No Excuse For A Bad Photo Nowadays!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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In the town where I went to school the local photography shop was the place to go when you needed a photo for a passport or driving license or whatever. The guy who owned the store invariably came out with the following line when he got you positioned and was ready to take the shot…

“Would you like a good photograph

…..or one that looks like you?”

It’s easy to be cynical and complain about new technologies. Although on the whole I embrace new technology, I have at times been highly critical about some aspects (as with recent short series about the awful auto-correct cell phone feature – check out the “Bloopers” section if you want to see them).

But new technology has on most occasions made life easier or more convenient. And at times a lot less expensive.

Photography is one area where there can be no doubt that for most people the advances made with digital photography is a big plus.

Just as with musical recordings there are still purists out there who use reel-to-reel tape and prefer the crackly authenticity of vinyl LP records, with photography there are some who prefer to develop and print their own photographs.

For my part, however, the days of running down to the local pharmacy with my 35mm film and then repeating the process the next day to get the prints, many of which weren’t worth the expense and bother, are over. And thank goodness for that!

Nowadays you can snap 100 photos, pick out the best 20 or so, use your personal computer software (even free stuff like Google’s Picasa) to crop and improve them and then print off either professionally or on your own home printer only the ones you really like (the ‘keepers’ we call them).

Of course, there’s always a downside. And the BIG downside to all this is that there really is no excuse nowadays for taking a bad photo – and printing it!

Unfortunately that message hasn’t reached a lot of people yet, as the following examples illustrate.

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Did They Really Mean To Say That? Newspaper Headlines Nightmares, Part Four!!!!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Newspapers are a constant source of amusement.

Sometimes they do it on purpose, but more often than not they do it completely by mistake.

Even worse, they do it while trying to be terribly pompous and precise.

Enjoy this fourth selection in our short series of Newspaper Headline Nightmares!

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A Man Walked Into A Hardware Store….

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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In case today’s title was a little bit obscure for you, it’s pun day again.

Yes even more of those bad jokes and word plays.

Enjoy!

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A man walked into a hardware store and picked up a can of fly spray.

“Is this good for wasps?” he asked the assistant.

“No, it kills them,” was the reply.

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My Doctor told me I’m a Paranoid Schizophrenic.

We think he’s out to get us

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I went into the pharmacy last week and said to the woman behind the counter, “Packet of three, please, Miss.”

“Don’t you Miss me, young man,” she replied.

I said, “Okay, better make that four then!”

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I used to go out with a midget but we broke up.

We just couldn’t see eye to eye.

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I went to the missing persons bureau,

but there was no-one there.

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Four fonts walk into a bar

The barman says, “Oi – get out! We don’t want your type in here.”

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Why do they call it ‘raw’ sewage?

Is someone somewhere cooking it?

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I am very much into DIY.

Every time the wife asks me to do anything, I say, “do it yourself.”

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Ted Kennedy got told off for not opening the door for his girlfriend when he was on a date.

Instead he just swam to the surface.

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Computers are like air conditioners.

They work fine until you start opening windows.

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Food has supplanted sex as the main driving force in my life

– now I can’t even get into my own pants.

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I had a horrible childhood.

My father was a Pontoon dealer in Vegas,

that’s why he used to hit me till I was 21

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I conducted an orchestra the other day.

It’s more fun than you can shake a stick at.

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They say being a hostage is difficult…

…But I could do that with my hands tied behind my back.

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What’s got four legs and goes “boo”?

A cow with a cold.

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The Interstate was blocked for an hour yesterday

after a car driven by a hunchback crashed into a car driven by a bearded lady.

Police are describing it as a freak accident.

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Bloody feminists.

They should all be put behind bras.

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What kind of bees make milk?

Boobies!

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Pun Day!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Yet another selection of those jokes you love to hate.

I wouldn’t guarantee the politically correctness of some of them, but enjoy them if you can!

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How do Welsh people cross the road?

Caerphilly!

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Are dwarfs the lowest form of human life?

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What are the rules of gay poker?

Queens are wild and straights don’t count.

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I had a mate who was suicidal.

He was really depressed, so I pushed him in front of a steam train.

He was chuffed to bits.

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A little old lady takes her dead cats to a taxidermist to be stuffed.

“Would you like them mounted?” asked the taxidermist.

“Oooo no….” says the lady, “just snuggled up next to each other.”

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A woman in the pharmacy sees a deal offering 5 boxes of tampons for a dollar.

She can’t believe how good the deal is and asks the manager, “Is that price correct?”

