Little Bunnies Jump
Back in Grade 9, when the pinnacle of desktop publishing was a program for the Apple IIE called Printshop, my computer class was given the assignment of creating a little newspaper . More of a bulletin, really, on one sheet of paper. And I still have it! It is one of my proudest achievements, in fact. I called my paper "Little Bunnies Jump", and I even modifeid the rudimentary clipart to make it look like one of the bunnies on my banner was indeed jumping.
The first and only issue featured stories such as "Chickens Fight for Their Rights", "Poaching Heats Up In Africa", "Harry the Beaver Hailed as Animal of the Month", and "Roy Rhino Wins First in Hurdles". All of the stories were accompanied by more clip art, some of it changed slightly to better reflect the article, as in the Rhino story, where I added a little hurdle beneath Roy. And Harry the Beaver had a little medal added to him. Strangely, there are no stories about bears or poo. My favorite story, because the clipart is so great, is "Mouse Killed by Elephant". The clipart I used was a picture of a smiling elephant with one foot raised up just off the ground, so I added in a little mouse just underneath the foot. The copy reads, "Today was a day of tragedy for people of the mice persuasion as a long and uneasy truce was broken by a member of the elephant species. It seems that an elephant in cold blood stepped on a defenceless mouse as shown here. Mice are now preparing for war and some are being sent as harbingers of war already."
As you can see, my editorial bias seemed to favor the mice, which I am quite happy with in hindsight given my recent affiliation with a mouse.
I got 90% on the assignment, with the only comment being "Weak banner", which quite offended me since my banner featured a little bunny jumping. I wish I had a banner even half as good for this blog! What else was I supposed to put in my banner? So I crossed out the weak and wrote in great, like this: Weak Great banner. I continued this practice of self-affirmation well into university.
As I recall, Jonny Smelter also came up with a great design, though for the life of me I can't remember what it was. I will have to email him and ask him about it.
Anyways, Happy Easter everybody!