When taglines attack!

I know I haven't been posting much in the way of substance of late, but I'll try to fix that soon. In the meantime, enjoy these! Click to embiggen.

Ha!

Leave to the New York Post!

Shorpy

Most of my friends know that I really love digital photography. I've always enjoyed taking pictures; in fact I received my first camera back in 1971 when I graduated from kindergarten. The first picture I took with that camera was of my great-grandmother standing in front of the school building. But my interest has really taken off over the past several years with the digital photography revolution, and especially moreso after my wife gave me my Canon Digital Rebel for Christmas a couple of years ago.

So it's a real treat for someone like me to stumble across a website like this one:

http://www.shorpy.com/

It calls itself the 100 year old photograph blog, but many of the images are between 50-70 years old, some newer, some older. Nonetheless, I find it to be a fascinating site with plenty of old pictures to look at and composition ideas to be found.

And so it begins

My favorite time of the year has begun. From now until the end of summer there will be orientation sessions for new and transfer students three times a week. It can be amusing watching parents and kids roam around aimlessly as they try to walk and peruse a campus map at the same time. Once last summer I took a campus bus down to the middle of campus to grab some lunch. Some of my fellow passengers were parents there for orientation. I was wearing my office keys around my neck on a lanyard which bears the logo and web addy for the particular school that I work for. As I enjoyed the bus ride, I watched as a couple attempted to decipher a campus map and find where a building was. Despite bearing something very visible upon my person that denoted that I worked on campus, they never asked me for assistance. Granted, I never offered either. I could've told them where the building was, which bus stop to get off at, even which bus route to take to get back to where they had been. C'est la vie.

For me, orientation means one thing: the Red Bags. Each new incoming student gets a bag full of stuff, and not just the usual crappy fliers for campus housing and dining plans or magazine order forms. That's the kind of stuff I got at my orientation (which was a complete waste of my time) to college last decade. No, these new kids get decent stuff like cups, t-shirts, penlights, etc. My guess is that the university is trying to start buttering up students and their parents now for the inevitable "sales pitch" later on for their ongoing fundraising campaigns. I haven't seen the contents for this year's red bags, but considering that budgets on campus have been a little better this year than in the past few, I'm sure that there's some worthwhile cushy stuff in them. And as there was an orientation today, please forgive me as I run downstairs to see if anyone has left one of their bags behind. If there's a cup in them this year, you can have it as I've enough already.

But first the good news?

After the storms moved out last night, my wife and I watched the 10 o'clock news on the Atlanta Fox affiliate channel. As they always do, late during the program there's a bumper from the Fox "News" channel with business news. They seemed it newsworthy and point of pride to announce that Countrywide Home Loans had processed 15% more mortgage applications in May 2007 compared to a year ago, and that they were adding roughly 1,500 jobs. Congrats, Countrywide, on a job well done. But wait, doesn't Countrywide specialize in refinancing? Today comes the news that foreclosures are up dramatically over this period last year. With more people applying for and receiving mortgages right now, I have a bad feeling that what Fox was hyping as good news is just the opposite: people are getting mortgages in order to wring whatever equity is left on their property in order to make ends meet. We'll see for certain in a matter of months. And the fact that consumer spending was up in May (along with the foreclosure numbers) only makes it looks like people just said, "Fuck it, I'm losing my house, let's buy that plasma screen t.v. for our new apartment."

Da Bears

Found this one online today and I just had to share it. Kudos to whomever created this one--it's pretty funny, I think.

Redemption

This just in: Paris Hilton has been sent kicking and screaming back to jail! What a great start to the weekend! Some of the comments supporting her on Paris' MySpace site are pretty damned amusing, and I'm proud to be in the group of "haterz." On the down side, another 40 fucking days of "Paris Watch" in the media. You know folks, people like Paris Hilton are just like teeth: ignore them and they'll go away.

So much for the rule of law

For unspecified "medical reasons," Paris Hilton was released from jail today. I guess trying to quit deep throating penises cold turkey had some unfortunate side effects for that poor, poor woman. I mean, why should anyone have to suffer such indignities for such minor offenses like driving under the influence and with a suspended license. She's rich and white--I don't see a problem with letting her serve her sentence at her palatial home. Thank goodness she wasn't poor and/or Mexican, or else she'd still be in jail. Best of luck, Paris, serving out your sentence in the hell hole that is Hollywood Hills, and thank you for showing us the double standard in the American justice system: With Liberty and Justice for all who can afford it. Stupid spoiled whore.

I wanna be sedated.

Yeah, I'm still here

Greetings! I know I haven't posted a whole lot of late. Admittedly I haven't been in much of a writing mood the past couple of weeks. Dealing with upcoming dental work and all, it's all a bit unsettling for me and it's clouded my thinking. Now throw in my appointment with my new primary care physician, and the prospect of visiting "Dr. Jelly Finger" isn't helping. On the bright side, soon all of this will be over with, so I've that to look forward to. My last post dealt with the drought here in the south. It's been pretty bad, and some localities have banned all outdoor watering altogether. A strange thing happened this past weekend. The sky got all cloudy, there was a strong breeze, and these droplets of water fell from the sky. Clearly the Sun God was angered. I'm not sure what we did, but certainly we will need to find a virgin and sacrifice them to appease the Sun God. Um, yeah, good luck finding a virgin in a college town.