Mixed Message (I Love You?)

'Mixed Messages' (I Love You?) is an automobile windshield that

speaks for itself, but may have more than one interpretation by

viewers. Your critiques and ratings are invited and most welcome, as

well as your interpretation of the message. This is a 'candid'

street photo, and I know nothing of the history of this

particular 'work' which I came upon. (If you rate harshly or very

negatively, please submit a helpful and constructive comment/Please

share your superior knowledge to help improve my photography.)

Thanks! Enjoy!!! John

The letter 'U' was taken deliberately 'out of focus' (bokeh), because I felt that emphasis should be placed on the heart-shaped break in the windshield; other photos were taken in which everything was in focus, including the steering wheel and the car seats, which place it more in context but are somewhat distracting.

 

John (Crosley)

sweet, funny, real - thanks!

A prize for succinctness and clarity.

 

John (Crosley)

This is exhibit No. 1 for why one should always carry a camera, ready to fire.

 

John

7/7

Gino, thanks for the ratings and letting me know. Seems most KNOW what this photo says -- and understand it.

 

John

There really is a thin line between love and hate, or as the song goes "stange kind of love". We would all do well to allways carry a camera. Glad you did..

I'm still mystified about how this came about -- whether it was something related to love, or somebody's idea of something cute to do with a broken windshield.

 

However, its message is clear, isn't it?

 

Yes, I never am caught without a camera -- people often ask me why, and I often wish I had a photo like this to show them. I was able to show it, to unanimous approval, when it was on my flash card.

 

Thanks for the remarks.

 

John (Crosley)

My first thought was "Love Hurts". Glad to know I'm not the only one who keeps a camera nearby at all times. Good job.

Sometimes it does, doesn't it? I think this photo is universal in its message -- few seem not to understand it, and its appeal seems to be universal. Anybody I showed this image to before posting, said 'Way cool shot' and 'where the heck did you get this?'

 

John

And i love this shot-realy super !

The appeal of this photo seems to be universal. Even a photofinisher I know saw this and he said 'Can I have a download so I can print it on postcards to sell?'

 

It gets right to the heart -- a metaphor for love life, I think.

 

Not much photographic skill, I'm afraid, but a hell of a catch, and of course the skill to recognize it for what it is.

 

Love to see you stop by.

 

John

I LOVE YOU!!! DAMNIT!!!

 

?????

 

John

What strikes me & takes this from really neat to great is the duct tape being the other letters. That which can fix all, may not fix the windshield, but maybe someone's heart.

Yeah! This is love! What better dedication than this to someone who has broken your heart!

That's a good conjecture, but I still don't know the circumstances that caused this to arise, and I think even if I did, I might not post them.

 

Maybe it's better just to let the viewer make up his/her own story.

 

I do like your comment.

 

John

When you get some of that duct tape that heals hearts, just put me on your list for Overnight Delivery, please.

 

And I'll be sending you your Nobel Prize combined in Peace and Medicine -- a double award and double prize money. (The Nobel prize carries with it a lot of cash.)

 

Just put this photo on every tape package. I'll lease this photo to your company for that, and I'll get very wealthy very fast.

 

;-)

 

John

This Photo is Copyright 2005, John Crosley, all rights reserved, First Publication 2005.

 

There, that's supposed to protect my rights; hope it does some good, as I think this'll be heading for a lot of fax machines and e-mail attachments.

 

It anybody sees this published, please let me know immediately, either by posting or by e-mail or preferably both.

 

John

This is kinda creepy. Some my think sweet, i'm thinking psychotic. (actually an Ex came to mind as soon as I saw this, I shivered.)

 

Thanks John for scarin' the tar out of me!

 

cg

Your comment is of the range that I expected to hear . . . and the comments were strangely silent about 'stories'. Sorry for scaring the .rap out of you.

 

At least this isn't your car.

 

Addendum: 9-5-05.

 

Or is it?

 

John

Ha, Luckily no, it isn't my car (I Moved far enough away so it wouldn't be my car!)

Gads, Chad, did you HAVE to move away?

