If you haven't noticed I like takin' pictures. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a photographer and my lack of shutterbug skills aren't helped by my camera: a beat up 3.2 Megapixel Canon. I'd like to think the subject matter I hunt down (foreign toilets, weird arcade machines, Bavarian kitsch, etc.) makes up for my lack of know-how.

Uh, I'll let you be the judge.

Undaunted, I've been tossing snapshots from Welcome to Blog into the photo pool over at Gridskipper every few weeks for past several months. They earned little notice until last month. I made the mistake of not logging into Flickr or checking the travel blog for two weeks and, of course, one of my submissions was picked for their weekly contest. I didn't find about all this until earlier today.

On January 25th my photo of the "Spice Beast" (see above. Adorable, ain't he?), went up against the work of four other far more skilled photographers. I never got a chance to link to the contest from this blog in an attempt to drum up support for ol' Spicy.

So he came in dead last with 2.4% of the vote but it's nice to be nominated. Gridskipper's author deemed two other shots worthy of competition but went with the lesser of three selected (I think). Dammit, "Vladimir Lenin Loves Tacos" would have been a shoe-in for at least third place in the weekly poll. To see the shot that went on to win Gridskipper's photo of the month for January, click here.

But enough about all that. If you haven't already seen the sleazy-as-all-get-out trailer for a certain movie that shouldn't have been made, here's a direct link. All things considered, I wouldn't suggest you click on it. I spent an hour tonight washing my eyeballs. Has Hollywood no shame?

UPDATE: Oh, wait, wrong link. Here you go. Don't say I didn't warn you.