EMPS: Love Birds on a Wall

This week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, appropriately, has "Love" as its theme. This being Valentine's Day, I thought I'd do the Monday Photo Shoot on Monday for a change. This is made possible by my having managed to sorta-kinda photograph something appropriate, something I have been wanting to photograph for the past week. If I'm very lucky, not to mention clever, I may even manage to edit, upload and post the photos by iPad.

Does it work? Well, set of, but only if the photos are on the iPad rather than online, and I have no interest in editing them at all.

Alternatively, I can try doing this from email. But again, that doesn't get the photos edited. Drat.

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This is an attempt to use a different app to create text and add a photo properly.

The good news: I can resize. The bad news: I still can't darken the photo. (The really bad news: the photo didn't copy over at all.)

Now to see whether I can select all and add this to the blog entry.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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No, that didn't work at all.








Here is the photo I first uploaded, which I've since edited online using an actual computer.

And here is the other shot, also edited online. iPad had nothing to do with it being here.

The explanation: this is a mural on the front of a building I drive past when returning home from my new job. The ridiculous way the freeway is set up around here means that I drive through downtown at rush hour, and often end up either stopped at a light or inching past this mural. I like it. The birds are vermilion flycatchers. I have very little concept of what the artist is trying to convey, but there is a valentine between two of these birds.And yet they have their backs to each other!

Unfortunately I failed to grab my camera quickly enough when I first passed the building today, so I detoured south to circle around for another attempt. That time, the light wasn't red, and my attempt to grab the shot on the fly, so to speak, wasn't entirely successful. A lot like my iPad experiments, then!

Karen

Location: Tucson

Weekend Assignment Results: Love Stories

Gates Pass sunset, March 2005

Light turnout this week for Weekend Assignment #202: Love Story. Apparently people were either not enamored of love stotries, or too busy living out their own. Still, we have some good ones:

Julie: "One day she popped in for her Star Trek game, and there he was. The nerve! It was her time to zap Klingons!"

Saqib: "A love story that I found inspiring would be the tale of Laila El-Haddad. Her story is a real life drama set in the hostile city of Gaza."

Mike: "When I saw her actually enjoying some heavy metal music at a party one time, that was it. I was hooked."

Florinda: "Her response: "Call me tomorrow when you're sober and ask me again." He did, she accepted, and their own wedding took place the following June."

Karen: "After I posted the Weekend Assignment topic Thursday night, I had a related idea to do a love story quiz." Check the comments thread for the answers; Sarah has them all.

Thanks, folks! I hope you've all had a great Velentine's Day, with or without the lovey-dovey stuff. New Weekend Assignment to be posted momentarily.

Monday Photo Shoot: Valentine Views

Last year for one of John Scalzi's Weekend Assignments I photographed a bunch of items on sale for Valentine's Day. This year, let's carry over that theme into the Monday Photo Shoot as well:

New Monday Photo Shoot #7: Valentine's Day is nearly upon us. Show us something related to that day.

Here are a few shots from this year's Safeway offerings:

There's nothing so romantic as a grocery store checkout

Cupid recommends the potted flowers.

With solarization, plus the negative command on the top half

I'm deliberately leaving this one wide open, so you can photograph valentines, themed gifts, or even couples in love. Have fun with it! And remember, even though it's called the Monday Photo Shoot, you have a week to post your photo and leave your link in comments. That gives you lots of time to see whether your beloved gives you something worth photographing, or to dig out that Valentine's Day-related heirloom. It should be fun, so please join in, okay?

Karen

Name That Love Story! A Pop Quiz

Hi there! After I posted the Weekend Assignment topic Thursday night, I had a related idea to do a love story quiz. Here it is. Can you name the couples described below, and the source of their stories?




1. He sees her on the dance floor: seventeen years old and already an incomparable beauty. He dances with her all night long, and with one look from her he knows he will soon be in love. He vows never to dance with anyone else.

2. He is the half-forgotten heir of an ancient line of kings, but her family history goes back even further. He is nearly 90 years old when he finally comes into his fame, with the appearance and vigor of a much younger man. She has lived for many centuries. After a terrible war, her family leaves for other lands, never to return, but she stays behind and becomes his queen. They enjoy over a century of love and peace together before he dies and she is left behind, soon to die herself.

