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What grinds your gears then?


Henry David

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Waking up between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. the past several days. And being wide awake - not like just popping awake and going back to sleep. But the kind of awake where you may as well get up and start the day, because there's no sleep left. :mad: :mad: This is resulting in about 3-4 hours of sleep a night - not enough for this sleep-lovin' sloth!!

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Waking up between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. the past several days. And being wide awake - not like just popping awake and going back to sleep. But the kind of awake where you may as well get up and start the day, because there's no sleep left. :mad: :mad: This is resulting in about 3-4 hours of sleep a night - not enough for this sleep-lovin' sloth!!

Who is the lucky guy that is keeping you from your beauty sleep?

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I've never posted in this thread as I've never really had anything that has realy seriously ground my gears. But today? They've kind of ground to a halt. On the way into work this morning there were commercials with faux-choirs carolling about great deals for the Holidays on Blu-Ray players and a raft of other spend-your-money commercials selling me everything from Honda leases to my Holiday groceries. Spend. Consume. I got tired of it and stuck in a cd to shut the commercials up. I received an email at work (one of those jokey-ones) about how Black Friday was the only day you can legally kill someone over a toy and get away with it. There was a number of photos of the mobs of shoppers. 2jewvwl.jpg

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During the day, someone had the radio on, more bombardment of inane commercials (show someone how much you love them with an iPad this Christmas!)

I got home and my Brother-In-Law sent me the next picture with a snarky comment about the extended families fuss and bother over the traditional Boxing Day meal and how it collieded with the photo. And now, everything I think of reverts back to this picture. The commercials seem insane with this going on in the world. This is going to bother me for a long time. Why the hell would the photographer choose taking the photo over scooping the kid up and rendering immediate help?

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I apologize for the downer post, but I am truly bummed.

Kenny.

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The photographer committed suicide a couple years after taking that picture, and as I recall, that was well over 20 years ago.

As for why he didn't scoop the kid up and get immediate help.....what kind of immediate help do you think was available in drought and famine-stricken Africa at that time? You don't just kidnap children in foreign countries, no matter how sincere your reasoning may be. He could have been killed. Unless you're saying his life was less valuable.

The photograph and the environment the photograph was taken in are tragic enough that we don't need to start manipulating it to wrench even that much more pity out of people. If you believe in karma, then you'd be fine with the fact the photog offed himself over the depression he was consumed by when he got back to the States.

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I don't think I manipulated anything. I was pretty clear that these were pictures that I had seen all within a 12 hour span. I did a little research on the guy that took the photos. It was 3 months after he shot the photo that he chose to take his life. I don't believe in Karma, so his death brings no satisfaction of any sort. Perhaps if he had (or was able to) help the child they'd both still be alive. Perhaps not. I wasn't suggesting kidnapping, either. The photographer is clearly in a position to make something before him that is bad, less bad. Even by a degree. But the viewer doesn't know what he (the photographer) is up against. Maybe someone had a gun on him. Who knows. I am not judging him. But the picture is powerful. It's the juxtaposition of people trampling over one another to get a cheap waffle-maker or somesuch against a kid starving. I wasn't being snarky, crude, or anything else. The thread implied what grinds your gears. This did.

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I don't disagree with your supposition that it's ridiculous how people behave during the holidays re: shopping and basically being materialistic dumbasses. I also don't disagree with contrasting the gluttony in the first pictures with the starvation in the last.

My issue was with you asking why the photographer didn't do something to help the child, as though he should have but didn't. It paints that photographer in a horrible light, almost likening him to the people in the preceding pictures, in that all he was interested in was getting the shot (and in return, getting money), and not with the welfare of the child. That was my interpretation of what you said, and if that's wrong, then I apologize.

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Yeah... that series, Ken, haunts me. I had not seen that photo before.

I used to wonder why in the world the photographers just took the snap and left, too. Like the late great Sam Kinison said, "You'd think the camera guy would give the kid a sandwich!!" But I studied up on it and realized the photo journalist's job is to document reality, not fix it. Unless he does so through his photos.

I know a photographer who spent 3 months in Africa traveling around the villages and documenting life there - and devastation. He brought his series back here and had a big showing. It was called "The Lost Boys of the Sudan." Through his work he was able to raise awareness and a lot of money for these orphaned boys from war zones to come over here and have a better life. In fact, I went to school a couple of years ago with one of the boys that benefited from this - and while he was hard to understand (very strong accent... limited English), he was achieving straight A's in all his classes. He even won a 3rd prize in the college writing competition - a poem about his journey.

"There will be poor always, pathetically struggling - look at the good things you've got." Jesus Christ Superstar

It is tough, when we live in a land of excess, and others have so little.

For another view of the differences between worlds, catch the movie "Babies!" It's an eye-opener about different cultures, and it's a very cute, heart-warming little flick with almost no talking - all babies.

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I think people should boycott Black Friday. People were shooting each other, one woman was pepper spraying people. It's disgusting, really. Now, stores are opening on Thanksgiving night and staying open all night to avoid riots. My sister works for Target. She barely got one day off to spend with her family because some excuses for humans can't act civilized.

I was at Toys R Us a couple of days ago and while people there were acting civilized, I got tired and angry from the crowds, people blocking aisles, etc. It drains you. Shop locally or go online!

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I think people should boycott Black Friday. People were shooting each other, one woman was pepper spraying people. It's disgusting, really. Now, stores are opening on Thanksgiving night and staying open all night to avoid riots. My sister works for Target. She barely got one day off to spend with her family because some excuses for humans can't act civilized.

I was at Toys R Us a couple of days ago and while people there were acting civilized, I got tired and angry from the crowds, people blocking aisles, etc. It drains you. Shop locally or go online!

Five Black Friday Myths The Media Wants You To Believe

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it took out your mirror, or your mirror hit it? I just got this mental image of the donkey being so pissed by the interruption that he bit off your mirror. :crazy:

animals run when they get injured (if that's the case). they get scared and run off to tend to themselves. Hopefully he's okay... if the only damage was your mirror, you couldn't have hit him too hard. Mirrors come off pretty easily.

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the mirror whacked him in the face I think, I stopped shortly after and went back looking to see if i had hit the donkey, but it was nowhere to be found. I'm lucky i didn't hit them with my car, it could've been severely damaged.

this was on the way to Lake Pleasent, be careful of any donkeys in the road, if you ever travel up there.

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The other night on my way to the lake, I came to two donkeys in the middle of the road and braked right in between them. One of them took out my side view mirror. I feel bad for the poor animal, but it just ran off.

Boy, that brings back memories...

One time driving big rig, but only a 27 foot trailer through open cattle range in Idaho on the way down to Boise, I came across a cow walking up the middle of the road at night.

Empty trailer and zig n' zag to the right/left and I missed by inches.

I feel for ya :cool:

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