Lucy! You got some splainin’ to do!

So I’m aware that in order to really be considered a “Sneak Preview,” a blog titled as such needs to be quickly followed by the story or entry that it is meant to be pre-viewing.

I’m not an idiot.

And to my loyal₁ readers, I do apologize for the long gap and for not really following through with the entry I previewed. But I will take the opportunity to prove something to all of you:

I can tell a short story.

Because I do want to talk about what happened to my boy, Gulliver, and because I have other pics to show, I’ll tell the fuzzy tow truck picture’s story in just a few lines, ready? This is a pretty momentous occasion, you may want to grab some popcorn for the event.

*Stretching*

Here goes:

Our car broke down on the side of the freeway when returning from a family visit in Orange County. They towed the car a good 40 miles back to our city, but the driver made Gully stay in the car that was being towed and didn’t allow him to ride in the cab of the tow truck with us. He was weirded out, but handled it like a champ.

That was pretty good, huh???

If I had more time, would probably include that it was dark out, we were on the side of a VERY busy freeway, the guy that towed us was a jerk (though, from the story, you could probably figure that one out).

Since it’s been a while, I thought I’d share a mixed bag of musings...a potpourri of stories...a Smörgåsbord, if you will, of ramblings and photos.

First of all, I realize there are important budget talks happening in Washington, and major civil rights legislation being implemented all over...and I’ll go on record as saying that rare are the occasions where I believe we should place limits on or eliminate a person’s right to do something they want...

But can we agree to outlaw these things?



Please???

The Disney corporation has a long history of making many of our lives happier...Disneyland is the “Happiest Place on Earth,” right? Incidentally, my parents have season passes there despite the fact that my dad hates Disneyland. That’s a good husband, though. Happy wife, happy life, right? Well, Disney also has a history of royally f-ing with the fragile emotions of children: I submit into evidence Mufasa demonstrating the animal kingdom’s version of road kill in The Lion King and Bambi’s mom failing to relocate during hunting season. And who could forget the story of a sweet young kid and his dog, Old Yeller. I get that in order for a sense of drama to be created, typically a “conflict” of some kind is the literary means to that end. And trust me, I agree that there are plenty of things that kids just aren’t ready for, like graphic violence, and Ke$ha songs. And I think the warnings in the corners of TV screens and MPAA ratings for movies are good things. But someone explain Bambi and The Reservoir Dogs have different ratings? Speaking of Reservior Dogs, that whole movie is very similar to Old Yeller in a lot of ways...think about it.

Now, given what we know about that movie...what we ALL know about that movie, why would anyone think this is a good idea?



Oh nice. Do the treats come with a shotgun too?

And speaking of things that will screw with kids minds, I literally have no words and no stories pointless or otherwise for the following image.




Good luck splainin that to the kids!

PS.

₁read “People with social and/or familial obligations to read my blog.

A Civil Sneak Preview

This will be a short entry…I know, it’s a big deal when I can be succinct (but I make no promises for the future).

I’m just going to give a little preview of what will be a long story involving this dog:




And this fuzzy photo of a tow truck.



Poor little guy had a rough night not too long ago.

Also, in light of recent events and the president’ call for more civility…




Also here’s a non-blurry screen capture of the website…kind of looks like my dog, no?



Just because my dog is redonkulously cute...and that this is one of the best/luckiest photos I've ever taken...



See you soon!

PS

MPS – If you like the sticker, click HERE for the site.

Here, Sip This Whiskey and Bite This Stick While We Cut Off Your Arm

You ever hear of the phrase, “Shooting yourself in the foot”…

I’ve essentially done the equivalent of that in the blog/mobile gadget world.

Allow me to explain:

I believe I’ve mentioned before that I carry a blackberry (though, not for long, and much to the chagrin of my wife, I talk non-stop about my next phone).

Here's my phone:





You like that shallow depth of field and selective focus on the shots of my phone??? Pretty sweet, I know.

Moving on.

So like a lot of smartphones, my blackberry requires an additional memory card for storage…most people just have the guy at the Verizon/AT&T/Sprint/T-Mobile/Cricket/USA Cellular/(sorry I’ve been reading a lot of phone stuff lately and just felt like naming the companies for some reason, get over it) store put in the card and you never think about it.

Well, like a lot of poor people, I can’t necessarily afford to have a guy do stuff for me and, as it turns out, it saves you (me) a bunch of money to simply open my phone and put a memory card into it myself.

Smartphones usually require this type of memory card



It’s called a “Micro-SD” card…I’ll save the technical details of it (mostly because I don’t know them) and just tell you that this thing is really fѱ©Ƙing small. So small, that they make a standard SD card adapter for it.

See how small?



