weekend milked

The weekend is winding down fast but it has been a good one - lazy and entertaining for the most part.

Last night, the boy and I went to an air guitar competition with a friend. Sadly, there were only three "guitarists" but still the crowd was stoked. Here is a photo of competitor #3:







The competition was to promote a film called "Air Guitar Nation"(awesome film which I would highly recommend). I was disappointed by the turnout but I think it was the usual Nashville situation. People just never turn out for things here (and if they do, a lot of the time, they talk through the acts loudly).

Across the street, several hundred screaming people drank beer in plastic cups and danced in a parking lot to an 80's cover band. As we left, two girls drinking beer and wearing sombreros kissed each other so that some guys could take photos of them.

(Girls Gone Cinco De Mayo)

Today, we ran errands and went for a leisurely walk around Spring Hill Cemetery in Madison. Here are some photos from the day:


These are from the grocery store (yep, I take photos everywhere):






Sadistic photo, no?






Truck load of meat! And it's on sale!





(parking space for expectant mothers)(or storks who shop)





I think I've met this guy (or could it just be the Willie Nelson resemblance?)




Here are some cemetery photos:


Jimmy Martin:




Hank Snow:




Big Slim Benham:




Photo from mausoleum:






Photo left on mausoleum wall:




Photo on grave:





Coloring book pages taped to mausoleum:





Flowers left in pill bottle on mausoleum:




Pretty grave statue:






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hey good looking, I'll be back to pick you up later

This week has been the worst. The pits. I'm more frazzled than a rat in a coffee can.

If my psyche had a Mr. Microphone, it would be 7 straight days of:


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGH!!!!!!!!

sport

Usually, I only kick myself after missing choice events at the fairground (buying other people's stolen stuff from the sheriff's department)(gun shows) (gun shows) (psychic fairs) (gun shows) but this time around, the boy and I caught wind of a dog relay rally event and headed down for a looksy.


It was a blast! Thankfully, there were less stage moms than we guessed (though we saw one who had lost her freakin' mind and yelled at her dog in a lengthy tirade- It made me want to revoke my "No Clobbering Idiots" rule.)

Here are some of my favorite shots courtesy of the boy (click on the pictures for a closer view of the frenzy):


















(Border Collies are insane and I must have one.)










And in case you've never heard a load of dogs collectively losing their minds, listen and look here:




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me

I usually shy away from photos of myself, but this one I LOVE. Isn't the decay of the house stunning?




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honky tonk hayride

Just a few bathroom photos from nights out honky tonkin' (call me a "redneck" or an "old timer", but that's what we call it here - honky tonkin'.)


Jesus knocking on the United Nations building:





A call to arms:




No explanation needed:





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in our generation

Almost four years.

It doesn't seem like there has been a single 6:00 a.m. alarm clock waking in the course of the past four years that didn't start out with a report on the deaths of soldiers and citizens from suicide bombers, arms attacks or roadside explosives. That's a lot of mornings. My mind hasn't numbed to it yet. I can't remember anymore what NPR talked about in the time before this war. I can't keep track anymore if our president still thinks that we are "winning" or which current catch phrase has replaced "the war on terror". Upon my 6:00 wakings, I can only imagine what it would be like if it were me waking up in the world of horrors that the reporters talk about on the radio. Then I wonder if we all think that - "what if it were me?" - and if there will come a time when I won't think that anymore at all.

I wonder if I have kids, will they grow up with these images swirling around them as they pick out their breakfast cereals or run from room to room engrossed in childhood games. Will the sights and sounds of this war be background noise to them? Or will it be another war that is so?

I'll end with this quote. It's taken from a poem written by Marge Piercy in 1969 in response to the television and photographic images of the Vietnam War:

Loving feels lonely in a violent world,
irrelevant to people burning like last year's weed
with bellies distended, with fish throats agape
and flesh melting down to glue.
We can no longer shut out the screaming
that leaks through the ventilation system..




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my eyes! my eyes! (or "how my day started with crotch shots")

I woke up this morning and decided to do a little work on my Flickr account. If you haven't used Flickr, it's a site sort of like this Blogger site where people do photo blogs. The pages look like photo album pages. There are millions of users and I hate to admit that I sometimes waste infinite measures of time clicking through photos from the lives of people that I don't and will probably never know. I've always had a fascination with people's lives. I would pass up the fiction novel hit of the week any day to read an interesting biography.


So, I'm clicking through Flickr and enjoying a nice couple's photos of their little kid. Cute little rascal too. Right there sandwiched between the photos of him dressed like a flopsy, little lion was a photo of a woman cowering on the ground with a gun pointed at her head. "That's odd!" I thought and I clicked on the photo to read the comments that fellow members had added. They all bragged about what a cute photo it was. Cute!? I was further stumped and zapped off a quick e-mail to the owners of the page to let them know that they had a rather scary, violent photo mixed in with junior's zoo pictures.

Then, I went to add some photos to my slight yet growing Flickr page to find that one of my photos that used to be a photo of a biker was now a photo of some unknown person in a sheet. Huh! What in the world?

