Hi, my name is Rick.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve updated this thing.  For those of you that still come to the site, thanks.  I’ll try and update more frequently but I’ve been really, really busy.  For those of you that don’t know, I’m currently the S3 for my unit.  For those of you that don’t know what that means, suffice it to say that it keeps me quite busy.  When I get done with work, I don’t feel like doing anything except hanging out with Eva and Sydney and going to sleep.

This last weekend, Eva and I went to Nashville for my friend Mike’s wedding.  It was an absolute blast.  We saw a lot of our friends from school who, for the most part, we haven’t seen in 4+ years.  That first night at dinner it was as if we’d all seen each other the week before.  Everything was the same and it was great.  We snagged a lot of great pictures at the reception and I’ll post some of them here after we filter through them in the next couple days.

In the mean time, here are some more shots from the Bahamas.

Abaco, Bahamas, Erin, Eva, George, Laura

When someone asks you a question, please don’t ever answer them by saying “Well, yes and no.”  That’s not an answer.  The answer is either yes or no, not both.  If you can’t muster up the mettle to answer one of the two, please don’t then bookend your witless, cop out response with the classic ”It is what it is,” or some derivation thereof.  For example: Me: “Excuse me, but must I attend the meeting as well?”  Moron: “Well, yes and no.  But whatever.  It is what it is.”  You see?  Dreadful.

The photos today are a smattering of delightful images captured in lovely Paris.

Eva, Paris, France

Newt Gingrich made a great point earlier this week: he first mentioned how the U.S. constantly makes sure we don’t offend any other nation with our stances and policies.  That much is a given.  He continued on, however, to make a point which I had never considered… that being that we never concern ourselves with why the rest of the world couldn’t care less if it offends us.  We’re so wrapped up in ensuring we don’t do or say anything that may rub any other nation the wrong way that we fail to consider that we’re the only ones that act that way.  Since when did national self interest become something about which we had to defend ourselves?

Two photos this week.  One is a super duper processed shot of my dad and Eva in my parent’s condo in Chicago.  It’s HDR and textured.  The other is of the cobblestone road leading up to the porch of my parent’s first house in Aspinwall, a suburb of Pittsburgh.

Chicago, IL, Eva, HDR, Pittsburgh, PA

Have you ever actually been helped by the police?  I haven’t.  I’ve had items stolen which I reported, and they didn’t help me at all.  The absolute only interaction I’ve ever had with the police is when they have been ticketing me.  It’s not that I received a ticket recently (which I didn’t), but it just seems to me that the police have at some point in the last 50 or so years transitioned from a force which “Serves and Protects” to a force that essentially tickets people.  Honestly, send me an email or comment if you’ve ever actually been helped by the police.  I simply haven’t.

Oh, and everyone can stop worrying about the oil spill: President Obama has established an investigative commission.  I like where this is heading.  Who cares about solving the problem?  Not me.  Let’s just fine some rich people.

I caught this little gem from our fantabulous local news reporter Kai Porter here in El Paso the other day: “One of the girls, who was in a coma, is able to move her arms and her legs on the left side of her body, but not on the right side of her body.”  Good work Kai.  And sweet name.  By the way, “Kai” is a “man.”

The shot today is of Eva and I in Palestine.

Eva, Paris, France, Rick

“…until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.”
               — Woodrow Wilson
                   Creator of Mother’s Day.  And the federal reserve.  And income taxes.  What a great American.

Speaking of Woodrow Wilson.  Does no one else see the unintentional irony of Progressive Insurance advertising on Fox News?

Students near San Francisco were told to leave school on “Cinco de Mayo” because they were wearing shirts emblazoned with American flags.  So… they were told to leave an American school for wearing shirts with the American flag.  It makes me so incredibly angry to type that… I’m just going to stop.

Did you know that Chinese products are so cheap because the Chinese government subsidizes a lot of production?  I bet you didn’t know that.  It makes me not feel so bad for shopping at Wal-Mart.  Not that I felt bad to begin with.

I love certificates of authenticity.  They mean that whoever you bought the crap you have from certifies it.  Ridiculous.

Fact: If you wear a pinkie ring, you’re a douche bag.

The photo today is one of my favorites of Eva and I.  It’s of us in Korea.  Not Seoul.  A little further north.

Eva, Rick

I apologize up front for the fowl language.  Let me illuminate you with my logic.

