eh?

La Chute (fra)

2011-04-17T13:08:00.005-06:00

Untitled, a photo by gumby* on Flickr.

Merci, babelfish

2011-04-17T13:08:00.003-06:00

Merci, babelfish, a photo by gumby* on Flickr.

The Farmer's Daughter- Jim Harrison

2011-04-17T13:08:00.001-06:00

The Farmer's Daughter- Jim Harrison, a photo by gumby* on Flickr.

Anansi Press, Canada

I <3 Getty & Random House

2011-04-17T13:07:00.003-06:00

I , a photo by gumby* on Flickr.

el hacha (Hatchet) esp

2011-04-17T13:07:00.001-06:00

el hacha (Hatchet), a photo by gumby* on Flickr.

book cover (de)

2011-04-17T13:06:00.001-06:00

Untitled, a photo by gumby* on Flickr.

flickr

2007-03-05T03:17:00.001-07:00

My creation
Originally uploaded by gumby 1.

I have disappeared into Flickr.
Come visit...

Photo Tuesday Update

2006-12-23T21:20:00.000-07:00

http://twtme-icon-of-the-day-winners.blogspot.com/2006/12/almost.html
Because I would much rather that someone else remember what day it is.

Photo Tuesday

2006-12-13T22:05:00.000-07:00

After having viewed the weekly entrants at Photo Friday for several months, I realised that not only did I not have anything worthy of entering, but I wasn't (and would never be) a serious enough photographer to meticulously record the appropriate technical information accompanying the entries.

To avoid artistic discouragement, and celebrate a specific genre of the photographic arts, I would like to announce the inaugral Photo Tuesday. Every Tuesday, or at least the ones when I remember what day of the week it is, I will announce a topic. Post a photo relating to the topic, and in a week the winner will be chosen at random. I imagine I have a good shot at taking home the top prize every week, and it will have nothing to do with photographic prowess or lack thereof.

Good luck!

Today's topic is;

WEST NILE VIRUS

World Peace

2006-12-08T05:13:00.000-07:00

It is what every individual wishes for at this time of year.

Beauty contestants, young children, and even George Bush might have this on his little list of Things I'd Like To See Under The Tree.

Chances are none of us will get it, and that the dreams we have will remain just that.

But it is a noble thing, this desire for goodness and harmony, and we must never give up hope that someday the world will be a better place, no longer fraught with discord.

God speed.

I, too, have my own abbreviated list, which includes the cure for AIDS, the end to World Poverty, and goodwill towards man. Perhaps it couldn't all fit in the sled, maybe the address was smudged. I'm not going to quibble. But in the interest of hope and faith, I will re-enter my list, which is brief.

1.Atlas Shrugs

Santa...that's him, beating the Queen's Plate (that's a Gr.1, Santa) winner Edenwold from off the pace in the $150,000 Queenston Stakes at Woodbine. A tenacious colt. I'd say a scrappy little bastard, but it is a religious holiday and that might been taken as a negative, even though it isn't.

He was in a 80K claiming race a few months ago, which means that his owners didn't want him anymore, which makes him virtually an orphan, which dovetails nicely with my seasonal be-nice mentality.

An orphan.

The thought brings a tear to my eye.

Santa, just remember...I donated to PETA.

I didn't scream at that gentleman on the cell phone driving the Navigator who nearly ran me off the road. Remember? I said, "snap" Santa, and that has to count for something this time of year.

Atlas Shrugs, 3yo colt, Reade Baker trained.

Could you also throw in a few years board and training? You wouldn't believe how it adds up!

Slumming

2006-11-28T15:43:00.000-07:00

Most people I know are loath to admit they have read the da Vinci Code. If they do crack, it is usually prefaced with a complicated explanation as to why. The dog ate the Milton, I found it in the park under a pile of leaves, I was building a perpetual motion machine in my garage and thought it might help...
But they do crack, eventually, if only to explain why it was such a horribly written book. Has anyone out there read only the first half? The first ten pages?

What happens when you are reading a blog which you know to be beneath you, but you can't help but be inspired by a particularly ridiculous statement, experiencing that thrill when sincerity, arrogance and stupidity collide in a perfect storm?
How do you justify your presence?
Michael Kinsey did, in an editorial, with an offhand, "While I was bored and reading random blogs..."* before going on to comment on the blog's inanity.
He can get away with slumming, because he is Michael Kinsey, and otherwise a busy man. If he was caught snooping around a Britney Spears fanblog, he could very smoothly spin it into punditry.
With that in mind, there are a few convenient options when commenting on a blog. Anonymous is useful to some, for a variety of reasons. You might be posting something insulting, or alternately, you cannot refrain from posting a comment wonderfully erudite, but you would be mortified if anyone knew you had been there.

"I did not have sex with that woman." Poor Bill, slumming. He should have posted anonymously.

