Disorderly Content

What do you think? Do I dare introduce our marketing people to these guys?

We had a pretty good earthquake about fifteen minutes ago. No damage, although I bounced around on the couch for longer than I liked. According to the guys who know, it was magnitude 5.6 and was centered five miles NNE of Alum Rock. I haven't experienced a quake like that in years...

I have a new colleage in town, a Parisian who relocated to the Bay Area so his wife could be back among family. Anyway, we were at lunch yesterday, and I decided to give him a little tour of some parts of the area he hadn't discovered yet. That included a drive down Grant Road, with me pointing out El Camino Hospital as we passed by. I also pointed out a few upscale markets, he being as much a foodie as the stereotypical Frenchman.

So imagine my surprise on our weekly conference call when I discovered that said colleague had made almost immediate use of that hospital, when his martial arts training proved to be inadequate for the board he was attacking, or that attacked him. (I didn't get details.) It seems his injury needed quite a few stitches but was neither life-threatening nor ultimately debilitating. As for me, I'm glad I didn't point out any cemetaries...

Oh god, I so want it...

I refer not to real cereal, but to Cereal Killers, which I'm told is an upcoming book. I think Tinkles is my favorite, and not just for its faux 50s color scheme.

...it probably means the joke's on you. It takes a special talent to make you feel both amused and not entirely sure that you're supposed to feel that way. Exhibit A: an Amazon reviewer called Caldinoro, who has an interesting slant on the books he discusses. If you want a laugh, read a few. Then go to this mailing by blogger Chris Locke and enjoy his discovery, his shock and disdain and then his delight in Caldinoro's take on literature both great and not nearly so great.

(Found on Joho the Blog.)

Speaking of photography, as much as I enjoy shooting for all the microstock websites, and especially getting paid when people download my work, it sure would be nice to know just what people are doing with them all. I mean, I've sold something like ten thousand photos over the past two years (correction: actually, it's more than twenty thousand), and I've heard from maybe a dozen purchasers in all that time. That's why an email I received today was such a pleasure.

The message came from somebody in the marketing department of an accounting firm, who wrote to tell me that they've used a bunch of my shots in proposals to clients. It seems some of my shots of lesser known California landmarks go over pretty well with the locals. I wish I could say that was part of some evil scheme (eeeeevillllll!), but I just get tired of the Golden Gate and want something new to shoot. She also wanted to know if I had any plans to photograph a particular Bay Area town. I didn't, I wrote back. But I'm nothing if not flexible. Heck, I should pay her for the suggestion. I won't, mind you. But I should.

Last week at this time I was suffering from a severe bout of cabin fever. I needed to get away, preferably to someplace photogenic. And that's when I remembered the Skunk Train, a scenic railroad into the California redwoods. Perfect, I thought; I can drive up late on Friday, spend Saturday riding the train and taking lots of pictures and drive back Sunday. And so I did, adjusting my schedule to be just across the Golden Gate in time for a fly-by by the new Airbus A380, a plane that makes a 747 look positively dainty. Anyway, after a couple of passes by the Airbus I continued my drive north.

I was on 101 north of Cloverdale, driving along the vineyards and worrying about the overcast skies and a bit of rain, when I spotted the most amazing rainbow I think I'd ever seen. The problem with rainbows is finding the right place to photograph them. You see, if you try to get closer, they generally just fade away. So I watched this one and looked for a convenient place to stop. A quarter mile or so I found one, and was surprised to see that the rainbow was maybe even a little more pronounced. And then I noticed that a half dozen other drivers had the same thought, and were standing along the freeway and enjoying the view. Which I have captured here for you poor people who didn't get to experience the real thing.

My big regret is that my lens wasn't nearly wide enough to capture the whole arc of the rainbow. But what I got wasn't bad at all. And I managed to collect a few other good shots over the weekend, which was nice. As Hannibal Smith liked to say, I love it when a plan comes together.

Well, whatever it is, that's what I did. (And by the way, is anybody else bothered by the fact that procrastinate is an active verb? Seems to me it should be a state of being verb.) A couple of months ago I learned from the Reduced Shakespeare Company podcast that the troupe would be performing in San Francisco this fall. That got me to the venue's website, which led me to Ticketmaster, which didn't have any useful information yet but did at least let me sign up for email updates.

And this very morning the news I was waiting for arrived: tickets will go on sale this Sunday. But, if you know the magic word, you can preorder ahead of the common herd. Since I didn't know that word, or at least didn't know that I knew (if you know what I mean), I headed over to the Reduced Shakespeare website, in hope somebody would have spilled the beans. I didn't have any luck there, although before I could give up I received another email from Ticketmaster. And guess what? The secret word was revealed. So I rushed in, and managed to get a seat in the center of the very first row! How amazingly cool is that?

I guess this is what happens to non-procrastinators. Interesting.

At least I think it's unintentional. I did a small doubletake this morning reading a blog entry on the Huffington Post. The title? Spice Girls Sell Out In 38 Seconds. Turns out to be about a concert, although you can certainly understand my confusion. I thought they'd sold out right around the time they met each other.