Boring You With Budapest, Pt.1

I could only upload some of the pictures I took whilst amongst the Magyar, so until I get a chance to remember the name and password for another of my flickr accounts, this is what you get. Because everyone enjoys sitting back and perusing someone else's vacation¹ photo's, right?

Forgive any bluriness - I was attempting to take some pictures while moving, and some in dimly lit or really bright areas and so I dicked around with the shutter speed quite a bit. Some pictures, now that I'm looking at them full size, suffered for it.

The Journey Begins?
We flew out of Montreal on Lufthansa. A few words about Lufthansa. They dicked us on our seats. I reserved certain seats and they changed them, with nary an e-mail to let us know, so that we weren't even sitting near each other and the flight was full by then so no hope of squeaking around at all. The food was good (for airline food, anyway, I 'd still be embarrassed to serve it to house guests), and the alcohol was...definitely over-served. Not that I'm complaining. But...before we reached cruising altitude they served us a cocktail. Then they came by with pre-dinner beer and wine (the house beer was Warsteiner, too!). Then, wine with dinner. Then after-dinner wine. Then an after-dinner, after-wine aperitif of brandy or Bailey's (they didn't serve the Bailey's in a shoe, though). After which I think they were still handing out free booze, but even though we had plenty of flight left, I had to lay off. No one wants a wine headache at 3,500 feet!

St Joseph's Stephen's Basilica
What is St. Joseph's Stephen's Basilica? It's a giant church. Outside, as I'd guess is the case at many cathedrals world wide, there are people with official looking badges - for the sake of argument, we'll say they're official - wandering around asking for donations to feed the orphans. Well, gee, church, don't you think that you could worship in some kind of plain looking wooden structure and use all the money that would normally go towards art and gold and marble and glass and stuff to feed the sick and look after the poor? No? Well, okay then.

The outside. It was one of those landmark's that's large enough that you can use it to navigate around by checking out which side of it your facing. Really helpful if you're standing right next to it.

Here we see the first meeting of the Royal Order of the Water Buffalo depicted above the basilica's entrance.

This is the front door. These dudes really love Jesus, but they are very stern about it.

This was an inside arch - I may have taken pictures of others, somewhere.

This was the main dome. Hopefully my artists eye gives some scale to it's awesome majesty. It was breathtaking. It was grand. I really just couldn't wait for a group of Japanese tourists to move along so I could see the rest of the place!

The pic in the cap was kind of cool. I think that this is supposed to be Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top.

The first altar boy.

This looked like it was tempra (it has that glossy, eggy look) and I liked the form of the art. Too bad I took such a bad picture! And that's tempra, not tempura, which is also eggy.

Stained glass fo' yo' ass!

Look at this guy - he's getting ready to rock that microphone!

I wanted to get pictures of all the windows, but instead we had to get the eff away from some pushy, loud, obnoxious Italian tourists who then scowled at us when we didn't do the "dip the fingers in holy water, then it's spectacles-testicles-wallet-watch" bit as we left. It's not like I've EVER been Catholic, gang, I just wanted to look at the ridiculously gaudy art!

Castle Dracula
No, really. But not really. But really - this thing was a replica of the real Castle Dracula. Really. The great thing about it was that there were little old lady vendors that you could buy a giant can of beer from and then walk around with an open container (and what was great about that was that it was like 90° F outside!). And the beer was Lowenbräu, which I haven't seen in quite some time.

I didn't see any bodies impaled on spikes. There were some baby ducks in the moat. And there were a lot of statues on the eaves of the buildings - some of which were very cool. Knights in armor, dwarves, stuff like that. No explanations given as to who any of them were, but I'd put one in my front yard if they were for sale.

The chapel...

Behind this medieval lion thing that the love lady is leaning on, unseen to the camera as it was only about three inches tall, is a creepy little guy who I believe was wearing robes. Anybody know what the meaning of something like that would be?

I think that this guy was supposed to be a writer or a philosopher or something. I took a picture because he looks like one of the Nazgûl.

Ah! This ring-wraith has no eyes!

These look like they should be in a Chinese tea garden, and not Dracula's Castle in Budapest. But I thought they were neat, so I took a picture. There were actually two, on on either side of a bench or something that looked out over the pond, but some matro-looking dud was standing there, so I didn't want to take a picture. Cindy did, however, compliment the shapeliness of his backside to me. Reluctantly, I had to agree.

That's all you're going to get out of me for now. Later today or tomorrow - whenever I have a long, boring sort again, I'll put another bunch of pictures up - I also have to get more Flickr space or something else going on to finish uploading all the pictures from the trip, and of my garden friends, and of the crazy storm we had yesterday.

¹It was a business trip, really. But around attending lectures and other things,we got to do a bit of sightseeing.

The best...

..New music video I've seen it quite some time...



I'll try to finally post some pictures and retarded commentary later today or tomorrow!

Everybody Loves Monkeys, Right?

Or at least they should. But not too much.

Cindy and I are off to Budapest next week, and I doubt I'll have time to blog on Monday before we leave, so see y'all in a couple of weeks.

Did anyone else like Idiocracy? Because I can't wait to find this stuff on store shelves, and I think it's super-brilliant that someone would start marketing things that have only been seen on movies before.

"Like a monster truck, that you pour into your face!"

Edit: After spending five seconds looking things up on youtube, I had to tack this on.

