Hello hello. Here are some things.

1. Type designer Laurenz Brunner’s new book Dictionary of the Illegible looks like an interesting – if deliberately difficult – read. With examples including comically obtuse black metal logos, Ray Gun’s infamous Bryan Ferry interview (set entirely in Zapf Dingbats), CAPTCHA text, grawlixes and graffiti, Brunner explores the limits of language and proposes illegibility as “a strategy for navigating a world increasingly governed by visibility, efficiency, and total surveillance”.

2. Eagerly observing Alistair’s quest to find the earliest known instance of the “quick brown fox” pangram. Wikipedia dates it as appearing in The Boston Journal in 1885, but that is clearly a reference to existing usage.

3. The wisdom of freshly centenarian Mel Brooks from this 2021 New Yorker interview:

   I’d learned one very simple trick: say yes. Simply say yes. Like Joseph E. Levine, on “The Producers,” said, “The curly-haired guy—he’s funny looking. Fire him.” He wanted me to fire Gene Wilder. And I said, “Yes, he’s gone. I’m firing him.” I never did. But he forgot. After the screening of “Blazing Saddles,” the head of Warner Bros. threw me into the manager’s office, gave me a legal pad and a pencil, and gave me maybe twenty notes. He would have changed “Blazing Saddles” from a daring, funny, crazy picture to a stultified, dull, dusty old Western. He said, “No farting.” I said, “It’s out.” He said, “You can’t punch a horse.” I said, “You’ll never see it again.” I kept saying, “You’re absolutely right. It’s out!” Then, when he left, I crumpled up all his notes, and I tossed it in the wastepaper basket. And John Calley, who was running [production at] Warner Bros. at the time, said, “Good filing.” That was the end of it. You say yes, and you never do it.

   Any of my art directors reading this, I absolutely do not condone this sort of behaviour. Not one bit. Nope.

4. At a time where all interviews are chopped up and turned into infinite scrollable soundbites, there’s something quite lovely about these Criterion montages of filmmakers sitting still and being quiet while interviewers record room tone.

5. I know next to nothing about tennis (it’s like an untethered, gruntier version of Swingball, right?), but this site showcasing the art of Roland-Garros could make me a true believer. Each year, the tournament commissions a different French artist to design a poster, with some absolutely stunning results. As rectangles go, they’re all fantastic, but I feel sorry for anyone who came after Gilles Aillaud’s downright perfect 1984 offering.

6. Stamp your own mutant long cats.

7. Fourth Cone working their magic, restoring a seven-foot Empire Strikes Back poster. I could watch hours of this stuff, it’s so calming (although I do find the sheer amount of water involved to be quite distressing … presumably they know what they’re doing).

8. “The ballista spider builds a snare trap designed to catch a single species of ant, which launches the prey into its web with a g-force that would kill a human.” Um, okay evolution, if we could just table that for now.

9. Raymond Biesinger’s “Bookmobiles on Parade” illustrations for the Literary Review of Canada are absolutely darling. Now contemplating the potential brilliance of a mobile library version of Wacky Races. … my money would be on the ludicrously retro-scifi 1950s Milanese one.

10. Halcyonine, myrmecophagine, icterine, phascolomian, hippopotamine and other useful animal adjectives. You don’t have to memorise all of these, but imagine if you did.

That is all.