American in Spain

At no point in the process of creating this image did I realize what it would be in the end. All I knew when I started was that I felt like doing some Photoshopping. Struggling to come up with an idea, I was staring at some of the objects on my desk and two caught my eye, a gemstone globe and a miniature ceramic chipmunk. I’d already done the “creature standing on the globe” trick with the BITWRATHPLOOB blog header, but nothing else was coming to me. So I held the globe out at arm’s length, focused on the chipmunk, and snapped a picture. Once imported into Photoshop, I cut out background and removed some of the background reflection from the globe’s surface. At this point, it was clear that I needed a star field, so I found a Photoshop tutorial to generate one. As soon as I put the globe and chipmunk in the foreground, the text that was needed popped into my head, and I knew my creation was complete.
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Yesterday, when I saw the expiration date on some cheese in our refrigerator, I said out loud, “That’s not the only thing that’s expiring on January 20th!”

I honestly cannot think of anyone that I dislike more than George W. Bush. I think that if he knocked on my door, I would not invite him in. If he came up to me on the street and offered his hand, I would not shake it. He very well may be the human being single-handedly responsible for the most suffering in my lifetime. The fact that he’s completely oblivious to his wrongdoing makes him all the more irksome. (more…)

My parents gave us a globe as a first anniversary present last year. When Marga was opening it, I said, “What in the world is that?”, and my father replied, “How’d you guess it so quick?” It’s really a pretty cool object. I can’t even begin to imagine how something like this would be manufactured. It’s a perfect sphere representing the Earth, and each country is a different gemstone. While technically you could make a map with only four colors, this globe has twenty-five different kinds of rock.
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One day about ten or fifteen years ago, I was riding in the car with my father driving through the center of my hometown. He pointed to a new shop called “The Best Way To Buy!” It was a shop that specialized in layaway. He explained that they were using an ingenious marketing technique:

Take the absolute worst thing about what you’re trying to sell to people and champion that as the most salient point of your advertising.

Since learning this, I see it quite often. I chuckle every time.
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This is what passes for snow down here at sea level in Northern Spain. It did actually stick to the hillside you can see through the window for almost 24 hours.
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On Saturday, we bought some pot. And a couple pans too. We finally got around to spending a 300€ gift card we had received as wedding present fifteen months ago. This past weekend was a big shopping day in Spain, the first weekend after Kings Day with 20%, 30% and 50% sales on lots of stuff. We’ve had our previous sauce pan set for seven years now and it was time for an upgrade. With the 50% sales, we ended up with 500€+ worth of new cookware without paying a dime. Yay.
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The standard cheap lager manufacturer in Spain is called San Miguel. It is of very acceptable quality, and far better than the standard corporate lagers in the US. San Miguel is currently offering special promotional bottles with the purchase of any twelve-pack. To my surprise, the promotional bottles are made entirely of metal! It is very light, so I can only assume they are aluminum. The bottles feel colder to handle straight from the fridge, and the beer doesn’t have any noticeable taste.
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I watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last night. If you don’t know what the film is about, I highly recommend preserving your ignorance until viewing. That’s why I’m not providing any hyperlinks in this post. Thankfully, the folks over at IMDB put the rating at the very top of the page, so when I saw the 8.5 rating (that’s very high!), I stopped reading and watched it. It would be even better if you watched it without knowing who the lead actor is, but that’s difficult since he seems to be on the movie poster. It might not win many Oscars, although I expect several nominations, but it’s definitely worth three hours of your time.
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On the exact same day that I first blogged about getting paid for photographs, I was contacted by a representative of ShipPax, a Swedish publisher of books and magazines about shipping and ferries, to inquire about obtaining publishing rights to a photograph I took during my honeymoon. Having immediately blogged about my negotiation failure, I approached the new deal cautiously, simply asking, “What sort of compensation are you prepared to offer?” The response came back:
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This post is about one of those things that only an expat would notice. I get the benefit of originating from the country everyone wants to emulate, so I see plenty of stuff like this.

As far as I know, the only kind of billiards there are in Spain are “American” billiards, but then the terminology for all the games under the title of Cue Sport vary so much from place to place that I may be completely mistaken.
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