Naughty Grant Boys (Warning – Christmas Card Spoiler):

The axiom of being a photographer is that there is this personal expectation to one-up yourself each Christmas with a more cute and creative image for the annual Christmas Card.  Added to that is the expectation from everyone else that the image contains a picture of the Grant boyz.  Here is this years attempt at both! 

Naughty Grant Boyz (Merry Christmas 2011)

Merry Christmas and Enjoy!

Warning: Chemical Engineering / Environmental Satire:

I know that many of you tree-hugger types may find this image offensive and it is still true that bio-fuels and "renew-ables" are still all the rage in Washington when it comes to energy source selection but I decided to go old school with this years Christmas photo and get back to the energy solution basics with good old fashioned COAL.  The kind that Naughty kids from all over the globe have been getting for centuries.  Giving the boyz a mason jar of Trans-Esterified Soy Bean Oil (Biodiesel) just didn't seem to fit the tradition of the season.

Please be warned if you decide to give your naughty kids COAL for Christmas with the expectation that you will save a few dollars on the Holiday budget you may be in for a surprise.  When the democratic run EPA found out that I was doing this shoot in a Non-Attainment area and a metropolitan city, I was notified by certified letter that I had to submit an Air Permit application to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources stating that I would not exceed the maximum concentration of CO2, NOx, SOx, Particulates, Ozone, Organics, Lead, and other heavy metals emissions as defined by the NAAQS.  The consulting fee's alone required to read and understand the local regulations and the expertise and software required to calculate the emissions plume exceeded my intended holiday budget by almost $200,000.  Plus, I was going to have to get an indentures waver from my sub-division for the 150' tall addition to my chimney because of the low stack temperatures required to meet said low NOx and energy consumption guidelines.  This massive stack is necessary to insure that my emissions would not endanger any tax paying Missouri voters and guarantee that they end up in Illinois where they are far too broke from enthusiastically preparing a jail cell for their past Governor  to afford the bureaucracy necessary to deal with such environmental shenanigans. 

Thus, I just settled for the above quick image of the Grant Boyz and had a HazMat team whisk the offending materials off to the closest membrane lined hazardous materials landfill.  Even though the materials were mined from the ground in the first place........