Oh Snap! It's A Nun Beat-Down!

The title squabble.

We're now entering butt-up sleep stage.

Peek! I should probably take the time to do red-eye correction, hmmm?

I like this picture. But the next is better.

"Whachoo talkin' bout, Dada?"

They're angels when they sleep.

We went to Canton Saturday, so I could play in the tournament at St. Lawrence University. It was about 30° warmer there than it was at home. If you look closely at this statue, you can see that the gentleman depicted (Jedidiah Springfield?) only lived for four years. That's one hell of a mustache for a toddler.

A dandelion?

I think that Ethan's up to no good in this picture...

Return to the woods from whence I came!

This says it all - sunny and 70° in Canton, TL was cloudy, cold, and there were lots of vultures circling as we came into town.

They alighted (my big word of the day) in the trees, and I tried to sneak close for a picture.

But the harbingers of doom had none of it, so blurry telephoto's the best that I got.

The Title Belongs Here. The Author Belongs Nowhere.

View of Lower/Middle Saranac (I think?) I took on the way home from work the other night - ice out is coming (it's already here on the bodies of water that are shallow or have a current of some sort)!

I am a bobot! Destroy...

...Destroy! I am a bobot!

'Choo looking at me, mang? I don' think 'choo should do that, esse.

I go crazy, mang. I kill for fun, vato.

Ah. I just want to get mellow, homes.

Look at the handsome kids, and ignore the ugly a**hole on the left-hand side. The scraggly beard has gone, but alas the crooked teeth remain as they always were.

I'm not the biggest fan of the blues. Sure, I can appreciate it as an art-form, and who doesn't like a little SRV or Jimi? Even some delta blues is pretty cool, but for the most part I find it to be sort of boring. But. The other night I was watching PBS (because I'm lame) and they had the 2007 Crossroads highlight reel on, and I saw this, and I was left bowing at the altar of the blues. It gave me chills, man. Chills. But I won't vouch for the YouTube video's quality!

Johnny Winter - Highway 61

Hey, Dad, I Can't See Too Good Is That Bill Shakespeare Over There?

No blogging for a while, I know. I've been either frantically busy or sitting with my thumb in my butt waiting for phone calls, so no one-eye-on-the-sorter-one-eye-on-the-computer much lately. I'll lead off with this, though. It's a comment left for the video of Connor throwing a huge temper tantrum. You know, the one I have on YouTube that shows a freakin' three year old throwing a fit.

"This little boy has anger issues, sorry but when he is older he will need therapy. This is not normal behavior."

What the hell is wrong with people on the internets? Or maybe it's western civilization as a whole. This person's handle is "JannDoug," go spam them. They've got videos of their eleven month old snow flake, who I'm sure won't be throwing temper tantrums when (s)he's three. That just doesn't happen in a soccer mom's perfect little world, where puppy dogs poop gumdrops and no one cries over the spilled breast milk. I didn't bother responding to their comment in turn, maybe I shouldn't have here. Don't criticize my kids for acting like kids, even if I have the poor taste to video record them when they're acting the most rotten!

The video in question (Dude, it's a temper tantrum. The only thing unusual about it is that after a couple of minutes of the screaming I thought to myself "fine, I guess I'll record this for posterity if you won't calm down." Which of course prompted Ethan to run into the room and get the toddler smack-down for his trouble!):



Pictures:


Dr. Mindbender began plotting his nefarious plans at a very young age.

I got up to pee the other night and found this thing crawling around in the bathtub. So we ate it.

Sometimes when you're little, and you play too hard, it doesn't matter where you sleep.

I was getting ready for work the other morning when I was informed that it was, in fact, time to go camping.

Some of us are more "with it" when we wake up than others.

View from the bedroom window (that we just moved out of - hooray hooray, the remodel end is near!).

A slightly different view, for perspective.

I'm not sure what kind of machine he thought that he'd built, but I'm pretty glad that I caught him in mid explodo-spaz so that he looks like he has wonky eye.

This was a couple of weeks ago, and I thought things would have changed by now, but instead I think it's gotten colder and it's definitely snowed more!

A few weeks back, Cindy took Ethan on an outdoor adventure snow shoeing at the VIC, only it turned out to be a harrowing tale for the ages:


It was a beautiful day, spirits were high.

The first warning should have been the sniper towers.

The second warning should have been the signs warning everyone not to stop and poop, just do it while skiing.

And then...Canibal Lean-To - they had to beat a hasty retreat!

After which, apparently, Cindy passed out.

And judging by his expression, Ethan was very concerned. Then I heard that something happened with a snow bank, and I think there was hand-to-hand combat with a yeti. But they both came home safe.


A final thought:
I try to avoid discussing current events, politics, or anything meaningful at all here as:

1. The internet's got way too much of that crap already, who cares what I think
2. Opinions are like buttholes - everyone's got one, and they all stink

But due to the media saturation of the "Eliot Spitzer Likes To Have Nasty Sex With Dirty Call Girls" story, perhaps amplified by my residing in New York state, I have this to say. I hope that this stupid girl who's made terrible decisions but has big dreams of making it big as a singer (who doesn't these days) is able to parlay her notoriety into the kind of legitimately deserved fame that we haven't seen in a long time. I'm talking grammy winner, oscar winner, tony winner, still respected when she's 80. Why? I think that it would reflect perfectly where we are as a society right now.

There's my $0.02.

Till next time.