I’m not sure what’s happening at the hotel room party pictured above, but it looks like fun.
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Today’s funemployment excursion took me and Anitra to Clearwater, Florida, the home of a number of interesting things. For starters, there’s…
…the Church of Scientology, whose “worldwide spiritual headquarters”, Flag Land Base a.k.a. the Fort Harrison Hotel, are in downtown Clearwater. They are rumoured to own or at least have their tentacles in half the businesses in the downtown area.
In addition to Scientology, there’s another belief system from Clearwater with an equally fanatical following. It’s also one that I can get down with…
…Hooters! Their very first location is on the road leading to the bridge to our destination, Clearwater Beach.
We decided to go on Tuesday, which Anitra took off from work. The beach was likely to be less crowded, and threatening-looking clouds probably kept even more people away. We decided to chance it, given that the weather here can turn on a dime, and motorbootied our way from Tampa to Clearwater Beach.
Clearwater Beach is on a set of barrier islands facing the Gulf of Mexico, and accessible via a bridge. I took the photo above while we were coming in on that bridge and just as the skies were beginning to let a little blue peek through.
The combination of a post-Memorial Day Tuesday and possible rain meant that it was easy to find a parking spot and that the beach was relatively empty. The sky let a little more blue through, making for yet another lucky break.
We hopped out of the car and made our way to the water. Anitra elected to stay on the beach, but I decided to venture in. It’s been years since I’ve had a chance to swim in non-pool salt water and even though I’ll get plenty more in the Philippines (I’m headed to Bohol in June), I wasn’t going to pass up a my first shot at ocean swimming in ages.
Anitra took the next few pictures.
Hmmm…that’s a pretty good wind out there. Ah well, the waves don’t look too bad…
Salt water! Whoo! Let’s go for a swim!
This is great! These waves don’t look so bad…
Okay, those waves look a little bigger.
The trick is to swim into the wave…
…spin around at the last second and ride that sucker. This wave carried me all the way back to shore like a rocket.
Victory!
Anitra was amused by my ocean antics.
Afterwards, I lay back on the beach for a while, enjoying the sand, the surf…
…as well as the company of my lovely companion.
iPhone self-portrait with me and Anitra! I will never tire of these.
It was a pretty nice day for a swim — as long as you didn’t mind a little heavier wave action — and there was plenty of space for everybody.
We took one last walk around the beach…
…and made our way to our lunch destination: Frenchy’s Cafe. “Frenchy” is a guy from Montreal who moved down to Florida and opened his first restaurant in 1981. Now he has a chain of them.
Hence you can get poutine at Frenchy’s. We didn’t order it, so I have no idea if it’s authentic or any good. We were here for something a little more local.
Here’s the second page of Frenchy’s menu. It lists what we were after: the grouper sandwiches. Anitra ordered the regular-size grilled grouper sandwich, while I ordered the Super Grouper, also grilled.
We weren’t going to completely bypass the fried fish: we started with a skewer of deep-fried grouper cheeks and a couple of half-pints of Shock Top.
Here’s my Super Grouper sandwich, with pickle and coleslaw on the side.
“I don’t always order a second beer…oh wait a minute, I always do!”. Stay thirsty, my friends.
Frenchy’s has a gift shop next door. I love getting pictures of local variations of the “unattended children will have something done to them” sign.
The rain clouds were finally coming in, and we had another appointment, so it was an opportune moment to leave. I had just enough time to snap one more amusing picture: the unfortunately-named Cooters Restaurant and Bar.
“Now that’s exactly how a trip to the beach should be,” I told Anitra as she rolled her eyes. “Starts with Hooters, ends with Cooters.”
Eduard Khil, better known to the internet at large as “The Trololo Guy”, is said to have suffered a stroke and irreversible brain damage and is now in a coma. The video of a performance from decades ago, performed in a vocal-less style called vocaliz took the ‘net by storm and inspired a number of homages and parodies, including this one from Family Guy:
as well as this one by Christophe Waltz, done around the time he took the Oscar for Inglourious Basterds:
He enjoyed the parodies…
…and he even invited people to come up with actual lyrics for the “Trololo” song, whose actual name translates to I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home:
Here’s a recent performance of the song that made him an internet sensation:
Remember this great moment from the 1992 Presidential campaign with Dan Quayle?
Naturally, Quayle’s memoirs say that he was relying on cards provided by the school for the spelling of the word “potato”. They purportedly misspelled the word as “potatoe”, and while he had an inkling that something was amiss, he decided to trust the school’s incorrect written materials. (If this is true, it explains a helluva lot about the invasion of Iraq to capture those WMDs.)
