American Typo - Psycho - Whatever

This is actually one of my favourite fonts, even if it is a little bit of a cliche these days. Whether it's Philip Marlowe or Jack Bauer, this font turns up all over the place... It is a font which takes one back to earlier times. I'm just glad I don't have to cover a runic font... This version of the typeface doesn't have the ragged ink-ribbon look that makes something more interesting but then I can't have everything.

Before I go into topical stuff, something that has been in my mind for so long is - how disfigured does a typeface have to be before it is unrecognisable? There are thousands of typefaces and all represent our standard a-z (I'm ignoring non-Roman fonts here, but I'm sure it's applicable there too) and yet most of them can be read. Even the ones that are deliberately obfuscated on some web sites to ensure that webbots can't generate lots of postings on one site. How do we do it? How can our brain be so clever. And I'm sure even Bush can read most of these fonts.

I was going to get into a rant about Bush's stupidisms but that's hardly topical. Well, not today, anyway. But seeing as the font is called American... I still think it should be about the US. Sort-of. Alan Greenspan - a bit of a Mr Big in the finance market in the states had this to say about the state of US finances a little while ago: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aYaUhNuevkSU&refer= and now he's telling us that we're more likely to suffer than the US market because of the way our mortgages are structured: http://infowars.net/articles/september2007/170907Greenspan.htm. How much money do you want to bet that he's not lost out on any of this - even if he wasn't paid for the interviews (which I would guess is unlikely). But let's not be bitter - especially if you've just managed to get one of the latest Woolwich Building Society 10yr fixed rate mortgages at 5.59% (http://www.personal.barclays.co.uk/BRC1/jsp/brccontrol?site=pfs&task=articleFWwealth&value=9631&target=_self) What do they know that we don't?

Then we have Al Gore - The guy who almost... well, who failed, really, didn't he? Just because he didn't know how to hack all those automated polling booths. But, bless him, he sort-of got an Oscar and now he's got an Emmy for child-oriented TV. I'm sure Bush, Bush Snr and Reagan were major voters: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TN_TV_EMMYS_GORE_TNOL-?SITE=TNJAC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT.

Oh I could go on and on about the US, generally not in a positive way, so it's probably better that I shut up now...