Exhibit 1.5.12

Did the Huffington Post Change?


No, no it did not.

I love this lady's face, by the way. She could be contemplating anything--war, the loss of a parent, a particularly difficult trigonometry problem--but, nope, it's her lack of a husband due inevitably to her permanent consternation.

Exhibit 1.5.11

Today In Misguided Stock Photography



O, Huffington Post, don't ever change.

Exhibit 1.5.9

The Flasher



Of the 20 images that come up when you search for 'the flasher' on my favorite stock photography website--favorite because it's mostly strange Scandinavian people doing strange Scandinavian things--that one is my favorite.

The Flasher can be had here or here.

Exhibit 1.4.13

Stock Photography Review
Sadsack Businessmen



To honor Mathias Svalina's I Am a Very Productive Entrepreneur--and at the long ago suggestion of one Jimmy Stockham--here are some some sadsack businessmen. But first, you should be sure to pick up Mathias's book which is amazing and entrepreneurial and portable and here. I read it months ago and my favorites have stuck with me long after I should have been paying attention to other things like teaching or writing or whatever it is I do.



"Things are going to get better, Robert, things are going to get better. You've got French cuffs and this is going to be okay."


"Makeup can make my cheeks shine, my lips pop, and my hair porcupine, but it can't make Vanessa come back."


"Why did I start a private architecture library? Nobody went to the one at school and nobody is going to this one either. I don't even know what an architecture library is."


"When they find me, I'll have to say something cute like 'I've got motherboard issues.' Not the truth, not yet."


"More like a notary sad."


"When there was only one set of footprints, it was because I was claiming you as a dependent."


"Dress for the job you want, they said, but I'm still here at the front desk and no closer to that handjob."


"Hey, Cindy. Cindy! Are you having emotions?"


"Okay, keep it together. She might still want to buy the steak knives. What was her name? Vanessa something?"


"I hope it's a nice day outside and not one of those this-hellish-white-landscape-is-a-metaphor-for-how-I'm-dying-inside days. O, goddamnit."


"Every year I find a way to ruin the company Christmas party, and firing everyone to hire Prince to perform may have been the best way yet."


"Stay calm, Robert, this is happening. We always knew it would. O God. Think of the cuffs."


Bonus! Submit your own caption for this one in the comments:


And don't forget to buy Mathias's book at SPD.

Exhibit 1.4.11

Today in Confusing Stock Photography




O, The Huffington Post. You're the world's number one purveyor of slideshows about bad stock photography and bad stock photography.

Also, not so good at the irony.

Exhibit 1.3.18

Camera Obscura



I knew since their first issue that Camera Obscura would be one of my favorite literary journals. It's stylish without neurosis, smart without smugness, relevant without pandering. It's weird how easy a journal like this can make the format and how, well, obsolete it can make other journals.

It's not the photography that makes CO seem bigger--though it certainly doesn't hurt--but the boldness of the fiction which, much like the design, always seems to be doing several things at once without falling into any of the usual traps. Like the photographs, it's always worldly and adroit and, damnit, just hard to look away from. Take the opening to Vincent Czyz's "The Nameless Saint":

It was the hour when the lamplighter, toting a ladder over his shoulder, made his tedious rounds; when workers slogged through the streets as though souls on their way to purgatory; when bones turning to dust in graveyards unexpectedly shifted like a heap of logs burning on the grate. This was not the quarter of Samirska lit by theaters and cafes, cabarets and fine restaurants--a quarter smiling like a crescent moon in the dusk--here the restaurants had bare wooden floors and for a drima offered a bowl of cabbage soup or, for a few more, greasy stew and a slice of black village bread. here, mounted gendarmes patrolled the streets in pairs or not at all.

You want to read the rest of that story and the rest of that issue.

Of course, I have a story here which you probably don't want to read and is mostly notable for having taken its title from the repeated line in an Arthur & Yu song ("1000 Words") that Dave turned me onto a long time back. It seems appropriate to me that the story ended up in a journal with a photography emphasis, and I'm thrilled it's there.

Please help them out by subscribing here or by checking your local Barnes & Noble. Unless you're in Topeka in which case I think my parents already bought them all. See, that's how much I care. I told my parents, and they don't even know where I live.*

*That's probably not true.