 

I had an Internet dating stalker, I never knowingly met in person, continually contact me through a large (very large) now international service, inventing 'profiles' and even hiring models to pose for them, and also ripping off other fabulous models' photos, just so she could harrass me.

 

She was fixated on 'besting' my initial refusal to correspond with her, as her first e-mail suggested substantial sickness, but brilliance.

 

She invented phone voices to talk to me, and I did respond each time until I caught on; a rude, pathological woman, whose 'guises' always were either 'beautiful women' (photos only) or were 'acquainted with highly-educated, famous women' and the posted profile was of an author, etc. (She knew I had written)

 

Early in one ruse conversation she talked haughtily about her (surely invented) close acquaintance with and feelings about Lillian Hellman (author and lover of Dashiel Hammett, who wrote 'The Maltese Falcon', and the other Sam Spade mysteries).

 

I found out details when she confessed one day in an e-mail, telling about how she had hired an AA flight attendant neighbor to pose for one of numerous posted profile photographs.

 

I think she even had come into my house when I was away . . . (imagine how freaked out I was.)

 

Now I have a photo of her, which I have obtained however, and which is distributed to authorities from 'local' and (unnamed) important agencies who would track her down instantly if harm befell me.

 

The stalking has stopped now by a few years.

 

It was terrorizing -- women associate 'stalking' with men, but believe me, women do it too.

 

I hadn't thought about that when I took or posted this photo; I have a wealth of personal experiences about so many things I sometimes lose track of such horrors (time heals many wounds).

 

When I saw this windshield, roadside, I passed it by, drove to my home, turned around, went back and took photos in the early evening darkness, then went back again the next day because I was sure that this would strike a chord with people about 'tricky' or 'dramatic' relationships they had endured.

 

Luckily nobody drove it away before the first photos were taken (15 minutes elapsed) -- in fact I guess driving this vehicle anywhere was out of the question.

 

I forgot that I had been the object of arder from such a 'terroristic' and underlying hostile and demented person.

 

If she comes anywhere near me, she is subject to immediate arrest, as her identity is now well known, and presumably she has other fish to fry --maybe other men to stalk.

 

Worse, it torpedoed feelings for any other woman who fit into the stalker's staged 'profile' characteristics, as I always was wondering if I was being 'set up' again, when any woman contacted me.

 

(I found her photo on one of my many hard drives as I explored it last night, and she looks sick and isolated.)

 

I hope she found that I'm not much, and maybe she got treatment, or found someone in a positive way who would pay attention to her.

 

(Shudder, shudder, shudder . . . )

 

I think the police would shoot her if they found her anywhere near me, and they have her photo(s)/

 

Last I heard they knew where she lived (they surveilled her).

 

O.J. Simpson's awful activities have had a positive result in California in ways I had let slip my mind. (They arrest first, then ask for explanations later where there is marital or extra-marital conflict, and stalkers are treated with alarm since that Hollywood actress got tracked down from her public DMV records and murdered.

 

I think you were wise to put distance between yourself and whoever it was.

 

My stalker had enough personal wealth or resources to have a substantial number of purchased profiles in her various 'guises' -- something those Russian/Ukrainian, etc., 'mail order bride' scammers don't usually, as they write, then 'fall in love' after three letters, or invite you to meet them, then disappear after you've sent them 'ticket money' or their mother needs an emergency cancer (or name your disease/affliction) operation.

 

And if you actually do send that money, then do go to meet them somewhere, they 'get into an accident' and their friend e-mails you for more money by Western Union to save 'her' life. Turns out these people rip photos off of magazines, etc., and even steal photos from Russian/Ukrainian/etc., photo processing machines, or buy dupes and post them on 'dating' sites, some of which are clueless and others of which are complicit because they live off 'letters' sent by these women.

 

Sometimes the 'dating' and 'marriage' agencies even commission the letters to be written, then charge the guy 'per letter' (See my photo Prospective Ukrainian Brides Meet Potential American Grooms (It's Not What It Looks Like) (paraphrased title), in my Early B&W folder and a posted comment there about the men who were in Odessa and found the women they had been corresponding with through a large internationally famous dating/marriage agency did not even have a clue of who these men were.

