Say Cheese, Bees!

Before we get into what passes for substance around here, I want to clear up any misconceptions you might have concerning the previous post.

It was a joke.

I assume most of you got it. After reading it, you clicked onto the first link and found the story concerning the demise of The Weekly World News. You then put two and two together; came up with five; understood that I liked The Weekly World News; and also understood that this had been my attempt to write something in the style of that august journal of truly believable stuff. You then said, "Hah! That Suldog! What a card!"

Or you said, "Man, I didn't think he could go any further off his nut, but I was wrong."

(As for those folks who thought it was a real news story? God bless you. If only you had bought more copies of TWWN when you had the chance. Then they'd still be in business. And, as a bonus, everybody else here would have been spared my attempt at satirizing that which is basically a satire of itself to begin with, and we all could have gone home early.)

Now, on to the business of today.

My good friend and business associate, Dan, has loaned me his digital camera. This is so that I can take some shots of my softball teams and spice up those deadly softball reports of mine. I figure if you have some faces to put with the names, it might make it more interesting for you.

(If that doesn't do it for you, I don't know where to go from there. There's only so much I can do to make softball interesting to those of you who don't give a rat's ass about softball. Maybe I'll intersperse random porno every third or fourth paragraph.)

Anyway, getting back to photography: I have never used a digital camera before today. Truth be told, I haven't owned a camera since I was a kid. I've occasionally bought those one-time-use cameras, taking a few rolls of vacation shots and whatnot, but I'm a piss-poor photographer in general. I cut off the tops of people's heads and forget to turn on the flash and stick my fingers in front of the lens and... well, my portfolio is not full of dazzling work.

Dan has graciously been giving me a few quick lessons on how to operate the camera. And what you are about to see are my first two shots taken with it.



This is one of the cicada killers that I wrote about in a previous piece. However, rather than build a sand mound, this one decided that it liked pre-fab housing. This is a drain cover that has a piece broken out of it. This wasp has taken up residence here. He (or she) has a water supply, lots of room to move around, and didn't have to dig for ten hours with it's hind legs to build a house.

The down side to this living arrangement is that someone might come along and fix the cover. In that case, it would become a tomb rather than a home. Oh, there is also a chipmunk living in the same space. I don't know whether they actually like - or just tolerate - each other. Perhaps it's some sort of interspecies "don't ask, don't tell" thang.


Next, we have this drainpipe full of yellowjackets. They have been building a hive inside of the drainpipe for about a week now. I don't believe this pipe ever actually drains anything, so they aren't in danger of being wiped out by a flash flood.

I got right up next to the bees, as you can see. I guess I'm lucky I didn't end up with a mouthful of them. They're actually pretty mellow, as bees go. They didn't seem to mind me being there at all.

(The cicada killer-chipmunk drain-cover pre-fab housing is almost directly under this pipe, by the way. So much life in such a small area! I expect someone to kill it all any day now...)

Well, that's about it for today. I hope my teammates who may be reading this aren't offended that I'm practicing for taking the team photo by taking pictures of bees and wasps. I assure you, it's nothing personal. Nor is it because I see any resemblance, although yellow-and-black stripes would be pretty snazzy for uniforms.

Monday, with more better softball stuff - and maybe random porno.