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This weekend I had a bit of free time, so in between trying to promote West Ham to the top flight of Master League in my Pro Evolution 2010 game – I put together this simple typographic wallpaper. If you dig it let me know.

Stock image credit.

While jamming track 4, the particularly rad and ethereal “I Still Care for You” off Ray LaMontagne’s latest – Gossip in The Grain in the car this morning – I thought of Dr Phil. As I often do of course.

Well, not Dr Phil exactly – although his mustache is scarily hypnotizing, but rather something he said. One of the + ticks to student life back in the day was a slumbering noon wake up and daytime TV and coffee with ‘ol boy Phil. Good times.

Promoting his next best-selling book or set of bumper stickers he came up with a concept that a person’s life is largely defined a set number of pivotal moments. I’m not sure, it could’ve been 5 or 7. As marketers or blog mavens know, putting a number to a title sells more cupcakes.

So while contemplating Phil’s eyebrows somewhere in Paarden Island at a red light to the rhythm of my right turn indicator, I thought of my own moments. Only one really stands out.

On a side note, I really love driving through Paarden Island – its a shitty industrial area, and if I parked there my car will probably be wheel-less and standing on bricks in 5 flat, but I’ll save those thoughts for a blog post titled “Stupid information that nobody gives a shit about”. Stay peeled for that one. Gonna be a corker.

So back to my moment: Table View primary school. I was about 6 years old.

An hour after the final school bell, the place was the setting of a make believe suburban ghost town western. Empty apart from the random janitors armed with a mop and laboring displeasure, and the library teacher who always stays late to colour code books with stickers and sneak in a passage from her secret order of Mills & Boon that never made the student rack.

Instead of the openness of a playground now kicked open for me to stomp around in, it felt closed and confined. The echoing corridors with shiny buffered linoleum type floors – smelling of ammonia cleaning products and pencils and wooden desks and day old sun-baked sandwiches hidden under desks was a reminder.

I made my way to pick up the one poor left blue and white striped suitcase that lined the passage – the one with a Mr Tickle (of Mr Men) sticker proudly displayed on top.

Tennisette time! Which is basically tennis for babies – where we use a tiny all wooden bat like a beach bat on miniature gravel courts. I was the king of tennisette amongst the uncoordinated group, and was ready to unleash all kinds of whip ass on my little friends.

Kitted out in my little white shorts and dreaming of being Pat Cash winning Wimbledon, I set out spacily towards the end of the corridor.

And that’s when I had my moment – one of the most pivotal and profound of my life.

I dropped my bat, my suitcase, my togbag, and stared blankly ahead to the end of the corridor. I really have no idea how long I stayed transfixed like that.

And the strange thing is that I don’t really think that I can convey in words or in writing exactly what I thought or felt.

It was a realization that my name is Brendon Grobler – that’s who I am. That I’m this person, and I have a very defined form and identity. I repeated the words in my head: “I am Brendon, I am Brendon”

I know that that all might sound silly, but the profoundness of this wasn’t in this realization (I wasn’t in the “Special” Class where arithmetic and language skills were replaced with knitting and crafts), but rather how absurd the idea was – that I was this person called Brendon – that that was my definition, that was my only framework to move in.

So yes, I can be a slave to logic, and I think that anyone with a bit of smarts is rightly seduced by logic, but after that moment, I know that in spite of any science or calculation of mechanics of what we cumulatively know and what we think is real, that I am right. I know that if Einstein or Hawking sat me down and spread out the sweetest most convincing argument of how I am in fact this person with a name, I would listen and smile in my own knowing.

So, I blame Dr Phil. Not for any other reason than I now have the hankering to grow a bit fat ginger caterpillar of a mustache, and dye my eyebrows (again).

This seems like a staged shot, but one of the things I dig about it, is that it was completely candid. Ended up being one of my favourite shots, with the diagonal stripes of the dress and upward perspective helping out the composition.

A quick post to reflect how stoked I am at the response of this site.

Thank you to everyone who contacted me publicly or privately. Also a big thanks to the gallery and design inspiration sites that have featured Mulletized. A personal highlight – being featured on BestWebGallery, and Smashing Magazine’s 50 beautiful and Creative Blog Designs.

Have a click around and let me know what you think. It’s a slightly experimental format – but my ideals for web design have always been to stretch the norm slightly. Usability trolls might be angry, but I personally think it’s very usable, and I think that web designers should aspire to be more creative when they have the opportunity and aren’t being dictated to by a paying client.

I’ve tried to create something less “bloggy” and more graphic – focusing strongly on typography (which is one of my great design loves) and imagery.

I hope you dig it, and I look forward to updating it more regularly with a mixture of useful and irreverent content.

Its free, and all you need is a printer and a scanner. And it works for both Mac OS and Windows.

All you do is download the template. Print it. After you’ve written your letters in the blocks provided, just scan it and upload it on the website.

Awesome.

I thought this was cool. The school uniform, the cigarette, the Gatsby R50 written on the hand.

Took this shot during a weekend away earlier this year. It’s amazing how if you get a little creative with your perspective while shooting, you can come up with much more interesting compositions.

I took this lying down on my stomach, with a mouthful of wind-swept sand as evidence.

Congratulations guys.

The lovely JustBcoz created some very awesome hand drawn doodle icons.

In my opinion they are some of the nicest social icons available of this type.

Go check them out on her site here.