Get it: "A Secret History of Coffee, Coca, and Cola"

Ricardo Cortes, the "Secret" author, has been researching this book for years. It's the kind of journalistic work that changes the way you see the world. (And he can draw!)

His campaign for transparency in the international trade of the coca leaf has lead him here: the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which he explains way better than I ever could in the linked editorial.

Evidently, that schoolyard legend about cocaine in your Coke is actually still true...maybe. At least, the Coca Cola Company includes coca leaves in its legendary secret formula...and the treaty says their brewing partners--Maywood Chemical Works--are the only ones in the world that can get them.

My doesn't that keep the price low?

Tangent...letterpress printing

I've finally settled on a pretty decent business card design. I've abdicated those tricky and critical decisions about job title and what contact info to include by choosing a Victorian calling card style...premature commitment, averted!

But ok, so instead of doing some overblown design or cutie-pie graphics, I'm nerding out big time on the printing process instead. Letterpress, of course. And not only cause it's more beautiful than any digital process, but because...der...that's how the Victorians did it!

I like to get distracted by things I know I'll never do so I don't have to spend time doing all the shitty things that nobody wants to do...like taxes. Here's one sweet way to spend time - taking letterpress classes at The Arm, a community letterpress shop in Brooklyn - and making my cards myself!

Yes! But no, Phoebe, no you're not.

Best Woman evarrrr!

My 2013 is pretty much set. I've accomplished all I need to for the year. I have been selected as the Best Woman for my best friend's supergaylawaspulisticexpialadohiocious NH wedding this summer!

And in the same vein, I can't wait to see the full film of Wonder Women!, a doc about society's manifestation of contemporary gender profiles through everyone's favorite superheroine: Wonder Woman!

Get it: Dragimals!

My gal Kat made this game, Dragimals, that's so good it makes me want to have a friggin baby.

If you have one (or just get down playing like a baby), you can get it at the app store.

New toy!

When the first iPad came out I was like...yeah, but its too big! I can't carry that in my bag - I need a whole fraking backpack to accommodate this "mobile" device!

But you know what would be cool? A screen about the size of a book...now that, I'll buy!

And I did.

SPOM: The Spirit of Cycling, Alex Moulton

Yet another nugget of awesomeness from Mom:

Alex Moulton, Creator of Quirky Small-Wheeled Bike

Mr. Moulton wrote in the mid-1990s, in a pamphlet titled “The Moulton Bicycle: The World’s Most Efficient Form of Transport.”
“The contrast in the activity of motoring and cycling could not be more profound,” he continued. “The driver, who sits in a low, enclosed, air-conditioned environment or ‘cage,’ is only sensually and nervously involved and is isolated from the surroundings; whereas the cyclist, with a high sightline and in the open air, is physically involved, and proceeds in that miraculous way entirely by his or her own effort of health-giving exercise, with nervous relaxation and spiritual uplift even!” 

I couldn't have said it better myself