Did you notice...

... that there is a search box at the top-left of the page? I didn't until I installed code from Purple Moggy and wrote 3/4 of a post out of excitement. So much for increased sleep leading to situational awareness... Incidentally I got on the search kick because I couldn't remember if I had shared the kumquat picture. Now you can all play a new game where you guess how many posts contain a word. Like "hernia". Oh the hours of family fun!

Hungry and Desperate

There are times that you will be hungry. There are times you will be desperate. But have you ever been hungry and desperate? Lucky for you, I have assembled several examples to examine. You might have been hungry and desperate if you ever...

• ...cooked a frozen pizza using an iron.
• Double desperate points if it was a travel iron.
• ...sustained yourself on Ramen Noodles and multivitamins.
• Double desperate points if the only reason you had the vitamins was because your mom gave them to you.
• Triple desperate points if you "cooked" the Ramen by letting it sit in the back window of your car until lunch.
• ...ate a pizza that was more than 7 days old.
• Double hunger points if it was at room temperature the whole time.
• Triple hunger points if it was stored in the top of your closet the whole time.

Please note, if you have ever cooked a substancial food item by wrapping it in foil and placing it on your engine block, you have too much time on your hands and are neither hungry nor desperate. Unless you are MacGyver. On second thought, if the food item is a stray dog, you may qualify.

On a serious note (cough) I want to share my solution to world hunger. Ramen Vending Machines. You've seen the machines that produce piping hot coffee fresh on demand. Picture that, but producing a steaming, hearty meal of delicious, low sodium, low fat Ramen Noodles!

Look - you, me, or anyone can buy a package of Ramen for about ten cents ($2 Canadian, 10^-4 cents Pounds Sterling). Think of how cheap it would be when buying by the truck-load for a world-wide network of vending machines. Now you can afford to have a soup kitchen on every corner! Picture the bright future - you could flip a quarter to a beggar on a cold winter's night, tell him to "get something to eat" and not feel at all guilty!

Technology Gone Too Far

Hopefully today's jumbo - grade AA - double picture post will pardon me for missing yesterday. See, the "deer incident" happened yesterday morning and I was eager to share it with everyone (by everyone I mean the one person that actually reads all these - yeah, you know who you are). To make a long story short (since you will require a long lunch to read my real post - go ahead, print it out and take it to the restroom with you)... I couldn't send the pix message anywhere. I tried multiple times to multiple places.

I got it going today obviously - the solution? Rebooting my phone. Let me repeat that. I had to power cycle my _phone_ for the software to work. Isn't this some sort of sign that our society has gone astray? Playing god with genetics is one thing - but when you have to reboot a telephone, you should stop and re-evaluate your grip on reality.

I warn you, this trend will continue. Mark my words - the day will come that your car won't start. You'll call OnStar and they'll instruct you to hit the "reset" button...

Wild America

You know, I was worried that when I moved out of the rural countryside I would lose all the wildlife that tended to wander around the yard. I no longer have this fear because in all the years we lived "in the country" we never had this happen:

That is our livingroom window, and _that_ is a 6 point buck. I wish the picture was better, but I had to zoom so as not to spook him, seeing as how HE WAS STARING IN MY WINDOW! He munched on the bush and then moseyed across the front yard.

There is quite a collection of animals around - like the contingent of squirrels that have a man posted outside every morning when I walk to the car. There is also a resident chipmunk that dwells in a stump and seems convinced that I am squating on his property. At any given time you can hear someone scampering through the leaves on the ground - causing the official theme song for our front yard to be that rap hit: Every Day I'm Ruslin'.

Case in point: I'm looking out my 2nd story bedroom window one morning, partaking for a moment in the wonder of dawn (well, pre-noon anyway) when I spy one of the afore-mentioned squirrels poking about in the lawn just by the porch. All of the sudden he explodes into motion, tripping over his own tail while scrambling into the bushes. I swear I could see his eyes bug out and heard a tiny "Oh, shit!"... Just as I'm trying to process the cause of such sudden panic, the answer arrives in the form of a hawk gliding by. This bird with a wing-span of three feet passes _below_ eye level right in front of the house - appearantly dead reckoning off the sidewalk. (whoosh). I am dumbfounded at this and experience one of those "point with your mouth open and look around to see if anyone else just saw that" moments.

In conclusion, if you are ever hiking up my driveway and hear something coming at you through the forest, relax - it's probably one of our harmless managerie screwin' with you. Like a gaggle of 19 turkeys.

Or it could be a rabid bear like the one that carried off the neighbor's kid. What - I'm joking... he wasn't rabid.

A Web Hosting Tale

So there I was, shopping for web hosting (as I'm sure you have done hundreds of times). I come across ImHosted... they seem like a quality company, and their plans look competitive. Oh, they even have a control panel so you can micro-manage the minutia of your site.

