okay, one more photo from the camera phone…

at the grocery store where i shop, they pack up your groceries and send them outside. for each bucket of groceries you have, you get a little plaque that has some random numbers and letters on it. the guys match up your plaque with the groceries and toss them in our trunk.

every time i get in line to get my groceries, i look at all the buckets and see if they spell something out (a huge bonus would be a bad word!) but i have only seen this happen a few times. the problem is that there are usually lots of numbers thrown in there.

the other day, i got my plaques, and threw them into the passenger seats, and lo and behold.. they spelled a word!

HIPPIE!!

not as cool as a bad word, but a pretty cool word nonetheless..

another camera phone shot…

every fourth of july or so here in ashland, they drag out a bunch of canons and fire up the 1812 overture. it’s really amazing that in this day and age, they allow canons to be shot off in the middle of town without everyone suing the city.

what is even more insane is the there is a HUGE amount of fanfare before they fire these canons off. there is a commander who shouts cadences. the canon firing guys almost do a dance with their giant q-tips before tamping down the powder. then, there’s a countdown, the commander draws his sword.. and BOOM!

the most whacky part about this is that even with all this fanfare, people STILL wander aimlessly. right in front of the canons. hell, even people rolling baby strollers wheel right out in front of those canons, completely oblivious as to what is about to happen.

have they never seen a canon, and are unaware of what the business end does? have they never heard the 1812 overture?

the beautiful part about the whole thing is, even with these people wandering out front, the show goes on. BOOM! and a family completely jumps out of their skin.. BOOM! and the orchestra trills.. BOOM! and every dog in a five square miles chimes in.. BOOM! and car alarms near and far scream..

i started to wonder a few weeks ago if you could make evocative photos with a camera phone. i had snapped mostly utility photos up until now. photos of stuff that i could remember until i got to the hardware store.

then, i realized that i had what might be an okay-ish type camera in my pocket pretty much all the time. so, i started pointing it at things i see every day.

this is probably one of the ugliest dolls i have seen in a long time. it almost looks like it was built after the fact. it is a dog’s body, with a girl’s face. when i walked by it, i almost stopped in my tracks because it was so hideous.

this little guy was up for sale at a flea market / junk bonanza. this place is chock full of things that nobody cares about anymore. for a buck, you can take them home, but for most people, it’s sort of like a museum of stuff you may have seen in your past. for those of you from southern california, think of trueblood’s.

as a joke, i snapped a photo of it..

then, i started to wonder.

this weird little doll probably sat through thunderstorms, earthquakes, domestic violence, drunken rampages, and helped some kid make it through another night that was completely beyond their control. if it was a raggedy anne or some other standard issue doll, it wouldn’t be so weird… but looking at this hideous creature, you would have to wonder what kind of parent would pick up something so ugly? my guess is that it’s the same kind of person that would subject their kids to random acts of insanity.

then again.. it may just be so ugly that no one ever bought it.. and it’s been an orphan since it rolled off the assembly line..

on this day, i called corey to check up on parker, the 20 pound lardass cat. corey told me it was -30F and miserable back home. some quick calculating reminded me that once again, it was one hundred degrees warmer in california.

shooting a snapshot like this, i wonder why i ever left.

the next day, i had to drive to long beach in the middle of the day.. and quickly remembered why i split.

if they would just kick 75% of the people out (the bad ones!), i would come back. when that happens, someone give me a call.