Day: June 1, 2022

Mr. Squirrel Verses Barky

Fandango13 Comments

Mr. Squirrel loves his home. There are plenty of trees to climb, nuts to eat when he’s hungry, a water feature for when he’s thirsty, and several bird feeders that the two-leggers keep filled with seeds that are easy for him to get to.

The only negative aspect about the place for Mr. Squirrel is that loud, barky, four-legger who lives with the two-leggers. But the good news is that whenever that four-legged barker is in the backyard, the two-leggers keep it on a leash, so even though it barks like crazy every time it sees Mr. Squirrel, that’s just a lot of noise and doesn’t prevent Mr. Squirrel from having free rein in his yard. So he doesn’t feel like he’s tempting fate by showing himself even when the barky thing is around.

Until one day when a mini two-legger went into the yard with the four-legger, who saw Mr. Squirrel and started barking like crazy and pulling at the leash. The mini two-legger let go of the leash and the barky four-legger bounded towards Mr. Squirrel before Mr. Squirrel could skedaddle.

As the barky thing started to jump on the little squirrel, Mr. Squirrel held up his two front paws and squawked something that sounded like the word “no.”

Being a well-trained dog, upon seeing the signal to stay and hearing the word “no,” the barky four-legger stopped in its tracks, giving Mr. Squirrel just enough time to scamper away and to find the closest tree to climb up.

Meanwhile, hearing the commotion, the bigger two-leggers ran out into the backyard, grabbed the leash, attached it to the barky four-legger’s neck collar, and yelled, “Bad dog.”

Mr. Squirrel looked down from his perch on a high tree branch and smiled.

Written for Christine Bialczak’s Simply 6 Minutes challenge and for Jim Adams’ Wednesday Thoughts prompt, where the prompt is “tempting fate.” Photo credit: Mary McGowan/The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2018.

One-To-Three Photo Processing Challenge — June, 2022

Fandango20 Comments

For this monthly prompt from Kate at The Squirrel Chase, the idea is pick a photo you want to play with and process it using three different methods. The photo I’m featuring today is an itsy-bitsy spider that was sitting on the faux-wood plastic bench of a Little Tikes picnic table we have on our back deck for when our grandkids come to visit.

All processed photos were made using apps available for the iPhone or iPad at Apple’s App Store. Also, all images, including the original, were resized (shrunk) to make them quicker to load (and to take up less space in my WordPress media folder).

Original photo
Processed using the Prisma app
Processed using the Distressed FX app
Processed using the BeCasso app

Which image do you like best?

My Last Photo — May ‘22

Fandango5 Comments

Brian, aka Bushboy, posted his monthly Last on the Card prompt, where he asks us to…

  • Post the last photo from your camera’s SD card or the last photo from your phone taken in May.
  • No editing — who cares if it is out of focus, not framed as you would like, or the subject matter didn’t cooperate?
  • No explanations needed — just the photo will do.
  • Create a pingback to Brian’s post or link in the comments.
  • Tag “The Last Photo.”

So here’s the last photo I took on my iPhone in May.

This error message showed up on my TV screen yesterday afternoon while my wife and I were streaming a show on Discovery+. I took this photo on my iPhone so that I could have it handy while following the step-by-step instructions. It worked, and a few minutes later, the show we were watching was back on.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #167

Fandango19 Comments
FPQ

Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

Are people gullible or just stupid? No, that is not my provocative question, but it seems that a lot of Americans — and not just Americans — believe in some very weird things. Of course, one of the things that almost all Americans believe in that I, an atheist, think is weird is the existence of some sort of supernatural, all knowing, all powerful being (i.e., God). But let’s not get hung up on that.

No, I’m talking about other things people believe in for which there is no evidence. Things like:

  • The planet we live on is flat
  • The planet is only six thousand years old, give or take a few thousand years
  • White humans are superior to non-white humans
  • The 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump
  • Chocolate milk comes from brown cows
  • Ghosts
  • Angels
  • An afterlife
  • Humans and dinosaurs coexisted on Earth at the same time
  • Poor people are poor because they are lazy
  • Climate change is not a real problem
  • The Holocaust was a fabrication
  • The moon landing was produced on a movie sound stage
  • Evolution is “just a theory”
  • A whole host of conspiracy theories

I’m sure, if you thought about this, you could probably come up with your own list of things people believe in for which there is no evidence.

So, my provocative question this week is…

Why do you think so many people are so confident in beliefs that can’t be proven?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.