Bane: Photographers (Part II)

I know it's Halloween and everyone else's blog has something to do with costumes or séances or the perils of trick or treating and so forth.

My entry has to do with some of the scariest things that I know of. I know this may seem redundant since I've mentioned this topic before, but get used to it because I will, inevitably write/vent about it again.

Here is visible evidence of what I was referring to in my last post entitled "Bane: Photographers": wedding photogs that have no sense of where I am and how to avoid blocking my shot. I'm generally not hard to find. I'm usually the only guy with a big ol' shoulder-mounted video camera with wireless accessories that push my camera upwards of 13 lbs. I'm not hard to miss.

Anyway, check out this picture of a beautiful candle-lighting ceremony. It's self-explanatory.

Backlog Blog (part I)

As of today, I am about nine wedding videos behind schedule. I am backlogged like most wedding videographers are but since this is my first experience with such a big post-wedding-season backlog I am a little stressed out.

Recently I have changed my contracts to allow for the possibility of delay without bad repercussions but most of the weddings I am behind on right now are not from contracts that have such protections. My clients have all been very cool and very understanding but I just feel bad on a personal level.

Luckily for me (and them) I don't ask for the final payment from them until my product is delivered. This helps them feel better about the delay. It helps them know I haven't run off to the Ozarks with all of their money.

Anyway, suffice it to say I am very behind and swamped with work until at least Thanksgiving. So I probably shouldn’t be blogging right now. Back to the editing bay I go!

Horn Blower Cruisers

I came across this video while on a videographers' forum (yes, I know I'm a geek. I've never tried to deny it.) The video is pretty funny. It's of some pranksters who startle the bejeezers out of people with drive-by "honking".

I didn't know what category this post/topic should go under so I put it under "music" which made sense to me because there are "woodwind" instruments involved. But really there's no music in this video at all. Unless shrieking constitutes music or singing of some kind. I digress...

I laughed out loud while watching this. Enjoy the video! (Windows Media Format. Mac users, do whatcha gotta do.) Click here.

DARPA Chief

Remember the DARPA Chief from Metal Gear Solid? Remember how he accompanied Snake on his mission as technological and strategic support? Well, the real life DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has invented a new device to support our troops in the field.

The Boomerang, a device created to triangulate the sound of gunfire and pinpoint the location of snipers, can be mounted on Humvees to be a techno-watchdog for our troops.

It costs $10,000 per unit and can point out sniper fire in echoey city streets and while in motion—both features not previously available in older units like this one. The price tag seems steep, but the lives of our soldiers are worth infinitely more.

Solid Snake would have been jazzed to have a device like this while on his sneaking missions.

"Hand's Free"

My old Sony Ericsson phone measured four inches from tip to toe. From the speakers to the mic was 3.5". My ear is at least 6" from my mouth. You do the math.

I found a new device that you can attach to your cell phone that will not only make talking on your cell with your wife more like the days when you were courting her in high school--spending hours on the phone while your mom yelled in the background for you to get off so she could coordinate the church potluck.

An excertp from the "WHY?" page of Hulger.com reads:

Why is new always better? Why is smaller more desirable? Why is technology so soulless?
Why should it not be fun & beautiful & individual? Why must it always look forwards, never backwards?

Amen!

Click here to see Hulger products.

Chinese Restaurant Names

Have you noticed how utterly fatuous most Chinese restaurant names are?

Well, I've created a Chinese Restaurant Name Maker. Take any word from Section A and add it to a word in Section B to come up with your restaurant name. Repeating words is not recommended. (Section C can be added as an option.)

Section A
Golden
Purple
Lucky
Szechuan
Harbor
Happy
Jade
Shanghai
Hong Kong
Hunan

Section B
Tiger
Dragon
Phoenix
Seafood
Garden
Palace
Emperor
China
Lantern
Joy
Fortune

Section C
Restaurant
Café
Palace
Seafood Restaurant
Donuts and Chinese Food
Cuisine

And as a bonus, you can add any Chinese fellow's name just before the restaurant name begins (e.g., "Ching Chong Chay's Golden Phoenix Seafood Restaurant")

Did I forget any words? Leave me a comment.

Website Rankings

Do you ever wonder how well your website ranks in the world of online portals and search pages?

Well, I found a website that will help you answer that question in mere seconds.