“Sure is,” says the manager, “It’s a special offer, 5 boxes for a dollar and there are no strings attached!”

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Did you hear about the gay carpenter?

He always left a saw behind!

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A psychotic rapist escaped recently from a mental institution for the criminally insane. He ran across the street to the laundromat hoping to find a change of clothes. Inside, he discovered two women, and forced them to have sex. Then he fled out the back door.

The next day the local newspaper headline read, “NUT SCREWS WASHERS AND BOLTS!”

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Irish bloke walks into a pub and says, “Drink of orange please landlord.”

The landlord asks, “Still orange?”

Irish fella replies, “Yes, I haven’t changed my mind.”

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Two blondes walk into a building…

Wow, you’d think at least one of them would have seen it.

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What do you call a bloke with a one inch penis?

Justin.

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After announcing he’s getting married, a Scotsman tells his pal he’ll be wearing a kilt.

‘And what’s the tartan?’ asks the mate.

‘Oh, she’ll be wearing a white dress.’ he replies.

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Two parrots on a perch.

One turns to the other and says, “Can you smell fish?”

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What qualifications do you need to be a road sweeper?

None.

You just pick it up as you go along!

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Good King Wenseslas called his local pizza parlour.

“Would you like your usual, sir?”

“Oh yes,” he replied. “Deep pan: crisp and even.”

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A customer is ordering food in an Indian restaurant.

“Waiter, what’s this Chicken Tarka?”

The waiter replies, “it’s the same as Chicken Tikka, but it’s a little ‘Otter.”

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Today is a beautiful day

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

I know an architect.

Nothing very unusual in that.

Except for one thing, this one is blind.

He hasn’t been blind all his life but from his late teens, when he was training to be an architect, he started to lose his sight due to an inherited disease and eventually it went altogether.

To his credit he hasn’t let it stop him leading as full a life as possible. Although there have been good and bad results.

For example, he insists on helping around the house but on one occasion he picked up a kitten along with the dirty clothes and promptly dumped all in the washing machine. Both the clothes and the kitten were clean at the end of the washing cycle, but the unfortunate kitten was also dead.

He also tells a story about doing some shopping at a time when his sight was almost gone, but not quite. He was in a local pharmacy and queued up at the counter waiting to hand over his prescription. He waited and waited, but the pharmacy assistant kept ignoring him. He could hear other people getting served, but never him. He waited and he waited and he waited some more, but nothing. The girl behind the counter just kept ignoring him.

Finally his patience just ran out. He was angry. He thought he was being deliberately ignored because of his disability and that other ‘seeing’ customers were being allowed to jump the queue. He spoke to the assistant who was standing right in front of him. She didn’t respond. Then he spoke louder. Still no reaction. Then he started to give forth some abuse which included a good bit of strong language. The other customers in the pharmacy all stopped what they were doing and watched what was going on.

People were a little embarrassed. Nobody intervened except for one gentleman, who walked up to my friend, put his hand on his shoulder and said quietly buy firmly, “Come over here son, and this other person will attend to your order.”

He found out later that he had been patiently queuing up in front of one of those body and head mannequins that was sitting on the counter and which the pharmacy was using to display a ladies wig, and had been hurling his abuse and angst at it and not to a real person at all.

A few incidents like that aside, he has coped quite well. He has compensated for his lack of sight by developing an extremely good memory and equally good recall. I think that proves that the more you use your brain the better it works.

What a pity so many people these hardly use theirs at all!

For a lot of years his way of designing houses was very laborious. He would plan the whole thing out in his head and then give verbal instructions to his son who would dutifully draft out a sketch of the proposed building. It was slow and tedious for the recipient of the instructions, although he reveled in the task himself – a little bit too much and too long for most people’s liking if truth be told. I know because I was the unfortunate recipient of the drafting instructions on a couple of occasions.

And then a possible solution hit me like a brick.

A Lego brick actually.

I bought a few large base sheets and he got himself some small Lego bricks and from then on he was able to draft his own floorplans, and to scale using each little brick as equivalent to one foot or whatever. It worked well for him and gave him a bit more freedom to plan and re-plan without involving anyone else in the process. I don’t know whether he still uses it or not, but I kind of hope so.

Now, what sparked this blog post in my head wasn’t him at all. It was a video that I watched recently. It’s not about architects either, but it is about someone who is blind. And it is also about the power of words which as a blogger and writer I appreciate, as I’m sure many of you do too.

It’s a nice video.

I hope you enjoy it.