 

It appears the women's photos were 'appropriated', and the dating agency (Russian based, but very, very large), had commissioned letter writers to write letters to the men based on 'profiles' the real women had left for real with its correspondent dating agency in that city (if the men, many of them, were to be believed). (these are my opinions only, based on my experience and those who talked to me.)

 

It has been alleged that that particular 'service' commissions letters to be written at $1 per letter by Russian speakers/writers, but only if it is responded to -- I am not sure personally of the absolute truth of that, but it is widely alleged, and experience tends to support that.)

 

The agency is paid on a 'per letter' basis of from $4 or more a letter, each way by the prospective groom, which is a fabulous sum for a Russian/Ukrainian person -- they often live on much less than $100 month.

 

(When I met my Russian wife -- the one who got brain cancer -- she earned about $11 a month in Russia as an elementary school teacher, and only got 'chits' for her pay to be collected when the State got the money to pay her. She stole the children's lunch money, and when she got paid, in turn paid the money to the cafeteria. (The children never missed a lunch).

 

But she then was quite honest and her daughter reports to me that despite our huge age difference, she was very, very much 'in love' with me (she wanted an older man who wouldn't cheat on her, and I never did.)

 

Russian/Ukrainian men are famous for cheating/men are scarce and the women make themselves available to the remaining men who can somewhat prosper as their societies turn the corner from a state-controlled economy under Communism to a Capitalist system.

 

(No self-respecting Russian/Ukrainian woman would ever even ask for bus fare from a man she had not lived with, and any mention of hardship is strictly 'nil zha' -- forbidden, no matter how badly off a woman is.

 

Even if she hasn't seen meat in three months she never would say 'please give me small money for an improved diet' so great would be her embarrassment, unless she were engaged.

 

(And most such honest women don't want an American 'Green Card'; they'd prefer to have a family in their home country with their relatives around and speaking their mother tongue/but some relent to economic pressures, and in fact American/Canadian men are widely renowned -- even famous -- for their chivalry and good, caring behavior toward women, and they are prized as good spouses, most of whom don't drink to excess and can support a family. And the women are among the world's most beautiful.

 

Further, if a woman considers marrying outside her home country, some age difference -- man to woman -- even is expected, as the man must be able to afford to raise a family -- a goal of almost every such woman in a society where being a mother, and in a family is almost the only to attain personal legitimacy for a woman.

 

(No matter that many are doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, professors, etc., they almost all want a family, first and foremost, and if their men don't deliver, they do look elsewhere -- their quest poisoned only by the ever-present scammers).

 

Some women make a fabulous living scamming gullible American men.

 

Some 'women' are indeed, 'men' (males at least, posing as women in printed letters and e-mails), if one uses the term losely.

 

One incredibly proficient scammer was a man in San Diego, scamming American men from his base in San Diego -- he was recently arrested with his Russian wife and accused of bilking a known about $750,000 from American men. (It isn't just Russians and Ukrainians who are crooks.)

 

In Moscow once long ago, I met a simply fabulous, stunning woman and we briefly became lovers -- she was absolutely gorgeous and smart, with a child being babysat by mom in her home city in the Urals, as so many women have children at an early age. She was an astounding lover.

 

She was to fly away on Sunday, and return the following Friday and 'only' needed $100 for the return airfare from 1,500 miles away -- typical fare for Russia then, maybe now).

 

I gave her the $100 and never saw her again, and later had someone contact her, and she explained 'he's not my type'.

 

I was scammed before scamming had developed into an 'art' form. 'Scamming' has been around since men first met women in prehistory; men seek women and some women (and males posing as women) use that for personal gain.

 

A friend lost 40 pounds when his Russian fiancee disappeared, only to turn up in Canada engaged and living with another man just across the border in B.C. outside Victoria on Vancouver Island, all on a Canadian fiancee visa.

 

She invited my friend to visit surrepitiously and advise her on how to break off her relationship with the man; he to

wow what a story john.

 

as for my moving, I moved a few months prior for a teaching job. So I was already out.

 

cg

True too.

 

Gads, I can hardly believe I lived through that and how it infected my life and new acquaintances.

 

John