Alex & Marijke

Wrongway Feldman

If that name rings even the slightest of bells, then you are either old enough to have seen Gilligan’s Island on primetime, or you’re from the Nick at Night generation.

I caught this picture at the park the today.

It shouldn’t, but it still amazes me when people think that their time is more important than the walkers, runners and bicyclists that use the lanes specifically set aside for them.

This 20-something girl decided to annoy the other people using the park rather than take the extra 4 minutes to go around the park to the exit.

Now, we could just assume that 20-somethingers tend to be self-centered,  I am just making a mountain out of a molehill, and blow the whole thing off.  Either this was International Ignore the One Way Signs Day or it’s not just an isolated “just barely past teen-age” incident, because in the hour I was at the park I saw at least three other people doing the same thing.

A 40ish guy in a Cadillac.

A younger guy in a Toyota.

And an even older guy (I think, there was a glare on the windshield) in a Lincoln.

I know you guys think that the world revolves around you, and that saving you the 4 minutes a drive around the park would take is worth annoying, endangering and scaring the hell out of the lesser peons that use the park, but I hate to tell you this: you’re not all that wonderful.  Seriously.

Quail family comes to visit.

Click on picture to see full gallery.

People, people, people…

Don’t send money to people you don’t personally know unless you initiated the contact. (P.S. – answering a classified ad does not count as initiating the contact – the ad itself counts as the initial contact.)  Simple economics – if we weren’t falling for their b.s., they wouldn’t keep spending the time calling.

I’m just might start a new blog, devoted solely to these stupid scams that people are either too stupid or greedy to just simply say “Duh, kiss my butt you scam artist.”

The latest?

“Hi, [your name here], I’m a court clerk for the federal courts and my records show you failed to show up for jury duty.  There’s a warrant out for your arrest, but if you put $400 on an untraceable, reloadable debit card and send me the account number by 5:00 tonight, I’ll just delete that pesky warrant and you won’t even have to show up for jury duty.  Deal?”*

Let’s face it, it’s the scams that nobody falls for that we never hear about, because they don’t last long.  They can easily make 100 calls a day, since the ones that don’t fall for it probably last less than a minute.  If only 1 out of those 100 fall for it, that’s 1%, then you can be making $400 a day.

That’s $100,285.71 a year, and that includes weekends off and 2 weeks vacation.  Not to mention: it’s tax free!

But I digress.  The point is: DON’T FALL FOR THESE STUPID SCAMS.  You’re just encouraging them.

* – I kinda made the quote up, allowed myself a little poetic license to make it a little more interesting, but still get the point across.

Thematic Photographic 255–Repetitious.

Construction of condominiums by my house when I was a teenager.  Each floor identical to the one below it, workers performing the same tasks over and over again as it rises.

Street lights along 7th East, and the signal light repeating the same pattern indefinitely.  Green, yellow, red…

Seagulls at the pond in Liberty Park.

A bridge where the Shoreline Trail crosses the freeway, ironically 20 miles (30 km) from the nearest shore.  But 20,000 years ago this trail would have been right along the shore of the late, great Lake Bonneville.  Most of my city resides on the dry lakebed Bonneville left when it receded down to it’s current size, now known as The Great Sakt Lake. 

And finally, a scene that repeats itself every 4^th of July as people show up early to get a good spot to watch the fireworks.