This is What I Do For Money

I'm a production artist. This means I'm an artist you will never, ever see in a museum unless it's a museum of advertising crap.

I know more about offset lithography than is health for a fellow to know but I've never taken an art class beyond the middle-school level. I couldn't draw a good stick-figure on a napkin.

But with a PC and Adobe's software, I can redraw a beach rescue procedure for my hourly wage. I can (and do) redraw logos for semi-obscure and soon to be merged real estate firms.

A lot of times, the art comes ready to 'drop and go.' In other words, whoever designed it already did the hard stuff and they gave it to us in a format that can be readily adapted to our templates and software.

Over the years, I've seen 'Realty Executives' mistyped as 'Reality Executives' (reality being something no agent I've ever met was selling...) I've seen the 'Vial of Life' produced as 'Vile of Life' for a fundament church. I've seen the 'Naked Mile,' postage stamps reproduced on bookmarks according to a theme, done a triangle-shaped calendar magnet for Bass beer, and a bookmark done to scale a dinosaur tooth for a natural history museum.

In the nine-plus years I've been doing it, I've seen about everything you can conceivably advertise with ad specialties come through, yet I still find amusement.

Mississippi Breastfeeding Medical Clinic, for instance...

I've heard of Louisiana Hot Sauce; Boston Baked Beans, New York Minutes, Texas Toast, but Mississippi Breasts are new to me.

Is it like with a watermelon feed, where you see who can eat the most Mississippi Breasts in a timed contest? Are they chicken breasts? Fried or roasted? Do you have to eat it off the bone or is it de-boned prior to cooking?

Or is the clinic an educational facility to help Mississippians eat breasts?

Or is Mississippi Breastfeeding a disorder they're trying to cure?

Or if it's breastfeeding as it's commonly taken in non-Mississippi contexts, why is it reserved for babies? Or is the idea that in Mississippi even people who can read a fridge magnet can drink milk right from a woman's breast?

I'm udderly confused. And/or amused.