Header No. 16

For the past year, I’ve had a set rotation for the 15 original headers I whipped up for the Chamber*.  Every Sunday I put the next one up, but tonight I got a bit of an itch and decided to make number 16 (if you’re really curious, this was actually squeezed between #12 and #13, but we’re not going to get too technical, OK?). 

I was careful to use the same format, and this image is creatively cropped and altered with my pathetic photoshop program using that series of pictures taken at a shaolin temple. 

*I did use a special Christmas header for a day or two.

Flame Warrior Profile: Icanhascheezburger.com Commentors

The home of “lol catz” macro images, I Can Has Cheezburger?, has become an immensely popular website.  In fact, on any given day, those of us who use wordpress.com can see that the site is listed at the #1 spot on the “top blogs” section of our main dashboard page, usually beating out the CNN Political Ticker (which is got to be saying something, given the fact that we’re in the peak of the political season). 

I find it pretty strange that a website that contains nothing more than silly pictures could become an internet sensation like this.  But if you want to see something really strange, just check out the comment section.  A sample:

Wud agree, sept eyem tinkin dat deez bootz wud bee gud bootz fur teh biskitmakin awlso. Mah kitteh nawt lyk two walk 2 mush, perfurs sleepin, butt iz gud at makin biskits on mah hed at siksoklok in teh mawnin wen he tinks iz brekfestime. Deez bootz kud mayk doze ekstrabig biskits yew get in kawfeeshopz.

It goes on and on, for hundreds of comments.  In trying to pin down the breed of netizens that I was encountering here, I was drawing a blank for quite a while.  Who are these people?  Then it dawned on me.  Icanhascheezburger.com …is Garble city hall.

Garble is a mystery: Is he a foreigner with only tenuous grasp of English? Is he on drugs? Does he suffer a serious mental debility? Is he typing wearing boxing gloves? Garble’s rampant typos, malapropisms and execrable grammar can’t be blamed solely on poor typing skills. Garble is all the more puzzling because if one manages to hack his way through the tangled muddle of his messages a discernable idea will often emerge. For example, in a forum discussion about a painting he might say, “Sorry the picchr the har is wrog. The culir. I liike the lips bot teh Paintng is sucs”. When someone refers to his random capitalization Garble might say something like, “oPS i HITTED THE CAPDLOCK”. Garble drives Grammarian and Nitpick absolutely nuts, but he disdains all efforts at correction, and if complaints persist he will indignantly sign exit saying, “yuor forum si stupef. bYE!” HINT: Garble may be Net Rat.

On “Fauxtography” And Politics

Disclaimer: I just want to make a preemptive statement because I know that some visitors will probably bring it up… I understand the power and influence a photograph can have.  There’s a good reason why the saying “a picture is worth 1000 words” exists.  In the past, I know that statement could be made without much chance of an asterisk being attached to it.  In our modern world, however, it can become a tad more complicated.  Given the fact that the majority of today’s images are shot digitally, and can be easily enhanced or altered by relatively simple software in a home computer, the concept that what you see in any particular image is representative of the reality that existed when the shutter originally opened can be brought into question.  In fact, we’re probably only six months away from the existence of technology that would make any live image indistinguishable from something whipped up on some kid’s home computer (if we aren’t there already).  So, I’m fully aware of the increasingly understandable skepticism that accompanies any picture that is deemed important enough to change the way people think about the world.  In other words, the age when a photograph could be used as reasonable proof that any event actually occurred is probably coming to a close.

On the other hand I’d like to think that, in the case of major news and media organizations (what most bloggers refer to as the MSM), we should apply some trust that the images being presented to us are genuine in their content.  Why?  Because the risk and consequences of being caught presenting fraudulent images outweighs whatever benefit the hypothetical agenda-driven manipulator might have in mind (on the whole).

That said…

Take a look at this image (click image for source and caption):

(Hat Tip: LGF)

Look fake to you?  Or, is this just what happens when a photographer points his or her camera in the direction of a bomb dropping and shoots a “burst“?  A lucky (if that’s the appropriate adjective) shot? 

At least one blog (Jawa Report) thought something was fishy.  They seem to have spent all day analyzing whether or not this image was genuine.  In fact, I haven’t seen this kind of critical assessment of images since the Music City Miracle.  If you ask me, there is a little more behind the skepticism than the first impressions of the visual. Are there some underlying political angles factoring into the painstaking deconstructing that was applied to this image?  In other words, did they want this image to be a fake? You decide…

For more on this and other images related to this event, visit Snapped Shot.

For some more of my take that I posted on LGF, start here.

Rotating Header Images?

I reached the conclusion early on when designing the basic layout for the blog that I wasn’t going to be able to come up with a cool header on my own with my ancient photoshop program.  So, I thought I’d make a bunch of relatively simple ones with a theme, and just change it every so often:

I’ve made about a dozen or so like this.  It would be kinda neat if the wordpress interface allowed you to have them change automatically based on a timer, calander, or with every hit.  wink, wink For now, I’ll just try to put a new one in there once a week and see how that goes.  Eventually, my creative juices will begin to ebb, and I’ll stop making new ones (I’m pretty much there).  Then I’ll resort to going back to the top of the order again. 

Update:  There are 15 different header images in total.  I’ve decided to make that the final count.  I generally make the change first thing Sunday.

Update:  What can I say?  I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription …is one more header.  So. make it 16.