Well, my phone had been acting up lately and I needed to upgrade the software on it and wanted to back up all the data I had saved on the micro-card. Smart move, no? Thanks, I pride myself on making smart moves.

My computer…



…actually comes with an internal SD card reader, but recently, due to my photography addiction, I bought myself a memory card reader…it connects via usb and can read all kinds of memory cards:



Up until the incident happened that I am purposefully dancing around telling, I had only used it for my big camera’s memory card which is not SD, but Compact Flash and it has worked perfectly and now it doesn’t take 3 days to upload my photos…

Well, it has a slot for a Micro SD card…I (stupidly)…(wait…I need to reopen these parentheses because, this is not the stupid part…there is a slot for the card I had and I chose to use it) thought, well, lets get some additional use out of the reader and use it for something else. Plus…I didn’t feel like digging around for the adapter…I know I have it, but I got the card so long ago, I might have a hard time finding it.

So there I go on my merry way offloading data from the memory card and moving along nicely. When I was done and needed to remove the card, I had some trouble…remember when I referred to me doing something stupid before?

Stage Hand: Cue the stupid!

The card is so small, that no matter how much you squeeze with your fingers, you can’t exert enough pressure to remove this thing easily from the deathly grips of the card reader. It also is not equipped with a little ejector or a push-in-to-release mechanism.

(there are WAY too many “That’s what she said’s” in there to even mention).

Stage Hand: STUPID! I CALLED FOR STUPID!

Okay, okay. I’ll try to get to the stupid. I looked around for something that could help provide the added pressure I needed to remove the card successfully so I could resume taking lots of stupid photos for all of you.

(Seriously, without the card in there, I can only fit about 20 total pics on my blackberry. And SAVE IT, iPhone users, I don’t want to hear anything you have to say).

And believe me, I’ve missed on a couple of gems! There was, for example, a truck I passed recently and it was hauling a piece of construction equipment. I know, who cares? Right? Well, you’d care when the equipment company is called:



My sincerest apologies, dear readers. I will (try to) not fail you like this again.

Stage Hand: QUIT STALLING! I called for Stupid and we’re behind! Get stupid out here NOW!

(I just saw Black Swan, so I think that’s why I’m thinking of a stage hand…good movie, kind of messed up…Gothika meets Fight Club…meets Pirates of the Caribbean (what with all the bones jumping and dancing everywhere) combined with all the anorexia of that Lifetime Movie with the Pink Power Ranger where all she ate was lettuce (don’t ask).

Sorry, I know I’m stalling on the stupid. Here we go.

When all my attempts to remove said MicroSD card from the reader failed…I resorted to tools. My dad used to always say, “Man is superior to animal by his ability to make and use tools.” The important thing about tools is you need to find the RIGHT tool for the job…even if you’re adapting a tool…you need something just tough enough, something with finesse, something that isn’t…well…going to crush the innards of your MicroSD card…oops, I gave away the punch line.

What tool did I think was the right one?

No, I’m not going to put a picture of me here…jerks.

This is what I thought would free my trapped flash memory card…






I was half right…well, all-right…I got the memory card out, see? It's back in my phone...right in there next to the SIM card...told you that thing is small!



But now I get this screen:






Sad.

Well, I’m off to Home Depot to find a good blade for the brain surgery I'm scheduled to perform later today. Should be fine…plus think of all that money I’ll save!

PS

Okay, who farted in the elevator?

Feedback is super important.

We get it from all kinds of places and we get it constantly!


That’s what she said!

Think about it. We get feedback from our speedometers when we’re driving…and when those don’t work, the city puts radar speed monitors out on the street that flash when you’re going too fast…aaaaand when those still don’t work…well, you get a ticket. But that is also feedback.

“Do you know why I’m stopping you, sir?”

“No, officer, please give me some feedback as to the nature of our interaction today.”

What? How do you talk to cops?

The key point of feedback, though, is that it really needs to be specific. Recently, I’ve gotten some very foggy feedback…one guy drove past my car and just gave me a thumbs up…completely out of the blue…and he did so very emphatically…like FRANTICALLY giving me a thumbs up…then he just sped on his merry way, probably not looking at his speedometer.

A short time later I’m driving along and this dude drives up next to me, shakes his head ‘no’ at me with a look of significant disappointment on his face. The look your teacher gave you when you didn’t do your homework. The look you got from your parents when you drew on the wall…seriously, very, EXTREMELY disappointed. Then he, like the other guy, sped away with no further explanation or gesture.

As I thought more about it, I realized that I DO have two pretty offensive and inflammatory stickers on the rear window of my car. The first is this one on the driver’s side…




It’s a sticker from a vinyl toy company called Wunderland War (http://wunderlandwar.com) that makes sort of punk-rock inspired vinyl toys…I think they’re pretty cool and I’ve bought a few and it came with a sticker…so why not, right? I know, VERY offensive.

