Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Vulparroty, a timely concatenation of “vulgarity” and “parrot,” is the name of the avian overlord perched securely above, his prodigious eye fixed upon you, ever watching, ever judging. The old logo, born screaming onto a cold text file one night, was an unseemly hatchet job well past its shelf life, and I’m relieved we were able to retire it. I knew I couldn’t be trusted to renovate the graphic, since my Microsoft Word skills have stagnated these past few years, so I turned to Mod Memento for assistance.

I made sure to contact the proprietor through back channels, naturally, because the official storefront lies in dangerous country: Etsy.com, a terrifying hellscape of handmade crafts and decorations. The urge to weep openly is upon me, truly. Think of Etsy as an artsy eBay, a haven for those who would willingly commune to celebrate design, drawing, sculpture, colors other than black and olive green, knitting–certainly I could visit, but my presence would have all the effectiveness of a church group in Amsterdam.

Chief among my initial requests was the stipulation that no part of the logo could be pink, nor could there be tulips and orchids or some such shit adorning it. Most importantly, though, I wanted to retain a reference to this idea of secondhand discourse, or saying stuff that’s already been said. Well, Boo Bear listened. She delivered. Parrots, in my mind, are usually the province of pirates or pet stores that can’t sell through stock. But they indeed are deft at recycling communication, and this was far cleverer and subtler than the original symbol.

It was a process, of course. There were revisions. The first iteration, Vulparroty Prime, was a malignant-looking beast. And some people continue to be physically incapable of producing swear words, so I suppose we’ll settle for an asterisk, a percentage sign, and a few harsh wingdings for now. The end product, however, was exactly what I needed. When it was finally unveiled, Boo Bear noted how glad she was to “capture the proper expression of a bird with a chip on his shoulder.” Ha! Unbeknownst to her, birds don’t even have shoulders. I don’t think they even have necks.