2007-10-31
2007-10-25
My favoritest pets
[My cat, Junior, and our dog, Baby Girl. While they do always get along, they normally maintain a respectable distance from one another. Not evident in this photo is the fact that Junior's paw is actually touching Baby Girl's snout.]
(I had intended to quote the movie "Ghostbusters" as shown below. Thanks IMDb!)
Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling.
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.
2007-10-16
Mantids of the Fall
Check out my Fuji Finepix S5000 photos of this critter and his compadre here:
2007-10-12
Name That Show
Challenge: Name the TV show with which I am settling my pizza. And no, the name of the show does not appear on the TV screen in this picture. I really only wanted to take a picture of the cup, but I thought it would be more interesting to have something in the background, so, what show is it?
2007-09-28
BonK! photographs "Arc de Square"
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| Arc de Square |
This is one of the coolest places I've ever been. I'll say it again... If I won the Mega Millions I'd reopen it myself.
I've had a list of Absurd Arcade ideas slowly accumulating in my head, but I'll save that for another time and place. Enjoy.
2007-09-04
My Wife and I at Ohio's Montgomery County Fair 2007
Friday night my wife and I made an impromptu trip to the county fair. It was a great night for fun, and fun we had! The air held a slight chill and the steady breeze helped keep us alert even this late at the end of a work day. I didn't take my good camera but I couldn't resist snapping shots with my phonecam. So, here's an illustrated recap of our short trip to the fair.
Our first stop was the ticket booth and we picked up 20 ride tix for $14. As it turned out, most rides took 3 or 4 tickets so we weren't prepared for much in the way of nausea inducing thrills. So, we decided to get our kicks out of the way with a ride on the Scrambler. I was wearing my Swiss Army knife (in a case) next to my phone on the right rear quarter of my belt. So as not to crush my wife I took the outside seat of the The Scrambler, hence I took the brunt of the centrifugal force and nearly became fused, Borg-like, with my knife and phone as they were pressed into my kidney. Otherwise, it was a good ride.
Then we hit the Monkey Maze which was a fun-house mirror experience. After the mirror maze we decided to explore a bit.
When I saw the booth in this first picture my brain jumped instantly into Cloverfield mode. My reaction surprised me because news about 1-18-08 has been slow to nil of late and, on this rare date with my wife, Slusho wasn't in the forefront of my thoughts. I find it interesting that I was able to get this shot (a) with a modest cell phone camera which makes the image seem like it belongs in the Cloverfield mystery, and (b) that there aren't any clearly visible people in the image, just the blurry fellow who looks like he might have been in a hurry to get away from "the monster." It gives me a chuckle. :-)
We made our way to the Ferris Wheel which seems tame enough, but my wife has a fear of heights so she was challenging herself just to get on the thing. I took a picture of her on the ride to prove to her daughter that she had done it, but I'll spare her the embarrassment of posting that closed-eyes photo here. ;-) [I love you, sweetie]
So, here are some shots I took of the grounds from the ferris wheel. This shot is behind us looking toward the area with most of the food booths. Beyond the lights seen here are the barns housing the livestock.
This shows one of the main game
areas of the fair.
Similar view showing more of the rides and games along the back side of the grandstand.
This shot impressed me with the amount of color visible. The color wasn't washed out by the luminescence.
The last shot from the Ferris Wheel, just before we exited the ride.
This is the Four Horned Sheep. Pretty impressive. Being an Aries, I can appreciate a good set of horns.
I'm no vegetarian, and I completely understand that someone has to know how to butcher a pig for us to have bacon with our eggs, tasty ham sandwiches for lunch, and pork cracklin's for Sunday games, but seeing this display gave me a bit of a twinge. Like a vaccination needle. It's not pleasant but it's gotta be done. Keep in mind, this photo fails to fully realize the experience I had seeing this colorfully painted, living, breathing animal who knew nothing of the meaning in his fancy new coat.
This particular room was filled with pigs of just about all the colors and sizes a pig might be. They had a pig sort of odor, but it wasn't too bad. You could pet them and hear them and watch them play and otherwise interact. It was easy to enjoy them, which made the sting just that much greater when we finally stumbled across the butcher chart pig.
The ponies were done for the night and enjoyed some food and water outside their trailer. Not to mention the adoration of my wife and many other passersby.
Bonus feature: here's a clip of my wife and I in front of a moving fun-house mirror. Enjoy!
2007-08-23
Save the Dayton Arcade
Downtown Dayton's Arcade will be open for FREE tours during Urban Nights on Friday, September 14th. Urban Nights runs from 5pm - 10pm. These tours will be used to promote awareness of the Arcade's current predicament and with the intention of raising money to pay taxes owed through donations and the sale of buttons, bookmarks, and calendars. The tax lien of $318,600.00 must be paid by November 19, 2007, as reported by the Dayton Daily News on July 27th, 2007. Please take advantage of this opportunity to support the Dayton Arcade. It may be you last chance to see what has been one of the most amazing features of Downtown Dayton.
Save the Dayton Arcade
The Dayton Arcade was a vital place in the early 1980's after a long struggle to renovate the facility. I performed there at Christmastime with my high school choir on numerous occasions and frequently enjoyed lunches from the food court and other establishments located in the Arcade. I had my first ever taste of Chinese food from The Mandarin Kitchen, which still does business in downtown Dayton. For a time, there was a wonderful Coca-Cola museum of sorts where you could get genuine cherry and/or vanilla flavored Coke from a fountain... and this was years before Coca-Cola began bottling these flavored versions of Coke. There was a hot dog stand where you could build your own dog with a salad-bar's worth of tasty toppings and interesting ingredients, and there was so much more.
I find it absurd that the Dayton Arcade doesn't have investors knocking down their doors. When 'town center' malls are the biggest thing to happen to shopping since malls were invented, the Dayton Arcade and surrounding area is a perfect, pre-existing location. Local examples of 'town center' malls are the recent expansion at the Dayton Mall, The Greene, and Easton Towne Center. Other plans for similar facilities have been discussed for many nearby locations like Englewood and as a replacement for the space that used to be the Salem Mall.
Downtown Dayton IS a town center and would gain a wonderful boost by working to re-open the Arcade. Town center shopping malls generally have similar features, one of which is an outdoor open space with a fountain. Courthouse Square and it's fountain is immediately across the street from the main entrance to the Arcade. It's a near perfect set-up. The one thing downtown doesn't have that the other locations have is an abundance of free parking, which is a problem. Perhaps Arcade merchants could supply customers with parking vouchers at the point of sale or some other scheme, but many people will already be parked due to their working arrangements, so this discussion is best saved for another time.
The Arcade would be a great supplement to the Shuster Center, the ballpark, the downtown housing boom, Tech Town, and all the other projects currently being discussed for the Dayton area. If I won the lottery I'd buy the place myself.
Help save the Dayton Arcade!
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