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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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Congratulations on winning an honorable mention for Best Blog at the 2018 Quill Awards for [Link To Item #1196512] . *^*Smile*^* This award was sponsored by the blogging consortium including [Link To Item #30dbc] , [Link To Item #blogcity] , [Link To Item #bcof] and [Link To Item #1953629] . For more details, see [Link To Item #quills] .](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/type-Blogging-2180.gif) ![Merit Badge in Highly Recommended
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| I find it unlikely that anyone would think I have "style." PROMPT November 10th What is your blogging style? In your response, consider the following questions: What is your process of writing a blog entry - do you plan it out in advance, or just start writing? Who is your ideal reader? How did your unique blogging style emerge? Has your blog changed over time? Yesterday, I made my habitual Monday foray to the local taphouse. For anyone who hasn't been following along, I started doing this when the establishment reopened after lockdown -- I don't remember now when that was. May? June? It's only a mile away (or roughly 1.6 km for anyone reading this in a country that doesn't clutch at archaic systems of measurement), so I walk, for exercise and so that I don't have to worry about drinking too much to drive. The caloric effects of the beer certainly exceed any benefits from the exercise, but whatever; I like beer and the walking can't hurt. I sit outside, on their patio, because it's a better bet than dining indoors. There are no guarantees, of course, but the science points to a lower risk of Trump Mumps transmission if you're not inside. Also, it's usually pretty empty on a Monday afternoon. I could further reduce that risk by not going out at all, but then there are other risks, like losing my fucking mind. I've been concerned about continuing this weekly voyage; infection rates are up everywhere, and, to quote the most overrated fantasy series of all time, Winter is Coming. Here in Virginia, October is usually the last hurrah of summery days, and to be sure, there have been a couple of Mondays when the temperature was a bit low for my outdoor-drinking tastes, but today was positively balmy, with the thermometer reaching a decidedly unNovembery 75 degrees (call it 24C for my friends in non-stupid countries). But that won't last. Though the manager (with whom I'm now on a first-name basis; his name is Sean and he has two kids and would rather be working anywhere else and is taking classes to that end at the nearby community college) did inform me that they're getting patio heaters, which pleases me. Still, I don't know what I'll do when we start getting the inevitable cold days; I don't mind walking in cold weather so much, but sitting on a restaurant patio? No. Well. I'll worry about that after next week, when the temperature should be in the barely-acceptable mid-60s on Monday. Anything less than that, and I might as well be diving off an iceberg. None of which really has anything to do with the prompt, except to illustrate that I don't really plan out these entries, other than maybe giving them an hour or so of thought, usually while doing something else (in this case watching YouTube videos about science, philosophy, and the philosophy of science), and then, in the entry, I could write about almost anything. I say "almost," because I have next to no interest in sports, and while I do have an interest in politics and religion, those are minefields that I tend to avoid here -- though that's not a hard-and-fast rule for me. Still, anyone who's been following along surely knows my primary subjects by now: language, science, finance, philosophy, fantasy/science fiction, psychology, intoxicating beverages, comedy, cats, music, etc., in no particular order. I don't want to get tied down to any one subject, because so many things are interesting to me, and in the end, I'm not writing for any particular type of reader, but just to write. Thus, I really haven't tried to push myself into a "style." Sometimes I'm funny (or try to be; jury's still out), and sometimes I'm completely serious. Sometimes both at the same time. The problem there is I'm not sure anyone can tell the difference. But insofar as this is a publicly viewable blog, I do keep readers in mind; that's why I tend to steer clear of the Forbidden Subjects, and try to be informative. My favorite comments are those that say some variant of "that's funny" or "I usually learn something." Those make me feel like I've been doing it right. My purpose is not to get other people to agree with me, although it's nice when that happens, but to present my own point of view. But I also appreciate it when someone disagrees with me, because contrary to popular belief (promoted mainly by me), I neither know everything nor am always right, and sometimes I need that