What does a credit score allow you to do?  It’s not a trick question.  It allows you to borrow money, or get a credit card which, for all intents and purposes, is just another way people borrow money.  What give you a bad credit score?  Well, generally it’s a bad debt.  Or two.  Or three.  Unpaid debts (ie. unpaid mortgage payments, unpaid car payments, unpaid credit card payments, etc.) will cause the debt owner to report you to the three credit bureaus who annotate the ding on your credit record and it causes your credit score to go down.  This credit score is of course a completely fabricated metric, but it’s the only metric, so that’s what’s used.

Where am I going with this?  Well, people are worried about their credit scores because a garage band dressed as pirates or Ben Stein told them they should be.  And guess what?  If you have a bad credit score, it’s because you have bad or exorbitant debts and the last thing you should be doing is borrowing money or getting new credit cards.  I don’t understand how more people don’t understand this.  Instead of worrying about a stupid score which can get you more debt, you should be focusing on paying off the debts you already owe.

Of course this is assuming you pay your debts and don’t declare bankruptcy as a result of your ineptitude.  And I admit, that’s a monstrous assumption.

The shot today is of Eva listening to a guided tour in the cathedral of Mont St. Michel in France.

Eva, Mont St. Michel, Normandy Region

Today, as I was driving in the car and listening to AM radio as I oftentimes do, I happened to switch the channel to AM 690 here in El Paso, and low and behold Sean Hannity was on.  He was ranting and raving about how the country is going to hell and it’s all President Obama’s fault.  I happen to be slightly more moderate than old Hannity and think most things he says are crazy talk.  I do happen to agree that the country is on a steady decline and it is due in large part to the ridiculous spending of the Obama administration, but I also think W is as much if not more so at fault.  I digress.  Hannity was ranting and raving about how Obama is ruining America, and lambasted him for bowing to the dictatorial President of China at the recent nuclear summit.  Then he quoted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to support his point.  If you don’t see the lunacy in that, leave my website immediately.  Seriously.

The photo today is of Notre Dame at night.  And there’s someone hiding at the bottom of the frame.  Here’s a hint: she’s cute.

Eva, Paris, France

I am in Tallil with Eva before we go on leave.  I’m doing a whole lot of nothing here and it’s spectacular.  We had Thanksgiving dinner yesterday and it was very good.  And very interesting.  There were myriad decorations and gigantic food-ish sculptures.  The piece de resistance however, was the living, human diorama.  Picture this: one Laotian man dressed up and face-painted as a Native American.  A Phillipino woman next to him adorned in Pilgrim attire.  Bookending the Pilgrimesse is a Nigerian man festooned in Native American garb; his costume bested only by his Laotian brother’s but his of a similarly gaudy nature.  In the foreground, a model helicopter emblazoned with a giant medical red cross turns in infinite circles over a small model of a poorly rendered depiction of what I can only imagine was a 1962 Vietnam jungle scene.  There was a gigantic butter dolphin.  There was a massive chocolate icing sculpture of a turkey as well as an enormous cake decorated with a turkey.  The cake borne turkey was made of cheese, lunch meat, black and green olives, kiwi slices, croutons and more– it’s making me a tad sick to type it.  There were hundreds and hundreds of Thanksgiving decorations splashed across every vertical face imaginable.  It was great.

The picture today is of Eva at the Ziggurat near Tallil in Iraq; it was taken by one of her co-workers also on the field trip.  There are 32 known Ziggurats, 28 in Iraq and 4 in Iran.  Eva was at the Great Ziggurat of Ur, one of the more well known structures, and also the Wiki article linked above.  Perhaps it’s more well known because people with cameras and Internet connections actually go there.  Who knows.

Eva, Iraq

“If it stings you, your heart can stop in 20 minutes.”

That’s how our resident doctor here on lovely FOB Hunter described a scorpion which one of our Air Force comrades found under his bed.  You see, creepy crawlies are so prevalent here that there are posters, well, posted around which have pictures of the more common, and, while not necessarily common, more dangerous critters as well.  The deadly vermin which our Zoomie brother discovered lurking below his mattress matched a scorpion on the top and most dangerous/deadly row.  Also, its name is, and I’m not making this up, the Death Stalker.  Awesome.  What I needed was a scorpion in the bedroom refresher course.

I’m reading ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy right now.  It’s actually my roomate Lincoln’s and he hasn’t read it yet.  He’s on leave right now however, so as far as I’m concerned that means I can do whatever I want with anything he left behind.  He didn’t lock anything up.  In the Army I wouldn’t be guilty of using his stuff.  He’d be guilty of failing to secure his belongings.

