I got my new camera yesterday, and was practicing shooting with different settings.
The bird is a great subject – she’s all texture and color, is always moving, and is pretty much constantly doing something funny or cute.
It’s only good luck that this shot happened to have that life’s thousand yard stare, but I went with it.
(click to embiggen)
Shot at Monterey Bay Aquarium, saturday 1/1/2011, with my daughter’s Lumix FH20 on ‘film grain’ setting. No retouching done afterward.
This is an original steam boiler from the cannery era, similar to the one that would have driven the old Hovden Cannery that houses the original part of the aquarium.
Sometimes one just has to make lulz.
Sometimes one just has to make lulz.
I’m trying to recall the last time i wrote anything.
Wow, I can’t.
I sort of want to blame facebook. Just because I hate facebook so much that it seems like a good thing to blame.
My updates are all there, I want to say. And on twitter.
Only it’s not true. I don’t update on facebook, and a barely tweet.
Is it any wonder then, that my friends keep asking me if i’m ok?
My answer: I don’t know.
My yardstick for ‘ok’ is so askew these days, I can only answer in relation to how I was.
Than last week? Yes, much better (I had a cold).
Than last weekend? Yes, a bit, the cortisone shot helped the pain in my shoulder.
Than last month? I can’t fucking remember.
Than six months ago? Yeah, i think so. I think, just maybe, yes.
Than a year ago? Than two, or three?
I can’t remember when I was just ok, with no caveats. Or to be more specific, I remember the times – the short, sweet, perfect moments are crystal clear in my memory, with flavors and scents and sound.
I just can’t remember how long ago that was; it’s too much of a fucking blur.
So I have to reel it in, measure on a closer scale. And that gets really, really hard. Because the context, the perspective, the range and distance are all missing. Dead-reckoning by instinct in the dark, the way you walk through your bedroom in pitch black and know where the door and the bed are, unless you stop and think.
But today? Yeah, ok.
I keep trying to get a breath, though. To get that little bit of distance ahead to start thinking, what do I need to actually be good again? And I can’t see it. Too close in; I’m in the thick of battle, fighting so many small and large fights all the time that I can’t see a battle, let alone know how to win it.
I’m wearing down; I can feel it. I can feel my body aging, and my mind with it. Some tide of battle surges up against me every time I think I’ve almost a some skirmish.
This would be easier if my battle-field metaphor were more true; brute force solves some problems so elegantly.
This is the battle on inches though; of minutes. And I’m losing it in tiny, almost immeasurably small increments. Like when something moves so slow you can’t only see it if you sit utterly still.
I can’t sit still; I can’t see the tiny progress forward or back.
So I need to do something to change the scale. I just don’t know what.
I remember when I used to be a blogger, rather than a guy who occasionally updates web pages. It was a long time ago, wasn’t it? I can’t even find a good way to graph my blogging frequency anymore. I know it used to be daily, and then several weekly, and then once in a […]
I remember when I used to be a blogger, rather than a guy who occasionally updates web pages.
It was a long time ago, wasn’t it?
I can’t even find a good way to graph my blogging frequency anymore. I know it used to be daily, and then several weekly, and then once in a while. Lately, it’s more like almost never.
Sometime in 08, I think it was, than the slide started; from there, it just seems like little by little I’ve given up.
I don’t mean on blogging – whatever. I mean on writing.
The last think I wrote that wasn’t just about an experience was two, maybe three years ago, aside from a couple of abortive tries and collaboration on erotica. The last thing I finished was a year or more before that.
I’m so rusty, my fingers don’t even remember how to type anymore (it took me three tries to get the work ‘type’ correct). My hands ache when I try, more from disuse than from anything else. The muscles have forgotten what its’ like to type more than the hundred or so lines I need to update a wiki page or type out a report.
I don’t even remember how I used to do this; I try to remember writing Wanton, and while I remember the feeling, I can’t figure out how I actually did it.
I started this blog – back in the dim, distant past in blog-years – with the express intent of using it to improve my writing. That never worked; or to be more specific, it got me writing something i hadn’t before (introspective essays), but didn’t help me with fiction – because it was a distraction.
Now, though? now, I’m lucky if I manage enough attention span to tweet one thing or to update my facebook status.
I was going to say I don’t know what it is, but that’s not true. I know what it is, I just don’t know what to do about it.
I’ve been in a sate of have to do something for so long now, I can’t quite my brain long enough to put words together with anything like flow.
This was bad enough, just with the ordinary stuff. Work – making the Greatest Smart Phone Ever (and the best tablet you’ve ever seen and didn’t even know you needed) isn’t just a full time job; it’s a lifestyle. We’re a seven day a week shop, and my area is to be the glue that keeps the 24 hrs per day stuff (the compute farm) going. So I’m working even when I’m not working, always aware that nothing holds this together but me. I dream compute farms and CAD tool licenses at night. And then, there’s the part about being the father of two teenager girls, which isn’t ever an easy job, even for very low needs children. Then there’s the rental house, my own house, and all the rest. Life has caught up with me in ways I didn’t quite anticipate; being The Dad to not just two, but four women (including my mother in law) takes it’s toll.
But now – well, that’s a whole ‘nother entry about Mental Health Issues. But that’s another entry, if I ever get to it.
But the bottom line is, finding even half an hour to gather myself and write, these days, is more than I can manage.