Cool SEO Tool is an online tool that will determine whether or not your site ranks in Google's top 100 links for a given inquiry. You simply enter your site name and then a querry, For example, you can enter: morningstarvideography.com and then enter the query: "high end wedding videography" and you will see that my site ranks nowhere near the top 100 responses from Google. Yay for me! :-( I suck.

(I should note that I come up as number 5 in a Yahoo! search with the same query.) Oh, yeah -- I forgot to mention -- Cool SEO Tool will search other sites like Yahoo! and MSN as well.

Lastly, in case you were wondering, "SEO" stands for Search Engine Optimization.

Enjoy!

Crispy Taliban

American soldiers bravely fighting in the front lines of Afghanistan cremated two corpses of Taliban terrorists. They were filmed reading a prepared message to Taliban terrorists while the corpses burned.

Part of their psy-op message, which was to be distributed in hopes of luring terrorists out of hiding, read like this:

"Attention Taliban: You are cowardly dogs. You allowed your fighters to be laid
down facing west and burned. You are too scared to retrieve the bodies. This
just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be. You attack and
run away like women. You call yourself Talibs, but you are a disgrace to the
Muslim religion, and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men
instead of the cowardly dogs you are."

Allegations are being brought out that their behavior might be contrary to the Geneva Convention.

The soldiers say that the bodies have to be burned for hygiene reasons and saw an opportunity to attack the enemy psychologically with by mocking them and trying to lure them out.

Personally, I don't see a big problem with this. At worst, it's done in bad taste, but more likely it is a good strategy to gain advantage over an enemy that does not follow the rules of engagement. At least two of the soldiers filmed in this incident are trained psychological operations specialists whose purpose in the field is to demoralize the enemy with propaganda and "mind games". I'd say they did their jobs pretty well.

Does the Taliban care about or abide by the Geneva Convention? I don't think cutting off the head of a living non-combatant contract worker is specifically prohibited in the Geneva Convention, but I haven't read the whole document so what do I know? Perhaps making fun of people and calling them cowards is on par with beheading them*. Maybe my moral compass is off and the two are actually comparable.

And since when has taunting your enemy considered grounds for an investigation anyway? I thought all victors—in war and in sports—earned the right to taunt the enemy with impunity. At least until the battle is engaged.

Frankly, I don’t care what kind of mean things our soldiers say to the enemy. Are we afraid it will hurt their feelings? Maybe the fear is that once they get their feelings hurt they will hate us more. It's hard for me to imagine hating people more than you already them if you hated them so much you flew an airplane into building and killed 5,000 of them.

Know your enemy a little better and perhaps you will stop complaining about these "incidents".

*WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY GRAPHIC. DO NOT WATCH IT IF YOU ARE NOT PREPARED TO BE SICKENED TO THE CORE OF YOUR BEING.
*Click here to see video of our enemy in action.

Carver, who art thou?

Did you watch Nip/Tuck last night?
~~POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT~~
~~DO NOT READ ON IF YOU WATCH NIP/TUCK~~
I think Kimber is the Carver.
That's all.

Poker Highlights

I was watching the World Series of Poker on ESPN yesterday was simply amazed at just how cruel the evil Mistress of Poker can be.

Actor Oliver Hudson--son of Goldie Hawn, brother to Kate Hudson—entered this year's World Series of Poker with great optimism but terrible luck.

In the very first hand of the very first game on the very first day of the Main Event held at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas, Oliver Hudson became the very personification of the notion that "luck beats skill" in poker. Of course, as Sam Farha proved, it's even better to be skilled AND lucky.

Here's how the hand played out for Hudson:
- Hudson was dealt pocket 10s in a game that the blinds are 25 and 50. He raises to 450.
- Farha calls. Perhaps Hudson was thinking Farha also had a pocket pair.
- The flop comes out Ace, Ace, 10. WOW! Hudson flops a full house!
- Thinking Farha probably has an Ace or a Ten in his hole for a set or two pair which his own full boat can still easily beat, Hudson goes and bets $300 more to slow play Farha into wasting more money.
- Sam Farha raised another $1000!
- Hudson was delighted. He goes ALL IN to force Farha into a tough situation. That's $10,000 of his starting stack on the first hand! Hudson figures he will double-up on the first hand while eliminating past champion Sammy Farha.
- Farha calls and flips his cards.

