HO7

I saw these kinds of pictures quite a bit when I first arrived in Athens. They certainly appear to be acrylic on canvas and done by a local artist, which I thought was a rather lucrative setup for said artist. Nice, pretty little painted scenes of local attractions. The first shop I saw them had a few and I thought they were pretty nifty. Plus they were quite inexpensive for original art.

Then I noticed them in several shops in Athens. Then in Mykonos. And finally on Santorini. Each shop had a ton of them. I imagine they're on every island that attracts tourists. Which leads me to wonder if it's not one artist but several working in sweatshop conditions to produce the amount of work we saw in just a few days in four different cities at countless shops. Or maybe it is just one artist with OCD. Who doesn't sleep. Ever. ->

2:31 p.m.

I'm hoping to make a singular art project with all these photos, so I started saving all my receipts.  This is less than 2 weeks worth...

Try it for a week.  You'll be amazed at the paper.  Not to mention the money leaking out of your pockets. -> 

Diet Oke

I just can't enjoy a summer day without one.  In fact, there is no summer day without one. Said day is nothing, NOTHING but a vast emotional wasteland not worth living without Diet Oke.  ->  

The Best of the Worst

Let me just preface this by saying I hated all these pictures.  The lines were soft in every one of them, and the weird colors Hipstamatic offers while in some cases looks good, in this case washed out the the original colors thereby diluting the point of my recording them. I eventually gave up and went with what I had, which I realized wasn't much at all upon shuffling through them at home (Thus adding fuel to the Geek's fire mantra of "You need a REAL camera") Those are actually acrylic finger nails, if you can't tell. 

So: Nail "art".  I'm sure you've seen it: the lovely French manicure with the Frankenstein twist that's been all the rage the past few years.  And people take it further, much further than just the tips, unfortunately. Honest to God, I've saw a woman once who had a rhinestone embedded in her thumbnails.  No.  I'm not kidding. 

Some women call this look "fun".  I call it "Tacky" (yes, that capital "T" was intentional) and am of the firm opinion that one should be sporting such fingernails in only certain, (read: quite limited) situations. Said situations being if you're 1) a drag queen , 2) channeling Dolly Parton on Halloween or 3) under the age of 12.  There's no excuse for such display any other time. Ever.  ->

On Sale for $39.99

I didn't buy them. ->  

Do Over

This was questionably overfull when I took the shot. ->

14

So when I was at the store today, I detoured down The Evil Carb Aisle in search of one of my favorite crunchies: Cheez-Its.  I sorta Lllluurrrvvv them, but I only get one kind: the reduced fat ones.  Not for any kind of worries about my waisteline, mind.  If that were the case, I certainly wouldn't be buying Cheez-Its, right?  No, I buy the reduced fat ones because I genuinely like them.  Especially dipped in natural peanut butter.  Which certainly keeps them reduced in fat.   

When I got to the Cheez-It section, I was momentarily taken aback because I couldn't find them. Then I realized the sheer volume of Cheez-Its I with which I was confronted: literally fourteen varieties. I'm not going to even attempt to name them all.  At first I thought they had all those varieties and not the one I wanted absolutely needed.  Karma was smiling on me, though, because there was one.  On the bottom shelf.  WAY in the back.  I had to get on my hands and knees to retrieve them, which is a metaphor, not to mention visual, I refuse to explore any further.  -> 

Monday is Junk Mail Day

Is there no way to rotate these pictures?  Seriously? What the hell?  Why can't Blogger be more like Flickr?  You can certainly rotate your pictures on THAT site.  Clearly it's superior.  

The more I look at this, the more I pretty much hate it.  I was trying to capture the essence of consumerism and personal psychology via snail mail. 

Say you: Say what?  

Say me:  Oh come on!  You know how it is: getting the mail every day is a little treat.  It's like a pull at the slot machine of life.  Most of the time it's worthless: bills and junk. But every so often....a check! A postcard! A wedding invitation!  I win!  

Today?  I lost all my emotional quarters.  I had 10 separate pieces of mail.  One bill, one checking account statement and the rest was junk.  

And it wasn't even photogenic.  -> 

2/$3

Do you remember when you could buy a candy bar for a quarter?  Do you remember when candy bars were normal in size.  As opposed to being manufactured and packaged as if all of us were the size of Shaquille O'Neal (no.  I couldn't spell that without Google.  I'm doing good to throw a sports figure out there, anyway.  And I only know about him because of those commercials he did.)


What's your favorite candy bar?  I happen to be fond of Milky Way Dark and Valomilks. Let's be clear here: said candy bars must have been in the fridge for at least 6 hours before consumption. Because only heathens eat their chocolate at room temperature.  ->

Meatier

t

Any takers on the chain?  -> 

And On the First Day....

Ace WAS the place with my helpful hardware man.  

This store is was a Norman institution and now it's dead, Jim.  The best thing about this particular store was the free popcorn.  You could always talk the kids into going on an errand with you to "the popcorn store" because the movie theatre-style snack was self serve.  One bag per customer, please. 

I should have known it was on the chopping block when the store began cutting back the free popcorn to weekends only.  ->