pointed out. It took me a while to get here. When I started blogging, lo these many years ago, it was mostly about personal stuff, like the crap I started with today. At some point, I started writing about articles I found online, and I've been mostly using that format when I'm not doing some blogging challenge or other. Obviously, I do still talk about personal shit sometimes, but I've arranged my life specifically to avoid drama, so very little happens to me that anyone else would consider interesting. Doesn't help that I don't get out much, these days. But whatever I'm doing, I guess it works, judging by that shiny collection of Awardicons and Merit Badges up there. Still, I'm always trying to improve. Speaking of which, I'm going to get back to handing out Merit Badges at some point. I sent out a batch not too long ago in connection with the October NaNo Prep, though, several of them to regular readers of this blog, and keeping track of who would and wouldn't get CRs from a Merit Badge Mini-Contest is a lot like work. I'm allergic to work. But writing isn't work. I suspect that if I ever made actual money from it, I'd probably start to consider it work and break out in hives. I mean, I still don't know exactly what hives are, but I gather they're something to be avoided. As I noted recently, I've managed to add an entry every day of this calendar year thus far, and I'm hoping to make it to December 31 (not that I'll stop then, but I do expect to take a couple of breaks next year). Would daily writing still hold my interest if it were something that I had to do, rather than something that I do for fun? Honestly, I don't know. Getting paid for photography didn't diminish my interest in photography; the rise of digital cameras did that. So that's it. Not particularly funny, nor particularly informative, but hopefully readable and with a minimum of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. I'll try to do better tomorrow. As usual. |
| It could be argued that everything I own fits this prompt. PROMPT November 9th Write about something you own that is weird, wacky, or downright silly. Where did you get it and what significance does it hold for you? Everything... or nothing, since a collection of weird things becomes, by definition, normal. When I was a kid, I loved Mad Magazine. I owe that era a debt of gratitude for my taste (well, actually, lack thereof) in comedy and parody. Many of the features seem childish today, even for me, but Preteen Me couldn't get enough of that dreck. Various artists, known collectively as "The Usual Gang of Idiots," as I recall, each had his own idiosyncratic style, much as a lot of the funny comic strips and cartoons you find on the internet today do. Mad's chief rival in the adolescent-boy market was Cracked, a magazine that just couldn't measure up to Mad's high standards, which is, of course, saying something. Nowadays, of course, Mad is but a pale shadow of its former self, and Cracked , in a completely different format, is one of the funniest things on the internet... sometimes. It's notable that Mad, for all of its juvenile humor, was primarily written and illustrated by grown-ass men, which either says something about boys or something about men -- or, possibly, about anyone who possesses a Y chromosome of any age. When I got a bit older and graduated to Playboy, I remember they once had an interview with Jay Leno (yes, I did indeed read the articles). This was before he took over the Tonight Show, if my memory serves me (which it often doesn't). In the interview, they asked Leno, "What do you think is the primary difference between men and women?" And Jay replied with something like, "The primary difference between men and women is that all men love the Three Stooges, and all women think they're shitheads." That stuck with me in the way that all profound philosophy does. One of the weirdest, most elegantly and inherently funny cartoonists for Mad was Don Martin. He was active at the magazine between 1956 and 1987, which meant I got to see his work at its peak. If it's possible to put physical comedy (in the vein of The Three Stooges) into the form of drawings, Martin was the guy who did it. His style appeared simple, and was often accompanied by brilliantly inked and perfectly onomatopoeic sound effects, much like the campy 1960s Batman TV show. These sound effects made me laugh. Every. Damn. Time. Martin died in 2000, and after, someone collected his Mad works into a two-volume hardcover collection, which I display proudly near my three-volume Complete Calvin and Hobbes. While the latter has the distinction of almost killing me from bouts of laughter at times -- the C&H snowmen strips in particular have never been, are never, and will never be not funny -- Martin's consistent, if puerile, genius spanned a much longer period of time, reflecting the evolution of comedy and pop culture over three entire decades. No, I don't remember how I acquired the collection. I probably ordered it on the Internet, though