Several years ago when iStockphoto first got started, I submitted a few photos to the site. Three images were accepted, but virtually everything else I tried to submit was rejected. This was mondo annoying. I finally deleted the three images I had on iStockphoto and vowed never to look at them again.

Then I found a copy of Microstock Photography: How to Make Money from Your Digital Images by Douglas Freer. After zipping through it once I thought I had a pretty good idea about what to shot and how to shoot it. So I joined a couple of MicroStock sites and submitted five or ten images to each. They were all summarily rejected.

Subject not suitable for stock, we have enough images of this type already, Blurry or out of focus, Over/Under exposure, Framing problem, Over or under saturated colors, Problems with contrast, Noise or Pixelation, Quality of routing, Interpolation problem.

And my all time favorite-Your photograph did not reach our desired level of aesthetic quality.

So I got back to The MicroStrock Photography book and read a little more. He goes into great detail about how high the standards are and how many photos are rejected. He even mentions that whole feeling that all creative types feel about any kind of rejection, but advises to get over it. The solution is not to try and teach the MicroStocks what a great image is, but to submit images that the MicroStocks want.

In the dark ages, about ten years ago, Big Stock Agencies would buy up old unused images from professional photographers. While there were a number of people who shot stock on the side, few people earned the bulk of their income with Stock. Then came the Internet and Digital Cameras and if you wanted a photo of a manhole cover, you walked out into the street and snapped a pic yourself. Then came Google Images-if you wanted a photo of pretty much anything, you just found it and downloaded it.

One of my fellow portrait photographers used to be a Freelancer, but so many people with cell phones are giving news outlets the images for free, that he was no longer able to make a living.

So my goal with the MicroStocks went from something rather lofty like getting 4,000 images online-to getting one image online. I have had four images accepted-out of the forty or so that I have submitted. I have to admit that those first images were pretty much crap, but I really didn’t realize it at the time.

So I am spending a lot of time shooting things I hope will find their way onto one of The MicroStocks. Only time will tell if it’s worth the effort or not.

In the meantime, the MircoStock Photography book has a lot of good advice about dealing with technical issues and finding good subjects to shoot and how best to shoot them. Sadly all of my older stuff is pretty much out the window as far as Stock goes. Oh well.

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I take back most of the bad things I have said about Tim Burton since The Planet of The Apes.

Alice in Wonderland was a great movie, made moderately better by being in 3D. But like Caroline and Avatar, 3D was not a deal maker or a deal breaker, it was just a gimmick. But this round of 3D seems to be a gimmick that will be around for a while. There were a lot of Coming Attractions in 3D, including a new Trailer for Tron 2.

Alice in Wonderland was a nice mixture of a Masterpiece Theater Costume Drama and the senseless weirdness which made the books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There so much fun. As always, there is a good jostling of characters and re-writing of the original to fit the film’s formula. But it worked well, as most people have never read the books anyway.

I liked the CGI in Alice In Wonderland better than I like most CGI. I was particularly impressed with the Red Queen’s large head, though I think the Cheshire Cat was a little over the top. But then, everything in Alice in Wonderland is supposed to be over the top.

My complaints fall squarely on the very poorly CGIed Bandersnatch and Jabberwock-this snippet of poetry being transformed into the plot, such as it is, of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. They just looked awful and over processed and well, bad.

Anne Hathaway clearly studied for her role as The White Queen by watching The Wizard of Oz as she pointedly channels Glenda The Good Witch of The North as she glides to and fro with arms floating out at her sides. I don’t recall ever seeing a Chess set with a flying Queen, though the whole gliding bit might fit it.

The gruesomeness was thankfully kept to a minimum, with the countless heads the Red Queen has chopped off being rendered as blank gray models and not a collection of decomposing noggins.

The overall bleakness of Underland rang the same bell as Hook, where everything is the same, only different. Which is odd, since one of the themes running through the opening of the movie is that Alice has continued to visit Wonderland every night for the last thirteen years-yet she remembers nothing about it.

As with all fantasy and science fiction, it is not a story that holds up to close inspection. But I still liked it. It was beautiful to look at and it left the door open for a sequel.

