The Richter Scale^®

My wife and I attended the Miami Beach Gift Show last month to see if we could find some new wares to offer on our http://www.BonaireStuff.com on-line store. While the theme of the show was mostly tropical goods (we found a number of new flamingo products), we also came across The Wink Toy Company, which has taking the emoticons we all know and love in our e-mails and embodied them in plush form (photo below).

Emoticons are the cutesy little things many of us put into our e-mails, text messages, and even on web pages, typically composed of a combination of punctuation marks viewed sideways. For example, a smile can be represented as a colon-dash-parenthesis, i.e. : - )

Change the parenthesis to the letter “O” and you have a look of surprise, or a “U” to have your emoticon sticking its virtual tongue out, or replace the colon with a semi-colon for a wink.

The list of variants is nearly endless. And some software programs, such as AOL Instant Messenger, will even convert those text emoticons into graphical ones (especially useful for those who need things more clearly represented to understand them).

Emoticons have been around for about as long as there’s been e-mail, and that’s decades.

But now, Keith Jaehnert has given emoticons physical substance in the form of his Wink Toys. These come in two sizes (regular and “Bittywinks” - the latter are what’s stuck to the cactus in my yard in the photo accompanying this post), and five colors (baby blue, green, red, yellow, and light pink) and designs (wink, shock, grin, smile, and tongue). The 3-inch Bittywinks retail for $4.50 and the regular 5-inch Wink Toys for $8.99.

Keith told us his inspiration in creating the Wink Toy line of plushes stems from Ty (the makers of Beanie Babies) and frequent exposure to emoticons. One day it came to him he could combine the two. He is planning on following some of the Beanie Baby strategy with his Wink Toys, retiring certain combinations of colors and designs after a while, and then introducing news ones. He even has hopes for a cartoon series to be based on his Wink Toys (somehow I can’t get the image of the Pac-Man Saturday Morning Cartoon show out of my mind here).

Wink Toy launch in July of 2006, and Keith tells us things are already going strong with sales in his home state of New Jersey. Certainly, making emoticons tangible is a fun idea, and the Wink Toys are well made and soft (both key features for plushes). I hope he does well with it.

Keith did drop me a post-show e-mail incidentally, with an offer of a 25% discount for anyone buying off his web site - the special coupon code is “mia206” and good through Sept. 30, 2006.

After having broken her hand in the late spring, and then a summer full of travel, my wife Linda is finally back in full swing painting. She has three active paintings going at any one time (as oils take a while to dry after a coat of paint has been applied), and just finished two new paintings these past two weeks. And one of them is my new favorite.

And that would be the one above, entitled Pelican Vigil. Breathtaking, especially when you see the original.

The other new painting is Trupial Brunch. Trupials are in the Oriole family of birds, and an amazing yellow orange in color across their necks and bellies. They also have this cool blue outline around their eyes. Linda captured them well in the painting (pictured below). She also did an excellent job with the cactus.

She has also converted much of our home into exhibit space for her works, so if you find yourself on Bonaire, call us at 717-4112 for a private showing. The plan is to build an extension onto our home (which on Bonaire is about a 6-9 month project - we’re still waiting to get near-final plans from our architect) which will have a sizable (1000 square feet or so) dedicated exhibit area (and will expand my office with another 150 square feet of space as a result - that’s much needed).

For more information on Linda’s new paintings, take a look at the Linda Richter web site.

It used to be that people would excuse themselves from a conversation, a meal, or other gathering to sneak out for a quick smoke, but make up some other sort of excuse because they either were ashamed of their addiction, or because they didn’t want others to know they smoked or found smoking more important than staying put.

My old friend Gina (a former Good Morning America technology trend reporter, among many other things) comes to mind. She used to sneak out for smokes during meals so that her husband Henry wouldn’t know that she was still smoking. But Gina, if you’re reading this, Henry knew.

That sort of sneakiness still happens with smoking, but less so. The new addiction and habit of many (myself included) is portable e-mail in the form of a BlackBerry, Treo, or other wireless device (my e-mail device is a T-Mobile Sidekick III).

While some folks are blatant in their public use of portable e-mail devices, others are a bit more circumspect, especially when in the company of spouses who abhor the glazed-over look that comes into an e-mail addict’s eyes which start to reflect the miniature text on the screen of their devices, while their thumbs fly across tiny keyboards.

Once an e-mail addict gets sucked into a message exchange, all hopes of meaningful verbal communications are shot (which is why the spouses object, no doubt).

So, those of us aware of our addictions, but unable to completely wean ourselves from our devices (there’s no Nicorette for BlackBerrys), have resorted to the old smoker’s “sneak”. We excuse ourselves under some pretense, such as needing to visit the restroom (which may be a real need) to mask the fact that as soon as we’re out of sight, out comes the BlackBerry or Sidekick, and we’re on-line, checking mail, reading and responding to the latest missives. And just as my friend Gina did, we delude ourselves that our friends and spouses don’t know what we’re doing.

So, how can you spot a closet e-mail addict?

First, they twitch a little every so often - usually on the right side of their body. That comes from when their portable e-mail device has buzzed them in vibrate mode to indicate that a message has arrived.

Second, shortly after “The Twitch”, they excuse themselves from your company.

Third, they spend more time away than is anticipated.

And lastly, when they return, they seem distracted, because they are still thinking about the e-mails they exchanged.

In closing, and in defense of e-mail addicts everywhere, at least we don’t return smelling like an ashtray (that’s how Henry knew, Gina), nor are our habits aurally invasive (unlike the chronic cell phone users who feel they need to share their ring-tones and voiced opinions with all around them).
Or at least that’s how I rationalize my e-mail addiction. And I continue to hope I’m fooling my wife.

We (my wife and I) were recently invited to participate in a juried art exhibition on Bonaire, featuring Bonaire’s artists. The jurying took place a few weeks ago, and the exhibition is slated to happen during the early part of November, with the possibility that Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands will officiate.

I created three very different pieces to enter into the jurying process:

All of these are based on my photographs, and all involve some level of various digital painting or manipulation. Of the three images, two were selected to be exhibited in November - a pleasant surprise. The only image not selected was “Shades of Growth” - not surprising as the judges indicated that they were looking at color as well as content.

More information on all three of these images can be found on the Jake Richter Art Site. All three images are available in a very limited closed edition and are available for purchase at Caribbean Art.