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Man, I don’t get this Donald Duck cartoon. I mean it’s pretty clear that it’s supposed to be anti-German during world war II, but it seems like they passed up a lot of opportunities for jokes in favor of play up the drudgery of working in a German factory. Is that really the best propaganda they had to work with? It seems kind of lame.

It was kind of hot today, and in an effort to get out of my oven of a home to enjoy the great outdoors, I grabbed my camera and headed over to the South Bay Botanical Garden. I’ve been there a few times before, and I knew that in the heat most of the plants would be fairly wilted.

Still, it has the advantage of being reasonably close, so I didn’t have to do much driving. I was hoping that under the shade of the plants it would be nice and cool. It was when a breeze would kick up. The breezes were all too infrequent though, so most of the trip was spent sweltering. I did manage to make a few photos, including one interesting dragonfly.

Just setting a memory point to come back to 99 Flickr Groups for Design Inspiration later when I have time to go through them all.

I spent a nice Saturday afternoon at Kenneth Hahn Park in Culver City. I had my camera with me, and you can see a few Park photos. I’m happy to say I finally managed to get a shot of a humming bird. It isn’t great, but I did get it, so that’s something.

I spent the past week or so working my way through 5 years worth of Questionable Content back archives. It’s a web comic strip.

On April Fools Day, this super geeky comic that I love, XKCD switched comics in a round robin “prank”. I read a few, and was kind of interested in the characters. I got busy and forgot about it, but then earlier in the week, I was reminded and decided to start from the beginning.

I think I liked it generally. A lot of the drama seems pretty goofy, and many of the characters (particularly the 3rd tier characters) are basically the same unrealistic character with like 1 quirk to make them different, and in the case of parents really unbelievable. Still, it held my interest, and there are a bunch of Dune references that I love. Really, more things should reference Dune.

I took my camera up to Descanso Gardens to photograph some spring flowers. It’s weird. I haven’t been to Descanso in about 5 years, and I remember it being a lot smaller. I don’t know if my memory was playing tricks on me or if I didn’t fully explore the place last time. It was a nice day though.

Presidential Candidate Mike Gravel’s cover of Helter Skelter is surprisingly awesome. Oh sure, it lacks some of the zen koan like absurdity of his throw a rock into a lake video. But, what it lacks in inscrutability it makes up for in disturbing images of war and violence and Bill Shatner like ironic song stylings.

With all of our recent rains, the desert is in full bloom, so I drove over to Joshua Tree to check out all of the wildflowers. I was really kind of surprised at the variety that I saw. It seems like whenever I see wildflowers on TV, it’s just fields of yellow flowers (I think poppies). There were plenty of yellow flowers, but there was also red, white, purple and blue flowers. I did the hike to the 49 Palms Oasis. It was a nice walk with plenty of steep and uneven rocks to teeter over. The oasis itself was shady and peaceful, but not very beautiful or interesting.

Here are a few of my photos of Joshua Tree Wildflowers.

I headed up to Chinatown today to check out their New Year Dragon Parade. It wasn’t nearly as colorful as the Doo Dah parade I went to a few weeks ago. It seemed a lot longer — particularly with all the city and state officials that turn out for the thing. Still, it was interesting and provided some prime photo opportunities. The sun was definitely trying to cook the year of the rat before it even got started. I got a bit burned, and the glare and harsh lighting conditions played havoc with a lot of my photos. Still, I did manage to make a few keepers, so here are some of my Chinese New Year Parade Photos.

I have no idea what Today is the Day is going on about. It’s surreal in the weirdest ways, but it is foamtastic.