I'm not the only one.....

Yes, its a bottle of fermented carrot juice. And you thought I was strange.....

parade of the Ottomans

A random parade on Istiklal street in Istanbul, is headed up by some local 'boys' dressed in some of the traditional Cashew-fruit hat, and carrying the curvy scimitar that we always associate with arabs, but which actually belong more to the period after the middle ages...

This guy has got a bit of a beer belly but is a great example of the helmet with the neck covered by chain mail *(as is the rest of the corpulescense)

From the rear a good example of the tiny tiny shield and bow, which apparently was an adaptation of the powerful mongol bows, but just before gunpowder made the whole outfit rather redundant. So in between the period that knights roamed the earth and the appearance of armorless musketmen, these guys were wreaking havoc in the east (and they stopped at the gates of Vienna, thus changing the history of the West forever). This was also about the time of the French Rout in Agincourt, where the supremacy of the English longbow and of guerilla strategy over the might of the horseman was proved once and for all- that is, until the Nazi tanks cut down the Polish cavalry in 1939.

Had my cake....and I 'et' it too!

This is a picture of a typical Slovenian pastry called Kremna Rezina, sort of a custard cream cake, topped by filo leaves and powdered sugar. It is served at the lakeside resort of Bled, a beautiful location with an island church in the middle of a lake, towered over by a fairytale castle. Schweppes bitter lemon optional (I washed mine down with Laska Pivo - the local brew!)

Save from What??

the lifesaver of a vaporetto is a little ironic; the canals of venice are so full of human waste material that I doubt this device could prevent you from the real problem of falling in the water: human caca

Murano

hot, hot, hot....definately a ten-beer day on the canals

Stinkin Canals of Venice

Photo taken just moments before a fight breaks out between English kayakers and Gondoliers in the stinking green waters of Venice. The Gondoliers, who regularly make about 100-200 Euros per hour, are a sort of trade union, and no longer do their own singing - rather they contract out for musicians. Most of them are middle aged and distinctly middle class, and they pretty much act as if they own the waterways - so when freebooters (or is that freeboaters?) like these pull into the waterways there is inevitably friction.

Coming in to the city by vaporetto

approaching St. Marc's square...

ıntegratıon

I caught this lovely combination of skin and fabric pattern on a lady's arm on the shuttle bus goıng to the Easyjet airplane on the way to Venice. Im not sure she understood my intentıon to photograph more than just the tatoo itself.

The Pıcture speaks for ıtself.....

on the wall at Schonefeld airport, berlin - makes you wonder what fundamentalist 'hellfire and brimstone' preachers would make of this

SWEPT CLEAN IN BERLIN....Almost

A typical superclean German street in the East German side of Berlin, giving only scant evidence of last nights solstice revelings.....this shot taken only meters away from the Reichstag on the river Spree

Where the rivers are clean, and you can...into the stream

Like that old Firesign Theater song goes,

Im back from the Shadows again

Where an Injun can be your best friend

Where the rivers are clean,

and you can PEE into the stream

Im back from the shadows again.

Since its probably a capitol (pun intended) offence, I wont tell you what I did from an overhanging bridge involving the beautiful River Speer in Berlin. This is a picture of the crime scene which is just a two minute walk from the famous Reichstag....

Noısy Dreams

When I went to sleep ın thıs Berlin Kunsthotel, I had just finished walking around all night and thus my dreams seemed to have a strange effect on the room.... thıs place was quıte a bargaın for 50 Euros even though ıt had a shared bathroom

mystery image

I think you, dear reader, can guess What this is, and Where this is, even though my LUMIX portable totally sucks at night shots. The question for my viewers is,

How large is the structure? Bigger or smaller than the Arc de Triomphe or the Washington Square Arch? Which vehicles would/would not fit through the portals?

and, ...how far from Hitlers former bunker site is it?

High over Mongolia

The distinctive wingtips of an Air Berlin Airbus 330 from Shanghai to Dusseldorf (where I left 8 packets of kimchi rushing to make the connection to Berlin) make a nice contrast with the vast plains of western Mongolia

A picture that needs no comment

End of Lunar New Year

A performer wearing an LED light suit, framed by green lazers, performs onstage at a nightclub in Apkujeong, Seoul.

the sea near 'Macondo'

Sunset over the Caribbean, January 2007. This little bay of Tagatana, near Santa Marta, Colombia, was one of the loveliest little beaches I had seen in Colombia. Unfortunately, the water isn't caribbean blue like next door in Cartagena, and it's actually quite deep - better for looking at than for swimming. The mountains drop quite steeply into the sea here, and this village is not far from Gabriel Garcia Marquez' home town of Aracataca, a.k.a. "Macondo"

Street Angel- Merry Christmas!

I took this pic for my mom and sis, who are veteran 'cute kid' junkies. Actually, there are so many cute little Korean munchkins running around, I don't normally take pictures, but I was killing some time, so...

This little cutie was with her mom, who was waiting to meet a friend for dinner, just as I was doing the same thing (people use the main gate of my former university as a kind of meeting place).

This little girl was no slacker on manners and charm, either, for her mom had apparently taught her well, and she kept bowing over and over when I said 'what a cutie!' in Korean to her mom. Frankly I was embarrassed by her extreme politeness, but that's just a typical western reaction to Korean Formality.

(taken with my LG CYON 1.2 Mpx phone, which is weird, because although it takes better nightshots than my 6 Mpx LUMIX, I STILL can't figure out the menu enough to be able to email photos directly from the phone - LG, if you need English Menu designers, you know where to find me!)

Thank you , Disk Knight - problems are not just for solving.

Perhaps you are aware of the new Worm, 'Disk Knight'. This little critter recently took my university network like the Sacking of Jerusalem in 1099. The reason for the great success of this relatively weak parasite lies in the typical use of computers for students, professors and staff; nearly everyone these days carries around a USB drive with them, that contains their word files, pictures, and, in the case of my Screen English class, movies. Right now my 'thumb drive' contains an AVI copy of Meet the Parents. And the first thing everyone does when they log on to a computer is stick their thumb drive in it.

Grateful to the Worm

What I appreciate this worm for is the way it shows up our complacency. I don't know how many of my students said, as they handed me a virus-pestilent thumbdrive, "But it's not a real virus"....
This attitude allowed the virus to completely take over my school and about 500 computers. A real digital bubonic epidemic, caused not by a super-cleverly designed virus, just one designed to hit us where we are weakest.

wow, a long time between posts!

For those (three) people in the audience, let me apologize for the delay in posting- just losing momentum, I guess. A lot of friends are pressuring me to join Face-Book, and the only reason I can possibly come up with for doing so is to drive more traffic to this site....why? Not sure. I'm just not the Facebook type, and obviously, not the regular blog type, either. Too busy with my other hobbies (plants, movies, and wasting time) to do something like this. But I'll continue to string out these photos....
By the way, the last picture was a SUNRISE in PAGAN, Burma....so one of you gets half a point for guessing that, and Angkor wat was a reasonable guess.

here's some odd bit of packaging I came across in Korea... No, they're not medicine, or even antacid tabs, but breath mints.

Next posting will be pictures of Rabbit In The Moon, a music/performance group.