Dead-Eyed Santa - Entry #1!

I have received the first (and hopefully not last) entry in my dead-eyed Santa contest! This one was submitted by John and features a nicely unenthusiastic Santa holding Scotty the dog, who doesn't look totally pumped about things either. Perhaps Santa wasn't a dog person. Perhaps Santa was confused by the fact that Scotty was not a Scottie... we'll never know. No matter what, this is a great start. Thanks John!

Yer Pal,

R A N T W I C K

Dead-Eyed Santa Contest!

I've never been a big fan of the Christmas season; I blame part of my crank on 5 years or so working in retail in a Mall. I also have trouble getting behind anything that stresses a lot of people out. But I am trying to change, so I am trying to catch the holiday spirit by hosting a festive contest!

I think lots of families have at least one picture like this. I love them. The child pictured here is my now 18 year old daughter. Ah, these are the special times a father never forgets, you know?

Anyway, please send me your dead-eyed Santa pictures. The winner will be chosen by the man at my work who has been Santa for many years at the kid's party hosted at my place of employment. He has a real big white beard. His name is Larry, and he is not the man pictured above. Perhaps, when I tell Larry about this great honour, he will allow me to post his picture here on the blog! Won't that be fun?

Rules:

- you must know the child in the picture personally

- I reserve the right to crop/zoom your photo to bring out that special "just kill me" holiday feeling

- pic must be received in the year 2016

Prize:

- A childishly hand-crafted tree ornament commemorating your victory and $20 to the charity of your choice! 

I know lots of people would only have a hard copy photo, but I made the one above by just taking a photo of the photo with my phone. Phun! Email your pic to "rantwick_at_gmail_dot_com". If you want to use Facebook or Twitter or Instagram to send it, that's cool too; just be sure to direct it straight at me or I might miss it. Please spread the word! If you're into #hastags please use the one I'll be using on Instagram and Twitter, #rantwick_dead_eyed_santa

Ho Ho Ho! Hoolleee Contest!

R A N T W I C K

Are You #%^1n' Kiddin' Me #10

Well, I've been watching TV commercials and getting annoyed again. This time it is a brand that many cyclists (especially the tech gear lovers) know well, Garmin. Here's the commercial:

OK, so where to start. First, the small, personal annoyance: Why does it appear to be effective marketing to paint spouses (wives in particular) as annoying shrews with these "honey-do" lists?

Hey, don't blame me. It's Garmin's commercial.

Even the phrase "honey-do" pisses me off. People seem to like a homonym for something like honeydew, I guess, but that's no excuse. We all have shit to do, for our families, our friends, ourselves and sometimes even, god forbid, for our spouses! WTF is wrong with that? I'll bet you a gazillion dollars that men who feel hard done by because they have chores or errands to do are also pampered little assholes who married clones of their fawning mothers rather than somebody they could respect for doing a hell of a lot more than pulling their own weight, as most wives and Moms I know do. Grrrr. Honey-do. Bah. Urg.

Now, let's turn to the more obvious problem with this commercial. To quote the commercial:

It's an insane amount of stuff, so you can do the one thing you're supposed to do: Drive.

Are You #%^1n' Kiddin' Me? How does an "insane amount of stuff" help you concentrate on driving? Is putting all the distractions of your phone on your dash so you can see them occurring much less distracting? I don't think so, and neither does the cartoon man in the commercial. Where is he looking as he travels along being annoyed by his wife? At his Garmin! Look!

And then he's

Then, at the end when he's supposed to be "doing the one thing you're supposed to do: Drive", he's still not right...

Sorry, cartoon man, but I need to re-arrange your face!

I lacked the skills to turn his head, but you get my drift.

Now as an added and completely unrelated bonus, I took this picture of my TV a good while ago:

All I inferred from this commercial is that people who rush in to Honda sales events are so stupid they don't know how to carry a pizza. So sad.


Thanks for reading! Yer Pal,

R A N T W I C K

The King of Autumn - 2016

Well, I didn't get around to taking a picture of the King this year until he was starting to go bald, but for what's it's worth, here he is:

For those of you who aren't familiar, I dubbed this tree the King of Autumn years ago. He was the starting point of an annual foliage contest, the Rantwick Autumn Tree Smackdown! That contest is currently on hiatus lazicus (look it up in the rantwick-to-latin dictionary) and may well see a revival in 2017, but obviously I'm to late too do it this year.

Anyway, it was a weird year because many leaves were falling away while the lower boughs were still green. At least the King didn't look like these jokers in the same park...

I mean, what was going on with these weirdos I wonder? When I retrieved this photo from my phone, it reminded me that I had a something else I wanted to write up about that little photo stop. Since it is really just some trivial ramblings, I have just now decided that they MUST be included in this post! 

Just past the right edge of this picture sat the Rantwick family car containing Mrs. and Daughter Rantwick, who were patiently waiting for me. Just past the left edge of this picture were a couple of young girls doing cartwheels and saumersalts and stuff. Like this:

When I got back to the car my wife and daughter said they were glad I hadn't lingered around or taken too many pictures. You know why? They said a middle aged guy on his own taking pictures in a park anywhere near children was creepy. I don't know what made me more sad, the fact that anyone would think that about a simple tree nut like me or the fact that I saw their point. We live in a fearful and cynical time; I can't claim to know where reasonable caution ends and paranoia begins, but it seems to me that most of us are more afraid than we need to be. Then again, tell that to a victim of somebody awful. Urg. Have I got you completely bummed out yet? I've brought myself down pretty good, gotta say.

On the brighter side, I got to draw thisand this for this blog post, which was fun. As easy as it is to search up an image of whatever you want these days, I still take great pleasure in making things like this from scratch. Anyway, that's it for now and I hope to be posting again soon. Thanks so much for stopping and reading this!

Yer Pal,

R A N T W I C K