I realize its been far too long since my last post. I’ve got the same old excuse, I’ve been busy. :D Hope this gives you enough of a chuckle to earn forgiveness. Happy Christmakwanzika everybody.
When I was a kid I always wondered why everyone seemed to make such a big deal out of the veterans in the parade. I mean, we got fire engines, horses, clowns, motorcycles and of course candy. Why the heck is there a bunch old guys with flags, pins and ribbons just walking by and waving? Come on, boring. 
Even as an older youth when I understood what a veteran was I still didn’t get why they were in every parade. I mean I know they were in the military and they served during a war but what’s that got to do with the parade? I didn’t mind, but it just didn’t really seem like it was all that important and I didn’t understand why they were always there. I mean it was guaranteed.
In many ways I think this is due to growing up in times of relative peace. No major wars were fought until after I had sat in a bar and had my first beer. Now I wish that had been in a VFW. Maybe then I would have started to get it. I don’t think my generation had come close to the cost of our freedom, the cost of war until now. Even the first Gulf War seemed largely an easy victory with very little sacrifice. At least that’s how it seemed to me at the time. Somehow, my generation managed to make it through our entire childhood and adolescence without being touched by war. If you look back in history, that doesn’t happen too often.
September 11th was a sad day for our country, but one very good thing came out of that day and the two wars that have followed it. Myself and many others of my generation, and the next generation now share a much deeper understanding of the cost paid for our freedoms.
I know that the war has been controversial, but supporting our troops has not. In fact, just the opposite.
It has renewed that appreciation in those who had it. And for those like me who were missing it, we see it now. We feel it now. And we say thank you.
I will never again watch a parade and wonder why those veterans are there.
all that have served…
and all that will serve.
Most of all, remember those who have paid the ultimate price for our freedom.
And remember their families who also make the sacrifice with them.
We are forever in your debt.
I love The Onion’s take on the outcome. Although usually complacent, things have gotten so bad… people finally decided maybe they should pay attention to what the government is doing.
“Although polls going into the final weeks of October showed Sen. Obama in the lead, it remained unclear whether the failing economy, dilapidated housing market, crumbling national infrastructure, health care crisis, energy crisis, and five-year-long disastrous war in Iraq had made the nation crappy enough to rise above 300 years of racial prejudice and make lasting change.” … The Onion
Let’s hope President Obama can convince everyone to continue paying attention and not just go back to milling around the sheep pens. So for any of you already starting to fall back asleep. This is for you.
Waaaaaaaaassssssssssuuuuuuuuupppppppp!
Change is Wassup for 2008
In case you hadn’t heard, Saturday Night Live has been running special Weekend Update Thursday’s for the last few weeks leading up to the election. Last week SNL Guru Will Ferrell returned to the cast to do his infamous impression of Gee Dubbya. Too funny not to post.
If you don’t already know about FactCheck.org you should check them out. They are doing a great service for all of us by looking into the facts behind the information being put out there about the elections.
FactCheck.org provides unbiased, verifiable information with cited sources about the often confusing, misleading or outright false information being circulated about the issues and the candidates.
Don’t believe me? Well don’t take my word for it, watch this episode of Just the Facts and you will immediately see that they don’t play favorites. Then take a look at their website for wider coverage. Is there an issue, statement or claim you’re wondering about? Chances are they’ve got it covered and best of all you will get the real facts behind both sides of the issues.
I cracked up when I heard SNL drop the latest nickname for Governor Sarah Palin. Whether you’re a supporter or not you’ve gotta laugh when you watch Saturday Night Live’s Tina Fey do her dead-on impersonation Gov. Palin. It’s so good that even Palin herself has commented about how good it is. Although she did say she watched it with the volume off so she didn’t hear any of it.
When asked about the impression by a reporter, she said that people noticed the resemblance between them even before Tina Fey started doing the impression. In fact, she said she even went to a Halloween party as Tina Fey once. Now that’s ironic. You gotta love a good SNL impression and this is one of best we’ve seen in years.
My personal favorite is this mock Public Service Announcement with Amy Poehler playing Hillary Clinton. But all of them are funny. Check em’ out.
Well its fall (my favorite season) which means there’s football! And despite the fact that I’m a Vikings fan, I love football season. But it’s also an election year, and one of the most historic presidential elections of my lifetime.
So it was only a matter of time before the election collided with my beloved sport. Or I guess in this case it’s the other way around. Check out Governor Palin’s introduction to America’s favorite line backer, Terry Tate.
Woo!, bring the pain! Want more Terry Tate? Check out these classics.
Terry Tate Office Linebacker
It’s really misleading to even call this a “retouch”, this is more like a total transformation! We all know they can do amazing things with Photoshop and we’ve all seen the beautifully airbrushed magazine cover photos, but have you ever actually seen it done?
As those of us who are photo geeks know, there’s a lot that goes into lighting a shot to get it to come out the way you want it. And then there’s the incredible things you can do with the all powerful Photoshop.
Check out this sped up time-lapse video of a model photo shoot, retouch and print. I think you’ll be amazed. As a photography geek I expected to be impressed by the Photoshop work, but after seeing the hair & make-up work on this I’m equally impressed their magical skills. A truly amazing transformation.
Finally, I’m back. My first attempt at blogging ended with my last post at the end of March. And as those of you who followed it know, I wasn’t great about updating it. There were a lot of different reasons for this and one of them was that I was learning. My first blog was a great success in the sense that I started it to learn the ropes so to speak, and I did walk away with a lot of lessons learned.
Another thing I learned was that I was actually trying to keep two different blogs in the same place, one for my personal life and one for my public life. Well, suffice to say that doesn’t work and it was becoming difficult to know where the line was. So I’m happy to be re-launching my public blog and look forward to sharing it.
I’ve also got a Flickr account setup to showcase my photography work. Clicking on the photo slideshow in the sidebar will take you to my Flickr account or you can bookmark this link if you prefer. http://www.flickr.com/photos/myeyedeas/
I’m working on back filling it with my photos. Soon I will be caught up to current photos, but since Flickr builds my photo stream in the order I upload, I’m trying to keep it somewhat chronological, at least for the massive upload of older stuff.
So for now, here’s a shot from the State Fair back in August. Thanks to Missa-Lissa who didn’t bring her camera but was noticing great shots anyway and pointed this one out to me. Hope to see you back soon!
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