Good grief, is the holiday weekend really over? I hope yours was as good as mine, I spent low-key style, in the Northern California countryside with friends and family. I also had a chance to catch up on some long overdue reading. Already highly suspicious of our fairly-elected leader – oh, assuming I lost most of you there I meant our President in a tongue-in-cheek way – anyhow, I had the privilege of being further enlightened by Al Franken’s genius piece of political satire, Lies And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. It was provocative and funny but mostly a well-researched, infuriatingly frustrating look at Bush, Bush’s cabinet and the lying reporters who knowingly distort the truth before the American public. I consider it a must-read for anyone who claims to care about this country, regardless of their political affiliations – as one Amazon reviewer put it, “Read it and enjoy being an American again”.

On the car trip home, I also started listening to Michael Moore’s Dude, Where’s My Country?, which is beginning to paint even a darker, more sinister picture of the current American political landscape. And finally, I was able to crack two great design books, Problem Solved!, a designer’s look at contemporary advertising, and The Art of Looking Sideways (pictured above), a fantastic book (and value at under $30) from Phaidon Press that, as on the Amazon website states, is an absolutely extraordinary and inexhaustible "guide to visual awareness," a virtually indescribable concoction of anecdotes, quotes, images, and bizarre facts that offers a wonderfully twisted vision of the chaos of modern life. Worth checking out.