Regarding the marks of man, I have heard your cries. You say, “The space allotted for the mark is tall like the heavens. It springs up like a tree and my hand cannot move the heights. Yet the mark is as the hair on the lip: wide and glorious.” Your complaints I have heard and I regard them not. For who are you to change the hair on the lip? Is it not the identity of the man? You shave the ends of the hair and the man is no more. Will you allow your heights to bring low the man? Alas, this should not be.
(For who told you to keep your thoughts within the box and so break the law? Move them outside of it and flourish.)
Yet you say to me, “The mark is found within a larger message—a message the governing authorities have allotted 0.3 cubits by 0.5 cubits. See how the maker of the message constrained the size to 0.3 cubits by 0.4 cubits.” You foolish deviser. You inventor of excuses. Will the maker of the message thank you for changing the message? Did he not have the means to bring it under the authority of the government? He will heap burning coals on your head! I proclaim it would be better for that message to have been centered in the allotted space than to use up the full number of cubits and be cast into shame.
Still I hear your words, “I am young in the ways of machines, and know not how to increase the mark without creating a blemish.” Have you not eyes to see? Have you not fingers to type? Have you no internet connection? Your laziness keeps you from searching for truth and I turn my face. Has not the shift key been given you since the dawn of keyboards? Could not your brother in the next cubicle have revealed this to you? For I know you drag the corner of the bounding box, trusting your own eye as a guide. May this never be!
How long will you persist in ignorance? For boldly you ask, “Then when can I add height to the mark, or when can I add to its width?” My strength fails as I whisper, “Never.” Do not ask me “But what if?” for my answer will remain the same. There are three things I hate, yea four that are anathema to me: hands that insert two dashes for an em dash, mouths that cry “back slash” in the presence of a forward slash, feet that run to place two spaces after a period, and the disproportionate stretching of a logo.
With apologies to Ian Frazier
I think I’m in love. I just stumbled across your blog and was not disappointed.
Thanks, Katie. This was definitely one of my stranger posts. Glad you enjoyed it!