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Being Real
May 30, 2007. 8:20pm.  LINK: A woman's 143 reasons for dating her
Too often we see the same personal ad that states "I love biking, taking long walks, movies, live music, museums, dining out, and just exploring NYC." These ads really say nothing about the person. This ad, though, got straight to the point. She understood the importance of being real, not just a sum of your interests. It surprises me that so many ad posters have either never figured this out or, for some reason, choose to remain utterly common and "mainstream".  Back to top
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Decorations
May 16, 2007. 10:20pm. Occasionally I encounter odd decorations or motifs that have been reworked so many times they've lost their meaning. Last Sunday on the Garden State Parkway I saw one. A black Hummer limosine sported a large "Torgro" logo on the side surrounded by flames. The flames in this situation were mere decoration and that was OK with me. 
The part I didn't understand were the flames behind the wheel wells. 
The first cars I saw with a flame motif were from the 60s but the flames were across the front. My guess is that they wanted to capture the spirit of supersonic flight or a burning reentry. 
The location of the Hummer's flames, though, missed the point and became something dreaded instead...
It's odd that people will hold on to a tradition even though their rendition of it creates quite the opposite impression than was intended. Back to top
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Specialists
May 11, 2007. 11pm. Some people have natural talents such as being able to draw, or sing, or do math, or play sports. Even if we practice night & day, these people will always be better at their specialty than we are. Some people, though, stand out because they've "figured it out" through practice, or a moment of clarity, or whatever. Examples include cooks, gardeners, masons, jockeys, or even simple, overlooked tasks such cleaning windows or even eating. I recently met a woman who was a jellybean addict, consuming more than a pound per day. When you eat jellybeans by the handful it becomes important to have control of the flavors, so she customizes her mixes for flavor groupings much the same way a chef would group certain flavors together and some not. Her favorite mix, for instance, when eaten together tastes like pears. This may seem trivial but I was impressed, as I'm impressed with anyone who is a level above the rest of us. 
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Passion is A Decision
May 07, 2007. 10:55pm. Occasionally we run into people who are passionate about life, or some aspect of it, and they never fail to brighten your day. Their energy and hope is infectious. Sometimes their passion manifests itself through a hobby such as this castle built by a postman from rocks he picked up on his daily mail route. Among the passions I admire most is passion for your job. If you love what you do every day, you and everyone who come in contact with you are lucky people. If you don't like your job, we're all miserable. Today I came in contact with both types of people. In the U.S. Social Security office in Newark, NJ, I encountered three miserable government employees behind glass who could have cared less that their waiting room was full. I'll spare you the rant and just state that, in my 40 minutes in that room, I came to the conclusion that they either didn't know they were miserable or they actually liked, and felt comfortable with, being miserable. They had chosen that life and situation and embraced it. Later on I encountered the opposite, an amazing person named Lynette, in the NJIT Graduate Studies office. She knew her job inside and out and made sure everyone around her benefitted from it. She was the most helpful person I've encountered in a long while and her passion for her job and for helping others made me smile for the rest of the day. She too was in a public service job yet chose happiness instead of misery. Oddly the actions of the miserables seemed just as natural and genuine as those of Lynette. They were all just being themselves. The difference, it seemed, was passion, or lack thereof. Back to top
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TESTOSTERRROOOOOOONE!!!!!!
April 16, 2007. 10:50pm. LINK: 300 HYPE EXCEEDS AAAALLL
Much of the way men behave can be summed up in one word: testosterone. It's why we fight, yell, kick things, gulp our food and start wars. We suppress it as much as possible but it's always there lurking, impatiently waiting to roar furiously forward at our slightest lapse in restraint. All we need is an excuse to open the flood gates. The movie "300" opened those gates for many. 
Courtesy of WTF Srsly.com Back to top
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Sex As The Ultimate Cure-all
April 16, 2007. 10:30pm. LINK: Get Them Laid .com
If your friends think that the cure for your awkwardness, frustration, shyness, cranky attitude, bad jokes, bad breath, discolored teeth, facial blemishes, bad grades and poor fashion sense is to get you laid, then what you need isn't sex. It's new friends. Back to top
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I Believe In Spaghetti
April 16, 2007. 10pm. LINK: Pastafarians & the Flying Spaghetti Monster
How can one persons' beliefs become more important than another persons'? How can God become exclusively your God? If someone wants to dress up in Pirate gear and pray to a flying spaghetti monster God . . . 
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Those Lucky Kids
April 11, 2007. 7pm. I've been seeing these billboards all over New Jersey recently. Every time I see one I think to myself, "Jeez, what a lucky kid." Judging by the elated look on her face, she probably got a Pontiac. 
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MJ & Her Bags
April 11, 2007. 6pm. I met a very interesting woman in the Baltimore-Washington Airport. She had on fuscia pink fuzzy sweat pants and was carrying a large bag full of other bags, so I bought her a beer. She was off to visit her sister in Reno and brought work with her ... forms, receipts, notes, ... each group in its own bag. I counted five bags initially and it turned out to be more. While most of us would use envelopes or file folders, she uses leopard skin bags. How cool is that. The world needs a lot more humans like her. 
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I'm Stumpped
April 9, 2007. 9pm. There are some things you can only understand if you've been in their shoes. One can only guess at the chain of events that brought about this landmark. Maybe the birdhouse was placed there to divert our attention away from the fact that there's a 6 foot high stump in their front yard. 
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Autograph Girl
April 8, 2007. 9pm. I photographed this young girl in a local Chinese restaurant. Her jacket was covered with autographs by her friends and classmates. 
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Barbequeing is SERIOUS Business In Texas
April 6, 2007. 6pm. LINK: Man Kills Then Grills Girlfriend
If you've ever spent any time in Texas you'll understand how something like this could happen. Last month, a man in Texas killed then grilled his girlfriend. No, this is not a normal occurrance. It seemed to the killer that BBQing her would not raise suspicion because Texans barbeque. His mistake was to burn her meat. Literally. He scorched her to hide all recognition of her human form. The overcooked meat is exactly what tipped off the neighbors. They were shocked at how amateur this man was at BBQing. I mean, this is Texas. Bad BBQin' is, or damn well should be, a criminal act, so they called the cops. Only in Texas. LINK: Man Kills Then Grills Girlfriend
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Free Flowers
April 6, 2007. 6pm. I marvel at the audacity of some people. Do these folks really believe that we won't notice that they obviously removed all the nice plastic flowers from graves across the street in the graveyard? 
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A Lot For A Lot
April 5, 2007. 10pm. Lets, see... do I want an overgrown empty lot for $299,000 or do I want a nice house for $245,000 or even $217,000? 
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Signage Issues
April 5, 2007. 9pm. This sign letterer probably dropped out of graphic art school just after he learned how to letter and just before he learned how to arrange text on a background. Lettering as good as this takes a certain amount of compositional and proportional sense, so it's hard for me to understand how he could have ignored the background shape and arranged the letters as if his canvas were symmetrical. Just uninspired that day I guess. 
A sign at a typical Jersey diner. On first glance I thought they were serving cheesecake coctails. 
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| "Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile is the source of your joy." - Thich Nhat Hahn "And sometimes it's the wacky things you encounter that make you scratch your head and ask 'WTF???'" - Human R. Weird |