I need it. I need to put words to my feelings, to tell stories. And I fucking can’t.
I don’t see an end to this, I truly don’t. I know it has one – I just can’t imagine how or where or when.
And my best tool has deserted me again.
My daughter’s bird loves her popsicle stick. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBhIKsV1jWY&fs=1&hl=en_US]
My daughter’s bird loves her popsicle stick.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBhIKsV1jWY&fs=1&hl=en_US]
This is so brilliant I can barely stand it. (video after the cut)
This is so brilliant I can barely stand it.
(video after the cut)
My friend MT Maloney just sent me a couple of samples of his work to check out, and I could not be much more delighted with them. I blogged a couple weeks ago about his work-in-progress blog, From the Workbench. But now that I have my hands on his work (and his work on my […]
My friend MT Maloney just sent me a couple of samples of his work to check out, and I could not be much more delighted with them.
I blogged a couple weeks ago about his work-in-progress blog, From the Workbench. But now that I have my hands on his work (and his work on my hands), I’m even more stoked.
MT didn’t just send me these, he customized them. We started talking about things I like, and what he got about me from reading this blog. He wanted to use something related to motorcycling, and something related to Clan MacRae, and then I thew back things I like (the number 13, etc). We threw ideas back and for for several days, and off he went.
What he wound up with was the MacRae clan motto – Fortitudine (latin for With Fortitude) on one ring, and on the other, his own version of ‘elvis 13′ (ELV13), which I think is bitchin’. The smaller one uses a triangular triumph logo, with ‘FTW’ inside – and make no mistake, that’s not ‘for the win’, as the gamer idiots think, it’s Fuck The World, as it’s meant in punk and biker circles for decades.
Below are photos of the two rings.
The larger is MT’s King Skull, his version of the big, chunky, realistic ring that is, generally, my favorite skull ring type. The smaller is his Little Voodoo. The little one is a pinky ring size, the larger fits my left middle finger.
(click to embiggen)
Now, I think MT’s King Skull is awesome. In look and feel, it’s similar to the Courts and Hackett Keith Richards ring, but less brutal; bigger eyes, more detailed teeth. Less totenkopf and more poor yorrick.
It’s a great addition to the genre; it goes in the the line with the Deadringer Classic, the Courts and Hackett, and the Ruby Crush Belladonna. That’s some rarified company there.
But of the two, i have to admit, the one I really, really love is the Little Voodoo.
Maybe it’s just because I don’t own anything like it. It’s completely non-realistic; it’s a low-browed angry little motherfucker of a skull, like something out of a max fleischer cartoon. Like a pissed off dwarf.
But really, i think what I love about it is that it’s the first truly badass pinky ring I’ve ever seen. It’s thick, it’s heavy, it feels far more massive than it really is. YOu don’t think of a pinky ring as being hardass, but this one is. I think it’s a really great ring. It’s also really, really comfortable.
MT’s carving is also distinctive. He’s not trying to be elegant, which oddly seems to give his work a rough sory of elegance I didn’t expect. The lettering on the King Skull (the one that says Fortitudine) just makes me happy. If I ever get my MacRae Fortitudine tattoo, that’s almost exactly the lettering I’d want to use. The carving is personal (He really thought about this, none of it feels tossed off).
I had a conversation recently witha reader who wanted advice on a couple of rings, tryng to decide which to look at. If said reader asked me today, I would have suggested adding MT’s work into the short list being considered.
Good shit, MT. You rock.
WIth great delight, I received a package last week my from friends Mark and Stephen at Deadringer, NZ. This is the first time I’ve gotten the full treatment – the custom carved casket. Mark asked me what I wanted carved in the casket. Just have fun with it, I said. Do whatever you feel inspired […]
WIth great delight, I received a package last week my from friends Mark and Stephen at Deadringer, NZ.
This is the first time I’ve gotten the full treatment – the custom carved casket.
Mark asked me what I wanted carved in the casket. Just have fun with it, I said. Do whatever you feel inspired to do.
Below is what they came up with, and I could not have been more delighted.
I wish I’d taken pictures of the whole thing as I opened it; the process is so dramatic that it would have made an amazing slide show. The casket is bolted closed with tiny brass screws, and comes with a tiny screw driver. Here, though, is the lid.
…and what was inside after I removed the screws.
The necklace is a thing of beauty. Later I’ll have Barb model it for me; it fits beautifully. It’s truly elegant. I love women’s jewelry that retails the edge, the biker-gothic-rock-n-roll feel, and yet is still beautifully feminine. This is s necklace that requires a lovely feminine neck to display to full effect.
The ring is Deadringer Minima Classic, modified to my request with a 13/spade design (you know how much I’m a sucker for spades). It’s sized as a pinky ring, and fits, as always, absolutely perfectly. I’ve never work a pinky ring for daily wear; this ring is so comfortable I just might manage it.
The thing that sets these guys apart from anyone else in the business is both the incredible detail, and the creativity; the photos below show both.
Below the cut, you’ll find a couple more shots; these two are the rings beside my Classic, and my Yorrick, for size reference. This shows the scale side by side, and on the hand
For all shots, click to embiggen.
This isn’t me. I swear though, it could have been. (video after the cut)
This isn’t me.
I swear though, it could have been.
(video after the cut)