Oh, Mistress of Poker, you are cruel indeed.
Farha shows an Ace 10 for a full house; Aces over 10s to beat Hudsons 10s over Aces!

FEMA: Louisiana State Lotto Racist

Slidell, Louisiana (AP)-- A winning Wheel of Fortune Lotto check worth over $1.6 million dollars was accused of being racist by FEMA officials Wednesday.

The Wheel of Fortune Mega Bucks Lotto rewarded Jacquelyn Sherman, an African American, a price of $1,636,429.00 when she picked 8 correct numbers and letters out of a possible 10 digit puzzle that spelled "K-A-T-R-I-N-A-S-U-X". FEMA Officials were concerned that only her "black family members" seemed to be benefiting from the reward and that Jacquelyn only has two "token whities" in her circle of friends.

FEMA, recently criticized for there lack of support for the vastly African American population of the hardest hit areas of Lousiana when hurricane Katrina hit in August. Critics allege racism as a key factor in the Bush Administration's lackadaisical attitude toward immediate relief.

FEMA Spokesman, Roger Rogerstein, in a televised news conference, accused the Louisiana Lotto of discriminatory activities because 87%-96% of people who purchase their lottery tickets from 2003 to 2005 were all African Americans. "The evidence is clear to see--the winner of this [jackpot] is 100% African American. What about the over 80% of White America who didn't get a sniff of the jackpot? What of them?" Rogerstein demanded.

Sherman was not available for comment but was seen rejoicing in her winnings, the blatant racism of the Louisiana State Lotto completely lost on her as she drove off in her nephew's Ford Taurus.

At print, Hurrican Katrina has been subpoenaed by Louisian Supreme Court on charges filed by the ACLU to explain why she targeted mostly black neighborhoods. Katrina was not available for comment.

Bane: Photographers

WTF is up with wedding photographers?

In my line of work, I've worked with many, many photographers and the vast majority (that is to say, about 80%) of them range from being pretty cool to very cool people.

Every once in a while I get a real stinger. I'm talking about photogs that constantly ruin my video by way of ignorance or malice or just plain selfishness. At one end of the spectrum is the oblivious photog that will wander into my shot because he simply doesn't know where I am or have a good sense of his surrounding. (I say "he" because most—with the exception of one—female photographers are all pretty conscientious) At the other end of the spectrum is the prima donna that thinks he is the reason the bride and groom are getting married. Like they are getting married so they can have an excuse to work with this clown and they're throwing a party to celebrate his hiring. What egomaniacs!

This last weekend I shot a wedding in Sacramento where the photographer (I think he leans toward the shallow end of the spectrum) who was a pleasant guy but kept walking in front of the bride and groom in between the Reverend's sentences. What normal thinking person with even an ounce of respect for circumstance and an iota of proper decorum would think it is OK to across the front of an ongoing ceremony of this caliber? Would you stand at the foot of a movie screen at your local Cineplex? Would you saunter between two people talking to each other in a hotel lobby? Who does this sort of thing? It's socially retarded is what it is!

And during the sand-pouring ceremony the guy goes in for the kill shot and blocks not only my camera but the eyes of half of the attending guests. I had no choice but to dismount my camera from its tripod and sneak in between his size 64 waist and the gazebo's entrance for the shot.

Sometimes I want to leave the footage of the photog's back in the final edited movie so the bride can see what I had to contend with and earn justification for any shots I might have missed because of it. "Perhaps", I yearn, "the bride will call up the photog after seeing the footage and give him a piece of her mind." Alas, it is too passive aggressive to punish the bride with sub-par footage in her video for me to actually leave that stuff in.

Inevitably, I am forced to spend extra time editing around this clod so that I can purposely hide from the bride the notion that her photographer was the single most influential factor in preventing me from getting the best possible shot!

Dissident Arab Gets the Treatment

Excerpt of "Dissident Arab Gets the Treatment" from FrontPageMagazine.com, January 6, 2005
By Ahmad Al-Qloushi

I am a 17-year-old Kuwaiti Arab Muslim and a college freshman studying in the USA. I was three years of age when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. My parents still remember what it was like for us during the invasion. Waiting for long hours in line for a few pieces of bread. We had darkness 24 hours a day from the burning oil wells. My two uncles are still traumatized from being kidnapped and tortured in Iraqi prisons. Most of all we remember our one-week-old baby cousin who died while the Iraqi invaders were stealing incubators from hospitals to sell them for profit. The Americans by contrast came in to liberate us and asked for nothing in return. I love this country for the freedom it provides and for rescuing Kuwait’s liberty in the first Gulf War. 12 Years later, America once again has selflessly protected my country and my people by removing Saddam Hussein.