Maybe Alice could visit a happy and perfect and challenging Wonderland or Looking-Glass World as she did in the hands of Lewis Carroll. Nah, that would never happen.

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Which makes Starbucking sound a lot more interesting than it really is. Starbucking is a no talent documentary film maker following around a no talent man who has a compulsive need to go to every ‘real‘ Starbucks in the world and drink at least a sample of coffee. Going to his bare bones website, Starbucks Everywhere, I found that he has been to my three local Starbucks. There is a kind of Washington Slept Here feeling about this, if Washington had been a slightly mad fellow who liked to drive in the nude and drink thirty cups of a coffee a day.

Winter has been quietly driving around the country hitting Starbucks for several years. He takes a photo of the Starbucks and drinks some coffee and then jumps back in his car and heads for the next Starbucks. He sleeps in his car-and there is a scene early in the film of a naked Winter pulling on his clothes while he is driving. Watching Winter as he runs in and out of Starbucks makes up a lot of what happens in the documentary Starbucking.

I was expecting something more along the lines of Supersize Me or Fastfood Nation or maybe even Roger and Me. Starbucking has the look and feel of a home movie that has been clumsily cut to put Winter in the worst light possible and make him look like a complete and total nut job. Maybe Winter is a complete and total nut job, but I still don’t see why he let this particular amateur ride on his fairly small coat tails and make this film.

Starbucking is kind of fun, in a watching a train wreck kind of way. We watch Winter run across traffic to get a cup of Starbucks. We see his friends talk about what a weirdo he is and how they hate the way he smells after he’s had a day full of coffee. We see an old girl friend or two that couldn’t handle the whole Starbucking lifestyle. Even a Z List Celebrity like Winter seems to have groupies.

All in all, the Starbucks obsessed Winter is a total loser. He has no friends, his family is not happy that he changed his name, and he doesn’t even like coffee! The only thing he ever orders at the countless Starbucks he goes to is regular coffee. He never does tourist stuff-even when he went to London-he just looks for Starbucks and drinks coffee. Winter is weird.

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Nothing is a really cool non-something, as we have no actual proof that it exists-well, except for that empty spot between George Bush’s ears. Nothing is one of those wonderful things that those wacky Scientist playing around with The Large Hadron Collider are looking for-except the nothing they want is called Dark Matter. But since Dark Matter is basically nothing with a wicked cool name, I think it amounts to the same thing.

Nothing has been a big topic in a lot of Science Fiction. The Restaurant At The End of The Universe is a place to watch Nothing expand and wipe out all of creation. Nothing might be at the center of a lot of Black Holes, or the general area around said Black Hole might soon enough be filled with nothing.

Seinfeld was a show about Nothing. I spend a lot of my time doing Nothing. Guilty children can always fall back on Nothing when asked what they are up to. Nothing is what husbands are looking at when their wives walk into the room. Nothing is what made every Reality TV Star a star.

For Descartes, there was matter, and there was extension of matter leaving no room for the existence of “nothing.”

Nothing good will come of this. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing. Nothing that is worth knowing can ever be taught. Nothing to do, it’s up to you. I’ve got nothing to say but it’s Ok.

Nothing-cut me off a slice of that.

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The Simpsons did the best all time Zombie parody, with zombies wanting brains and shoving Homer out of the way to find them. Shaun of the Dead is a comedy, but it is still a zombie movie as well. Instead of heroes, we have a couple of mega losers who hang out at one pub and play video games. They are so self absorbed that they don’t even notice the world is being taken over by zombies for the first thirty minutes of the film.

Once they do meet a zombie, they assume that she is just drunk. They then decide to fight off a couple of zombies by throwing random items found around the flat at them. They finally find a shovel and a cricket bat, and they are then off to save their family and friends-by taking them to their favorite pub. The rest of film shows them making a lot of fairly poor decisions on the zombie fighting front.

There is a rumor floating around that NBC is going to be making a Shaun of The Dead TV show. The mind boggles. But then, why not? Shaun and his trusty cricket bat saving the world one zombie at a time. Of course, he was not very good at saving the world, so maybe it would be more like losing the world one zombie at a time.

