Rarer than the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, a friend of mine spotted the even more reclusive “Googly-Eyed Whitetail Deer” in Central Arkansas today. To assist mobile users, I’ve zoomed in on the shot for you all to enjoy. The good thing about these deer is that it is impossible to determine whether you’ve startled them or not, as their perpetually “surprised-face” never changes.
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=6710&picture=by-the-pool Original picture link, photo by Jon Luty – changes made by me and not endorsed by him.
This website isn’t as straightforward as you would think. Once you input your information, you should scroll and read through all the information on the results page.
Everyone who takes a minute to do more than a cursory glance has discovered something new.
One thing that I find informative is how the results compare an event in the past to your birthday, versus your birthday to present day. It compresses time into a surprisingly narrow and rapid series of events.
For me, it was interesting to think about time in gaps. For example, in 1976, the US’ 200th birthday, I was only 9 years old, but I remember hearing about WWII, thinking it was ancient history. But for those telling the stories, it was less than 30 years before, a long generation. From 1976 until now is much more time than from when I was 9 back to WWII. It adds an almost hidden element to time. Our memories both compress and elongate history.
Take a look at this picture. It is the iconic picture of Jesus that many of us stared at while growing up in our grandparent’s houses – the one which made the hair on the nape of our neck stand on end when we were trying to get by with something forbidden.
Or is it?
No, it’s actually a very clever morphed Jesus-Zach Galifianakis hybrid picture. This picture makes me laugh out loud, literally, sometimes.
I’ve used many times to wrap presents with. Those who don’t look closely think that I’ve used a picture of Jesus. Those who look really closely and who also follow pop culture really get a laugh out of it.
I’ve used this picture on personalized coffee mugs that I’ve had made.
I’ve used this picture as a centerpiece on xmas decorations and things of that nature. Many people never notice that something isn’t quite right about the picture.
I tried to convince myself to make a large framed version of this and sneak it into the church I most often attend. I couldn’t quite do it, although I’m certain that the pastor would have laughed until he cried. It’s not like any of us old fogies can see well enough to catch the tomfoolery at first glance, anyway.
It’s not so much that I’m subverting anyone’s beliefs, but that it is a great example of subversive humor.
Many of you may soon see me on the news or on A&E. As you’ve probably heard, I’m the 1st person to ever obtain photographic evidence of Smallfoot. (He is a genetic cousin of his larger counterpart Bigfoot but instead of being 7′ tall he is only 3″ in height.)
Instead of “Squatch” we might call him “Squashed.”
I had footage of Smallfoot. Unfortunately, I took it at midnight near a river in West Fork, with the lens cap on evidently. But it’s still further proof. However, the media won’t let me show it to you, for reasons I can’t discuss.
I disbanded the Smallfoot social media community on 12-20-2014.
One of my previous hobbies involved taking pictures of the toilets (or a toilet) in a place I visited. (I didn’t take a picture if the place were filthy.) At the apex of my hobby, I had at least a 100 great toilet pictures. I’ll bet you’ve never read that sentence in your life before, have you? Say what you will about the foolishness of such an endeavor, it was certainly inexpensive to collect such “mementos” of the places I had visited. I would even take them back when all I had was a traditional film camera. Imagining what the people printing the pictures were thinking was no small part of the fun of the stupidity I enjoyed.
Whether I sauntered into the Imax in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Liberace’s private bathroom, I would take a snapshot of the toilet. Doing this rarely failed to give a me a burst of laughter. There were times someone might walk in during my shot. More than once, I had looks of outlandishly bewildered expressions thrown at me. On one occasion, I took a shot and the flash must have bewildered someone in an adjacent stall I thought to be empty. I heard a very quiet “What the f$%^” come out of the supposedly empty stall. Explaining what I was doing in these situations didn’t seem to sate the curiosity of those who walked in during these photography sessions! No, it usually inspired the inquisitive people to march away quickly, very quickly.
A few years ago, I had visited Olive Garden in Fayetteville with my cousin Jimmy Terry. He wanted to “see me in action,” so to speak. He accompanied me to the bathroom and as I opened the stall door, he couldn’t control his laughter. “I can’t believe you do this all the time!” he giggled. I let him take the picture but his giggling resulted in all 3 of the pictures coming out looking like he had a seizure while trying to take the picture. More than once, Jimmy would later ask me if I took a picture of any toilets while I went to Vegas or to a new restaurant. He liked to joke that I should get a photography service started and do the photo shoots ONLY in bathrooms. He said it would be easier to clump everyone together if they were all crammed in a stall together – and that they would be more inclined to not waste time, especially if the stall were “between users,” so to speak. He added that since people were always running off to the bathroom, doing the shoot IN the bathroom would be thereby eliminated as an excuse, too.
When going through old photo albums, you could have seen two dozen pictures of the Air Museum only to be thrown off guard halfway through by a full-color shot of one of the toilets residing there. Every once and a while, I would throw in a picture of one of the toilets in the dvd picture slideshows I loved making. (From my perspective, there was just as much recognition of my visit having seen the toilet as the front of the building housing it.) Including toilet pictures in a person’s slideshow is a quick method to determine how much of a sense of humor someone might have.
(I used to joke that such a book would make an excellent coffee table book. The novelty of such an item should have been enough to achieve modest sales, even as a gag gift.)
Sometime not too long ago, I thought I was doing myself a favor by culling the toilet shots out of my photo collections. I think by doing so that I excised a portion of my wonderment and amusement toward the world. It would be a great pleasure to laugh at some of those pictures again and to test how many I could identify without any context.
Newser Story Containing a Couple of Links Directly Related to This
I think that having giant dinosaurs concealed in the foliage along I-540, Hwy 412 and other places would be an awesome addition to our scenery. Perhaps have a large T-Rex head poking out from behind billboards and large trees, or King Kong’s head peering over the top of a small hill. It would draw attention to the advertising and make life visually interesting for everyone.
Backwards clocks are a reminder to stop assuming that there is a “normal” orientation for things. Even if there such a thing, it is a poor reason to insist on conformity. A huge dose of craziness is what makes life interesting.
You can order one through Amazon, among other places.
Please keep an eye on your friends or family if they are drinking while looking at these clocks. They’ve been known to cause brain freeze and bewilderment.
People needlessly spend a fortune on getting a yearly Xmas ornament for their tree. There are some very beautiful ones out there – and many which aren’t terribly expensive, either.
But if you are looking for a yearly ornament that is both cheap, easy, and will look almost exactly the same, year in and year out, look no further.
As strange as it sounds, you should use a dollar. Seriously. Each member of the family should sign his or her name on it in colors, then label the bill with the year in larger letters. You can then hang, roll, or place the bills year to year on your tree.
My wife and I now have 5 on our decorations. We even have one that is labelled as a “proxy dollar,” as my stepson thought it would be cute to “liberate” one the first year. It’s now part of the story of our ornaments, rather than detracting from it.
Since we didn’t do a tree this year, you can look on the very far right of the picture I attached to see the dollars in the lighting of my alternate Xmas decorations.
It’s fun, cheap, and different. What’s not to like?
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 