Exhibit 1.2.22

Things

* I don't know if you've noticed, but making fun of stock photography has really caught on. This, far more than my declining health or general disinterest, is why I haven't written about it in a while. Still, some fantastic examples here (thanks E).

* This is pretty great if you're a fan of The Wire. And if you're not a fan of The Wire, I really think you should get on that (Thanks H).

* The Cupboard's contest deadline was extended over the weekend and so you've now got until April 4th to submit here. Please do. Or, at a minimum, tell your father.

* Speaking of The Cupboard, we're going to be at the Houston Indie Book Fest alongside a bunch of other great presses, some fantastic readers, and, I'm told, a crepe truck.

* When I told my class about the crepe truck, one student asked with devastating seriousness: Sweet or Savory?

* I answered some questions about The Cupboard for the festival here. O, and when I say "we" are at the festival, I mean me, in the sun, eating a crepe of ambiguous savoriness. So come say hi.

* The Royals lost on opening day, but, in perhaps the brightest spot, got a good performance out of Aaron Crow. Still, I've long been aware of the folly of my optimistic season preview and the shortcomings only seem more clear now. It's possible winning 70 games with this rotation is actually impossible.

* If I'm still alive, I'll post something about my fantasy team soon. Because that seems like something I should put on the internet. In the mean time, ponder their name and mascot:

THE HAYS CODE

Exhibit 1.1.20

The Social Network in Stock Photos

Featuring a gorilla as Mark Zuckerberg. In seven acts.



Act 1

"I need to do something substantial in order to get the attention of the clubs. They're exclusive and fun, and they lead to a better life."



Act 2


"We're ranking girls."



Act 3


"As for the charges, I believe I deserve some recognition from this board."



Act 4


"I'm talking about taking the entire social experience of college and putting it online."



Act 5


"It's like a Final Club except we're the president."



Act 6


"You're gonna blame me because you were the business head of the company and you made a bad business deal with your own company?"



Act 7


"If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook."



The End


♫Baby, You're a Rich Man♫

Exhibit 1.1.8

Stock Photography Review

Another great found stock photo from Maggi who also sent me this one with the hotdogs. As with that one, this photo is almost too weird to do anything with other than present. It's so strange these exist as stock photos--and royalty-free photos--because it implies wide usage when, really, you'd think the one guy who needs this photo could just find a couple of game friends, attend an open house at a for-sale mansion, slip away from the agent, and...


Almost as good as the photo itself are the keywords you can search for to get this photo (officially titled "A Naked Woman on a Bathtub with a Naked Man Crouching over Her Head" which, frankly, seems a little cumbersome):

Agility? Dreams? Standing out from the crowd? Teamwork?

Okay, I'll give them agility.

Still, there's something kind of awesome in sending this into Getty as a stock photo. I don't know if there's a writer equivalent of this, but it probably involves getting an assignment to write about a sporting event and turning in some language poetry, just like Rae Armantrout did when asked to cover the 1984 Orange Bowl.

For what it's worth, I would have titled the photo "The Wife of Bath's Bath" although that maybe works better for the old-timey pornography version nobody asked me to make:

Exhibit 1.1.1

Stock Photography Review

So, in honor of this blog's arbitrary system of numbering rolling over, I thought I'd post some stock photography from the Huffington Post, a great site to find this kind of nonsense. These are two I grabbed just now from the front page.


I love this one just because this photo could be used more logically for dozens of other headlines. Among them:

1) "Local Face Goes All M.C. Escher"
2) "Sexting. Time to Talk to Your Friends about It?"
3) "Listen Closely--Yes, That Close"
4) "25 Family Secrets (PHOTOS)"
5) "Are You Getting Good Advice about Your Sideburns?"

Apparently we're supposed to think this is how insider trading happens, but I'd prefer to think this is actually how federal investigations happen. Like one long game of Telephone where the last agent just shrugs and says, "Martha Stewart? Well, okay."



