Imaginary Crimes

I'm not sure which activity is being proscribed here - normal-sized bicycles riding giant skateboards or tiny bicycles riding normal-sized skateboards.

Make A Joyful Noise

I don't think this kid likes choir much.

Happy Birthday, Rimpy Jr.

The 22nd was Rimpy Jr.'s 25th birthday. This is a candid snap of me and the little bologna loaf on the blessed day.

Trip Down (Painful) Memory Lane

My friends on Facebook have lately seen me posting various screen captures from Google Maps Street View. Perhaps because of my under-utilized (more like UN-utilized) education and training in matters geo-spatial, or just a general interest in geography, I've always been fond of Google Maps. Of late, however, I've had a more vested interest in it.

 A few months ago I was driving my bus down one of College Town's main downtown streets when I was passed by one of the Google Maps Street View cars:

I guess they gave up on trying to be discrete what with the giant mast sticking out of the roof of the car.

I try not to speak to my passengers any more than absolutely necessary, but this event excited me enough to shout it out to those on-board. No one seemed impressed. I doubt that many of our average passengers even have internet access, and if they do, Google Street View probably isn't high on their list of favorite sites.

I wondered if the Google car was recording when it went by me. Since then I have periodically checked the site to see if they had updated the images for the area in which I had seen the car. Finally, recently they did, but neither I or my bus were anywhere to be seen at that particular intersection.

I navigated to the nearby transit center, and one of our drivers was clearly recognizable (to anyone familiar with him) in a parked bus:

This was obviously on (the now defunct) Hawaiian Shirt Friday.

This sighting of a co-worker has led me on an on-going cyber-journey along the various bus routes in Butt County to see if I could spot any of my other cohorts. I've spotted a few - a couple of whom I'm pretty sure I recognize, and a couple who are just blurs. One or two of the blurs I thought might be myself, but I think I would have noticed the Google car going by at those locations, much as I did when it didn't photograph me.

I also started visiting other places I frequent, such as my current abode and my place of work. I spotted my car parked at work:

It's the little one in the middle.

Sadly, the images of our current domicile were taken in February - before we moved in. Furthermore, the images of our old house were taken in April, just after we moved out. It felt as though we had fallen into some sort of Google limbo.
Which is sad, for a couple of reasons. First of all, we lived in that house for 11 years. In the old Google Street View image of our house, my son's friend David's car is visible in the driveway. And he had obviously just arrived or was about to depart because the brake lights were lighted on his car. It was a nice personal little moment in time. Now, nothing. Actually worse than nothing...

Secondly, not long after we moved out, Mrs. Rimpington had business in Former Home Town. She drove past the old house and was shocked to see that the beautiful trees in the front yard had been cut down. We have no idea why this was done. We just hope it was for a very good reason.

The new Google image of the house actually caught the landlords in this act of desecration:

click to enlarge the EVIL!

It's all there in gory detail: the freshly chopped trees, chainsaw in plain view, the preps laughing over their heinous crime. That's Mr. Former Landlord on the far left and Mrs. Former Landlady on the far right. I don't know who the guy in the red shirt is - probably the driver of the dump truck which is visible in the driveway in other angles. Isn't it amazing that this particular moment was when the the Google car happened to drive by and record it for posterity (or at least until they again update the images)?

So, Google Maps can be fun, but it can also be a little heart breaking.

Christian Confusion

I removed this from the bulletin board at the Former Hometown ("Former" since it is no longer my Hometown) transit center (after the event had passed, or course - I'm not a monster). I had to cut it down with scissors into manageable sizes for my scanner, and to remove participants' personal information. I just thought it was both hilarious and disturbing for various reasons.

Hilarious:

Wow! Power Point! Kids love Power Point presentations, am I right?

Disturbing:

Those eyes! Those eyes! Aaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuugggggghhhhhhhhhhh!

As you can see, the image of JoJo the Opossum's eyes are a lot more pixillated looking than those of Samson's, and it's not from me zooming in on the image. It appeared that way on the original poster. It made me think that Reverend Chub Bub must have gotten the image off of a website and blown it up himself. I did an image search on "opossum puppets" and immediately found this:

It's exactly the same image as on the poster, right down to the position of the hair. This led me to the website of the company that makes the puppet, which also made Samson. Now there's nothing wrong with using an image from the web - it just seems odd not to use your own photo if you actually own the puppet.