*No, I do not have the link. Ich bin ein Luddite.

Losing My Religion

2006-11-23T06:36:00.000-07:00

Devotion is a curious thing. Those that leave the flock are spiritual lepers, doomed to an eternal hell that even Dante may have underestimated.

But belief must be maintained if one is to remain in the light. The path must be followed.

I have not been smitten, stoned or turned to salt for my transgressions, and the skies have not opened to claim me.

The strangest part for me is that my lapse is total, and I hardly even noticed. Is that the way it works? I used to be blessed, surrounded by my fellow worshippers in a congregation of the chosen who reaped the harvest of the earth while others slept, long before the opening bell.

Once upon a time, I would listen rapt as Sylvia from Frankfurt spoke the gospel from afar in a strangely moving accent, and a shiver would travel down my spine when the earnest Mormonesque David Faber recited breathlessly the devotional poetry of ebitdas.

I used to study the face of Alan Greenspan for clues to my beloved, but even this ageless prophet, having thoroughly converted me with his cautious yet inspiring revelations, has disappeared with his sacred briefcase from the Mount.

All that remains of this previously ecstatic relationship is a tidy sheaf of computer-generated correspondence, the last and final testament to a love that lasted through, and strengthened in spite of, plague and pestilence.

Sometimes, in the throes of a fitful sleep, I hear voices murmuring like the rubbing beads of a rosary,

"...forex forex forex...".

Niagara (1 and 2)

2006-11-19T00:52:00.000-07:00

Frank Maedler is a German photographer, and if I never
picked up a camera again, it would be because of his work.
This diptych is 3x9 feet.

Too much time

2006-11-17T21:32:00.000-07:00

Not even one female match found.
Either the facial recognition software is compromised, or it is time to start wearing make-up.

But, Rod Stewart?
I'm sticking my head in the oven.

...& not enough Banksy

2006-11-17T21:11:00.000-07:00

Thank you

2006-11-13T16:05:00.000-07:00

... to everyone who commented.
It was illuminating to sift through the advice, and I truly appreciate it. However, I seem to have installed a wicked program which does not allow me to post back to your blogs, or it might be that I have buried forever the passwords and userwords which I randomly entered and promptly forgot.
Let's see if I have this straight. I need to;
Post more pictures/ fewer pictures. Better pictures. People shots.
Change the subject matter to include politics. Fashion. Pets. Scrapbooking?
Dumb name. Cute name. Change the name.
Font too small, screen too black.
Postings not informative about the world. All over the place. Crap blog. Read my blog.

The irony is that with the exception of the gentleman who has his sister tied up in the toolshed, you're all right.

The Rest

2006-11-12T17:27:00.000-07:00

After having lived in Singapore for a year, I became homesick for the taste of red licorice and the smell of horses.
Not just any horses, but the big glossy neurotic prima donnas with hooves that can shoot out to remove your kneecap with surgical precision if you don't watch out for the tilt of their ear. The bigger, glossier and faster, the better.
I contacted a trainer out of the track at Bukhit Timah, and he was kind enough to allow me to come with a camera for the morning gallop.
All tracks have tight security, but I didn't realise I would have to leave photo ID. All I had in my pocket was a Mastercard, which they grudgingly accepted. Restrictions meant I couldn't hang over the rail as I had wanted, so the pictures were slightly blurred. I did get some better shots for the purpose of drawing, but after a few hours, the bogus-artistic black turtleneck I was wearing had turned into a fibreglass cocoon, so I left while I was still standing.
When I developed the pictures, I phoned the trainer to get his address, but his secretary hung up when I called. After trying several times, getting the same response, I gave up and mailed them to the steward at the track.
A few days later, the Straits Times had an article about a doping scandal in the stables on the day I had been there. Senveral trainers were being investigated, but there was no mention of a tall sweaty foreigner camouflaged as Cato lurking around the stables.
The trainer did phone weeks later to apologise, and I sent him a photo of the drawing I had made of his favourite colt (sketch below).
"Lah" he said, "Where's the rest of him?"

Sketch (pencil on paper)

2006-11-12T17:13:00.000-07:00

2006-11-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

Lordy lordy. My blog is sagging.

Socks

2006-11-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

A brick wall on a residential road in Shanghai, one of three built close together, each one higher than the one before. The closest was built with fascinating disregard for the fundamentals of masonry.
There was no gate or entrance visible from the road, and no roof on the structure.
You could have crawled up, if you were curious, and peeked through the window, but all you would have seen was yet another brick wall.

