Alright, update time.
I've been working a fun, but low paying job at a game company (low paying for what I'm trained to do). as an assistant art director, which is really more of an admin type thing. Recently, though, I've gotten to review portfolios, do a little design work. and continue to rail against copperplate gothic, the best looking overused font of all time.
The more research I do and the more education I acquire, the more I realize how much dead weight exists on a corporate level. I know most jobs are gotten by who you know. But, so many of those who you knows are really getting by on slight of hand. I'm not talking about a what have you done for me lately type thing. I'm talking about fundamental ignorance of their own profession. In a specific example, I've run into a working, professional designer that not only still lays out text pages in photoshop, but lays out multipage text documents in photoshop. That's okay if in the world of club posters and desktop publishing; but in a professional business point of view it's like taking your $50,000 car to Uncle Fred because he happens to have a metric socket set. Nut, I'm sure you all have your own examples in your own jobs.
As if that wasn't me being asshole enough, I've been having to say no three times a day to various breast cancer causes I run into while out and about. Now, to be fair, Safeway does both breast cancer stuff and prostate cancer stuff. But I've got a couple of things to say about the whole thing. Firstly, the term breast cancer awareness, bugs me. Is there any literate person in this country that isn't aware of breast cancer at this point? They have the best PR/Marketing of any disease/cause not featuring a kid in a hospital bed and/or with flies on them. Seriously, if you are unaware of breast cancer you really haven't been paying attention.
And that leads to the second thing.
You know what the leading cause of death in women is? Not breast cancer. In fact, the breast cancer isn't even the leading cause of cancer death in women. What is? Heart disease, of course. Heart disease kills one out of every two women. That's 50%, or half, for the mathematically impaired. Heart disease kills more women than all cancers combined. And you know that leading cancer death cause thingy? That's lung cancer and it kills almost twice as many women as breast cancer does. Which is still a lot less than heart disease.
Sadly, the leading cause of death among pregnant women is homicide. Which is the suck.
Now, I'm not saying breast cancer isn't a worthy cause. But here's the scary part: less than 50% of women are aware of those facts. Speaking of awareness.
That's an increase from 34% as recent of 2000. Even Sadder? Among minority women, who are the greatest risk of dying of heart disease, that percentage drops to below 30%.
Hey, it gets better. Even though around 50% of women are aware, only 13% would list it as their own greatest health risk. But, awareness is the first step.
So, what I'm saying, I guess, is heart disease should get the same PR firm and cute pink ribbon campaign as breast cancer. 'Cause I've never been asked to donate money to women's heart disease.
In lighter news my flag football team won our first game. I just joined this year, but supposedly they haven't won in the three years since the league was formed. I'm taking full credit, as it was the first game I got to play at linebacker for the whole game and I made around 8 tackles. Next nearest dude got two. And those were sacks caused by me rushing and pulling his blocker off him. So, yeah, I'm full of myself tonight. Super linebacker/designer/preacher, that's me.
My roommate is leaving for Italy tomorrow. She's already at her dad's house, and she won't be back for about two weeks. I have a house alone, which hasn't happened for a couple years now. Too bad I don't really drink and am currently without girly girl. But, some friends are coming over Tuesday to smoke cigars on the pouch and watch ultimate man fighting, so it won't be all bad.
I've been working a fun, but low paying job at a game company (low paying for what I'm trained to do). as an assistant art director, which is really more of an admin type thing. Recently, though, I've gotten to review portfolios, do a little design work. and continue to rail against copperplate gothic, the best looking overused font of all time.
The more research I do and the more education I acquire, the more I realize how much dead weight exists on a corporate level. I know most jobs are gotten by who you know. But, so many of those who you knows are really getting by on slight of hand. I'm not talking about a what have you done for me lately type thing. I'm talking about fundamental ignorance of their own profession. In a specific example, I've run into a working, professional designer that not only still lays out text pages in photoshop, but lays out multipage text documents in photoshop. That's okay if in the world of club posters and desktop publishing; but in a professional business point of view it's like taking your $50,000 car to Uncle Fred because he happens to have a metric socket set. Nut, I'm sure you all have your own examples in your own jobs.
