Thursday, April 13, 2006

Promptergate: Can you help...?

I was going to write another glum piece about the possibility -- or likelihood -- of nuclear war, but this has already been a sufficiently depressing few days. We thus turn to what they used to call "the lighter side."

Remember promptergate (a.k.a. "Bulge-gate"), the scandal that made this blog semi-famous for a brief period? Nearly two weeks ago, I found a pic on the net that seemed to provide further evidence. Look closely at the Bush's ear in this profile shot, and you'll see...well, something. I'm not sure what. But it doesn't look like the normal ear formation!

Here's the problem: For the life of me, I cannot recall where I got this blamed image.

Yes, the date stamp on the pic says April 1; that must've been the date I downloaded it. Yes, I know Photoshop pretty damn well. Yes, I could have created this image if I had put my mind to such a devious task.

But I didn't. Sweartagod. I found this thing; I didn't make it.

And that's why I'm asking for your help. Does anyone else out there recognise this picture? It came from a legitimate news story -- one which did not mention the "prompter" factor at all.

I just need to prove it.

By the way: For this enlargement of the ear section, I did do a little Photoshop tweaking. But all I did was:

1. Crop and enlarge the image.
2. Blur the image just a tiny bit, in order to help ease some of the jpeg artifacts.
3. Lighten the image, in order to get a better look at that...thing...on or in his ear.

I'm not saying that it's an earpiece. It may be a skin blemish. A skin blemish that just happens to look like an earpiece.

We'll be back to doom-n-gloom soon....

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Creepy.

I can't say definitively what that is, of course, but it looks...okay, it looks alien. And it's not the spiky, funny looking blemish-cum-prompter-attatchment thing on his ear lobe that captivates and repulses me so much as it is the tiny, black dot you can barely see nestled in the bottom of his ear. Is that the prompter itself? If that's it--it's so small. But then, they would want it to be.

Sorry, Joseph, I have no clue where that shot came from, but nice catch.

Captain Quahog said...

It's his comlinc to Cheney/Rove.
It's nuclear powered I bet.
And thats as close up as I ever want to see him again!

Anonymous said...

Oh...I just figured it out. No, not where that photo came from...the potential that Promptergate still has to damage Bush. Joseph--you're a genius, and absolutely indefatigable. Can't promise your readers will be able to help you identify the photo, but I hope we will all spend some time trying today.

Anonymous said...

awesome catch! That little black dot under the ear could be a wire.....

Anonymous said...

Have you dug through your web browser's history file? You've probably got the URL buried in there somewhere.

Anonymous said...

Of course it's a propmpter. Bush is inept. He couldn't steer a docked ship.

Anonymous said...

looks to me like the whole outer edge of his ear is a fake... and those black bits?... don't know.. maybe they've finally given him a fully-wired prosthetic ear.
...robotron presidente!

Anonymous said...

I'm an oncologist and I don't think that dark blob below his tragus (that the bit of cartilage that juts out in front of your ear) looks mechanical. I think it looks a lot like a melanoma.

And ditto to the earlier commenter about the ear crease.