I miss Tom Tomorrow.

Also, your format change reduced print size and intensity for many articles making them too hard to read. Hope you saved a bundle on ink costs.

TC, Dec 3rd, 2008 1:51pm

 

Surprisingly, the addition and subtraction of comics is one of the more controversial things we do here. We've been boycotted for not firing a cartoonist(this happened many years ago when we were asked to fire John Callahan; when we refused, a protest was staged, complete with signs and megaphones, outside of one of this city's biggest grocery stores). On the other hand, whenever drop a cartoonist we also hear from folks. So it goes with Tom Tomorrow.

As for our redesign, which is now more than a year old, we did change the font of our body type from Officina to Chronicle. But the size of the type didn't change. At the same time, we also reduced the vertical length of the paper a bit to reduce our newsprint costs. But it shouldn't have made the paper harder to read; our goal was to make it easier. You clearly don't agree.

 

Your blistering of Mr. Lister's twisted-sister idea about looking to past ideas for guidance on change/improvement notwitshstanding, I diffidently suggest a short feature titled, "Why People Can't Write Good." The subject of misspelled signage alone would be worth a year's columns. Using profanity for emphasis is deplorable, but it's fucken everywhere, as with the word "marshal"; nobody in Hollywood can spell it, apparently. Kids watch movies, read the words on the screen. The words are spelled wrong. "Balloon" is another one that floats up, frequently misspelled.

Next is punctuation. Simple, except for hyphens. (And don't you hate to have to look up those little eyeballs above the A in the word angstrom, to see if they're supposed to be there? What's with umlauts? But we should ignore all the shit and scurf that Europe sprinkles on every other word. "Cafe" is just fine without the accent mark. Scrape 'em all off our beloved mother tongue, except maybe for cedillas and tildes. Maybe.)

Define spoonerisms. List Portland-specific spoonerisms. Note ease with which profanities disappear into camouflage: "I caught the flucken foo."

Unrelated topic: Ever notice how some readers seem to come-like-a-dog in bliss when they can vent and tell you what a rag WWeek is? This or that writer's a moron? Way I see it, it's the pinnacle of self-interest to calm everybody down somehow. Give 'em something funny and short to suck on. Everyone's jonesing for Night Cabbie.

 

Distiller from Rogue; great article Ben about the whiskey. One thing: I'm a duck, not a beaver. Cheers!

 

thanks for the correction; my classmates freaked out.... ~yours in a tub of rum, mel