Picture This

From time to time a picture will grab my eye (and drag it several hundred feet before letting go, vicious little things) and I will save it in a little file on my desktop.

Most of these are screen grabs from various sources, chief among them the New York Times reader, the best on-line newspaper there is. I highly recommend it but there is a problem with getting it. You have to be a subscriber to the “dead-tree” version of the Times to access all its features.

I subscribe to and have received for years the New York Times Sunday edition. I read it all week and enjoy it tremendously. A few years back they pointed me at the reader. You have to download a very large program – Adobe Air – which seems as resource greedy as Photoshop to use it. It takes a LONG time to load. But it is hands down the best newspaper experience on the internets, now available on computers.

As I use and become more comfortable reading newspapers on-line my need and enjoyment of the NY Times Sunday edition has diminished. Many weeks it sits on the counter until Saturday unopened and gets tossed. But I continue to take it.

Why?

A few weeks back ago I guess the person who delivers it changed. The new one evidently cannot read numbers because three weeks in a row he didn’t come through. I called and called complaining about this and I finally got someone in New York (New York, the city so nice they named it twice) and found out this:

I can subscribe to the on-line “reader” version only for $30.00 monthly, BUT I will not get all the features. If I continue to take the newspaper, which I don’t really want and only shows up sporadically I get everything and the four week bill is $35.00.

I wonder at this. Why would they penalize anyone who wants to get them out of the dead tree business? It’s puzzlement.
But back to the pictures.

Here’s one:

The caption explains what is going on. Not what interests me as usual. My meandering eye looks at this guy:

And I look at the knife in the scabbard on his belt.

That’s called a Scimitar methinks. A long knife with a curved blade, excellent for slashing opponents while riding on a horse.

Several things occur to me.

There really are cultural differences in this world of ours. If I saw a guy wearing a big knife in a belt at the flea market I might think twice about buying what he is selling.

However, I also gaze in wonderment at Cops at flea markets, book sales and high school basketball games with guns on their hips, so don’t go by me.

The scabbard the guy has the knife in. It’s green. And it’s really curved on the end. I am guessing the knife doesn’t have that much of curve to the blade.

And check out the top of the knife. Is that a jewel?

I can amuse myself for hours with such questions.

I don’t know if that is a good thing, or a bad thing.

It is what it is, I guess.

The Rant D’Jour is about Monday.