Another disturbing tidbit: the blue and red circle next to the picture of Samson and the morbidly obese Protestant says "Warriors Against Satan" around the edge, with a fancy "WS" logo in the middle. I searched for a group called Warriors Against Satan", and image searched for that logo, all to no avail. The closest I came was this:

This is a little confusing, because the handle of this blogger reads "Warrior Against Satan (Debra P.). At first I thought "Warrior Against Satan" was identifying herself parenthetically as "Debra P.", so I thought it was weird that "Debra P." seemed to be railing against a woman named...Debra Pasquella. A strange coincidence, or a case of self-loathing?

I did a search on "Debra Pasquella" and found she has a blog that mixes LGBT issues and spirituality.  It seems like just the sort of thing that a wing-nut "Christian" like "Debra P." would foam at the mouth about. I finallly concluded that "Warrior Against Satan" was identifying "Debra P." as Satan in the parentheses.

It's interesting that "Warrior Against Satan" joined Blogger as recently as March of this year, posted once about Debra Pasquella and hasn't made a peep since. He or she probably threw holy water on an image of Debra Pasquella on their computer monitor and was electrocuted.

Halloween 2010

GR1 - Fairy Princess

GR2 - on the way to becoming a dinosaur.

Grandrimpy - something gruesome for the umpteenth Halloween in a row.

A little facial hair cosplay while shaving for HST

I was trying for the District Attorney's Drug Conference outfit rather than the usual shorts and Aloha shirt look. It was a failure. For one thing, I'm too fat to pull this off. That's supposed to be a bottle of ether in my hand.

GR1's Jack-O-Lantern.

Rimpyette's G Dragon JOL in background, Grandrimpy's in front.

Rimpy Jr.'s JOL

My JOL - done with a drill because I'm lazy.

Six Flags Discovery Kingdom 2011 or 2012

For her fifth or sixth birthday (I don't rightly remember - this is 2019 now), we took Grandrimpyette 2 to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, California. Below are a few shots from the day.

What it looks like, duh.

The birthday girl

GR2 at the helm.

Man, that kid has skills!

Big Sister GR1 in the foreground. Unidentified teacup passenger in pink shirt.

Some penguins. I don't know why.

Mr. Chipplesworth - The Travelin' Chipmunk, who goes with us most everywhere.

And lastly, some video footage of the teacup ride (this video is acting strangely and I can't get it to sit under the related photo without it attaching itself to the picture of Mr. Chipplesworth:

Sonoma County 2010

We took a trip to Sebastopol and surrounding areas in Sonoma County, California to attend a play written by our dear friend Lizann (who is, sadly, no longer with us as of this update). She had asked me to contribute a piece to her play about breasts:

Casting of Step-Rimpyette's first pregnancy belly, part of decorations for friend's play about breasts.

It's a pretty progressive church that will let you string up dozens of bras for a play about boobs.

View from motel room window. Not much to look at, but love the fog!

Walking about Sebastopol on a foggy morning...

Some electrical box art.

Oh god! What is it?

Sebastopol Community Market...

Someone's happy.

Aubergine Vintage Emporium, Sebastopol...

Cool exterior of huge second-hand clothing store/cafe

Bodega Bay...

Mrs. Rimpington at the ocean.

A rock, without so much bird on it.

View from back of incredible fish and chip shop in Bodega Bay.

Back of awesome little fish and chip restaurant where they've been tossing the shells for many years now. That's an old surf board.

 Sonoma Train Town...

One of the unfriendly goats of the Train Town "petting" zoo. Would take your purchased food, but wouldn't let you pet them.

The minus-five-foot Mrs. R finds a doorway she can almost hit her head on.

More miniscule doors. Our giant son has to duck to look inside.

Mrs. R towers over a train. Obviously train and town are not to same scale.

Some sort of flying thing made of lichen or something that hung incongruously over an air hockey table.

Random sights from Train Town...

Finally, headed home, we spot this wall of brassieres in Gridley, California. It seemed in keeping with the theme of the weekend...