I finally figured out the definition of a sock, and why it is sometmes torn off and waved around in triumph, and batted up and down the field like the grotesquely barbaric polo games featured in the National Geographic of my youth (Oh gross. Is that really a head? Eww. Lemme see...).
I am puzzled, not only by anyone who has the energy to cultivate and practice such an elaborate performance, but also whoever has the tenacity to track down and reveal these individuals.
But I would like a snapshot of an actual sock, because I have in mind nothing more than a pimply, scrawny youth allergic to dander and peanuts who hyperventilates at the idea of being out in public, so Mum saves up to get him a reconditioned computer for Christmas.
Is this the genesis of the Protocols?
Or a lady, myopic and a wee bit older than a certain age, in a grimy chintz bathrobe surrounded by a sea of cats.
But I am confused as to why.

Setting aside the enigma of socks, I am relieved there are (approximately) only two sexes from which to choose, because my confusion over a matter as supposedly simple as this has left me with a certain amount of paranoia.
Who the hell am I talking to?

My, Grandma. What a big vocabulary you have.

Cacaphony

2006-11-08T19:57:00.000-07:00

Meet the magpie.

It makes a sound like the slow pull of a rusty nail out of old wood. It is relentless, and generally bored. It likes to join its friends outside open windows, especially before dawn on weekends. These striking birds can harrass one another for hours. This particular specimen is young, immature and cannot fly. Ironically, it is the noisiest one of the flock.

The group I seem to have fallen into (and will not leave, apparently) is not the warm fuzzy we-are-the-world congregation of similars that I would have expected. I would not have expected how quickly these brilliant, cannibalistic, bored, and entertaining individuals regroup themselves from the binary to be so vivid, diverse and consistent. They tear each other apart. They ignore the uninitiated, the lost, or the over-eager. They are only gentle to the truly stupid. And those, they carefully scoop up and return to the branch.

I'm not sure if I have been returned to the branch, or everyone is too lazy to get up and shut the damned window.

October

2006-11-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

Remind
us
again
about
the
evils
of
global
warming...

Navigation

2006-11-02T05:42:00.000-07:00

You can't be annoyed if someone tries to charge you $20. for a pineapple at the corner market. Every morning for weeks, I would hold up a pineapple at the fruitsellers makeshift sidewalk stand, and he would punch an elaborate series of numbers into his calculator, and every morning he would come up with a price equvalent of $20. I thought after a few weeks that persistence, nodding, and a fistful of modest-but-respectable yuan would win out, but no amount of bargaining was going to make that pineapple cheaper, or mine.
I switched to watermelon, which were heaped in piles on the sidewalk. Five dollars for one that I had to strap onto my back to get back to the hotel. I happily paid it, every day, until one morning an old woman came beetling over and started barking in Mandarin at the fruitseller.
She slapped the money I had just given him out of his hand, grabbed most of it, and handed the money and the melon to me. She didn't stop scolding him as I walked away, and from then on, watermelon was fifty cents. It was as though I had learned a new, recognizable phrase. The watermelon was particularly sweet that day.
There were times when I felt as though it might be possible to understand where I was, and at times I couldn't put anything in context; not as a roundeye, female , or even human being.
On a particularly wild taxi ride, (I was alone but had been in Shanghai long enough to know how much it would be and how long it would take), we blasted through the lights and, at that particular moment the odds were against us, and the taxi broadsided a cyclist. Not a glance, but a direct undeniable smash at full speed, and an old man on an old bike ricocheted off the front bumper, flew over the hood and landed in a flutter of clothing 20 feet away from his bike.
I assumed we would stop, but we didn't even slow down. When I looked back, he was lying in the road, not moving. The cab driver was screaming and shaking his fist at the rear view mirror, and when we stopped at our destination half an hour later, he got out and traced the crack in the windshield with his finger quietly, then continued shouting. The only indication it had happened was the cracked glass, and a streak of blood on the hood almost indistinguishable from the rust.

Taxi driver

2006-10-25T21:36:00.000-06:00

Catch a cab here and it will take you anywhere. It may not be where you had initially planned, but you will get wherever it is you are going with great dispatch. There are no traffic signals here, only decorative posts and festive lights dotting the streets which mean nothing more than the electrical grid is up and running, and life is good. A red light signifies that the driver grit his teeth, curse to the heavens in Mandarin, and floor the accelerator until all 42 horses scream in protest.
The serene and civilised flow of cyclists is hardly interrupted, unless they are unfortunate enough to find themselves in the direct path of the bumper, in which case that pretty red light is just about last thing they will ever see.
When I lived in Miami Beach, during the first week I saw a car accident which had obviously happened moments before, and there were several bodies lying in the road, some moving and some not. I had just come from a mean, cold climate and the carnage was something I had never seen. But the sun was so bright off the Bay of Biscayne, and the air so clean, that the carnage blocking the road held no horror or even fascination.
When you step into a taxi in Shanghai, you are not taking your life into your hands. It is someone else's life, and it isn't your hands. And you might even get where you want to go.

Lost

2006-10-24T22:02:00.000-06:00

Ghosts in Shanghai