3. They are reporters, rivals as well as friends. Of the two, she is the adventurous one. Somehow he seems just a little safe, a little square. She much prefers her mystery man, the clean cut hero who can do almost anything, and rescues her when she gets into trouble. Sometimes she wonders whether her boring friend and the mystery man are the same person.

4. They were married the day they met; not through their own choice, but because that was the way things were done. Now, one by one, their daughters are marrying for love. This leads him to wonder whether, in their quarter century together, she has learned to love him too. She wonders whether it's worth making a fuss about after all these years.

5. She lives on a planet that really shouldn't be there any more, and for a while all he knows about her is that she is beautiful, has a horrible brother, and has said the word "This" to him. He finds her again, by wildly improbable means. They go flying together, travel to America together, and read an important message together. Then he loses her forever.

6. They are business rivals, and bitter enemies. Her business is failing because of him; he considers her a "pill." They each confide online with a friend, knowing each other only by screen name, unaware that they have already met and dislike each other. When he learns the truth, he can't resist torturing her a little.

7. She is sent by her father to marry him, but is initially dubious until she meets him and they fall in love. Trouble arrives in the form of his best friend, a brash and earnest young warrior. She initially dislikes the friend, but later comes to love him. They do their best not to betray her husband, but eventually they are caught together and she is condemned to death. He husband is as pleased as anyone when his erstwhile friend rescues her, even as their idyllic kingdom crumbles.

Oh, that's enough for tonight, dontcha think?

If you decide to do your own Name That Love Story quiz, leave me a link in comments, and Ill add it to the Weekend Assignment roundup entry. Thanks!

Weekend Assignment #202: Love Story

Here we go again, and it's not even a topic from my list:

Weekend Assignment #201: Valentine's Day is coming! Tell us a love story. It can be the story of you and your beloved, someone else you know, that celebrity couple you find intriguing, a quick recap of a comedy or tragedy from Shakespeare, Rob Reiner or whomever (with attribution, of course), or a story you make up yourself. All I ask is that it be a tale of love that appeals to you for one reason or another.

Extra Credit: Have you ever been extravagantly, tragically in love? Would you want to be?

I think I'm going to take at least two passes at this one myself, because I want to give it a greater effort than is practical tonight. But for now:

Some people would probably disagree, but to my mind, the ballad of John and Yoko is truly one of the great real-life love stories of the 20th century. It's got everything: extravagant expressions of love, controversy, a world of jealousy, hostility and condemnation, "overwhelming oddities" to be overcome, opposition from "some of their beast friends" (although it should be noted that Paul helped out on the song The Ballad of John and Yoko), infidelity, Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl, politics, music, beds, bagism, and a horrible, tragic loss no one will ever forget.

They met at an art gallery, he the restless rock star, she the avant garde artist just starting to make her mark. He climbed a ladder to read a word she'd written on a ceiling, and was pleased that the word was "yes." That was the start of it. John and Cyn ultimately got divorced, but not before John and Yoko made an album together. Yoko fed John's experimental side, and John gradually inspired Yoko to become more accessibly musical. They tried to use their celebrity to promote peace in a variety of lighthearted ways, never taking themselves too seriously. They split up and got back together, did drugs together, cleaned up their act together and had a child together. John became a house husband for five years while Yoko looked after their business interests. Then they made music again, mostly together, until it all ended abruptly, an icon cut down by a deranged fan, as his wife looked on in horror.

After December 8th, 1980 I wore a series of buttons in memoriam for a whole year. The one I wore most often said "Hold on Yoko." At the end of a year I mailed it to her.

Your turn: tell us of a love story you find appealing or memorable or inspiring. Write it up in your journal or blog, and come back here and leave a link. I'll do the round-up on Valentine's Day, just before I head out to Gallifrey. Which reminds me of another controversial love story.

Karen

P.S. I almost forgot: I've certainly been in love, and maybe even a little obsessed; but it wasn't tragic. Good thing, too! No poison or dagger for this Juliet!