Jpatrickm

A friend just pointed this out to me. I have no idea how things like this get discovered but it’s hilarious. I wasn’t sure how long this would work so I grabbed a screen capture of the page. This is an actual screen shot. Nothing was edited. If you go to Google and search on just the word failure, the first search result is a link to the “Biography of President George W. Bush”. The interesting (and funny) thing about this is that the referenced page doesn’t even have the word failure anywhere in the content. I do a lot of search engine optimization and there is no way that page can be first without some insider help. So I guess we know which side the techs at Google are on. I can’t see this staying in their index very long, as Google probably hates this type of publicity. SEOs are going to have a fit because clearly this proves that Google is stuffing their search engine rankings. It’s also not someone paying for the top spot through an Adwords pay-per-click campaign either. Even if it is a joke, it shows that the tech people behind the scenes are putting whatever keywords they want at the top. (click on image for larger version).

Now THAT is funny!

Technorati Tags: Google, President+Bush, Bush, failure, Google+search, biography, keywords, President

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Just in case you weren’t paying attention… Today the Canadian House of Commons passed a bill that makes gay marriage legal in all of Canada. The bill was supported by 158 lawmakers in the 308-seat House of Commons, with 133 MPs voting against. It is expected to win Senate approval and become law by July, making Canada the third country after the Netherlands and Belgium to allow gay marriages. Gay marriage is already legal in eight of 10 provinces and one of Canada’s three territories.

Most countries also already allow gays to serve opening in their military as well. So almost every other modern democracy around the world, is more democratic then America. We’re too busy attacking other countries and screwing over our veterans and seniors to worry about stuff like this.

Can our country survive in this modern world and continue to be a super power? The fall of the Roman Empire is attributed to several factors: the influence of christianity and religious power resulting in less government control, decline in public health, political corruption, unemployment, inflation, urban decay, inferior technology and military spending. Sound familar?

Read more about the gay marriage ruling in Canada:
CBC News- Same-sex marriage law passes 158-133
BBC NEWS | Americas | Canadian MPs back gay marria
Technorati Tags : gay+marriage, gay, Canada, Canadian+Parliament, House+of+Commons, Civil+Rights, gay+rights

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Today I was walking back from my coffee at Starbucks and an older, somewhat disheveled and heavyset man with a cane stopped me and asked for help. He wore dirty, ratty clothes and was unshaven. He was shuffling along and could barely walk. He told me he was trying to get down the street about a block and was wondering if I would offer an arm to steady him and help him along. At first I replied that I was sorry and couldn’t really help as I was on my way somewhere and after all my hands were full with my cell phone and the book I was reading. He very politely insisted and again said that he was just going down a few houses. It was one of those random situations that is sufficiently weird and strange that I had to stop and reconsider. You know those bizarre moments when you have to stop and look around to see if anybody else can see him. To make sure he really did exist and that it wasn’t just something in my imagination. Like one of those scenes in a movie where the person sees this old bum walking and it turns out to be an angel or God testing him. It was one of those moments and so I paused for a second and then put my arm out and started guiding him down the sidewalk. His name was John. He began to explain that he was 67 and that his condition was something with his feet called soft tissue and it was very painful to walk. As we shuffled along I realized that his words were very pronounced and articulate, speaking like a professor would speak. He asked me what I did for a living and I told him I worked for myself doing web design and photography. He thought that was great and remarked how it takes a special person to be disciplined enough to make that work. We continued along as he talked more about life and success and he chuckled and said how he probably sounded like a cranky old man complaining to me. He said, “it used to be success wasn’t enough. You had to bloom and be great. Today, just surviving is success and you’re lucky to have that.”

He was right and it made sense to me. I spend a lot of time just surviving. Sure I could walk better then him but it made me wonder who really needed whose arm to lean on.

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Ok, so we really didn’t have an earthquake that big, but it sure felt like it with the email I received about the LA Pride & Anna Nicole Smith pictures I posted. It appears that some people, and by some people I mean my Mother, felt I crossed the line by posting those scandalous images here on my blog. My friends and I have this saying when someone just goes completely off the hook and gets pissed. We call it a 10.0 (pronounced ten point oh), taken from the TV miniseries last year about a 10.0 earthquake hitting the west coast and demolishing civilization there. Well, my mother Betty went 10.0 on me. I decided to write about it because, all kidding aside, I think this is an important subject and since her email, I’ve been thinking about my life and this blog and what it really is like being gay and 34. In all fairness to her, we talked this over and she gave me permission to write this and to graciously post her 10.0 email.
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Ok, they are finally up online in the photography gallery. The scandalous pictures you’ve all been waiting for of Anna Nicole Smith, along with a few others of the weekend thrown in. If you don’t know what pictures I’m talking about, see the previous post.