a search through my nearly 25 years of Amazon purchases came up as empty as the collection of fucks I have left to give. I only mention this because "where did you get it" is part of the prompt, but my memory for that sort of thing isn't nearly as good as my memory for Don Martin's irreverent comic drawings. Now, I have zero talent for drawing, myself, and whether or not I have any ability in comedy is as open a question now as it was when I first tried my hand at it as a teen. But this Don Martin collection is one of my most prized possessions not only for its nostalgic value, but because it's just so damn timelessly funny. And it's good to know that, in times of stress or our impending descent into irreversible chaos, there's one thing (okay, two things if you count the C&H collection) that will never fail to make me laugh. And I gotta laugh. Some samples of Martin's work: https://i0.wp.com/www.dailycartoonist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/sounds-don-... https://www.lambiek.net/artists/image/m/martin_don/martin_don_ono.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/44/0c/37440ce89af164301766ed44a3a5fc39.jpg https://www.madmagazine.com/sites/default/files/MAD-Magazine-Don-Martin-Evening-... |
| I'm not sure I've ever been on what one might define as an "adventure." PROMPT November 8th Tell us about the most memorable adventure you've ever been on. Did everything go according to plan, or did anything unexpected happen? Also, if everything goes according to plan, I'm pretty sure it doesn't qualify as an adventure. Sigh. I guess I'm going to have to resort to the dictionary again. adventure (n) an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity. I mean, it's not like I've trekked across Antarctica or braved the Sahara or rowed across the Atlantic or shit like that. Nor will I, at least not willingly. I could, I suppose, talk about the time I went horseback riding through a Central American rainforest. Or the week I spent at 10,000 feet in the Rockies. Or the time I attempted to learn scuba diving off of St. Thomas only to be betrayed by my eustachian tubes. Or the times I managed to not get shot by jealous husbands / boyfriends. There was also my first cross-country trip, which I mentioned in here fairly recently. Like, all the way back in July. Here: "The Not-Shining"  I'd say that was unusual, somewhat exciting, mildly hazardous, and both an experience and an activity. And memorable too.Or one time on a different cross-country trip, I stayed at the Clown Motel in Tonopah, Nevada. Why do I mention this? Well, just to freak out anyone with coulrophobia, of course. The worst danger I ran into there, though, wasn't the clowns, or the ghosts that are supposed to be haunting the place, but a wonky room heater because Tonopah gets awfully damn cold in the winter. I've walked around New York City at night, navigated back roads in Iowa, drunk beer at a biker bar in Montana, driven through a blizzard in New Mexico, gotten pulled over for speeding in Texas, and visited an active volcano in the Caribbean. There's more, but since I can't think of them right now, I guess they don't count as "memorable." So I guess what I have to say is there's only been one "most memorable adventure" for me, one that's had its share of hazards, excitement, and a great deal of the unexpected. By which, of course, I mean life. |
| I'm sorely tempted to respond to this prompt with "differential calculus" or "matrix algebra." PROMPT November 7th It's said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Describe something that you think is beautiful or attractive that someone else might consider unattractive or ugly. But if I talked about those subjects then no one would read it. Hell, I probably lost half the potential readers just by mentioning them. My first impulse, other than math (hey, where are you going?), was to describe my spirit animal, the turkey vulture. Majestic creatures they are, embodying the ideal of maximum gain from minimum effort, an efficiency that appeals to me as an engineer and a lazy person. But objectively, those birds are ugly as hell. Okay, not "objectively." There's no such thing as objective beauty or ugliness, and that's even before you get into the "beauty is only skin deep" cliché. But really, I don't know if even I would hang a photograph of a close-up of a turkey vulture's head in my living room. There are, of course, certain things that are generally agreed upon to be aesthetically pleasing, such as the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa, or, well, pretty much everything else in France with the possible exception of this apartment complex in Paris , and that's still more attractive than anything I've ever seen in New Jersey except maybe the Statue of Liberty, which... oh, right, that's from France too.You know what's pretty, though? Well, no, you probably won't agree with me, because that's the whole point of the prompt. But I think spiders are kinda elegant. Not at first, of course. When I see a