So I have reason to believe the English hate the French. Actually three reasons — specifically, three examples where our limey cousins have expunged the word French from common phrases:

• French Fries
  Here in the United States, we only remove the French from this crispy treat's name when our Francophobia reaches a fever pitch. Meanwhile, the Brits use a different name all the time: chips.
• French Toast
  If you ever really stop to think about it, French toast isn't even really toast. And still this light, fluffy breakfast food is a source of pride for the French people — sort of like how beer is to Germans or disturbing pornography is to the Japanese. So imagine the gall of the English to call it something descriptive like eggy bread.
• French Kissing
  Perhaps France's most significant contribution to Western culture since stripes, Englishmen instead call this continental creation snogging.

Understandably, there may be some unresolved tension from that whole Norman invasion thing but come on, England, bury the hatchet!

In an interview published in the latest issue of Complex, cover girl Zooey Deschanel says this:

My philosophy is that art should be as pure as possible, and as much as there is a separate component of audience reaction, whatever creative things I do should be unaffected. I don’t ever want to do something in anticipation of someone. The more you guess what people are going to like and dislike, to me, that is corrupting the product.

In an interview published in Art is Work, cover boy Milton Glaser says this:

When art is defined as an activity driven entirely by the needs of of self-expression, I become very nervous. The overwhelming history of art, in fact, has been the history of people doing work for a specific purpose, in other words, commissioned works with specific intentions. After all, Michelangelo did not paint the "Last Judgement" to express himself. He painted it because the Pope wanted to scare the bejeesus of of the congregation. The idea that art is primarily an expressive medium is a recent invention not more than two hundred years old.

I don't have much interest in owning a bike (well, not one that requires pedaling) but I happened across these ads today for this bike brand called Titus that I think are pretty spiffy. See the thing about Titus bikes is that they're expensive. So expensive, in fact, that these ads urge bikers to take up a second job in order to afford the $3,300 minimum price tag.

Like most ads I like (or at least the ones that I post here), they're a little edgy. The jobs they suggest you take up are things like phone sex operator and nude model. It's all tongue-in-cheek and actually rather tame, but that didn't stop a magazine called Mountain Bike Action from refusing to run them. (That's when I knew I'd like them.)

Anyway, in addition to being cheeky, these are also charming. I like that they use regular-looking people who bikers can identify as "one of them." I also like that these don't feel like they were very expensive to make, proving that you don't necessarily need a huge budget to do good creative. (But you do need one to buy a good bicycle, apparently.)

(Stolen from Amy Corr's "Out to Launch" at MediaPost.)

Unfortunatly, som of th kys on my kyboar stopp working. I just bought this kyboar a fw wks ago to rpla th on that am with my omputr. That on also only work a fw wks. Thn I us anothr kyboar an it also stopp working. This is why I say I hav ba luk.