I enrolled in Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California and immediately registered for “Introduction to American Government and Politics." I was shocked by my Professor’s singularly one-sided presentation. Week after week, I encountered a lack of intellectual and political diversity that I would have more commonly expected to have heard on the streets of pre-liberation Iraq. In this particular class I heard only one consistent refrain: America is bad.
A week before thanksgiving Professor Woolcock assigned us a take home final exam. The final exam consisted solely of one required essay: “Dye and Zeigler contend that the Constitution of the United States was not ‘ordained and established’ by ‘the people’ as we have so often been led to believe. They contend instead that it was written by a small educated and wealthy elite in America who were representative of powerful economic and political interests. Analyze the US constitution (original document), and show how its formulation excluded the majority of the people living in America at that time, and how it was dominated by America's elite interest.”

When I read the assignment I remembered back to my high school in Kuwait. Many of my teachers were Palestinian; they hated America, they hated my worldview, and they did their best to brainwash me. I did not leave my country and my family to come to the United States to receive further brainwashing. I disagreed completely with Dye and Zeigler’s thesis. I wrote an essay defending America’s Founding Fathers and upholding the US constitution as a pioneering document, which has contributed to extraordinary freedoms in America and other corners of the world - including my corner, the Middle East.

Professor Woolcock didn’t grade my essay. Instead he told me to come to see him in his office the following morning. I was surprised the next morning when instead of giving me a grade, Professor Woolcock verbally attacked me and my essay. He told me, “Your views are irrational.” He called me naïve for believing in the greatness of this country, and told me "America is not God's gift to the world." Then he upped the stakes and said "You need regular psychotherapy." Apparently, if you are an Arab Muslim who loves America you must be deranged. Professor Woolcock went as far as to threaten me by stating that he would visit the Dean of International Admissions (who has the power to take away student visas) to make sure I received regular psychological treatment.

Read the rest of the article by clicking here.

Ahmad Al-Qloushi was born and raised in Al-Shaab, Kuwait where he attended English language school. He recently became President of Foothill’s College Republicans. He is a Political-Science major at Foothill College. Please e-mail Ahmad at ahmadalqloushi@sbcglobal.net.

Back to Burkhas!

Why is it that liberals are so unified in their defense of Islam and consistently expound its virtues while bashing and limiting the spread of Christianity?
Here are a few reasons why liberals are insensitive, at best, but more likely inconsistent, incomprehensible, and perhaps even a little insane.

1. Liberals love women's rights. A steady, unfaltering mantra echoing from the Left for decades has been women's rights to vote, women's rights to hold jobs/earn pay equal to men, and women's rights to choose. But Islam prohibits a great number of women's rights. Religious prohibitions regarding marital rights, divorce rights, inheritance rights, and women's equality in general still abound in Islamic Governments throughout the Middle East. Honor killings, the murder or women who have 'dishonored' their families with premarital sex are still happening today Women, without permission from their father or husband are not allowed to drive, enroll in universities. German courts recently started a trial where a Turkish man is being accused of shooting his sister who lives a "Western lifestyle" and was learning to become an electrician. Are liberals really able to defend a religion that allows things like this to happen?
2. Liberals protect gay rights. Well, guess what? According to many Imams, their interpretation of Shari'ah law demands the death penalty for homosexuals. Even conservative Evangelical Christian communities who believe homosexuality is a sin will never demand death to a gay man or woman! Why don't the Cindy Sheehans of the world protest this violently homophobic ideology instead of the war in Iraq (that will bring a democracy that will most likely, directly or indirectly, put a stop to this kind of radical homophobic thinking)?
3. Liberals who espouse hatred toward the American government—if Radical Islam didn't view them as allies—would most likely be beheaded by "insurgents" (I prefer the term, "terrorists" because it far more accurately describes their singular purpose for existing) for their liberal thinking if they had their 'druthers. Are these guys kidding? Do you think Hillary Clinton would be allowed to speak the way she does and hold high offices the way does if she were under Shari'ah law? In an Islamic world, Hillary would be wearing a burkha, denied the right to speak in public, given a clitorectomy and then executed if she complained about it!