big damn spider, my reaction is the same as most peoples': aaaah get it away GET IT AWAY. But then my rational mind takes over (provided, of course, that the arachnid isn't preparing to chomp on me) and I can see their beauty: eight symmetric, articulated legs; multiple jeweled eyes; delicate mandibles that I definitely do not want to get too close to. And then there's their webs. Not all spiders spin webs, of course, but I marvel at the evolutionary process, whatever it might have been, that led some spiders to be able to instinctively create those works of art. Yeah, I know, I'd think differently about them if I were a fly, and I really, really hate walking into one unexpectedly (because that's a good way to get munched on by a spider), but they captivate the eye just as effectively as they snare insects. Not that I want to live with one or anything. But when they're outside, where they belong, and they don't sneak up on me, I'm fine with them; they spin their webs and eat the bugs and gleam in the sunlight. |
| I suspect I'm going to be an outlier here. PROMPT November 6th Would you ever take a trip to a place "off the grid?" Where would you go? Short answer: No. Long answer: HELL no. Even longer answer with philosophy and life experience thrown in: First of all, let's work out some underlying assumptions. I've driven through the stark deserts of Nevada and the sequestered mountains of Colorado, Washington State, and West Virginia. With Nevada in particular, it's possible to drive for hours without encountering civilization at all, or even mobile phone service. So I'm assuming, here, that by "trip" we mean something longer than a few hours, or even overnight. Also, by "off the grid," my mind jumps to those polar opposites: hippies and libertarians, each seeking a reprieve from what we call civilization for their own disparate purposes; there might be electricity, self-generated, or perhaps something even more primitive: survival in a pre-technological mode. It's as if you've built yourself a mansion, and when you look at it, you decide, "nah, I'mma go live in a mud hut." Fuck that. I mean, hey, you do you. Obviously no one reading this is "off the grid" in any meaningful way, because to do so you had to access the internet, but I'm sure you've heard of the type of person I'm talking about: an acolyte of Thoreau, perhaps, or of some Eastern guru. It's not my intention, though, to disparage their way of life, or to insult the Amish, or rag on the Inuit; only to say that such a lifestyle is absolutely not for me. But we're not talking about spending one's life cut off from the rest of the world, here; just "taking a trip." Even there, I have my limits. I'm only alive right now because of technology. If not for medical science in particular, I'd be dead at least thrice over: once from complications of bronchitis when I was sixteen years old (resolved with a course of antibiotics), once from some weird infection of the optic nerve whose name escapes me right now but could have spread to my brain (again, antibiotics), and once from a heart attack (angioplasty and stents). At the same time, I'm perfectly aware that technology has its dark side: pollution, microplastics, toxic waste dumps, auto accidents, Justin Bieber. Still, on balance, I've already lived longer than I would have in a pre-technological era. I'll take that trade-off. Now, again, don't get me wrong; I understand full well that some people feel the need to escape civilization for a time, going camping or whatever. I understand, yes, but it's not for me. I could probably spend one night without my CPAP machine, for example (and, last night, I was forced to do so because my nose was doing its Snotagara Falls impression), but after one night without it, I'm boned. But even absent that technological marvel, I've never enjoyed nor sought out camping for the sake of camping. I mean, sure, I did it some when I was younger, but I can't say I ever enjoyed it; I always wanted to get back to electric lights and books and my computer (this was even before the internet was a thing) and, primarily, heated rooms and showers. Hell. I spent a shitload of money on a whole-house generator because I can't be arsed to go without electricity for extended periods of time, and we get power outages here. I excuse it by saying I need it for my CPAP and a foundation drain sump pump (it occurred to me one day that power outages usually coincide with the times when I desperately need the foundation drain to work), but it also keeps my internet connection on. And now? Now I have personal goals that require me being connected to the internet on a daily basis. This blog, for one. I have written in it every day so far this year; in eight more weeks, absent a serious illness and/or the coming collapse of Western society, I will have written a blog entry every single day. Though... it's worth noting that, had this year gone as originally planned, there would have been gaps -- a trip to Europe and a trip to a dude ranch in Colorado; in