Then, next one I have is this one…



Who knew that this would be such a lightning rod for all kinds of feedback I didn’t need. Honestly, I kept the sticker on past the 2008 election for two reasons:

1) I still support the guy and
2) I think Shepard Fairey did a really cool thing with the picture and I dig it.

(Babe, you like my two-point reasoning???)

Hold on to your hats…here comes a tangent!

Every year I get invited to join a fantasy football league, and every year I decline said invitation. It just isn’t my thing…plus it seems like a LOT of work!

No thanks, I have my own fantasy football…it’s POLITICS! I get sucked in every time. I follow the different campaigns, read the news, and generally obsess about all of it.

On the obsession note…check out this website

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com

They do incredibly accurate election predictions based on polling data…really cool…geeky, but cool nonetheless.

Anyway, one of the reasons I purposefully went on this tangent is that I’ve been seeing something this election cycle that I find pretty interesting and I’m going to illustrate it with another tangent.

Have you ever walked onto an elevator and its pretty obvious that someone just farted? You ever worry that if someone else gets on that elevator that they’re going to think that YOU, in fact, dealt it?

I have a strong suspicion that’s how Barrack Obama must feel at this point during these mid-term elections. It’s got to feel like he walked into a stinky elevator and when others joined him, they started blaming him for the fart…but the funny thing is that we all saw the guy that stunk up the place.

So when I write these entries, they usually percolate in my head for a while. I’ll snap a picture and the image will spark some kind of idea or theme and then I write it in my head for a few weeks. Sometimes I’ll start writing and then come back to it later…just like this one.

So I started writing this one and had most of the images and ideas down for what I was going to say and had the title of ‘Who Farted’ etc, etc. But then one day my wife and I went to lunch and when we came out THESE documents were on my car’s windshield, my windshield only, and no other car in the lot:









Chock full of “Obama’s a Socialist” business, Glen Beck is a god, blah blah blah. The moment was made even lighter by the thought that someone just had this stuff in their car waiting for someone with an artsy window sticker to come along to they can change my mind with their literature.

Then I laughed out loud when my wife yelled, “We’ve been tea bagged!”

Awesome!

So what was the image that sparked this politically-charged entry, you might ask? (But I know you didn't)

Well, it was someone giving someone some feedback.




See ya next time, jerks.


PS

Simpsons Did It!

I used to love the Simpsons…actually, I still do, but I don’t really watch anymore, not sure why.

In fact, my quote on facebook is a line from the Simpsons. When you pick a quote for facebook, it has to be something that captures you perfectly…after all, what’s more important than facebook?

My quote?

Oh right. Here it is:

“Powerful like a gorilla, yet soft and yielding like a Nerf ball.”

Gets me every time.

Not only do I think that quote describes me perfectly…but it serves as the perfect segue for my images today.

My facebook quote comes from a Simpsons episode where Homer finds his long-lost brother. His brother is a rich auto-tycoon and allows Homer to design a new car…which he cleverly dubs “The Homer.”

His car looks like this:



Complete with isolation bubbles…awesome, right?

Cartoons are good for that kind of thing. Showing you something that would be incredible…if only it could happen…

If only…

Cue dreamy sounds…



How sweet is that?

Let’s hope this catches on…



See you next time!
PS.

MPS: No one commented about the title of the last entry…not one of you. I’ve been torn up about this all week. It’s almost like no one is actually reading this…but that can’t be true.

Liberate Tutemae Ex Inferis

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!



I’m just kidding. Though the news that laser surgery is now less painful is helpful…I have better news.

MPS is back!

I went on hiatus a bit, but I’ve been writing in my head for a while, promise.

I wanted to say something like “Guess who’s back in the mother f-ing house”…

but after scrolling down and seeing my photo in the last entry, I know I really can’t get away with “a big fat blog for your mother f-ing…”…

…

I can’t complete that phrase…I know for a fact that my MOM reads my blog…sooooo…I definitely can’t finish that.

Speaking of readers, though, I received confirmation that MPS has a unique reader…a friend linked to my site on her site and then commented on that friend’s facebook page that she thought MPS was funny…

I want to say, "Redemption is Spelled"…but there is nothing more annoying to my beautiful, intelligent, sweet, caring, loving wife then when I spell ‘redemption’ in all kinds of new (read: dumb) ways.

Back to the subject of my Mom…I wanted to talk about family today.

There’s a HUGE part of my family that resides in this blog. I completely believe that my Dad has a BIG part to do with my blog…with my desire to find recazulous (Word. Coined!) stuff in the world. And well before starting the blog, my family has sent me pictures of all kinds of weird things...more on those later.