The amazing online site management tool which allows you to master your online web space and makes the technical aspects of running your site simple and seamless.

Well, that sounds like the cat's meow - and what's this? There is a button to "Test drive now!"... oh, well I must press the button... hmmm.

I thought about hosting with them anyway... but thankfully my buddy the internet showed me abysmal user reviews. Thanks buddy internet!

As a postlude to my tale - I chose Lunarpages as a shared host. Their ratings are unlike anything I've seen - and so far the experience and value has been stellar. Alright, I'll stop singing their praises - I'm just happy to have a hosting experience go smoothly.

Black Pearls

Small, medium, or large. What's your preference? I hope they are low sodium, because I hate it when I get salty... errr. Hey, you think I'm a perv, do you see what the logo is?

Faux Turkey

A Delicious Vegetarian Feast
Feast Includes a Tender, Juicy Stuffed Tofu Roast, 8 Delicious Cranberry-Apple, Potato Dumplings, Rich Tofurky "Giblet" & Mushroom Gravy, and Our Signature Tofurky Jurky Wishstix

Several things come to mind - foremost being, WTF are Tofurky Jurky Wishstix? Also, the massive vinyl sign is the latest evidence that this store's sign department has too much time on their hands (yes, I know for a fact that they have a multi-person sign _department_). Who exactly is the target market again? People who really want to eat animals, but feel the superficial obligation to avoid killing? Or is it people that aren't comfortable with themselves and their convictions, and want to keep up appearances for others? Way to compromise (yourself).

I'm not really picking on anyone (vegan or otherwise) - it's just that this is damn funny. It speaks to some greater irony in society. And let's not lose sight of the important thing - it costs $17.99! Better yet, make that $22.99 per pound ;)

Tofurkey - when only the best vegetable-mass, simulated pseudo-meat giblets will do!

The commercial cuts to a gaggle of kids around the table in uncomfortable sweaters - "Hey mom, more Tofurkey please!" (big smiles and clean plates held high) "Shut up kids, do you know how much this crap costs!? Go mash some garden burgers up into the shape of a bird."

Or should the tag-line be "Surprise, it's protein!" ? Either way I wish you - carnivore and vegan alike - a Happy Thanksgiving!

Professional Arsonist

Oddly, another picture taken in the dark. My question is - what does the gentleman who drives this truck exactly do for the county? He's obviously professional, I wonder what his business card says...

• Jack Flash, Fire Coordinator
• We bring good things alight.
• Lots of things to destroy but don't have time to burn - let us help!
• Insurance Specialist.

I wonder if there is any significance to the fact that this was parked in front of the aforementioned meat market.

At Night

Keeping with tradition, this is a real picture taken by me. I whipped out my phone this afternoon to enlighten you all with whatever picture struck my fancy - and had not one, but _three_ photos like this. Now either I was sleep-clicking or I hit the buttons on my camera just right while it was in the holster.

Having to do a double take (get it - double take) on my own photos amused me, and so it made today's entry. I was thinking though... what else could you do with these photos? Some ideas:

• Create a series of postcards like "Bainbridge at Night"
• Frame all three separate pitch black photos, hang them in a pretentious gallery. Individually name them: Autumn, Fall, Summer
• Convince your friends that it is one of those 3D pictures - time how long they stare at it cross-eyed.
• Same as above, but take a picture of your friends and post it on a blog (then you have a truly funny entry)

Expanding My Repertoire

I sat down to write this post to merely say that I was thinking of adding funny experience stories as acceptable entries. This doesn't sound like a great leap... but this was started as a photo blog, and the main reason I am expanding is out of fear that since I am trying to be very regular in my posting (weekends are still up for debate) I am worried I will run out of pictures.

I thought it was amusing (can you tell from my grocery store fascination that I am easily amused?) that I had no funny story to share and that this would be a purely informational message. (Actually, I do have a story that involves a beer bottle and a hard-headed individual, but that was more amazing that funny... especially when you learn how tricky glass is to clean up)

BUT... the world is a funny place and always provides humor if you are willing to laugh. So when I started to write this post, I blanked on the spelling of "repertoire"... I deserve some leeway since it isn't my first language and because I spell by rule - which is good in some ways, but sometimes causes problems. So after having no luck on M-W.com I turned to my buddy Google. And voila, I had a funny post. Complete with picture. I'm thinking screen shots will be making more of an appearance from now on. ;)

Product Placement 2

How did aisles 7a and 7b come to be together?

We Specialize

I'll Stop Complaining

I wanted to say that I love this new version of the blog. There are so many little things that improve the usability - like the menu at right: isn't that better? Also, when I send pixmessages to it, it automatically makes my pictures clickable. Enjoy the full-size image goodness!

Golden Anniversary

Honored as the best tasting American lager at the 1987 Great American Beer Festival.

... and it has been sitting on this grocery shelf at room temperature ever since.