The shot today is of, from L to R, my sister Erin, my wife Eva, my mom Julie, my sister Laura, and my grandmother Mimi.  The photo was taken in my parent’s condo in Chicago.  You know, Chicago, the place where all minority honor roll students are beaten to death.

Chicago, IL, Eva, Iraq

I have a bug net around my bed.

[The following events took less than 2 minutes to actually occur.]  I walked into my room, or, should I say our room, not too long ago.  Same as any other day.  Walk past the TV, past the couch, past the “kitchen table” full of dirty dishes and unused flatware, past the locker of food, and into the back portion of the room.  This is where my bed is.  Across the room, nary eight feet away sits Mitch’s bed–Mitch was the one stung by the scorpion.  Diagonal from my bed, and in what would be considered the common area of the room, sits Lincoln’s bed across the room from the couch.  I walked past all these things like I always do en route to my little living area, my little place in the world, my little spot with my stuff.  I walked toward my computer, the very computer on which I’m typing now.  My screensaver wasn’t on, which meant someone had been on my computer recently.  This in and of itself isn’t too strange.  In a room of three guys, with well documented finicky internet, one person’s internet can go down while someone else’s works.  That could have been the case.  But it wasn’t.  Being that my screensaver wasn’t on, I could see what could have been misconstrued as my wallpaper.  They say possession is 9/10 of the law.  My screensaver, you see, had been a black and white shot I took of my beautiful wife.  You see, she’s a soft and delicate woman, feminine in every way, from her free-flowing strands of hair to her high cheekbones and soft skin.  This was not the photo at which I looked.  I didn’t know exactly what I was looking at.  The wallpaper was different but familiar.  On second thought it seemed the wallpaper wasn’t what was familiar, but rather the scene in the photo which now graced my computer’s background was what was familiar.  The background looked like my little place in the world, my little spot with my stuff.  And my bed.  I knew upon further examination that the bed was mine because my bed is very easy to distinguish from other beds.  I have a bug net around my bed.  A green bug net which usually keeps disgusting little critters out of my sleeping sanctuary.  A reading lamp which is attached to my bed was on, shining unnecesary light on the situation.  The lamp illuminated a man.  A man laying in my bed.  A man laying in my bed posed and giving the camera a “come hither” look.  Oh, and he was naked.  The picture showed a naked man laying in my bed seducing the camera with his eyes.  The man was Lincoln.  The photographer, one can logically deduce, was Mitch.  I changed the background as fast as humanly possible.  In hindsight I should have screen-captured it as it was the only evidence that existed–the original photo had been promptly deleted.  Hopefully Lincoln matured in the month between posing for that photo and now; he’s on his way home to be with his wife for the birth of their daughter.  Needless to say the little prank was worth more than a few laughs.  I thought growing up meant we would all get more mature.  I guess it really just means you get older.

The photo today is of my aforementioned beautful wife in Korea.

Eva, Iraq

The saga continues.
“Where the hell is my scorpion?”  We’d left him, again, on the shelves near my roommates bed.  He was dead, and, as such, unlikely to escape.  Or so we thought.  We started combing the room for the resurrected scorpion.

“What the hell is that?”  Said my roommate–the one who’d been stung.  “What?”  I asked, making my way over to the shelves on his side of the room at which he was looking quizzically.  “This,” he said, pointing to some little black dots on the top of his shelves, “these little black things right here.”  We looked at them and thought for a bit.

We have mouse traps set up all over our room.  One day a few weeks ago while my roommate and I were studying up on our Army doctrine and counter-insurgency techniques, (read: playing Gears of War 2), a mouse zipped across the floor, apparently realized he was out in the open and in the light, spun like a furry top and raced back into the hidden darkness under a bed.  It took this little event recurring exactly once for us to realize the bugger would likely complete the trifecta, and we set up the aforementioned traps.  Since then we’ve caught the little bugger.  Don’t worry PETA, he went quick.  I doubt he felt much and, in all likelihood, even enjoyed a final smidgen of peanut butter before the spring powered metal rod catapulted down on his rodent spine, snapping his mousy neck and leaving him lifelessly pinned to a dull and miniature mouse guillotine.  A few days later the scorpion struck with a fury.  Was it reciprocity?  Perhaps vengeance?  We can only speculate.

