If Only I Were An Engrish Teacher

If you've never checked out the site www.engrish.com, you really should. It's a site where people around the world take pictures of signs or products that butcher English in their overzealous translations.
So, in that spirit, I was recently in a store here in San Ramon that has a lot of weird, cheap stuff imported from China. I have no idea why I had my camera that day, but it was a good thing I did, because I came across this product. I'm still not entirely sure what it is, but it's got some weird English:


Especially if you zoom in on the picture, you can see that it is an "Oxygen Bar," if something like that can be placed in a small box. On top it says:
"IN RUTHLESS BUSINESS WAR
THE WISER BECOME WISER"
And at the bottom it reads:
"BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE
THERE IS A BRIDGE
BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER
JUST LIKE HUMAN BEING AND NATURE
IS ALWAYS INSEP ARABLE"
If that's not poetry, I don't know what is.

365: Picture a Day Project    365 Leftovers    All My Pictures    Sitzbook

Speaking of Night-Time Incidents...

Since I just wrote about Ginger, I remembered that I had been meaning to post this following picture for a while. I guess I talk a lot about the shit that comes into my house at night, like the lizard in my toaster, the various roaches, beetles, and flies, and God knows what else. But about a month ago, I saw this little guy hopping around our living room:


Sure, he's a frog, but he's freaking cute. Plus, he was really tiny, about the size of a quarter (that's about the size of a five colones coin, if you're nasty). I think his major problem was that he was caught in a piece of Angela's hair that he picked up from the ground along the way. So when I took his picture, he just kind of sat there. Expressing as much bummed-out emotion as a frog his size could reasonably be expected to express.
Plus, I guess frogs are cold-blooded or whatnot (what am I, a frogatologist??). Since it was a chilly, windy night, he was probably just trying to find shelter.
Anyhow, I was going to leave him in the Torture/Crucifix Room, but, as with most good Torture/Crucifix Rooms, there's no ventilation and no real way out if you're a frog. So, I just put him outside and sent him hopping on his way. Hopefully he made it to wherever he was going.
Godspeed, little froggy!

365: Picture a Day Project    365 Leftovers    All My Pictures    Sitzbook

My Old Nemesis

This posting pretty much speaks for itself, I suppose...





OK, maybe it doesn't speak for itself. At all. So I guess I'll have to speak for it.
Anyhow, Angela and I live next to Angela's sister Toni (Antonieta). Her family has this little dog named Ginger, which used to bark all night and keep me awake (although I seemed to be the only one affected by this). So, after dropping hints, they tied up the dog at night, and now she doesn't bark at all. Man 1, Perra 0, if you're keeping count.
This picture above was one that Angela got off of her niece Adriana's camera when we were downloading our wedding pictures. I have no idea what the hell is going on with the dog in this picture, but after seeing it, I can begin to understand a bit more why Ginger might have needed to bark all night to let out a bit of pent-up aggression.

365: Picture a Day Project    365 Leftovers    All My Pictures    Sitzbook

Resident Evil

This is probably, in all honesty, the most complicated thing I've ever done.

365: Picture a Day Project    365 Leftovers    All My Pictures    Sitzbook

It Looks Like I'm One Of Those Guys...

So, It looks like I'm one of those guys who...
1. Drives a RAV-4
2. Owns a black and a brown belt
3. Calls guacamole "guac"
4. Actually buys those almanacs at the grocery store (they have them here, too)
5. Is a homeowner (oh man, I still need to put up a picture of the shack on our property!)
6. Gives his students a writing assignment after watching a movie, just to ruin the fun
7. Rips off both David Letterman and Jeff Foxworthy in one fell swoop
8. Speaks Spanish
9. Has a blog...AND a website
10. Teaches high school

365: Picture a Day Project    365 Leftovers    All My Pictures    Sitzbook

Getting a Bonner*

As you may have noted from my postings on this blog lately, I've grown obsessed with my cluster map. I love it. And I was happy to see it when my friend Brad Bonner put up a cluster map on his site, too. His link is here, so check it out quickly, or else this posting won't make any sense:
http://bb-365images.blogspot.com/
Anyhow, if you look at the right side of his blog, you can see HIS cluster map.
"Fucking A! How the hell did he get all those dots?!" I thought. I was getting envious. Sure, his work is much better than mine. And after all, a photo is a more universal image, and my blog is light on the photos and heavy on the words. So it'd stand to reason that someone from...what!?...is that a dot from SIBERIA on his map?!...uh, where was I? Oh yeah, it'd stand to reason that someone from United Arab Emirates or north north north Canada would be more likely to come across a web site with pictures, than a website with musings and bitchings about life as a teacher in Costa Rica.
Still, I was jealous. His map is impressive. So, tell your friends about sitzblog, or visit it from exotic locations.
Thanks.

*(Yes, the title is spelled correctly, so no, it's not dirty)

365: Picture a Day Project    365 Leftovers    All My Pictures    Sitzbook

Famous Brother

I mention my brother Paul a fair amount in this blog. I do that for two reasons:
1. Paul is cool.
2. I think the only reason people come to this site is to see if they get name-dropped.
In any case, my brother is studying music and video production or something similarly technological and complicated in Australia. So I guess he was in a music video that one of his friends made as a final project. I thought it was cool so, despite the fact that Paul himself called it "Corny. As. Hell.", I still decided to post a link to the video here. I think it's actually cool. Have a look at it if you want:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2-kGYwhP2I
(Paul is the one with the scraggly beard, not the boobs)

365: Picture a Day Project    365 Leftovers    All My Pictures    Sitzbook