Time for a long aside, but it’s been a while since I’ve written so you’re just going to have to oblige…or just scroll through and not read…either way, I’m going to take up more space because I’m PS damn it, and you’re not…but if I could provide a teaser for you…should you read on, you will ask yourself the following question: "Did he really just tell a story about a non-descript white van?"

SPOILER ALERT:

The answer is yes.

So remember how I say that EVERYTHING has a story? Well, I got more proof of that some time ago. There was a non-descript white van (told you so) parked on the street. I hadn’t noticed it before, until one day I was walking my dog…




…and I happened to notice a note left on the windshield of this white van, parallel parked near a small apartment complex. As I approached it, I thought I was going to see a ticket on this person’s windshield and utter the words, “sucks for that guy,” to myself. Turned out it was piece of ruled paper (I didn’t get close enough to evaluate college/wide/legal ruling…my apologies). It was a note facing inward, but written darkly enough to be read: YOU CAN’T STORE YOUR VAN HERE. MOVE IT OR IT WILL BE TOWED. Weird, I thought, seeing as how it was a non-descript white van, one that I hadn’t noticed before, but it really pissed somebody off. A day or two later, there was an official city ticket and notice. Then a couple days after that…no more white van.

It occurs to me that there are no less than 3 versions of this story. Mine (the outside observer), the angry guy who couldn’t stand the non-descript white van near his apartment any longer, and the person who got his van got towed after thinking it was cool to park it there for a couple days.

Some day, I’ll tell you the story about my truck got towed in LA because my wife, then friend, and I failed to read a sign correctly.

Okay, back to the silly picture.

Full Disclosure Time:

I have seen this image many MANY times. Not only have I seen it on my own and with my wife…

This is where I wanted to post a picture of my wife being inappropriate next to the photo you’ll see below…I even blocked out her eyes like I did to my own picture…no go. Oh well.

She’s awesome…and I love her a lot.

Here it is all alone (and by all alone, of course, I mean that all of the inappropriateness lies within the image itself, no one making obscene gestures beside it:



Something tells me that the title of this blog gets whispered in the above situations…

Seriosously, Catholic Church, don’t you think it would be worth it to modify the image a bit? I mean, I get that you have a lot of settlement money to pay out…and I know I’m no publicist…but seems like it would be money well spent to aid in improving your public image.

Here is where I intended to put a stained glass version of this image, but I lost it. Can’t find it in my email, can’t find it on my computer…but it was my whole reason for discussing family in the first place…my dad found it and sent it to me. I’ll post it solo whenever I can locate it.

See you soon!

PS

MPS: Bonus points for anyone who can identify the origin of the title and put it in the comments. I’ll call you out in the next post.

Myspace Angles

Back in the day, Myspace was all the rage. Everyone had a page and there was a race to see how many “friends” you could get on there. One of the things that influenced your friend count was your picture…you always wanted to have a good Myspace profile picture. You had to get the right angles that made you look best, yet still looked casual and fun.

The way to get these pictures just right was to take the picture from above with from about 45 degrees off-center. The person in the photo usually looks out of the corner of their eyes and smiles so as to stretch the muscles and tendons in the neck…emphasizing the bones, and, well, not your fat neck.

I took a trip to Michigan and Chicago a few years back with my family. My sisters and I were hitting the tourist bars near Wrigley Field, and we all took fun Myspace pictures…mine turned out pretty legendary, this is what I looked like:



As I look at it, I realize that I probably don’t need to hide my identity…one because I know all my readers personally, and two (and most importantly), my face and neck are more mutated than the ninja turtles that I’m pretty much unrecognizable. One of the best things my wife has taught me is that a good argument tends to have 2 points…well she didn’t exactly teach me that…she’s just better at arguing than I am and her arguments ALWAYS have two points.

“The cats are wayyyyy better than the dog. One, because they’re cleaner and TWO, the dog sucks.”

Anyway…why have I gone through all this trouble and posted a ridiculous picture of myself? Well, PS had another wreck-less driving experience recently. I saw this delivery truck on my way to work and I thought it was funny enough by itself…my first few attempts to capture the image didn’t go very well…too far away, too blurry, you name it…yes I took probably 5-6 shots before deciding to drive up alongside the truck (stroke of genius AND pure luck, if you ask me).

I was a good driver and kept my eyes fixed on the road in front of me, but I aimed my phone at what I hoped would be the right angle to get what I was after…this my friends was my albatross that morning. Turned out, the angle made the picture funnier than it was originally…much like the properly snapped Myspace picture will make an otherwise homely, overweight, and generally unattractive person look more appealing.



Pepe actually puts produce in your tacos...but I got the good Myspace angle on it! So even though it is significantly less appetizing thinking about Pepe dropping fresh duce in your taco, it's funnier, and more attractive to me.

Always check your angles!

PS