the tree of woe

I’ve decided that since I like having followers so much, I’m going to start a new organization: Contra Costa County Photography. It’ll be about photography in Contra Costa county. I think our logo will be something simple, like a slightly abstract image of light passing through a magnifying glass:

Despite my best efforts to destroy this blog, it still somehow keeps getting visitors. Apparently, I’m huge in the Russian banking and pharmaceutical communities. I really do appreciate the offers, guys, but I don’t need to refinance anything right now.

This monstrosity of a blog might see even more neglect in the future, due to the recent addition of a puppy to our family. I would recommend a puppy to anyone who both hates sleep and enjoys maintaining a near constant state of alertness. It’s kind of like suddenly becoming the parents of a two year old child who won’t wear diapers, can run faster than you, and is capable of destroying anything within its path. Manually piloting the space shuttle through a difficult, dangerous atmospheric reentry would be a good equivalent regarding stress, only with less poops.

Next time you’re dealing with rejection, think about what some of these famous people had to go through:

• Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.
• Thomas Edison went through 3,000 prototypes of the lightbulb before he discovered a filament that worked.
• Abraham Lincoln was told he was no good at splitting rails, but what do we chiefly remember him for today?
• Louis Pasteur killed over 200 people while testing his “Pasteurization” process.
• When Walt Disney told people about his idea for a theme park, people would punch him in the throat.

This is why I love having a beard:

• I look thinner.  More specifically, it’s harder to tell if I’ve gained weight.
• It’s like having a built-in scarf at all times, even in the shower.
• I look smarter, especially when paired with my glasses. “Well, let’s ask him. He’s got a beard and glasses” is something I hear frequently.
• It brings me one step closer to doing a perfect Hemingway/Commander Riker/Zeus impression.
• I think I look scarier, at least until I open my mouth.

I’ve been feeling bad for not blogging the last week. It’s not that I’ve been particularly busy, I have just been lacking the motivation and inspiration. For this reason, I decided to see what unpublished blog posts I had lying around, hoping one of them would be in a finished enough form to just publish without any additional effort. Mysteriously, I didn’t find one like that. So enjoy all of my old fragment blog posts. Consider this blog post to be like one of those furniture store ads that goes something like this: “Oh no! We bought too much furniture! You’d think we’d learn our lesson and fire the buyers, but we don’t for some reason! It ALL MUST GO NOW!”

A Vague, Possibly Horrible Warning!

I like my car.  One of the many things I like about it is its ability to tell me what, if anything, is wrong. My previous automobile, like a small infant, lacked the ability to articulate what was troubling it at any particular time.  ”Check Engine”?  Check it for what? Leaks? Bugs? It’s very existence?

One day last week I woke up, and discovered I couldn’t move my right thumb. Well, I could move it one direction. Specifically, I could grip with it, but I couldn’t straighten it. It didn’t hurt, there seemed to be nothing else wrong, aside from the lack of movement in my thumb. I got out of bed and became very dizzy, quite suddenly. I became dizzy to the point that I had to kneel by the bed and hold on to it, as I couldn’t keep myself upright, not even on my knees. I immediately concluded that I must have some sort of horrible disorder. I’ve been accused of being melodramatic.

Here are some ways to improve your quality of life. (note: That’s all I wrote. I wish I would have worked on this one. I could have really used these tips.)