Shaun of The Dead was fun, but there was the usual shambling dead with missing limbs and one fairly graphic dismemberment. But for the most part the violence is near cartoon quality with Shaun and his idiot sidekick pounding zombies to little effect. And as with most British films about the slacker class, there is a bit of profanity here.

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British Football is a different animal all together from American Football. While we have a handful of Pro Teams, and a hell of a lot more than a handful of College teams, The Brits seem to have teams for every village in Britain where two street happen to cross. This spirit verging on obsession is the primary topic of Unseen Academicals.

Along the way we meet a few new characters who work in Unseen University and have glancing blows from dozens of the people we have meet in the other Discworld books. Mixed in is the usual collection of puns, jokes, and bits of silliness that make Terry’s writing so much fun.

I really did laugh and cry while reading this book, but then, I am a bit of a softy for the End of The World is Coming, but it got waylayed on a slow cart out of Ankh-Morpork bit. A common complaint about the Discworld books is that they all seem to have happy endings. Well, that’s one of the prime reasons I love them.

Every Discworld book is like a family reunion and a chance to meet a few of the newer additions to the clan and catch up on the latest news from home. Well, the Discworld is much as it has always been, which is a good thing.

I did notice something kind of funny about the cover of Unseen Academicals, the ball pictured is not a Soccer ball but a Volley Ball. Curiously both the covers of Unseen Academical have a Volley Ball drawn on them. Odd, as one of our heroes, Mr Nutt, meticulously makes a football using precisely measured pentagons.

I should like to note that this error in no way diminishes the work as a whole.

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While it is easy enough to be anonymous on blog when no one really cares who you are-once you have a book deal, well, everybody knows your name. While the cover of Waiter Rant says by The Waiter, every CD in the audio book says Steve Dublanica. It has also been discovered that the restaurant known only as The Bistro-is a place called Lanterna Tuscan Bistro. Well, there’s no such thing as bad press, right?

The stories in Waiter Rant:Thanks for The Tip-Confessions of a Cynical Waiter are funny and strike that same cord of truth that Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential struck. The people in these stories, both the hard working restaurant staff and the often demanding and unreasonable restaurant customers should be familiar to anyone who has ever eaten at a restaurant. The Owner who runs and hides anytime it gets busy and spies on his employees for the fun of it should be familiar to anyone with a job.

The Waiter covers the normal events of life at The Bistro with humor and also explains them in such a way that you can understand why he treats some customers with kindness and others with barely concealed disdain. He talks about Tips and Holidays and how a Waiter can made a couple of hundred dollars a day-but rarely more than a couple of hundred dollars a day. He also explains how that money tends to disappear due to frequent trips to Strip Clubs and High End Coffee Shops.

Waiter Rants ends with Steve getting a book deal and being a little bit happier in his life. His War Stories are fun and make me glad I’m not a waiter. I also have a great weakness for Blogger Makes Good stories.

Dan John Miller does a great job as the reader of the audio book version of Waiter Rant.

Waiter Rant includes some a couple of useful Appendix:
40 Tips on how to be a good customer and 50 ways to tell you’re working in a bad restaurant. My favorite Tip on Being a good customer is the last one-If you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to eat at the restaurant.

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George Clooney talks almost nonstop, as Mr Fox loves the sound of his own voice. Meryl Streep gives voice to Mrs Fox, but she is such a master of voice manipulation I didn’t know it was her until I saw her name in the credits. Bill Murry, Owen Wilson, and Willem Defoe also have small roles.

The stop motion animation lacks the smooth perfection of a Wallace and Gromit film, but perfection doesn’t seem to be what the animators were going for. It is a rough looking film, with fire and water looking especially bad. There are a lot of fun details though, such as the odds and ends that the animals have to dig around in their various escapes and the fact that Mr Fox has a fox sized motor cycle at the ready.

My favorite bit of business in the film is the slug lines that mark the beginning of each new segment. Mr Fox Has A Plan, The Great Heist-phase 1, The Siege.

As with Disney movies there is no explanation as to why the Wild Animals all talk and wear clothes while Domestic Animals like dogs and chickens act like, well, dogs and chickens. There is one point where Mr Fox escapes a dog by climbing a wall. If a fox can climb the wall, why can’t the dog?