After a while, and after sending an e-mail to tech support, I went to the message board to find that one by one, more and more members were finding the same issues on their accounts. My usual time waster of looking at anonymous folk's photos had now been replaced with reading the second by second accounts of their photo account corruptions. I couldn't help but copy some of the better ones, being a collector of quotes. Here they are:



The thumbnail of my friends on their wedding day has been replaced with one of a dead pigeon!


It's a nude pic of some naked girl on the roof instead of my bowling record picture....... shit!


I have some random fat lady in one of my thumbnails.


Its supposed to be grandma yet it's replaced with a hot mama!


When one of my pictures of rocks shows up as badly pixelated porn, it just screams "hacked" to me.


One looks like maybe a Chippendale dancer & the other is maybe some northern European village.


I've got some soft porn on my pages replacing my flower and natural history photos.


Ewwwwww, i've got a picture of a fat naked guy with legs akimbo where there should be a photo of a room in an asylum with peeling paint.



I am finding pornographic photos in a group of photos I have shared with numerous members of my Congregation!


I have a man holding his c**k as my thumbnails!


My picture of a warthog landed up as a naked male!


I have pictures of my 2 month old daughter up on my gallery, and now it has freaking pictures of some pervert in his underwear.


My account has been finally upgraded to naked. GREAT. got so mad i spilled my coffee on my crotch. i think that's some what of a lawsuit going on right there.


A picture of my son splashing in the ocean turned into a woman wearing a strap-on.


I really don't enjoy having what is supposed to be a panda bear show up as some chicks in bikinis.


I was just looking thru my photos of circuit boards and PC cards and tech things like that, and then I see some soft porn in the stream, saying that its one of mine! that's kind of odd. and actually incorrect...but then I thought, hmm, someone, somewhere, is expecting to see HIS soft porn and instead is seeing some of MY circuit boards. ha! ;)


Same here. I've now got a photo of a fat woman lifting her skirt up. Jeez...


Also, I am also having this problem. There's a big-bottomed woman named "Sinnammon" where there should be a picture from my recent ice-cream social.


My daughter is NOT a cigar-smoking guy from Turkey.


If I have some crazy woman's boobs in place of a mountain goat, than could a picture of your mom end up on a porn site???


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The message boards were flooded with people from all over the world, from all walks of life who had discovered that the photo blogs that they had worked so hard on were right before our eyes becoming stag film stills and albums chock full of weirdness.

There were pastors and school teachers pulling their hair out, worried (and quite understandably) that their congregations and school kids would log on and see the corrupted pages. There were also a few cards who lamented because they didn't get any of the porno photos on their sites. My favorite was the guy who takes only photos of temples and shrines. Beautiful work. Poor guy got a topless grandma sunbathing on a roof deck. He was one of the many professional photographers who had given out their Flickr URL's to prospective clients.


People also wondered aloud that since these types of photos were ending up in G-rated photo blogs, did it mean that their missing photos of grandkids and friend's wedding receptions had ended up somewhere mixed in with the porn shots of the X-rated photo bloggers?

I could hear the sweated bullets hitting the floor.

It took several hours for Flickr to fix the problem, and we felt quite stranded by tech support who in our collective time of need sent each one of us an automatic reply e-mail message that read:


"Just a quick email from Team Flickr to let you know that
we've successfully received your recent Help by Email query
and we hope to respond within 10 days.

We'd also like to take an opportunity to remind you that
one query is sufficient and multiple queries regarding the
same issue make the Magic Donkey cry."


10 days?? The magic donkey?? No wonder we all felt so freakin' hopeless! The Generation Y bunch was in charge and the ship was sinking as they slept off last night's hangover!

Just goes to show you my friends...you never know what is going to happen - especially when it comes to the net. And, on top of that - you never know what you will wake up to find. Some days it's cat vomit on something that can't be cleaned. This morning, it was freshly fallen snow and lots and lots of money shots. Cha cha cha.



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how not to get the job of your dreams

So, I finally got the call to interview for a job that I have wanted for a really long time.

I planned what I would say, read all of the tips by the experts on how to make an employer want you, got lots of sleep and dressed snazzy with a slight Mary Tyler Moore "I can take care of business, Mr Grant!" flip to my hair. I was early for my appointment and chatted up the receptionist about her dog (take it from a previous receptionist, this works - if we like you, we pass on the word). I was personable and straight-forward and displayed all of the correct body language. Right before I became a bumbling idiot.

Note: There were four people interviewing me at once - what I will evermore refer to as "My Psychological Gang Rape of '07".


Interviewer #1: "Tell us about a time when you went above and beyond the call of duty on a special project or task."

Me: (blank stare) (blink) (blink) (thinking "who uses the term 'call of duty' anyway?")

Interviewers #1 - 4: (waiting and returning stares) (blink) (blink)

Me: (blank stare) (starting to sweat) (gulp) (blink) (blink) (wondering if I have ever completed a "special project or task") ( I started feeling faint and aware of the silence that I must somehow fill and fast so I blurted out:

"I once looked a broker's head for ticks."

Me: (wincing) (wishing that I could suck the last 5 seconds back in before anyone noticed them)

Interviewers #1- 4: (blank looks that could have been either disgust or terror)

Interviewer #4: (condescendingly) "well, I guess that could be considered a special project..."

Me: "Yes, it was an especially bad year for deer ticks."


Yes, folks...I am one hot commodity.