Another amazing bird Photo of the Day from the National Geographic site.
There is very little description with the photo, just that the photo is of crows and the shot was taken in Northern California.
Click photo for larger size and to be massively creeped out
Photo by Jamie Zarza.
During my recent visit to New Mexico, I got the chance to appreciate a good ol’ fashioned medium for blasting one’s special kind of crazy out to the world.
Look, I’m not talking about no Twitter, no kind of Facebook, no blog telling the world how I think about things. No!
I’m talking about full on signs attached to one’s vehicular mode of transportation.
Not bumper stickers. Signs.
Who knew?
My trip began with a journey from the airport on I-10 headed for Las Cruces. For a large part of the journey, I followed an eighteen wheeler with a rather large sign attached to the back.
As a matter of fact, this sign:
I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I always thought The Big Guy had a better sense of humor than that. I’d like to think if he had a problem with my little nickname, well, he’d just tell me. Why’d I have to learn about this from the back of a semi?
Should I call the number on the sign and ask?
Later that same day, I stopped off for lunch. I had a quick bite at a place over by the mall in Las Cruces and when I came out to my rental car, I noted that the car parked next to me was covered with stickers, signs and slogans.
The one that caught my eye was a bright yellow number that said:
“What if Glenn Beck is Right?”
After I finished hurting my head pondering what that meant, I was reminded of the South Park episode where Cartman riffs on Glenn Beck.
Which makes me wonder if maybe the real question is…what if Cartman is right?
Huh? Huh?
“I’m just asking questions!”
So seeing those two signs got me thinking about Southern New Mexico. It seems things have taken a lean to the right since I lived there last.
But just like the old saying about my home state, “If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes” turns out it took only a couple days to bring things back into perspective.
As I drove back to the airport on Sunday, again on I-10, I followed a beat up old Subaru with a hand-lettered sign on the back.
This bit of typesetting said, and I quote: “If you are going to ride my ass, the least you can do is pull my hair.”
In big letters. Covering the entire rear window.
Which just made my eyes ping-zing around in my brain while the word “Tilt” flashed over my head….
Cruces is getting to be an odd place.
Today in the San Francisco Chronicle‘s online edition, the SFGate, there was a very brief story on the front page for a few hours.
Here’s the headline:
Pot-firing catapult found at Arizona-Mexico border
Ok, in a nutshell, the story is:
“Drug smugglers trying to get marijuana across the Arizona-Mexico border apparently are trying a new approach — a catapult.
National Guard troops operating a remote video surveillance system at the Naco Border Patrol Station say they observed several people preparing a catapult and launching packages over the International Border fence last Friday evening.”
Blah, blah, blah, the Border Patrol and National Guard seized the catapult and about 4 pounds of the green stuff.
A fairly amusing story, all in. But that’s not the best part.
SFGate allows readers to comment on articles, and that’s where it gets good.
Here’s a selection of the best of what SFGate readers had to say:
“The catapult has been held without bail”
“Time for US to spend a few billion dollars to develop counter-catapult technology.”
“When trebuchets are outlawed, only outlaws will have trebuchets.”
“Total distance traveled by projectile: Over the border;
Time to impact from launch: 2.5 seconds;
Angle of launch: 45 degrees;
Temperature at time of launch: 65 degrees Fahrenheit;
Dimensions of projectile: 8 inch wide x 12 inch long cannabis;
Force of gravity: 32.15223 ft/s/s;
Muy bueno!”
(that’s geeky goodness)
“OMG it’s raining pot!”
“sounds pretty half baked.”
“No doubt these guys got the idea for their new delivery method from playing Angry Birds on their stolen iPhones.”
“They left this part of the story off:
‘Shortly after the seizure, the Mexican troops contacted the Americans and offerred to capapult 10 kilos of marijuana to the American side of the border in exchange for 10 large combination pizzas and a case of Doritos.'”
“Sophisticated criminals use a trebuchet.”
“Green Express. When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”
“This is what you get when the smugglers trade pot to an engineer for design work…”
“Save the bales!”
“The free Mexican Air Force is flying tonight
Flying so high yi hiyeeeeee!!”
I guess I should expect no less from the Bay Area, a place notoriously in favor of the use of the same stuff that is being lobbed over the wall.
Buncha smartasses. *grin*
Image from Icanhazcheeseburger
From a whipping-up-anxiety article in Time magazine titled “Will the Earth Have Two Suns by 2012?”
Regarding Betelgeuse, a rapidly collapsing red super-giant star:
“It goes bang, it explodes, it lights up,” Carter said. “We’ll have incredible brightness for a brief period of time…and then over the coming months it begins to fade and then eventually it will be very hard to see at all.”
And while the celestial event could take place before the end of 2012, it may not occur for a million years.
Emphasis added by me.
Sooo, it could happen in a year or a million years. Trifle hard to plan provisions for that million year stretch. What’s the half-life on my water container?
It’s only January of 2011 and I’m seriously DONE with the doomsday predictions.
Meanwhile, a star that explodes and lights up the Earth for a few weeks then fades away? That’s pretty damn cool. I kind of hope it happens by 2012.
The celebration of New Year’s 2011 was an interesting one, at least from my perspective.
It’s no secret that times have been a little rough for the past, oh, three or so years, but on December 31, 2010, there seemed to be a lot of optimism.
The general tone of the tweets, articles and conversations I experienced was that 2010 was over, and expectations were very high for a good 2011.
Even I fell into this category, being as suggestible as I am. It felt SO good to cast off what was, but a most accounts, a crappy year and turn my face to a new year that could hold so much joy, healing and peace.
Wipe the slate clean. Start again. The market is coming up a little. Jobless rate is going down a little. It seemed like more people had jobs and a bit more money to celebrate the holidays.
These are all good trends. Heck yeah, 2011! Bring us something good!
Today, the seventeenth day of January, it feels like folks have become a little impatient.
Where is my something good? Bring it to me already!
The credit card statements are rolling in, and those fun holiday celebrations are demanding they be paid off.
A few more people have jobs, but I can’t see that any more people are particularly happy with their jobs. It is, after all, still called “work”, as much as I’d like to get up in the morning and go to “fun” all day long.
Then there was that horrifying event down in Tuscon which not only ripped apart a community, but also became fodder for the harrumphing heads (<--like a talking head only wind-baggier). The news doesn't seem happier. People don't seem happier. Things are improving, but slowly. This weekend I started looking around at my fellow man and realized something. Everyone is pissed off. There is rudeness abounding, people saying shitty things, and today at the grocery story, something went down between the checker and a customer that ended up being taken outside. At the grocery store. Ay god. Then we came home from the store to see a police car sitting on our block in front of a neighbor's house. What the f--- is going on around here? I'd like to blame my own neighborhood and say "eh, it's just turning bad" but I'm not sure that's it's just happening here. I think people are fed up. Maybe, just maybe, we've put too much pressure on 2011 to be the panacea for all of the residual worries, anger and sadness from the great recession. One month into one year cannot fix all that came before. Maybe let's give both 2011 and each other a break, ok? We've got a lot of days left to go in this year. Who knows what 2011 has up its sleeve for, say, April? Or August? Ya just never know. I still believe in you 2011. You won't let us down. Right?