“What the hell is that?”  We were staring at the tiny black sprinkles.  Finally, “I know what that is dude,” said my roommate.  “It’s mouse $#!T.”  Sure enough.  Rodent excrement.  And it was on the shelf leading to what had been the final resting place of the regaled scorpion of terror and no mercy.  But said dead scorpion was now gone.  We believe the mouse that defecated on my roommates shelves absconded with the corpse as a snack.  Perhaps in the land of mice, dead scorpion is a delicacy.  Perhaps the mouse gave the scorpion mouth-to-mouth and miraculously resuscitated him.  This is all speculation.  What we do know is that the scorpion is gone.  Again.

A little slice of heaven.
On Wednesday last week I flew to Tallil Air Base where Eva lives.  I was there from Wednesday afternoon through Friday.  I got there on a Blackhawk and the total travel time was four and a half hours.  In 130 degrees.  In all my gear.  And gloves.  It was worth it though.  The picture today is of Eva and me on Thursday night, the night before I flew back to FOB Hunter.  If you don’t know where FOB Hunter is, it’s about 20 km or so south of Al Amarah.  The next time I’m supposed to see her is in Novemeber for R&R, but who knows… maybe I’ll luck out again.  Rest assured that if I do, you’ll read about it here.

Eva, Iraq, Rick

I walked outside today, breathed in through my nose, and it burnt.  Like in a sauna.  From the heat.  Because it’s hot.

This is Eva on the L in Chicago as we rode into the city from O’Hare.  It’s called the “L” because it’s an elevated train.  Which, I suppose, would mean it should be called the “El” which means “The” in Spanish which would then mean that it’s “The El,” or “The The.”  Weird.

Chicago, IL, Eva

Below is another shot I got of the bean in Chicago; there are infinite photo ops there in Millennium Park.  This became evident to my Dad and Eva as they stood by, patiently at first, whilst I took picture after picture after picture.  I consider this shot a self-portrait.

On an interesting note, Eva was able to fly out to my location the other day.  She arrived in a Blackhawk helicopter with a multitude of other people who came to my tiny little outpost to slum it up for the day.  I only got to see her for about two hours and we spent the majority of our time together in a meeting, walking around my base so she could see what he have (she actually came out here to complete a legitimate professional function), or hanging out in my office.  Regardless, it was great.  The second shot is one I grabbed of us while we sat in my office.

Editor’s Note:  Wily readers, and frequenters of this fine online publication, may note, correctly, that I am without moostaash in the second photo.  Let me explain.  Eva tried to surprise me with her visit; she failed to consider that I, like many of you readers, am also rather wily.  I saw through the charade immediately.  There were myriad clues which foretold her arrival, thereby defeating her attempts at said surprise.  She was working in conjunction with my Commander who, I would be remiss were I to not mention, had a hand in blowing said surprise as well.  Blowing the surprise was a group effort; going into the specific clues which effected said blown surprise would serve no purpose other than to confuse the, while wily, (as compared to the superior intellect of yours truly), simpleton minds of this site’s patrons.  Trust that the clues were aplenty.  I discussed with my Commander my summation that Eva was en route and he feigned defeated anger.  The cover being blown as it was, he also told me that Eva had sneakily requested that I both bathe and shave my moostaash prior to her arrival; given the planned surprise, my Commanderwas to somehow pass on these two requests without my realizing there was an alterior motive involved.  The showering was easy enough; I was overdue as it was.  The moostaash was a different story.  Judging by the picture below, however, you can see that I ultimately opted to shave as requested by my wife.  That’s true love, people.

Worry not.  The Moostaash shall return, and this time, it’s for real.

Abstract, Chicago, IL, Eva, Iraq, Rick

The photo today is one of my all time favorite pictures of Eva.  I took it in the back of a cab in Seoul.  Eva and I, along with our friends Chris and Jeff, went to an area which some consider off-limits.  By “some” I of course mean “the US military command in Korea” and by “off-limits” I of course mean “off-limits.”  We didn’t stay long.  I’m also pretty sure we inadvertently wandered into a Mafia run house of ill repute during our venture into the seedy underworld of Korean nightlife.  At least I like to think we did.  This picture also happens to currently be the background image of my work computer as well as my personal computer.  Yea, I like it that much.  You should too.