The Romney campaign is dealing with a similar gaffe. The With Mitt app, which is still available in its uncorrected form as of this writing, lets you use your iPhone to take pictures with overlays bearing pro-Mitt Romney slogans such as “Day One, Job One”, “I’m with Mitt”, “Obama isn’t working” and so on. Normally, it would get buzz from Republican-leaning voters and the usual pro-Republican sites and the sorts of people who think FOX News is real, but thanks to a traitorous typo, it’s getting a lot of buzz in places where you’d normally see Mitt mocked (this blog included).
The problem is that one of the overlays — meant to say “A Better America” — actually says “A Better Amercia“. Here’s a self portrait I took with said overlay:
That’s right, Mitt’s app has the word America — quite possibly the most important word after “God” in any God-fearing American’s lexicon — misspelled. Had the Obama campaign done this with an app, you’d be hearing calls on FOX News right now for execution for treason.
Let this be a reminder to app developers: have someone double-check the spelling on the text and graphics of your apps! The developers behind the With Mitt app have their work cut out for them to fix their rep.
As Vanity Fair reports, the app is actually quite fun in spite of its association with Mitt Romney. The slogans are so easily subverted and will provide me tons of photographic fun, which I’ll share from time to time here on the Accordion Guy blog:
The accordion: Day one, job one!
The “I’m with Mitt” word bubble offers endless comic opportunities that would make the Romney campaign soil their special Mormon underwear. I’m thinking Mexican donkey show.
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Clever Business Card Designs
Yup, those are my feet in the foreground, and that’s Clearwater Beach in the background. I took this photo yesterday, when most of you were at work.
I’m taking a break from work to relax, recharge, recalibrate and even retool, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t already have a couple of irons in the fire. I’m taking a few calls from interested employers and partners or their representatives, I’m still actively blogging (especially on Global Nerdy, my tech blog), and starting today, I’m teaching myself iOS programming. I realize that not everyone can pick up and run off to Florida, crash at a pretty blonde’s house, tour about, hit the beach, use her swimming pool and self-train on a valuable skill — but I can, and I’d be a fool not to pass up the opportunity.
My last job was at Shopify, a very design-oriented company. Naturally, they had a very well-designed business card template. Here’s what my Shopify business card looked like:
Only the title and email address on the card are invalid, but I still need to create new non-company ones just for me. Seeing as I’m coasting on savings, advertising revenue from the blogs and what I like to call “ill-gotten gains” (Microsoft stock), I think I’m going to opt for the inexpensive route. Still, it doesn’t hurt to look to others’ business cards for inspiration, especially the really creative ones featured on Bored Panda, some of which I’ve posted below.
The ones above are for Levin Tahmaz, personal trainer. His business is quite cleverly summarized in his business card.
The business cards for the Surrey, BC deli restaurant La Charcuterie look like their products.
Gangavan is a secondhand shop, so why shouldn’t they have secondhand business cards?
Heh heh heh. Oops — I meant to say: I completely and categorically do not get the joke in this business card.
The clever design in this designer’s business card ensures that you’ll be holding it up in front of you, where you can read his name, many, many times.
For more imaginatively-designed business cards, see Bored Panda’s articles:
Click the photo to see it at full size.
I love flea markets, which is why I spent time at one outside Tampa on Saturday. The part of me that’s still from “the old country” that likes walking through stalls run by local people running small businesses selling things that you aren’t going to find at your local Wal-Get or Tar-Mart. The opportunity to see what people are dunking in batter and deep-frying is a bonus.
Click the photo to see it at full size.
They sell everything at this flea market. Friends of Anitra sell jewellery, and there are stalls for everything from pets to computers to leather jackets to customized hospital scrubs to cheese to cars…and even legal services, like the one pictured above.
My favourite place in the flea market is the store that carries nothing but Aloha shirts. I love these things, and being a Pacific Islander myself, I think I look pretty damned good in them. I asked Anitra to take a picture of me in my latest purchase beside “Good Luck Riki”, the tiki that stands guard over the change room. This one was a steal at fifteen bucks. I’m pretty sure I’ll buy another shirt here during me next visit.
Another satisfied customer!
Greetings from the land of awesome junk food! I’m touring about with Anitra for the Memorial Day weekend, so this entry will be a quick one.
Pictured above is a taste treat I saw that isn’t available in Canada: Philadelphia brand milk chocolate cream cheese. No wonder Mayor Ford thinks Florida is the promised land!
The combination of chocolate and cheese reminds me of the Ween album with that title, so I’ll close with this classic, Voodoo Lady: