An old timey contributor came back to the fold this week. Hopefully she makes it a consistent habit down the homestretch of the failed Random Weekly Photo Experiment.

Dawn Krause of Impassioned Versifier


Christopher D. Bennett


Mike Vest of Waxen Media

You might be wondering if I am going to contribute a picture of my dog or bunny every week for the last 10 weeks of this failure.

What if I do?

This week’s theme:

Last year’s submissions for LOVE:

Hopefully a few more people can submit a picture of something or somebody that they love this week. I hate to think there isn’t very much love on the outskirts of my world.

I hate the phrase “things happen for a reason” more than I hate any other phrase in the world. That doesn’t mean that I don’t necessarily believe in fate, but for the most part I don’t like fate. Its plans run contrary to my plans, no matter how hard I work on my plans. So fate can go suck an egg.

However, sometimes fate works out in my favor, even though I don’t know it.

One of those fate just screwed me over, but it ended up working out pretty well for me moments was when my wheel flew off my car on my way to Minnesota a few weeks back. I had a pretty sweet vacation planned, but it all went into the ditch with my wheel and more money than I care to think about.

I rescheduled my vacation for the last week in August. That movement of my vacation just a few days allowed me to complete Operation Puppy sooner than I anticipated.

I knew when I finally got a puppy, it would be while I was on vacation and I didn’t think that I would be taking a vacation for several more months, but I still checked several websites and newspaper (okay newspaper websites) for the puppy that I wanted. A female golden retriever.

A simple enough request, but there weren’t many in the area. Then an ad for a bunch of puppies showed up in the Des Moines Register.

I wrote them and they gave me the sad news, all of their female puppies were probably claimed. 2 were for sure. The other two were most likely claimed.

I wrote them back and let them know that if one of the females became available, I wanted to be at the front of the list. That was on a Wednesday. I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be getting a puppy for several more weeks or months.

Then on Friday they wrote me to tell me that they thought that one of the females might be coming available, but could not make any promises.

I made plans to drive up near Hubbard on Saturday to see the puppies. I figured that it would be a fruitless trip, but it wouldn’t hurt to see some puppies. The cutest most adorable kind of puppy: golden retrievers!

Then on Saturday morning I got an email saying that they had a female for me.

That afternoon Jason, Alexis, and I drove up to see the puppies. I put down a deposit and set up a day and time to come pick up my puppy. I worked it out so that I could pick her up on the Wednesday of my vacation as I came back down from Minnesota.

The next step was coming up with a name. I struggled with a name, but eventually with the help of friends a name was found. Here are some of the suggestions I received:

Willy: Cuddles or Miss Wiggles
Faust: Steele & Melanie
Jen: Mila
Jill: Daisy
Sara: Astrid, Mahtob and then she sent me a list of about 200 other suggestions.
Carla: Chloe, then she went out and bought a puppy and named it Chloe.

But it was actually a suggestion by Derrick that put me on the road to the name. While we were sitting on a bench at the State Fair resting, he asked if there was a female character from a Kubrick movie that I liked. I have to confess that Kubrick movies aren’t filled with extremely strong female characters. If you take out the prostitute from Eyes Wide Shut or the sniper from Full Metal Jacket, that really leaves you with Lolita and I’m not naming a dog after Lolita.

I toyed with the idea of Kubrick and then Coltrane as a name, but those were just too male sounding names. I was stalled.

Then fate took a hand again. Every morning I run shuffle on Media Player and then post whatever the first song that comes up to Twitter. Now, I know that nobody in the world cares at all what song I am listening to during that exact moment of the day. I do it as a reminder to the world that I have better taste in music than they do.

On August 24th a Miles Davis song was the song that shuffle landed on and I posted the following to Twitter:

“In a Silent Way/It’s About That Time…”-Miles Davis-In A Silent Way-If I were getting a male (puppy), I would name it Miles, Coltrane or Kubrick.”

Dawn replied to my tweet with this tweet:

“How about Naima? Unusual & fits the jazz theme…”

It was a great idea and while I marinated on the idea for a couple of days, in the end, I decided it was too great of an idea to pass up. So I named my puppy after one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite musicians.

I had a name and a week later I had a puppy. Here are a few of the pictures from my first few days with Naima:

Next week’s Wednesday randomness will feature pictures from the mini family reunion I hosted Labor Day weekend.

These are the pictures I entered in the Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest and the person that selected the picture:

Derrick Gorshe


Jen Gorshe


Russell Kennerly


Dawn Krause


Scottie D.


Rebecca Peterson

Thanks to everybody who took their time and energy to select pictures for me this year!

The picture that Dawn chose got 2nd Place in Black & White. My original intent for next year’s selectors was to bring back all of the people that had chose an award winning photo in the past few years, but my fire for photo contests has kind of been extinguished. Not that I might not reconsider, but I think that this might have been my last photo contest. Or at the very least the last time I enter the Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest.

Today is the birthday of my eldest sister, so happy birthday to her!

I took a few pictures of Dawn’s grandchild Kayelee a few weeks back. Here are a few of them:

Despite the fact that I’ve never had a photo shoot so beset by so many technical problems, I think we did some good work.

For the rest of the pictures, visit the link below:

I’ll just confess that my picture this week was not the intended picture. But I did what I could after I had some kind of memory card failure where I lost my original picture.

Here are the submissions for NIGHT:

Christopher D. Bennett


Dawn Krause


Mike Vest A


Mike Vest B

Next week’s theme will be:

A look back at last year’s submissions.

I am going on vacation next week, so next Monday at noon the theme for next week will publish, but none of the pictures will be published until I return from my sabbatical. Unless you get your picture in by Friday.

It is time once again for me to to do a random look at some of the statistics on the website.

First up is what are the 10 Most Popular Images in the Artistic Gallery.

This one is actually somewhat of a shocker. A picture of Brandon has went from nowhere to be the most popular picture and the long time reigning champ Outburst of the Soul has fallen all the way to a tie for 6th Place. Although admittedly, I think spammers might have something to do with the rather large shakeup in the standings.

1. Brandon Senior Picture


2. Johnathan Senior Picture


3. Battered School Bus – Hamlin, Iowa


4. Self-Portrait


5. Jen Between Sets of an UnHingd Show


6. UnHingd Publicity Still


6. Outburst of the Soul


8. 1900


8. Becca – Senior Picture


10. Abandoned Piano – McCallsburg, Iowa

There has also been quite a shakeup in the Snapshots Gallery Top Ten.

Here are the 10 Most Popular Pictures in the Snapshots Gallery:

1. Me White Trashing It


2. ISUCFVMB


3. Alexis Cheerleading


4. Shannon and I at an Inebriated Saints Show


5. Jesse and I with the World’s Largest Cheeto


6. Logan’s Tree-man


7. Jesse and I at the Surf Ball Room


8. Jesse Endorsing the Bob’s Dog


8. 2010 ISU Spring Game


10. Shannon Reading Map at Backbone


10. Jesse and I in Clinton

Finally, a look at the Top Ten People to either contribute or be written about in An Artist’s Notebook.

1. Jesse – 163 – (+20)
2. Jay – 151 – (+7)
3. Shannon – 146 – (+6)
4. Derrick – 123 – (+6)
5. Teresa – 109 – (+13)
6. Jen – 107 – (+6)
7. Willy – 101 – (+8)
8. Sara – 96 – (+8)
9. Vest – 80 – (+19)
10. Dawn – 73 – (+9)

Wondering who the biggest movers were outside of the Top Ten?

1. Dad (+19)
2. Carla (+14)
3. Jill (+10)

In case you were interested in what the standings looked like 100 posts ago:

There were a couple of submissions for FOOD this week. Included in these submissions are several submissions from Sara that clearly violate the one and only one rule of the Random Weekly Photo Experiment. Since this is her first submission, I’m allowing it:

Teresa Kahler


Sara Junck A


Sara Junck B


Sara Junck C


Sara Junck D


Sara Junck E


Dawn Krause


Christopher D. Bennett


Mike Vest

I’ve been down to visit the Random Theme Generator to get a theme for this week. It gave me what I consider to be a pretty good theme.

