Giant Gerbil Wheel?

A human powered ferris wheel? Who'd have thunk it? These guys would run/climb/hop from the internal struts, making the wheel go round. Then stop when they got tired and unload everyone.

There were a few problems with this method. For one thing, the operators had little control over the wheel balance. Basically, fat families all seemed to went to get on together, while the other chairs around the wheel were filled with toddlers. This made the wheel unbalanced, which gave the two "running it" a hard time getting started. While I'm sure they were both strong, combined I'd be surprised if they were more than 300 pounds. Once momentum was on their side, however, they were fine.

Also, stopping was a little tough, it seemed. They slowed down the pace of the awkward run/climb/hop they they had going, until finally a guy at the bottom attached what looked like bungee cords with hooks onto the frame, rocking it to a halt. They then went one at a time unloading the old and loading the new customers.

Anyways, this is another elegant Indian solution in an environment where machinery is expensive, electricity is spotty, but people are cheap.

Gangsta' Lean

Saw this while in a taxi in Delhi. Politics in India can sometimes be a bit more physical than in the modern US. So, politicians often travel with armed guards, of which this is an example.

I guess I should have cropped the picture a little. In the back seat is a guy holding a AK-47 with the muzzle sticking out the window.

Elephant Bath

Another India picture. You all should get used to it, I finally got my HDD fixed, so there are gonna be a lot more of these coming.

This elephant has a kind of a cool story. It lives in the villiage of Hampi, where it offeres blessing at the local Hindu temple. You come up, hold out a coin in your palm, it picks the coin up with its nose, put it in a tray on its head, and then blesses you with a nose-kiss on your forehead. Anyway, this is it taking its evening bath in the river.

One of my coolest pictures ever

This isn't comical or absurd, really, if you don't count the whole playing with fire thing. But it is one of the coolest pictures I've taken. If only I'd gotten the focus a little sharper.

Extreme Yoga

The absurd part about this isn't so much that he's holding his head in the pads of his feet; such things seem fairly common in the yoga world. Its that he's doing this on a street corner in the mid-afternoon.

I just find it interesting the things you associate as being "indoor" activities simply because you've always seen them done inside. Yoga is certainly, at least in my mind, one such indoor activty. Paying your taxes is another. Childbirth is the most extreme example I can think of right now, but I'm sure there are others.

Attack of the 50-foot locusts

Naw, this is just me showing off my camera's micro-zoom features. The insect is of normal size--it's your perception of it that's blown up.

I'm not going to try to explain this

Saw these in a water park in central India. There are reasonable explainations for these signs which makes them less funny, but I don't know them.

Chapel of Ease

Found this today in McClellanville, SC.

Beware of car stealers. . .

I'd never seen this reminder before. . . Feels like something my mother (not the police) would say.

I Scream, You scream

Thought a picture of this Valentine's Day Baskin Robbins sign was worth capturing. . . .

Open Windows Can Be Hazardous

"WARNING. OPEN WINDOWS CAN BE HAZARDOUS. Failure to heed this warning may result in personal injury or death."



Here's the kicker. You can't see the sticker unless the window is open.

Place Sticker on Forehead

Chiquita officially prescribes what we've all been doing for years.


"Place sticker on forehead. Smile."

Custom Apartment Homes

When I signed the lease, no one asked what type of flooring or countertops I wanted.

Nonetheless, they're very nice apartments.

Centurion on a cell phone

Saw this in Rome. Its well known that what made the Roman army so formidable is their advanced communication technology; they were millenia ahead of their time...

Disturbing

I saw this in Sicily last summer. I think its a ocean dryad, the offical mascot of Sicily. It just looks vaguely scary to me.

Woah

Yeah, I suppose toilet humor is the basest kind, but this just looks rediculous. What's especially funny is that cost was actually in terms of 0.50 Euro, which was more like 65 US cents, and the atmosphere was anything but "magic." Saw this in Turkey, when I was there last summer.