As if that wasn't me being asshole enough, I've been having to say no three times a day to various breast cancer causes I run into while out and about. Now, to be fair, Safeway does both breast cancer stuff and prostate cancer stuff. But I've got a couple of things to say about the whole thing. Firstly, the term breast cancer awareness, bugs me. Is there any literate person in this country that isn't aware of breast cancer at this point? They have the best PR/Marketing of any disease/cause not featuring a kid in a hospital bed and/or with flies on them. Seriously, if you are unaware of breast cancer you really haven't been paying attention.
And that leads to the second thing.
You know what the leading cause of death in women is? Not breast cancer. In fact, the breast cancer isn't even the leading cause of cancer death in women. What is? Heart disease, of course. Heart disease kills one out of every two women. That's 50%, or half, for the mathematically impaired. Heart disease kills more women than all cancers combined. And you know that leading cancer death cause thingy? That's lung cancer and it kills almost twice as many women as breast cancer does. Which is still a lot less than heart disease.
Sadly, the leading cause of death among pregnant women is homicide. Which is the suck.
Now, I'm not saying breast cancer isn't a worthy cause. But here's the scary part: less than 50% of women are aware of those facts. Speaking of awareness.
That's an increase from 34% as recent of 2000. Even Sadder? Among minority women, who are the greatest risk of dying of heart disease, that percentage drops to below 30%.
Hey, it gets better. Even though around 50% of women are aware, only 13% would list it as their own greatest health risk. But, awareness is the first step.
So, what I'm saying, I guess, is heart disease should get the same PR firm and cute pink ribbon campaign as breast cancer. 'Cause I've never been asked to donate money to women's heart disease.
In lighter news my flag football team won our first game. I just joined this year, but supposedly they haven't won in the three years since the league was formed. I'm taking full credit, as it was the first game I got to play at linebacker for the whole game and I made around 8 tackles. Next nearest dude got two. And those were sacks caused by me rushing and pulling his blocker off him. So, yeah, I'm full of myself tonight. Super linebacker/designer/preacher, that's me.
My roommate is leaving for Italy tomorrow. She's already at her dad's house, and she won't be back for about two weeks. I have a house alone, which hasn't happened for a couple years now. Too bad I don't really drink and am currently without girly girl. But, some friends are coming over Tuesday to smoke cigars on the pouch and watch ultimate man fighting, so it won't be all bad.
The whole photoshop thing... I've worked with guys who just stared at me when I'd crack open illustrator and... uh... illustrate in it. "You don't do that in photoshop?" "Uh, no... the pen tool in photoshop is terrible, and... come on... there's a reason it's called illustrator." Or even worse, a friend of mine who made the footer graphic of his site a swf... mind you, there was no animation in this file, and a GIF would have saved him like 30-40k in file size (let alone the extra markup). When I asked him, he just said "quit bashing Flash!"
As far as the breast cancer v. heart disease issue, it bums me out as well. I agree that there is undue ignorance in this area. I think the main issue with breast cancer is that is psychologically devistating to many women. having a breast removed feel like having part of thier womanhood removed. Although, I'm sure they would be more affected by being dead from heart disease. There is a new "cute" PR thing starting surrounding women's heart disease. It is the "Red Dress" campaign. It started a few years back and is starting to gain exposure.
As far as this issues goes, the medical field has been sadly lagging behind as well. It is just recently (past 10 years or so) that they started to realize, "hey maybe we should get some statistics on female heart disease, ya know since it's killing a butt load of them, instead of just assuming the research on men applies directly to them." That was such a genius move. Who would have thought that men and women's bodies differed.
OK, this response is now almost as long as your blog (but not so long as other things, from what I have heard