I also forgot to mention that Greg (the guy’s house we ended up at Sunday night) is also the writer and director of the movie “The Broken Hearts Club” (IMDB) (Amazon.com). I watched it again last night just because it’s a good movie and I wanted to see the director and producer’s commentary. If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend it. It’s a good flick.

View the pictures in the LA Pride Weekend 2005 photography gallery.

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Well I thought it was a good idea, but my eBay auction for my Germany trip ended without any takers. I think that a few things contributed to it’s lack of success. I probably needed more time to organize the travel arrangements, which would have allowed for a longer auction and maybe a lower starting bid. I also realized after going live with the auction that the end-time was going to be around midnight pacific time and 3am east coast time. That’s certain death because most of the bidding occurs during the last few rush minutes of an auction. I knew this little rule of auction management but I must have been caught up in the concept and idea to think through the logistics of it. Anyway, that’s not to say that it would have been more successful had it ended earlier but statistics show that the best time to have an auction end is somewhere around 6pm to 10pm eastern standard time (people getting home from work and browsing the internet before bed, etc.). Oh well, so no Germany trip… at least not one next week.

On another note, I spent the weekend in LA. I don’t even know where to begin writing about this one. It was LA Pride although I didn’t end up doing anything actually related to the pride event itself. I didn’t go to the festival or the parade but just went out to clubs and hung out with some friends. One of our friends is very well connected in LA and is good friends with most of the club owners so it was VIP treatment the entire time. I’m not familiar at all with the LA scene and I haven’t hung out there much so all I can say is that it was by far the most VIP experience I’ve ever had. We walked right in through the back and side doors of clubs that had hour long lines out front with huge security guards and huge crowds. Most of the clubs in LA also have private VIP rooms in back and we had complete access to those as well. At one point during the night I looked over into the booth next to me and there was Anna Nicole Smith completely trashed on top of some other guy with two camera crews filming her. I took a few pictures before her nerd lawyer friend (from the show) yelled at me. At one of the clubs we were introduced to this young cute guy named Greg. We all hung out most of the night and then a small group of us ended up going back to his house in the Hollywood Hills for a few more drinks and hot-tubbing. Well Greg ended up being the writer and creator of the shows Everwood and Jack & Bobby on the WB network and was a contributing writer for Dawson’s Creek. Needless to say I am a huge fan of Jack & Bobby and so I did my best to not be an ass. It was a ton of crazy fun. He showed me the original script of another movie he wrote which is coming out soon. I’ve now decided that I’m going back to get my Masters in Playwriting :). I also hung out with another guy I met named Jordan who was really cool and cute. He was an actor but I’m not sure what movies he’s been in, not that it really matters to me. I can totally see how people can get wrapped up and lost in the LA scene. It’s easy to get swept up and taken along for the ride. I’m still replaying it over and over again in my head… crazy. Anyway, we stayed there overnight (what was left of it anyway) and headed back to San Diego on Monday morning.

I’ll write more later and I also have a bunch of pictures from the weekend that I’ll post once I organize and format them. And yes, I’ll even post the Anna Nicole pictures! lol

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So I came up with this idea about a week or two ago and the more I thought about it the more it seemed like it might work. I’ve been wanting to take a trip to Europe for a long time (I mean who doesn’t). My friend and former roommate, who is from Germany, recently left Seattle and his job at Microsoft to move back to Berlin. So we’ve been chatting back and forth about me visiting but I don’t really have the resources to make the trip (translated meaning money). So I came up with this idea to trade photography for travel. I’ve been doing photography for over 15 years and I like to think that I’m pretty good at it. I’ve been published and while it’s not my primary job during the week, a good percentage of my income comes from photography work. I decided to put the power of the internet to work.

Introducing “Operation Commissioned Work“: an eBay auction to offer all of the original high resolution photographic images of my trip to Germany in exchange for some flat dollar amount to offset the costs of the trip. This is perfect for someone with a new home or office that they want to decorate or for a marketing or advertising agency that is looking for new unique images. The buyer gets all rights to all images taken during the trip… no royalties, no licensing fees… just the full, exclusive rights to them all. I anticipate there being several hundred images by the end of the trip. I mean who wouldn’t want an original Joe McDonald photography print hanging on their wall!

The only problem I see is that my window of travel is rapidly approaching and I’m hoping to be there the week of June 20th… I know… very close. Airfare is expensive right now but I have “my people” working the numbers.

So if you have a website or blog and would like to give me a little cross promotion, please link through to my blog or my auction and help spread the word! I think the idea is a great one but we’ll see if it actually takes.

You can learn more and view the live online auction at eBay.

Technorati Tags: ebay, commission, photography, germany, commissioned work

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