Last night two donkeys wandered into our FOB and were eating our garbage.  I haven’t even seen donkeys anywhere near this place since I’ve been here.  Granted, I haven’t been out and about much… well, not at all actually.  But still.  When was the last time you had donkeys wander anywhere?  When was the last time you saw a donkey?  When was the last time you said or even read the word “donkey.”  Donkey.  What a ridiculous word.  The things you see here…

We had some Iraqi contractors here the other day operating a crane to move around some of our connexes in which we shipped stuff here and continue to use as storage on the FOB.  They were like sitcom characters.  Bad sitcom characters.  Very amusing.  I took, and you should therefore expect, pictures of them in the near future.

Eva, Seoul, Korea

Well I finally have a photo to post.  It’s not so much that I finally took a photo I consider good enough to post, but rather I finally took a picture at all which would facilitate the posting of said picture.  That was admittedly too many words.  And I didn’t even take this picture… a friend of Eva’s named Tina took it for us.  As though an explanation is necessary, this is Eva and I in Kuwait.  If it doesn’t look hot then the picture is deceiving.  We’re at Camp Buehring, and it could most certainly be a lot worse.  There are plenty of facilities here to occupy the cornucopia of unoccupied time we currently have available.  We spend about 4 hours in the DFAC (Dining Facility) every day, and whatever other time we have available is spent wandering about looking for minimally occupied common areas which have air conditioning.  We’ve discovered that air condition is paramount.  Not very Meriwether Lewis, but an important realization just the same.

Quick side note: if you would like a copy of the picture, click here to get to the large size on Flickr and then just click the ‘Download the Large size’ link right above the shot.  Also, you can click the picture itself to see my photostream and some of my more recently posted photos.  (”Recently” here is a relative term.)

What gainfully employed time we do have is spent in mandatory training; “checking the block,” so to speak, before we head up north into Iraq.  We’ve learned about IEDs, Fratricide, Humvee and MRAP rollovers so far… real sunshine and rainbow stuff, let me tell ya.  However, it is necessary and applicable so overall it was all probably good.  Fortunately, almost all of the training Eva and I have had to do has coincided, so we’ve been hanging out more or less all day, every day for the last week.  Not too shabby.  People are jealous.

We’re both heading north here in a few days.  We leave the same day, potentially on the same flight, and might be at the same base in Iraq for all of two days.  We could just as easily part ways as soon as we hit the ground in Iraq.  It’s not impossible to tell, but damn near.

We’ve actually seen a lot of people we know from West Point here in Kuwait.  Most of them are aviators from the 1st Cavalry Division.  People we’ve seen, in no particular order, are: Jason McCoy, Grant Cloaninger, Kevin Britt, Mike Hahn-Conti, Dave Park, Nick Fullmer, Tina Chong, and a dude I went to high school with named Marty Davis who’s a Specialist in the Wisconsin National Guard.  Of all the people we’ve seen, seeing Marty Davis was the craziest.  Seeing classmates from West Point is expected; seeing classmates from Horlick High School is decidedly not.

So that pretty much sums up the last week.  Yes, it has been 4 short paragraphs worth of activity.  I suppose I could describe the actual deployment out of Ft. Bliss too.  Here it goes: we waited at the airport on Ft. Bliss, we got on a plane and flew to Bangor, Maine where we waited, we  flew to Shannon, Ireland where we waited, we flew to Kuwait City, Kuwait which looked strikingly similar to El Paso and Ft. Bliss where we waited, then we got on a bus and drove to Camp Buehring where we disembarked and continue to wait.  There ya’ go.

The “Stars and Stripes,” while likely sounding to you like a WWII anachronism, is in reality a wonderful resource here.  It’s a great (albeit oftentimes the only) source of news and it’s free in deployed areas.  As I’m new in theater, I’m still amused by the weather forecasts contained in the “Stars and Stripes” daily.  Here is today’s forecast: “Hot today with sunshine and patchy clouds.  High 100 to 106.  Winds east-southeast 8-16 mph.  Partly cloudy and very warm tonight.  Low 80 to 86.  Winds north-northeast 6-12 mph.”  And it’s not even summer yet.

Well I hope that was enjoyable.  Expect similarly long winded, somewhat disjointed descriptions of the happenings in Kuwait and Iraq as time goes on.  Updates will continue to be sporadic for the foreseeable future, so keep checking back… you never know when I’ll bless this page again with my sharp wit and cunning logic, thereby quenching your thirst for quality commentary.  If you’d like to send Eva and I an email, click the ‘About & Contact’ tab at the top of the page and use the email form there.  Talk to you soon.

