Visual Illusions

StumbledUpon! this site, which has some very intriguing stuff.

Illusions
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More Photoshop

Hubert Bogarth III

Photoshop Fun

From a couple of images of Che Guevara smoking a cigar, I used Photoshop Elements to give the old revolucionario a different look.

Facebook

Been spending time on Facebook and not very much on this blog. Posting images here requires about the same amount of time as for Facebook, but putting words together for the blog takes a bit more effort, especially when, as now, the Muse deserts. But, not to worry, she will return.
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Shanghai Public Market

Scenes in a Shanghai market

Rice, beans, and nuts

See the hanging preserved goose?

Pretty noodle maker with fabulous hair

Gizzards and thighs and feet, oh, my!

Sugar cane, pineapples, bananas, and melons. And California oranges.

Fish of all varieties

The cautious egg, rice, and bean guy eyeing a customer.

Sweet baked stuff

Apologies to E.F. and O.K.

A bowl of oatmeal with milk of cow

A piece of toast, a bit of jam, and thou

Beside me at this breakfast table

Ah! Breakfast were Paradise enow!

California landscape

This is a quiet response to a friend who recently moved to Oregon. Oregon?

Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad.

This M.R.James story, which I read when I was oh, just a little tyke, still has the power to give me the creeps. For creepy stories, Montague Rhodes James is tough to beat.

Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad

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The Golden Gate

This was taken on a slightly hazy day in 2002. Came across it as I was
going through my photo files. Always a pretty sight.

Peggy's Cove - Nova Scotia

The Lighthouse

The Cove

Scenes of Shanghai

Temple of the Jade Buddha

Butcher shop

The steamed bun lady

Glamor on the Bund

Inside the Shanghai Museum

High-rise apartment buildings

Strollers on the Bund

Facebook Manners

Here's a YouTube video with some tips on how to act on Facebook.

Parable, Fable, Whatever . . .

Al Cool is his name, an individual of high spirit and uncompromising taste, with strongly held ideas distilled from the wisdom of the ages, and the refinement that they say comes from noble birth and good stock. Often maligned in the press, he is less concerned with insisting on his own percentage than with the labels others have stuck on him, so long as the appellation remains under his control and the demarcations are clear. You've met him, I'm sure, from time to time at cocktail parties, where men gather round him in clusters and women too often find him irresistible. Yeah, that Al Cool, what a character!
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Rambling Again

Took a walk today, second one after a gap of many days. Laziness, mainly, and also somewhat less than good weather. Excuses, of course. But today the weather is gorgeous, though a bit warm in the sun. Hat needed, but forgot the sunblock. The scent of the mock-orange fills the air in the back yard. It's now a tallish tree, not the small shrub it was, oh, just a few years ago, and you actually get some shade under it. Speckled, though.

The bumble bees are active. Busy, as the saying goes. Interesting that they spend varying amounts of time in each flower. Here a sniff, here a longer sip or two, there a lingering guzzle. Same geranium pot, but I guess each flower is different.

Dragonflies are back. Maybe they're damselflies, the smaller ones, usually a bright blue. Their wings like what illustrators of children's books use on fairies. Tinker Bell too. Reading "Peter Pan" as a kid I thought she was only a minor character. But the fluttering damselfly wings in the Disney version made Tinker famous.

Funny how tastes change. Mickey Mouse was big when I was growing up. But for years now, "Mickey Mouse" has been synonymous with "trivial, of poor construction or shabby".

Mickey_mouse

That's how it goes. Poor Mickey!
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Views of the City

View of San Francisco from Lincoln Park,
outside the Palace of the Legion of Honor

A view from my friend Jim's living room window

The photos were scanned from old color slides that I fixed with Photoshop.
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