Ah, yes, the virtues of the Great Religion of Peace!

Why endorse a set of ideals that will put women a thousand years back in time? Why bring democracy to a nation and place only ballot measures that will deny the voter the right to vote? Why lovingly invite a gay couple into a room and lovingly leave them alone with 30 armed and a violent homophobes? It makes no sense!

Liberals, for some reason, cannot wrap their small minds around the concept that the use of freedom of speech to espouse hatred against the very Nation that provides you with the freedom to securely to speak against said Nation and to endorse and protect a religion and a religious people who are the very antithesis of the freedoms that you enjoy is categorically illogical and borderline insanity.

Ghost in Commercial

Recently, a British Ad agency released a mysterious clip from a video they filmed while making a car commercial.

The video shows a mysterious white mist that trails the right side of the car on a particular stretch of road. The producers of the commercial initially thought there was some sort of technical error on the film or in the processing of the film that created the aberration and considered removing it with computer editing and effects.

A short cost analysis showed that it would have been cheaper to simply reshoot the segment so the production company went back to the mountain road where the sequence was originally shot and went through the motions of reshooting.

Taking care to make sure nothing weird was happening, the director was satisfied that they got the shots they needed and went back to edit. Again, the mysterious mist reappeared, but this time it was bigger than before.

Baffled but undaunted, the director had his assistant do some research and they discovered that there was a fatal hit and run accident that occurred on that particular stretch of road, just under the exact grove of trees exactly 15 months prior to the original shoot.

They subsequently relocated the shoot and this footage has not been aired until now.

What do you think? Is it just a coincidence or is it the wrongly deceased reaching back to get revenge.

Take a look at this video to see for yourself. (Hint: if you listen closely, the director gives some insight as to what he thinks has happened.)

click here or copy and paste this link:
http://www.atlantasbestdj.com/GhostlyCarAd.wmv

Plagiarism

I found a new website today: www.copyscape.com

Do you have a personal homepage, a blog, or a business website that you are afraid people might steal from? Visit CopyScape, type in your URL and do a search of the web to see if there is similar or identical content that is being used elsewhere.

What you do from that point on is your business.

Teeth of the Tiger

Tom Clancy's latest novel, Teeth of the Tiger, may well have been titled "The Boring Tiger and His Distinctly Toothless Tale".

I'm not a fast reader by any standard and I don't have the most leisure time of my peers so trying to read a novel becomes somewhat of a cost-benefit analysis for me. I've only read one other Clancy novel in the past and it was pretty good so you wouldn't be surprised that I would want to give it another go in spite of my limited free time.

Also, the book was in prominent display on the Bargain Books table at Borders and advertising an obscenely low sticker price for a brand-new hardcover book at $5.99. (I should have taken that ridiculous price point as a warning rather than an invitation. After all, how many automobiles will sell for 1/7 of the retail price without a distinct flaw somewhere on the machine?)

Having been sufficiently enticed by the low price point, hooked by my favorable past experience with Clancy, and sank by my attraction to all topics pro-war and anti-terror, I bought and read the novel cover to cover in about a month's time. (That is not long when you factor in my limited leisure time and slow reading pace)

Without going into detail and without giving away the plot, I can say that the novel was more a business venture intended to set up a future franchise series than it was a work of passionate storytelling.

There were so many unbelievable and unbelievably mundane scenarios that the entire tale could have been told in a matter of 20 pages had a proper editor been retained to render the service of editing Clancy's manuscripts rather than kiss his a$$.

I did like the overall premise of using non-government, third party agents to make bad people who hate America go away, but there was so little substance and so little suspense in the story that the entire book seemed like a whimsical thought rather than a serious endeavor.

Anyway, if you are thinking about reading this book, don't. If you must, borrow mine and save your $5.99 for a Venti Almond Latté instead.

Genesis

Blogs are so commonplace now that pursuing one seems bourgeois and not pursuing one seems archaic.

Alas, what is a man to do? I guess caving into peer pressure never hurt anyone... that I know of... that will admit it has, that is.

Anyway, welcome to the distinctly "fanfareless" premiere to Andrew's nameless blog currently entitled "Working Title Blog".