Misc photographs of absurd things.
Some more photos to share from my backlog. These are bicycle related:
Window boxes outside a great bike shop on Martha’s Vineyard:
Seen in the North End of Boston:
For every temporary impediment to cycling…
…there’s a glittering invitation to go farther!
This is my favorite bridge in all of Massachusetts. Straddling Newton and Watertown, the Charles River Greenway Bridge is a beautiful structure spanning a beautiful river along a beautiful bike path. It has me dreaming of spring already.
A BlogSnax© post
Can there be enough turtle pictures? Here’s my contribution:
From the No-Brainer Department, seen on a local road:
The ideas for this blog have been piling up, but so have the weird photos I’ve been sitting on. And there are more just about every week. Let’s throw a few out into an unsuspecting world before they get too stale.
From the people who brought us the ever-so-tasteless “FU” ad campaign comes this bit of stupidity. They’re “Flamin’ Hot” but they’re Cool Ranch. Only in the Frito-Lay universe is that possible.
So much better was this much needed encouragement received at a local self-serve gas station:
It’s nice to know someone believes in me.
Covid-19 is over but as this photo, taken recently inside a porta-potty (yeah, I’m that desperate for material) indicates, the paranoia and madness remain.
Lock it up! Lock it up!
Is this a big enough problem–people putting their bikes on top of this fence–that they need a special sign for it? On the other hand…
…this sign is clearly needed, especially for whoever put the sign on the piano.
And last, but not by any stretch of an already stretched-to-the-breaking-point imagination least, this alarming picture-within-a-picture from the what-the-heck-were-they-thinking department:
I don’t even know where to begin with this disturbing picture, obviously the product of a seriously deranged mind. It has given me nightmares since I first saw it. Now it’s your problem. Good luck.
A BlogSnax© post
If you lose at this Extreme Jenga game, there’s a lot more than pride at stake.
The following photos capture locales in Boston that serve as settings for my newest novel, “Only Love Can Break Your Leg”.
If you’ve read it, I hope you enjoy the background. If you haven’t, maybe this will pique your interest. Enjoy.
Seen on the road…
Saw this sign on the side of a building during a recent bike ride:
Okay, I’m good with that. I’m a massive proponent of supporting local businesses.
But wait! Pull back a little and we see the bigger picture:
What am I supposed to do with this cognitive dissonance? Subway spreads like a deadly pandemic across the face of this country. Fine. Let Iowa, Florida, and New Mexico have their nasty, mass-produced, generic sandwiches. But here in the Boston area, home of some of the best local sub shops east or west of Tuscany, Subway is unnecessary at best, a cancer at worst, eating away at our culture like the rot slowly consuming the shack in this photo.
Much to my embarrassment, the last time I wrote a real blog post for this blog–not a shameless advertisement for one of my books–was January 23 of this year. (My other blog is not much better. Last post: August 16, 2019. And that one was preceded by an eight-month hiatus.)
Mea culpa.
Once I completed The Endless Cycle (a four-book series for middle-grade readers (all installments now available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle versions (I couldn’t resist (sorry)))) I decided to take some time off to regroup, relax, recover, rethink… and do some jigsaw puzzles.
Time’s up. I have to put something out here to prime the pump for my next large-scale project, one as yet to be decided. So here goes: A brain dump of random strange thoughts that have been piling up.
Lessons I’ve learned from my grandchildren, Part I: Any truly good book has stickers at the end.
I don’t think, therefore… am I?
I love Maine. It’s a beautiful state. My favorite spots are Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, or as we say in Boston: Bah Hahbah and Arcadier National Pahk. (Contrary to popular opinion, we don’t discard our “r”s, we recycle them.) I have one problem with the state, however. They need to put a moratorium on the use of the pathetic pun “Mainely” in their advertising and business names. Driving around the state, you’ll encounter “Mainely Lobster”, “Mainely Antiques”, “Mainely Burgers”, “Mainely Brews”, and Mainey more. Enough already.
Speaking of Maine, on my last trip there, I saw this bumper sticker:
I thought it was a souvenir, but then I noticed it was on Donald Trump’s car. Makes perfect sense.
It’s a shame that the common expression is, “sweat like a pig.” Two fun alliterative alternatives exist: “sweat like a swine” and “perspire like a pig.” Just sayin’.
Here’s some word weirdness that makes me say hmmm…
The English language was obviously created by committee.
Working on a new book (actually five of them!) so the blog is lower priority. Hence the sparsity of posts lately. Here’s a quickie that’s been on my mind. A few thoughts spread among a few shots.
Try looking up “Funk & Wagnalls” in your Funk & Wagnalls.
Welcome to a new year. In my younger days, I’d be writing the previous year well into March. Now it’s like a tick of the clock. I started writing 2019 on January 1 without missing a beat.
By my observation, people usually say more than they know yet know more than they’ll say. Some of us err on one side more than the other. But we all do it.
I was in California not too long ago. I saw a truck for a local business called “Leadership Fumigation“. Do you think they’d do a job at the White House?
Watch this space for the announcement of my new book series for middle-grade readers:
Scribbling in the Sand 