do the same thing – I just arbitrarily chose one that would best complete the graph.

A panel from a shirt about MIT majors that wasn’t quite good enough to complete. This was the Course 9 square. Dug it up, thought it was cute.

So – would you buy it?