Guy in photo: So I'm the struggling American office worker, right?
Photographer: O, yeah, totally.
Guy: Because my Outlook's open here and this Word document.
Photographer: Definitely, definitely.
Guy: I just don't want it to be used for anything creepy.
Photographer: Let's try one where you're licking the screen.
Guy: Right! Because I'm hungry for a living wage!

Exhibit 23.19

Stock Photography Review



Image 1 - Bad. In all likelihood, this person's only conception of home ownership is when he returns the shopping cart he's been living out of to an abandoned Kroger in order to prove to himself that, despite this post-apocalyptic wasteland, he's still a man.

Image 2 - Good. This person is demonstrably smoking and her agape mouth shows her interest in breaking news about same.

Image 3 - Wash. On the one hand, this person might have credit card debt. On the other, this photo only made me want to start an early Cat Stevens cover band called "The First Cat is the Deepest."

Exhibit 21.12

Stock Photography Review

Much thanks to Maggi for passing along this incredible piece of misguided stock photography. Honestly, I've been sitting on this for months because I just didn't know what to say about it. In the end, I decided to give it a shot with various taglines to find the target market.

Nope.


Way off.


I don't think Burger King serves hotdogs. Nope, I don't think they serve uncooked hotdogs at all. Unless that's the way you want it.


I don't know why I even tried this one.


Hmmm...maybe.


And there we go.

Exhibit 19.15

Stock Photography Review

There have been or will be a lot of birthdays among some of the most important people in my life this month. My sister Kaitlin's birthday was June 1st. My brother Jeff's birthday is June 16th. Lincoln Saltdogs pitcher David Humen's birthday was June 11th. Happy birthday, everyone. Especially you, David. You most of all.

In honor of the siblings (and, more importantly, some other guy) here's some birthday-related stock photography.



I don't really have anything to say here other than that I initially thought those were giant Mike and Ike's which sent me to the Just Born company website to see if they also made giant Hot Tamales. Then I started looking at the Peeps and, well, it's now dark out, I've got a day's worth of stubble, and at some point in the last 18 hours I tried to send a text message to my parents' home phone asking if I could borrow $1,800 in order to develop a gallon-size Hot Tamale mold.

This is better than the last time I looked at the Just Born company's website when I woke up in the geographic center of the United States with an empty bag of Jet-Puffed marshmallows, a sticky pocket knife, and an army of poorly whittled marshmallow bunnies replicating Khalid ibn al-Walid's famous flanking maneuver.

So I guess what I'm saying is, good luck, kid.



In most cultures, gifts are given by ascending height in a precisely ordered queue so as to increase the family's odds of being used in an AT&T billboard campaign.



Which birthday is the whipped-cream birthday again? Oh, right, the last one.



Look, I know the kid is bummed because she only got half-inflated balloons and wilting flowers for her birthday, but the fact that they ordered a frowning cake leads me to believe this wasn't totally unexpected.



Why doesn't anyone like Julia?



Maybe it's because she's always changing clothes and eating flaming candles when we're not looking. In fact, I'd say that's exactly why we don't like Julia. But it's not why we hate her. No, that's something only she knows.



Since this came up on a search for birthday, I can only assume this kid was born on December 25th. Hey, so was this guy:



Stock Photography Jesus is my favorite Jesus. All you need is a tanned white guy with a beard, a ghost costume with some rope tied around the middle, and access to an old stable.



This isn't birthday related, but Stock Photography Jésus the Québécoise Gangster is my favorite Jésus the Québécoise Gangster.



See, I hate that. That takes all the fun out of guessing which box is the one crying.

It's like how at your wedding I'm going to get you something from Crate & Barrel and you're going to know it because of their boxes. Except this time it's a baby rather than whatever is exactly $65 on your registry. I'm just going to stop typing now.



(still not typing)



Jésus the Québécoise Gangster had forgotten he'd planned the kidnapping on the same day as his birthday. I've just been working so hard it completely slipped my mind. It's not easy to time an explosion at the stroke of midnight to distract the guards. Who has time to plan a soirée and an underhanded seduction? Besides, who would I invite, François the getaway driver? I don't think so, he explained to the judge's daughter. Do you think my son will remember to call?



I don't know what's going on with these two. They make Julia seem well-adjusted. Maybe we should set her up with blue-shirt guy.