Enchilada Sinners

(So many jokes, so little time...)

Just a friendly reminder from Taco Cabana:
During Lent, order the cheese enchiladas with no
chili sauce on Fridays, or you'll Burn in Hell.

Exit Wendy's

(Click To Enlarge)

The Exit was the best part of tonight's visit to Wendy's.
I want to go on record as believing that the franchise
at Wurzbach and Medical in San Antonio is the very worst
'restaurant' in the chain.
I once watched quite the scene here when they put onions on a burger
after the customer had made it perfectly clear to everyone that he was
allergic to them and would end up in the hospital if they even touched
his meat. The employee who then suggested that he pick the onions off
looked pretty stupid to everyone.
Their burgers are always cold, too.
Tonight, I waited in line for ten minutes and they hadn't
managed to take a single order in all that time. There was
plenty of activity but somehow they just couldn't seem to
accomplish anything.
The drive-thru was being served just fine, it was those of us
who elected to eat inside that were trapped in limbo.
Finally I loudly said to the stranger in front of me: "Let's
go to McDonald's--I'm buying" and we both walked out.
He thanked me for making his exit more dramatic, then went
to eat somewhere else while I stayed behind long enough to
take this photo.

One Year Ago Today

I was unemployed and had no car, so I was hanging out
under a nearby bridge, smoking and taking pictures, trying
to figure out how to turn my life around.
My decision?
Start a website.
These photos were taken at the exact time and place that my original
site Views Of Texas was born.
Zzakk's Garage came a few months later, after I realized that
I needed an outlet for my darker side, for my photos and rants
directed at the stupid people in this world.
Examining the absurd actions of others has helped me see
my own faults more clearly, too.
I hope I'm becoming a better person because of it.

Can't recommend starting your own website as a way to solve
all of your problems, but there's evidence that it helped me.
I have a job and a car now, at least.

At A Loss For Words

Location: Sportsbar men's room
Subject: TV in the wall.
Question: Would patrons rather piss their pants than miss a play?

One Man's Trash...

...is another man's photo-op.

While I like this first picture, it has it's problems.
I was shooting a parked train on the southwest side of town,
and decided to include the random farm junk in the foreground.
There was a rusty tractor that looked pretty cool, but I was
drawn to these pieces of discarded irrigation equipment.
The downside of this image is that people who don't snap to
the fact that overseas shipping containers aren't just sitting
in a field in south Texas for no reason won't 'get' that
there's a train in the background. Maybe one of the containers
has new pipes and valves in it?


A few miles away and a few minutes later I chanced upon this
interesting scene, so I stopped my car and rolled down the window
for a few exposures.
Originally I was only after the exercise bike that was discarded
in an upright manner under a highway bridge.
But then I noticed the Christmas tree and realized that there was
some kind of story here.
To me the tree makes me think of someone who is done with that
holiday and has disposed of any now-useless reminders.
In a similar way, maybe the exercise bike represents
an already failed New Year's Resolution?

Soundmen, Be Advised

Since I'm a sound engineer, this sign cracked me up!
We were at Raymond Russell Park, and I spotted this
warning in one of the pavillions.
First of all, noise ordinances are fine by me--nobody
wants to be forced to listen to music (or rap) that
they aren't interested in, especially late at night.
However, the wording of many such laws border on the
ridiculous.
Some of them state that the sound pressure level, which
is measured in C-weighted decibels, is not to exceed
65db at the street in front of an outdoor stage, less
than 50 feet away.
The traffic and even the waitress's farts are louder than that!
But the consultants hired by the city council don't understand
that decibels are measured on a logarithmic scale, which
means that 100db is half as loud as 110, and 90db is one-fourth
as loud, etc.
Anyway, what really makes this sign funny to me is the way
it was written. Look at which letters are larger than the rest.
Why isn't the C in Cut bigger, too?
And it looks like the sign maker was all set to engrave "10:00"
before realizing that he was running out of room for the "PM" part,
so we're left with the awesomely incorrect "10:PM".
I hope the parks department bought spares, because once a
sound engineer with less scruples than me sees this sign it's
going to disappear, and everyone knows that sign makers who
understand the rules of grammar and punctuation charge a lot more.

(Click On The Photo Quietly)

Dangerous Practices

It's moving day, and you don't have enough rope to
secure the furniture in the back of your pickup truck.
Do you get more rope or use an extension cord like
an intelligent human being?
No, you convince your buddy to stand in the bed of the
truck to hold the load and keep it from tumbling out
when you turn. Then you haul-ass down the highway at
night, changing lanes like a maniac.
There are some awfully dumb and dangerous people in
this world.
To be fair, and to explain why the title of this post
is plural, I have to mention that it's not exactly safe
to fumble with your camera trying to shoot a photo through
the windshield while driving down the highway at 60mph, either.
But I did it, just for you.