09/01/2010

Cookies for breakfast but no Haloscan

Coffee can message holder
left at the peak of a lonely
mountain top somewhere
in the Nevada desert
They weren't the hit I'd thought they'd be but this morning I gave the magpies butter cookies for breakfast, the kind you buy at xmas in the big tin. I'm not sure how old they are. At least a year. By seconds the general consensus was they were weird. A few birds hung around to pick and nibble but even they left some on the table. Now, as usual, one fellow is still out there cleaning up but I hope he doesn't get a tummy ache. No more cookies for magpies. Maybe I will try them on the ducks. They are pigs with feathers.

In other news, Haloscam has finally extracted itself from my blog. Good! Skeevy bastards. It was waste of time installing their stupid service in the first place. Blogger comments always worked just fine. I was like a crow, enamored by a bit of shiny tinsel. The downside is that the brilliant, witty comments left here over the years are also gone leaving me at this outpost border crossing bribing birds for company and hoping a ragged traveler or two will happen by and leave a note in the can. Yes, they are only digital but they do make the world seem a friendlier place.

05/01/2010

Local news at 12:17



From where I sit, twenty-ten came out of the gate sideways. Change. So be it. I don't have to like it. I just have to go with it. Even my favorite cafe in Reno closed. WTF? It had the best poetry open mic in town and was right on the river in the same building as a great gallery and an artist's resident hotel. On the other side of the spectrum, the assholes at Haloscan still haven't removed me from their service. Fuckers. Anyway, I am in Reno today. Will post some photos later. I hope your year had a more gentle beginning.

03/01/2010

Real friend test


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Skin flick

Do you need heart or guts to watch this video?

02/01/2010

Bird eat bird

Today is Haloscan's big deadline. Either start paying for their service or get dumped. Screw them. I have been wanting to switch back to the Blogger commenting system for years but, oh no, Haloscan didn't offer that option. Undoubtedly, part of plumping up the user base in hopes of getting acquired and/or eventually discontinuing the free service. Yes, I could have reverted to Blogger's default widget template at any time thereby (probably) deleting them in the process but didn't want to make work for myself so good. Delete me. Adiós assholes.

And while I am on the subject of good sites gone bad, WTF Technorati? Seems Corporate also decided to castrate this once saavy interconnected site and turn it into a top-down-one-way-maze leading to the inevitable craphole advertisement. Fuck you too, Technorati.

Okay then.

And while I am on the subject of predator and prey, a small hawk recently claimed the Bird Park as his personal hunting ground. He is eating the little birds and leaving disturbing feather piles in and under bushes and trailing across the yard in tell tale testimony to successful captures. Just yesterday he swooped by my window after some poor fellow who probably did not get away. The Bird Park is on the brink of becoming yet another Nevada ghost town. The magpies still come about 7 am but they just grab their peanuts and go and though, at the moment, the little birds are braving death for a quick breakfast, they don't stay long. I really miss watching them throughout the day. Now, more often than not, I just look out at the fence and ugly roof line of the neighbor's horrible house. No movement, no life just another dead suburban moonscape. While I really resent corporations who suck the life out of things, I don't blame the hawk. He is not obsessed by profit and control but, between him and the fat neighborhood cats who saunter by after breakfast to play lion, there is not much joy in the Park. It's sad. I'm wondering if the magpies might chase the hawk away or at least challenge his hold on the place. They'd hang around if I feed them more. They scream at the cats. Of course, they also eat finches. It is a bird eat bird world.

The pigeons don't bother anybody but the neighbor on the other side of the fence but he died last month so that's something anyway. His widow doesn't give a crap about the outdoors. And the quail keep to themselves and are very fun to watch. They too are plagued by hunters, mostly the babies, but that's in the spring. Talk about sad. I get instantly attached to the tiny fluff ball babies following their parents around like a little train winding around curves after the engine. Last year the hunters gobbled them up like popcorn. What are ya gonna do? We are all food for somebody no matter how I wish it were NIMBY.

31/12/2009

Blue Moon New Year

The photo is from Beaver Dam Wash. We don't go there anymore. The one road in washed out. Only the moon goes there now.

30/12/2009

Mexico revisited

I needed a graphic today

Street vendor

and ended up going through my photos for hours.
After that, I felt pretty useless.

Three of Cups

Three of Cups, reversed.

Street shrine

Maybe I'd feel better about myself

Escritorio publico

if I were an Escritorio Publico

M. Lee & Don Plata

but my customers would have to speak English.

Street dog, shadow, blue

Mexico is a beautiful but sad country.

Pink wall

On this particular trip, M. Lee drove 10,000 hard miles

Inexplicably mannequins

and I took 10,000, mostly blurry, photos.

From the cafe window

The rest of this batch is at flickr.