both cases, I still wouldn't have been "off the grid," but I probably couldn't have been arsed to worry about blogging. For another, I've got a good streak going on Duolingo -- 435 days as of yesterday. For those unfamiliar with the platform, that means I've done language lessons every day for well over a year. Now, a streak isn't really all that important; what's important is that I keep learning the language, but I'm obsessive enough to want to keep the streak going as long as possible. Doing lessons daily helps me learn and retain more of the language than if I only did it sporadically. And yes, the internet can be poisonous. I think I avoid the worst of it, like Twitbook. But I have a thirst for knowledge and learning, and an insatiable curiosity, and the greatest marvel the world has ever created is the ability for us to learn about pretty much whatever I want, whenever I want. YouTube videos on quantum mechanics. Treatises on ethics. Where we stand on figuring out our universe. Chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, cosmology, music, astronomy, psychology, history, philosophy, comedy, geology, art, literature... sure, sometimes I have to weed out the falsehoods and be critical about things, but like any skill, one gets better at it over time (at least I hope so). I trust that my blog entries when I'm not doing the 30DBC reflect this curiosity. I wouldn't trade all that for time in the wilderness, not even for a single week. Okay, maybe for a day or two, because that too would satisfy my curiosity, but that's my limit. All of this, of course, means that I will be utterly useless in our impending civil war and subsequent breakdown of society. I have only rudimentary survival skills outside of a technological milieu. I'm okay with that; like I said, I've been living on borrowed time since I was 16 years old. There are worse things than dying, in my view, and being stuck without technology is one of them. So enjoy your camping trip or your sojourn in Antarctica or visit to Siberia or whatever. No, really, if that's your thing, go for it; I look forward to reading about it and seeing the pictures and/or videos (as long as the videos aren't vertical) on the internet. I'll watch the mansion for you while you're away. |
| What's the point of temptation if you have to resist it all the time? Tonight, I'm giving in to temptation with my response to this prompt. PROMPT November 5th Imagine the year is 2030. Write about what has happened in your life over the last decade in the past tense. This past decade has been the longest century of my life. It started, of course, with 2020. I remember the sayings well: "This year sucks." "Will this year ever be over?" "And we thought 2016 was bad." All posted on the internet, of course. I miss the internet. I miss computers and smartphones. Hell, I miss electricity. I tried to warn them, you know. Every time someone started talking about looking forward to 2021, I'd point out that things were only going to get worse. I didn't make a lot of friends, but that's the fun thing about being a pessimist: either you're wrong, in which case you feel good because something better happened; or you're right, in which case you get to be smug about being right. Silly me. I thought I was preparing for the worst. I never expected to actually survive. The pandemic was bad enough. Then there were the riots. And the flooding. And the hypercanes. And the water shortages (which would have been amusingly ironic, considering the floods, but I stopped laughing after the first time I saw the tide of dead bodies washed up from a tsunami) that killed millions outright and displaced billions, triggering apocalyptic warfare. I don't think anyone used nukes, but I can't be sure. Not around me, obviously. But the sunsets turned bright crimson for a while: dust kicked up by nuclear detonations? Or simple volcanic ash? All I know is the skies glared white in the day and the stars shone only dimly at night, and the hottest years on record got replaced with the coldest weather I'd ever encountered. I meandered south, hoping to be where it's warm, but the murder hornets and plague mosquitoes had the same idea, so I turned back to the frozen zones. I always joked about how nuclear winter and a drastic decrease in population would be a surefire solution to global warming. Ha. Ha. Very funny. I was such a comedian. I was able to scrounge, for a while. Fresh food became a distant memory. Plenty of cans, though. Dried beans and rice. After a few years, even in the cold, those staples started to go bad. How did I manage to survive when so many fortunate others perished? I still don't know. Maybe I didn't. Maybe there is a hell after all, and I'm in it. If not, then let it be known that my penultimate action in life was to leave this note where, maybe, one day, someone will find it. I saw a bear out there. It looked hungry. Farewell. |