A look back at last year’s HANDS submissions:

I am hopeful that there will be plenty of submissions next week. After all, almost everybody has hands and everybody knows somebody that has hands. Plus hands do such interesting things!

“In the end, everything is a gag.”

- Charlie Chaplin

When it comes to college basketball prognostication, 2011 will be remembered as the Year of the Woman.

Not only did the Roundball Oracles crown our first ever champion from the fairer of the two sexes, three out of the top four finishers were also members of the female persuasion.

It was certainly a chaotic NCAA Tournament this year.  Consider these facts:

• Before the Final Four was even played, our championship was already secured.
• Only two people (Jesse and I) even got a single Final Four team right. We both got Connecticut right.
• Our eventual champion’s national champion lost in the 1st Round.
• 6 people picked Kansas as their champ, 4 picked Duke, 2 people picked Ohio State, 1 person picked Syracuse, 1 person picked UCLA, 1 person picked Michigan State, and 1 person picked BYU. None of those teams even made it to the Final Four.
• Our eventual champion finished in last place last year.
• Our 3 time defending champ finished in 2nd to last place this year.
• Only Jesse got 1 of the teams in the championship game (Connecticut) right.

So who is the new Queen of College Basketball Divination?

The Final Standings

Name – Bracket Name – Points – Correct Games – Last Year

1. Carrie Baier – Izzo – 100 points -41/63 – 21st
2. Jesse Howard – MeatThermometer – 94 points  – 39/63 – 13th
3. Linda Toot – LittleSister – 74 points – 38/63 – 9th
4. Dawn Krause – Duh Winning – 73 points – 34/63 – 3rd
5. Jason Baier – Duke the Fifth – 72 points – 35/63 – 7th
6. Corey Faust – Always Go Top Shelf – 69 points – 34/63 – 4th
7. Christopher D. Bennett – They Call Me Mr. Bennett – 63 points – 31/63 – 18th
8. Robert Henning – Losing Bracket – 59 points – 32/63 – 8th
9. Russell Kennerly – StackinWinsLikeJustinBeiber – 59 points – 31/63 – 17th
10. Andree Jauhari – Floccinaucinihilipilification- 58 points – 31/63 – DNP
11. Nate Buckingham – White Magic – 57 points – 33/63 – 9th
12. Tim Peterson – Dominate Monkey – 57 points – 32/63 – 9th
13. Lowell Davis – Golden voiced hobo lover – 53 points – 34/63 – DNP
14. Nader Parsaei – Oscar – 51 points – 29/63 – 2nd
15. Mark Wolfram – Taiwan Hawkeye – 26/63 – 1st
16. Shaun Kirsch – Lil_Dog – 45 points – 29/63 – DNP
17. Frank Meiners – Master Picks – 0 points – 0/63 -4th

If I were giving an award for the best bracket name, it would clearly go to Andree, but I am not. Perhaps next year.

Carrie’s name now sits in the Hall of Champions with the past greats:

Past Champions

2011 – Carrie Baier

2010 – Mark Wolfram

2009 – Mark Wolfram

2008 – Mark Wolfram

2007 – Tim Peterson

2006 – William McAlpine

2005 – William McAlpine

I already can’t wait for the next college basketball season to start and not only because I expect the Cyclones to return to greatness next year. At least I have the Spring Game to look forward to in a couple of weeks. It is football, but it is something.

Not so many submissions for FAST, but here are the ones that I have:

Dawn Krause


Christopher D. Bennett


Mike Vest

I’ve been down to the Random Theme Generator’s office and asked it to give me a good theme for this week. It handed over the following:

I think this is a good theme for a week where the weather is getting nicer, but the Earth hasn’t sprung fully to life. Although I my rhubarb has started to grow and I have a little bit of life in some of my flower beds.

Here is a look back at last year’s submissions for DRY:

Hopefully DRY trips the shutter release finger trigger of quite a few people for next Monday.