Mr Fox’s plans almost get everyone killed, but they still follow his leads. In the end it doesn’t matter that Mr Fox is an irresponsible thief that can’t resist his inner animal’s urge to steal and slaughter-he still cares about his family. They come right after the stealing.

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There is something so liberating about destroying the world-all writers love killing off everyone, knocking down buildings, burning forests, and generally having their way with the reader’s emotions. It’s a bit surprising that these stories about the End of The World still have so much power and resonance. After all, how many times have we seen the world destroyed now? Seems to be common Summer Blockbuster fodder-and yet it still works, because we still care about the world.

Bangs and Whimpers:Stories About The End Of The World is a collection of some of the best science fiction by some of the best science fiction writers of all time. These are stories about how people bring about their own destruction, how it just sort of happens, and how sometimes things are not what they appear to be.

My Favorite stories in Bangs and Whimpers are Expendable by Philip K. Dick and The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. All the stores are tad dated, but the emotions are still bang on and the stories are still fun to read.

Contents:

* Nine billion names of God by Arthur C. Clarke
* Killing the morrow by Robert Reed
* We can get them for you wholesale by Neil Gaiman
* Fire catcher by Richard Kadrey
* Not with a bang by Howard Fast
* Lost and found by Connie Willis
* Wind and the rain by Robert Silverberg
* Year of the jackpot by Robert A. Heinlein
* Expendable by Philip K. Dick
* Finis by Frank L. Pollock
* Guide to virtual death by J.G. Ballard
* Emissary from a green and yellow world by Robert Sheckley
* Portable phonograph by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
* Fermi and frost by Frederik Pohl
* Ultimate construction by C.C. Shackleton
* Manhattan phone book (abridged) by John Varley
* Man who walked home by James Tiptree, Jr.
* Interview with a lemming by James Thurber
* The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

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The Road is a substandard Post-Apocalyptic Epic. End of the World stories have been popular forever, but this particular kind of story has been floating around for about sixty years or so. The Road is Science Fiction-NOT General Fiction as it says on the back cover. One of my pet peeves is science fiction not labeled science fiction as that might scare off readers.

Not only was The Road given most favored status by Oprah Winfrey, it was also given The Pulitzer Prize. I’m guessing all the people that loved The Road have never read a post apocalyptic story before, never seen The Last Man on Earth or The Road Warrior or A Boy and His Dog or The Twilight Zone.

This is a story that has been told before, countless times, why all the fuss over this one? Because a real writer wrote it. The Road is a Stylistic Tour de Force foregoing such mundane things as quotation marks, the occasional apostrophe, and standard paragraph breaks. It is filled with words like torsional, vermiculate, gambreled, isocline, sepulchre, counterspectable, and hydroptic. Flashbacks are indiscriminately mixed in with the present, making for occasional re-reading of passages to try and figure out what is/was going on.

The road is mentioned ad nauseam as the nameless and ageless duo work their way South. The Road is dangerous, but they seldom move very far away from it. They constantly find caches of food and water and clothing, all of which is either left behind or all too quickly eaten or ruined by the cruel world they inhabit.

Unlike 28 Days Later or Mad Max or even I Am Legend, The Road removes all hope for the future of humankind. Whatever the untold Event was, it has left a world barren and dead. There are no birds, fish, animals, or plants left living-though it is possible that the last trees and mushrooms have only recently moved into the world of the Extinct. The Man finds apples, mushrooms, and a ham hanging in a smokehouse on their travels-proof that something was living in the not too distant past.

Curiously missing from The Man and The Son’s list of food items is Honey, a food that will keep pretty much forever. They might have stumbled across one old hive amid all the dead trees they are constantly surrounded by.

In the end The Boy is not eaten by cannibals, and cannibalism is not as prominent here as it was in the movie. We are given a few lines that indicate The Boy lives long enough to have several discussions, but the world is still dead, the handful of humans left alive are still all doomed.

The finial paragraph talks about trout and how their world is gone and will never return. That pretty much sums it up.

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