theology&geometry

Okay. I am kind of squeamish about doing this, but the way I see it, the best-of-Memphis competitions have for too long been dominated by the same blogger, and it’s time to knock the tube-top obsessed off the leaderboard. Fire sale information and salacious and sometimes clandestinely taken pictures of tanned and tipsy women are great and all, I guess**, but there are other blogs out there that deserve some love too. And no, I’m not just talking about this one, although if you do vote for my blog, I will hug you so hard.

So anyway. Go here and vote! Be sure to fill out the majority of the ballot — write-ins are welcome — for it to count. I’m also nominated for best local Twitterer, so if you want to vote for me for that too, I will hug you twice and both times so hard, and then probably tweet about it.

Thank you. And may the best self-absorbed internet citizen win!

* Hotness and wetness may not be available in your region.

** Not really.

(Cross-filed in the shameless friend promotion cabinet)

Check out these sweet page designs featuring Shane McDermott’s artwork. The Facebook page is my favorite, even though Shane had to bust ass to get it done on deadline since his original sketch was lost to the ether thanks to some kind of shitty Illustrator-related technical glitch. Shane, when he reads this post, will probably leave a comment saying that he likes the Facebook illustration, just not as much as the original one he did. And then he will sigh heavily.

That sound you hear is this week sucking the life out of me. It’s been … not great. Apparently my karmic retribution for being in a horrible mood midweek was to turn the tail end of the week into my own private failfest at work.

I got called on the carpet for my participation in this conversation, and I can’t say I don’t see why. I’m an asshole! I don’t mince words! I speak to commenters with the same amount of respect they use when speaking to me and others! I’m a horrible diplomat! But, I know. Put the word “staff” in red allcaps by my name and I guess I seem like a MAJOR asshole. To quote Le Tigre: I get it, I get it, I get it. So I will voluntarily resume shutting the fuck up in story comments since I know I can’t just suddenly get nicer, and I’ve been told that my not niceness isn’t going to fly. Fair enough. I’m a big (biiiiig, according to some critics) girl.

It’s humiliating, though. I hate knowing I’ve done something wrong enough to get in trouble for. Makes me feel like an eight-year-old again, like everyone’s looking at me and thinking about what a fuckup I am. The only difference is that this time I was standing up for something I believe and I don’t have an ounce of regret about it. I am grossed out by the pervasive idea that dudes have the right to gaze at Hot Chicks^TM on demand and at all times, including on a NEWSPAPER’S website. And if you don’t think that’s where that comment thread was heading, then maybe you don’t know the internet very well. Ugh, I need a shower now.

Oh, and compounding my failure rate for the week was the fact that I lost the “forced sex”/”rape” word battle again in this story. Editors are still sticking by the notion that we can’t call it rape if the court isn’t calling it rape. (Related: We used the word “rape” without hesitation over “coerced sex” in this story.) No one seems to really want to acknowledge the point I’m trying to make: That the court terminology is necessarily muddied because it’s motherfucking COURT and there are all KINDS of shenanigans happening there that laypeople don’t get. In a news story, it is possible to both describe what a person is pleading to/charged with AND what he admitted to doing. Are we afraid of being sued for libel at saying the officer raped a woman? Because, uh, he admitted to it, even if he didn’t technically plead to it. Therefore it’s true and libel-proof. Where does our fear of calling a spade a spade come from?

I don’t know. I love my job. I love journalism as an entity and what it can do for a community. I love working for a newspaper and being a total newspaper wonk. But it’s a lonely life being a shrill feminist harpy bitch hag who raises these questions repeatedly and sometimes to ridicule, not just at work but from everyone.

But hey, I’m not a feminist to make friends, you know?

On a decidedly more positive note, I won an award of excellence from SND for two True Crime packages (this one and this one). I’ll finally make it into the SND yearbook. So at least there’s that to stanch the flow of fail this week, I guess.

Completely forgot to post these back in December. Oops.

It’s a pretty remarkable story, especially when you consider it’s about a young lesbian of color. How often does a story like that make it into the paper?

And check out this little explainer video about the series, which was featured today at the annual H.F. Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America in New York:

The CA has nominated the series for a Pulitzer.

I’m ever so slightly behind on posting my True Crime designs, so let’s get caught up.

Part three (ran Sunday, Nov. 1)

(thanks to Shane McDermott for his work on the family tree and pie graphs)

Part four (ran Sunday, Nov. 22)

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my part one design won a Scripps quarterly design award. I got a lot of helpful input from my AME Visuals, and lots of graphic help from freelancer Shelby Murphy and staff illustrator whiz kid Shane McDermott, so I would be remiss in not thanking all of them.

This has been a fun series to work on, despite the overwhelmingly depressing subject matter.

Part two, if you missed it, is here. And check out the series in depth online. Extra points if you can make it through the comments without getting punchy!

I’m rather proud. Review is here.

Part two of the True Crime series rolled out on Sunday. The story chronicles the Clementine neighborhood, which is statistically the most violent area of Memphis. Some pretty incredible journalism here.

Part one’s layout is here.

Nine pages of news-design goodness. Next installment hits the streets Oct. 18. (Please ignore the wonky spread alignment here; were I smarter, I would have tweaked the spreads before uploading individual pages, but I am very, very dumb sometimes. Rest assured that the folios printed in alignment. Or should have.)

Every now and then I get to head up the design on a special project at work, and for a couple of weeks now I’ve been wrestling with this behemoth True Crime special section (will post images as soon as I can get my hands on them; the front-page teeze is at left). A lot of hours and eye twitches went into this section, and I’m really grateful for my co-workers for stepping up to cover so much live design while I was busy trying to pull everything together from multiple sources (lots of reporters and photographers worked on the story, and we farmed some of the graphics out to an intern at another paper) while tons of editors kept close watch and had intense debates about headlines and display photos and what it all meant. Anyway, it was fun to work on, if not completely fucking stressful. Check out the web component here. This is the first in an occasional series. I’ll post the others as they roll out later this year.

I posted just now over at The Memphis Blog about first moviegoing experiences, and I’ve sat here for roughly three seconds trying to dredge up my own memory of my first time at a movie theater, only to thoroughly confuse myself. I guess I’m going to have to ask my parents, because I can only narrow it down to four contenders (one of which I’m not even sure happened): The Abyss, The Little Mermaid, Driving Miss Daisy, and The Wizard. All of those flicks came out in 1989 and I guess I could do some research and see in what order, but, well, meh. But I’m still not convinced it’s any of those, because surely I saw a movie in a theater before I was eight years old, right? I just can’t remember going to any movies before then. In fact, there’s a whole chunk of my childhood I don’t remember at all. Hmmm.

Anyway, the important thing — er, things — to get out of all of this:

• I lost a tooth during The Little Mermaid, which I went to see with my cousin Ashley. I think I remember wrapping it up in a bathroom paper towel and bringing it home to cash it in.

• I saw Driving Miss Daisy with my sister and I’m fairly sure I was a brat through the whole thing, because boy was that a boring movie for a kid to sit through.

• I saw The Abyss with my parents, and they made me cover my eyes during the boob shots. I was fascinated that there was a character named Lindsey, which wasn’t a name I heard a whole lot at the time.

• I’m still not sure I saw The Wizard in the theater, because I think maybe Ashley and I had the choice between The Wizard and The Little Mermaid and I pitched a go-devil fit (as my mother would say) for The Little Mermaid so it won out. I should see if Ashley remembers…