“My girlfriend has left me. After four years together, she has left me. It happens, I know. It happens to us all, and my turn has come. This time however I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to throw everything out and start afresh. My second-hand life is for sale; I’m starting a new one. Come and buy. I’m selling up to free myself of all ties.”. (Matteo Caccia)

I break an unwritten rule, presenting something in Italian. It’s worth it.

Vendo Tutto (Everything for Sale): a radio program written and hosted by Matteo Caccia on Radio 24.

You can listen the podcast and the archive of the previous episodes. The sale, real, was on Ebay.
The signature tune is: Ten Millions Slaves by Otis Taylor.

Above: Matteo Caccia, photo from his page on Ebay, detail.

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“I love acting. It is so much more real than life.”

(Oscar Wilde, Reality Is Unrealistic)

“Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés.

Tropes transcend television. They exist in life. Since a lot of art, especially the popular arts, does its best to reflect life, tropes are likely to show up everywhere.”.

TV Tropes: “a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction.”.

“So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever.
Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years.”.

Gapingvoid: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”. By Hugh MacLeod.

Above: Dinosaur (2006), print on paper, © gapingvoid gallery.

“My design features: a vertical orientation, because it’s how I handle money; American artists, we’re a culture, not just a government; corresponding geographical scenes; and a complementary color scheme, with bold, high-contrast numbers.”. (Dean Potter)

The Dollar ReDe$ign Project: “It’s time to rebrand the buck.”. By Richard Smith.

“The history of the Milan subway signs was very interesting, because the subway was completely new. Usually the architect designed the furnishings and then say, “now you have to put the signals”. Instead we created a new system, the famous red band on the M1 line , for the signals. Before then, the station’s name appeared only once in the middle of the quay. I proposed to repeat the name every five meters so that, with the train still in motion, one could immediately see it. This was a world first.”.

“I believe that my work is always a work of communication. Communication means that I have to do a service to another, to be able to make readable a text, and to make understand enough. That’s not to say that it is boring and you can’t do anything. No, there are many possibilities.”. (interview for Rai Educational, 2002)

Top, right: Milan metro sign, 1964.
Bottom, left: Bob Noorda (Amsterdam, 1927 – Milan, 2010), designer.

	“Nicholas Felton spends much of his time thinking about data, charts and our daily routines. He is the author of several Personal Annual Reports that collate countless measurements into a rich assortment of graphs and maps reflecting the year’s activities.”.
	“He is the co-founder of Daytum.com, a site for counting and communicating daily data, and frequent designer of information graphics for numerous corporations and publications.”.

Top: The 2008 Report: Dining/Drinking, detail.
Bottom : The 2009 Report: Relationships/Activities, detail.

“A winter’s day I was going to wear a heavy wool jacket, and there was a cat that was watching me and I thought: this cat doesn’t understand what I am doing, it knows nothing, it knows neither what is a jacket, nor that there is the winter, nor what is the cold, it doesn’t know anything, and it will never know anything because its brain is structured in a manner such that it doesn’t go beyond certain boundaries, it is useless to want to go further.
We are in the same situation, we are under one roof and we fail to never go beyond.”.

(Ettore Sottsass: Conversation under a roof, translated from Wikiquote)

Bender: “I tried helping them. I tried not helping them but in the end I couldn’t do them any good. Do you think what I did was wrong?”

God: “Right and wrong are just words. What matters is what you do.
Being God isn’t easy, if you do too much, people get dependent.
And if you do nothing, they lose hope.
You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket.
When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”

Godfellas: the transcript at the Internet Movie Script Database.
From Futurama, episode 52: Godfellas, written by Ken Keeler (2002).

“This site is a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others.”. Indexed, by Jessica Hagy.

Above: Always. Everyone. Everywhere.

“Zlango is a visual icon-based language where icons replace concepts or words.”.
“Little more than two hundred icons is all it takes to convey daily messages, write songs or transform classic books into a rich and fun experience.
Zlango is an international language relevant in any country or culture.”.

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