Surpise!  Another photo!  I posted this to see if any of you found it as novel as I did.

Eva, Kuwait, Point & Shoot, Rick

I learned an interesting fact today.  Turns out the monthly job losses that all the news sources tout is somewhat misleading.  Not intentionally so–the bottom line still reflects job losses–but misleading just the same.  For example, job losses for the month of March are reported at about 660,000; we’ll call this 0.6 million jobs.  However, the real job losses for the month of February is more like 5 million or so (give or take, I’m summarizing and estimating for illustration).  The 0.6 million lost jobs is actually the difference between the 5 million lost jobs and the 4.4 million new jobs created and subsequently filled in the month of March.  People are getting new jobs, jobs are being created, but the net difference reflects a loss of jobs overall.  Does this improve or change things?  No, but it certainly makes the situation look a little less abismal.

This is a shot of Eva looking out our hotel window in Vegas.  She is looking longingly at the hotel pool 32 floors below.  She looks longingly because I hate going to the pool and “laying out.”  So, we agree to do other things which don’t involve “laying out” and instead involve anything other than “laying out.”  We stayed at the Venetian on the strip.  The hotel was very cool, very gaudy, and a lot of fun.  If you go to Vegas, I recommend it.

Eva, Las Vegas, NV

This is from Seoraksan National Park in Korea.  I took this in a gondola that took us up to a huge mountain peak which Eva and I summited.  It was life changing.  It was life and death at times.  It was at all times treacherous.  I’m exaggerating, it was quite republican.  It was cool though.  I love this picture; one of my favorites.

Here is a shot of us on the summit.  It’s Photoshopped somewhat significantly… see if you can tell where.

Eva and I are going on leave today; it’s the block leave our entire unit is taking before we both head to Iraq next month.  We’re going to Chicago, Hilton Head, Baltimore, and Vegas over the next 2 weeks.  We’re gonna be busy but it’s gonna be great.  That being said, I’ll try and update the site as frequently as possible but no promises.  Please be patient and check back for updates as I get to them.

Abstract, Eva, Seoul, Korea

Another blurry night on a back Austrian cobblestone street.  Mozart lived around here somewhere.  Austria was exceptional, save Edith.  She was the worst.  I’ve written about her terribleosity before, but it is impossible to beat this dead horse.  Edith’s like the horse you want to die but it won’t, so you beat it anyway to speed the process along but your pain-in-the-ass neighbor records it and puts it on YouTube which PETA sees so they sick the ACLU on you just as the video gets notoriety on the cable news circuit and all of a sudden you realize you’re being lambasted by Al Sharpton who doesn’t know sh** about horses.  I’m getting a headache now just thinking about it.  Of course the headache could very possibly be from drinking coffee all day and no water… I’ll go with Edith.

Eva, Vienna, Austria

This is Eva and I on a balcony of the hotel in Seoul we stayed in; it was the honeymoon gift from our friends that I mentioned in my post about 5 days ago.  Scroll down and review if you so choose.  Or click here to see the page without actually scrolling and then go ahead and revel in your abject laziness.  We took this the same night I took the grainy (intentionally so) shot of the moon and its (her?) reflection.  We posed for this with my camera perilously and precariously balanced on the edge of a damp metal hand rail with the timer set.  The trick is this: Aperture Priority with flash.  Pose vewy, vewy still and the flash grabs the people in the foreground while the aperature stays open to capture the lights in the background.  Easy!  *winky emoticon*

(I realize it would have been easier to actually make a winky emoticon thusly but I submit there is precisely zero comic value in that.)

Eva, Rick, Seoul, Korea

Some of you may very well remember a post on this wonderful site not too long ago which featured a link to Eva standing “too close to the wrong end of a baby elephant.”  Regardless of your ability or inability to recall inconsequential, arbitrary web content, I will take the time to briefly recap: it featured an overtly creepy Thai man staring at Eva.  Should you care for a refresher, here it is.

Following the photo featuring (alliteration intended) Eva, the elephant, and Creepo, Eva and I posed for a shot with the elephant.  Unfortunately this photo also featured the aforementioned Creepo.  I decided to “Photoshop him out.”  This is something people say frequently without realizing that it is in fact quite difficult and time consuming to accomplish while maintaining a realistic appearance.  I gave it a go, and I’m quite happy with the results.  The top shot is the post-processed shot sans Creepo, and the bottom shot  is the original photo with Creepo.  Enjoy.

Eva, Phuket, Thailand, Rick