Sign Here

I get sick of having to show ID or sign before being permitted to do everything short of opening my own front door. With a name as far from plain ol’ American as mine is, each such incident is an unpleasant episode of cultural ignorance waiting to happen. Thank goodness someone decided to have a little fun signing his credit card receipts any number of wacky ways, with absolutely no harm to National Security whatsoever.

It did, however, crack me up and at least momentarily cool me off from having my own paycheck endorsement rejected for no good reason.

Face/Off

Here’s something I thought I’d never do: for the first time evar… I grew out my face. Just to see what would happen. All of my life, in direct opposition to culture and family custom, I’ve gone clean-shaven. Just never thought it would look good on me. Took a couple months, but one day there it was: total Santa Claus look. Even my family was alarmed (it tends to happen a lot with me…). Then, when it seemed it all had just about got out of hand, I started shaving off bit by bit, resulting in the sequence you see here:

The biggest surprise? I have opted to re-grow some, at least for a little while. My aging face seems to be losing what little contour it once had and I’ve decided it needs a little help. Okay, it needs a lot of help but a goatee and some sidburns will just have to do.

Bring ’em On

In the course of my daily toil I take pains to limit the number of images used per page in a website in order to have the whole thing load faster. After all, what’s the use in waiting? I just found an exception: This is probably the first page on the internets that deserves your wait as it loads… and loads… and loads… 1635 (as of Feb. 6, 2005) thumbnail pictures, one for each soldier lost in Iraq to satisfy the greed and bravado of a few rich old men.