| No, I do not have a hangover; thanks for asking so loudly. PROMPT November 4th Details, details, details... Pick something in your view and describe it in as precise detail as possible without naming what the object is. See if you can get your readers to guess what object you're describing. I did, however, wake up with a runny nose. This happens to me from time to time; while I'm not technically allergic to anything (except maybe an obscure ingredient in some protein bars), dust or pollen can irritate my sinuses just like with many actual humans. But, of course, these days, a runny nose can be a death sentence, or worse, so my mind immediately leaped to: Could it be Trump-mumps? It feels just like every other time Nature has a good laugh at the expense of my mustache (it's hard to catch all the drips), but my best friend tested positive for Covfefe-19 the other day. Fortunately, she's basically on the other side of the country and I haven't seen her in person for months, so I couldn't have caught it from her. Still, that's where my mind went; it's 2020 and part of me would welcome the sweet release of death, but I'd prefer it not to take two weeks on a ventilator to get there. Anyway, I even took my temperature and, if anything, it's a bit low, I'm guessing from all the ethanol from last night that my system is currently frantically trying to process. And yet, my nose is running like Niagara Falls, and it's annoying as hell. All of this is to not only kvetch about it -- my blog, I can kvetch if I want -- but make the object from the prompt maybe easier to guess. Its basic shape is a rectangular parallelepiped, which I can spell just fine but don't ask me to pronounce it. Wait, that won't help much, will it? It's a right rectangular prism, a rectangular cuboid... oh hell, it's a three-dimensional object with six rectangular faces, the parallel planes of which are congruent. The regularity of the container is broken by a large oval cutout in its cardboard. This morning, it was completely full of soft white pieces of flimsy paper, half of which are gone now because, at the risk of repeating myself, my nose absolutely will not stop running and no antihistamine or decongestant has ever done a goddamn thing for me. The box is printed with artwork: stylized flowers. I'm pretty damn sure this is to make it so that people will buy more of these things faster, because we're highly suggestible, and what is one thing that triggers people with allergies? Flowers. That's what. It doesn't matter if the flowers are real or just pictures; hell, people have gone into sneezing fits just looking at oil paintings of flowers. And the ones that don't have flowers on them? Grass. Ugh. I guess they don't print them with pictures of ragweed because that would be too obvious. So this thing's in my field of view, within easy arm's reach, and will remain so until Nature decides to stop messing with my head. Literally. To make matters worse, I use a CPAP machine to sleep. If I don't use it, I don't sleep well, and I invariably wake up with a headache and a scratchy throat, not to mention everyone within five counties can hear me snoring. But if I do use it, it goes over only my nose. And right now, what's in my nose is desperately trying to escape, which makes wearing the damn mask that much more of a pain in the tuchis. And yes, I know full well that lots of people have it worse than I do right now. That doesn't stop me from being irritated with the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse (his name is Minor Inconvenience; Famine, War, Death and Pestilence don't talk about him very much). Chances are I'll do tomorrow's entry just after midnight, as usual. I couldn't do it last night because I was entirely drunk (as you have probably already intuited). But if I had, I would have missed the opportunity to describe this object and kvetch about my sinuses. |
| If there's one skill I've always had, it's the ability to keep my head above water. PROMPT November 3rd Write about a time when you were "thrown in the deep end." This can be taken literally or figuratively. I mean the above both literally and figuratively, though these days, it seems "literally" serves double duty there. I grew upspent my childhood near a large body of water. This was an estuary of the Potomac, which in turn is part of the Chesapeake Bay, which is essentially the flooded remnants of the Susquehanna River, submerged after the last Ice Age. That far from the ocean, the water is usually fresh, not saline. This matters because I've been to the Dead Sea, so I know from experience that it's easier to float in water with a high salt content; the point is that when I was a kid I wasn't overweight and could have easily sunk in the estuary. But I didn't, because one of the first things my dad taught me was how to swim. And he did it the old-fashioned way, like he did most things: took me out to where he could stand but I couldn't, and let me go. It worked. I never became a strong swimmer, but I could dog-paddle with the best of them, so the "deep end" never really fazed me. Of course, later in life, my density only decreased (fat is less dense than muscle) so floating only became easier. Exactly the opposite of walking on land. Which is not to say I'm in any way graceful in the water, which leads me to the "figurative" response to the prompt. One of the few artistic skills I had, besides some small ability at writing, was photography. I use the past tense, because I don't do it much these days. Oh, sure, I snap pics with my mobile from time to time like most people, and I retain some sense of framing and composition, but I don't worry too much about other technical aspects of photography. But back in college, long before everyone walked around with a camera in their pocket, I was good enough to use it to earn beer money. My foray into semi-professional photography took two paths: photojournalism, which at the University newspaper took the form of not only random pictures of stuff going around on Grounds (that would be a "campus" anywhere but UVA), but also concert and sports photography; and also, I got hired by an actual professional photographer to document fraternity and sorority parties and, later, weddings. None of this paid a great deal, but like I said, beer money. I like to think I was pretty good at it. My sports photos in particular were well-received, because I seemed to have a knack for knowing when something interesting was about to happen in a sportsball game. And okay, I also had a really fast automatic... whatever it was called. A thing that advanced the film faster than my thumb could. I don't even remember what the damn thing was called, it's been so long. Of course, it's archaic now because there's no film to advance with digital photography, but back then it was a Big Deal. I also got really good at swapping out rolls of film. Point is, I could do stuff like follow a quarterback, shooting a frame every half a second or so, so the result was almost like video. And yet, I'd never messed around with video, even when digital video started to become a thing. I just wasn't interested. Still-shot photography was my focus (pun absolutely intended) and I didn't want to stop (pun even more absolutely intended) doing that. The whole idea made me shutter (okay, last photography pun, I promise). So when my party-and-wedding-photographer boss came to me and said, "I have another photographer that can handle this wedding, but no videographer, so I need you to handle the filming," I gulped. (Obviously this was a long time ago so I don't remember the exact words used but hopefully I'm conveying the gist of it.) "I've never done video," I said. Which isn't entirely true; I'd messed around with my dad's movie camera once, a tiny thing that was light and easy for a kid to handle, but the results had been... unfortunate, which is one reason I never took up cinema. "It's okay," said the boss. "You know how a wedding goes. Just concentrate on the bride and groom. Mostly the bride. Maybe get some dancing at the reception. That sort of thing." "Really, I have no idea what I'm doing." "You're a great photographer. This isn't so different. Besides, it pays more than stills." The combination of money and flattery always works on me, so I agreed. So come the day of the wedding, he hands me one of those fifty-pound movie cameras that dig into one's shoulder. Hey, that was the height of technology in the 80s, I suppose. It even had gyro-stabilizers, from what I recall, which meant that I wouldn't have to work too hard to keep the camera steady... but panning was an absolute chore. I could explain the physics of that, but experiencing it was something else entirely. There I was, then, with a camera that weighed almost as much as I did (at the time), one that wanted to turn at weird angles because of the gyroscopes, and whose controls I had to figure out on the fly: Focus here. Zoom there. Aperture with this ring. Also, it had the old-fashioned viewfinder, because, if I recall correctly, LED screens were barely an itch in some inventor's pants at the time. What that meant was that I had to keep the thing glued to my eye, which in turn meant that my peripheral vision was shot; if something happened to my right, I'd only find out about it too late, and then I'd have to pan the bloody bulky contraption over in that direction (boss said he'd edit out the twisty parts later). And, just to emphasize this once more, this was a wedding. It may not be a once-in-a-lifetime event for people these days (or even in the 80s), but there's pressure to get things right, because it's not like you can get all the guests back together in a month for a reshoot. My friends, I tried. Shoved into the deep end, I flailed around and attempted to keep my head above water, but goddamn if I didn't sink like a stone (the fifty-pound movie camera didn't help there). No amount of editing could fix the result. Shit was out of focus. Zoom was all over the place. And in spite of the stabilizers, the video ended up shaky -- which could have been passed off as "artistic license" in just ten short years, but that the time, it was an absolute ruin. Now, obviously, it's been over 30 years now, and that camera was probably not as heavy or as unwieldy as I remember. Memory is funny that way. But the result, I'm absolutely certain of: abject failure. He paid me anyway, because he was that kind of boss. But obviously I never again shot video at a wedding. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Well, the occasional thing on my phone, which is much easier to use (technology has come a long way in 30 years), but I'm still not happy with the results. Oh, I'm sure that, given time and practice, I could shoot a decent video. I would at least know to hold the fucking camera sideways; the only thing I hate worse than present-tense narrative in fiction is vertical video. But the idea just doesn't hold much interest for me. I still take still pictures sometimes, though I wouldn't bestow the title of "photography" on the results. Scroll through my phone gallery and it's like: beer, beer, brewery, beer menu, beer, beer, steak, mixed drink, cat, cat, cat, cat, cat, bottle of wine, bottle of scotch, beer, beer, tacos, beer, beer menu, brewery sign, beer, beer, beer, cat, cat, cat, cat... |
| I figured out long ago that everything -- well, almost everything -- that we humans create goes through four phases. PROMPT November 2nd Write about something you collect. If you don't collect anything, write about the collection of a friend or family member. There are exceptions, of course. Perishables, for one; you want to consume those as fast as possible before they go bad. Strawberries, for example. After one day in the fridge, they become a biology project. Avocados have an approximately 15-second window between "too hard" and "rotten;" only once in my life have I seen a perfectly ripe avocado, and by the time I was done eating it, it was already turning black. Art is another exception. Real art, great art, I mean, which can't be defined but "I know it when I see it." The Sistine Chapel ceiling is probably just as valuable now as it was when Mikey painted the sucker. Great care is taken to preserve works of art, because each is unique. But for most mundane objects, the first phase is shiny and new and therefore valuable, while the second phase is when it's lost its luster and has become, in the common parlance, junk. It's at the second phase that things get discarded, thrown away, scrapped, recycled. Few care about such objects, unless they hold some kind of sentimental value. Your mom throws away your comic book collection. You trade in your iPhone for the latest model and the earlier one becomes garbage. Entire neighborhoods are leveled to make way for a shiny new apartment complex or stadium, which, some decades from now, will in turn be demolished for something even newer and shinier. But some things, should they survive, enter a third phase of their existence. Their contemporaries have mostly been destroyed, and they gradually become valuable again, for their uniqueness. And it doesn't matter what the book value of such a thing is. It could be a house, the last remaining example of its architectural style, a window into a bygone era. A street - when I was in Alexandria the other day, I walked along an alley of original cobblestones, preserved because there weren't many examples left of Colonial-era cobblestones. An antique automobile, all of the other vehicles from that long-scrapped assembly line having been wrecked or junked. Even something as relatively valueless as a beer can; I've seen entire collections of vintage beer cans, ones with pull-rings instead of tabs, even earlier ones that you had to use a pointy opener on. It's always been my intention to preserve certain things through the second phase until they entered their third phase. My ex-wife put a stop to that. My stamp collection is gone. My book collection is severely diminished. I had a piece of the Berlin Wall that she thought was just another brick (cue Pink Floyd here), and a jar of fine ash from Mount St. Helens. All gone. I can forgive her for a lot of things, but not for that. Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm a bit of a hoarder, for that reason, but I've never kept old beer cans. I do have a couple of wine bottles of sentimental value, signed by the winemaker or something of that sort. But I do have a bit of a collection of shot glasses going on. Shot glasses are easy to collect. They're generally not very expensive, and when I'm traveling, sometimes I'll pick one up at one of those tacky tourist shops. Dice on a glass from Vegas, or a seashell shot glass from Virginia Beach. A crude drawing of Bear Lodge (aka Devil's Tower) from a gift shop in Wyoming. One done in Navajo style that depicts the Four Corners location. Things of that sort. I rarely use shot glasses, myself, and when I do it's a generic one just so I can properly portion out the ingredients of whatever alchemical concoction I get it in my head to try. Like, tomorrow, I expect to make a few that involve: two shot glasses' worth of vodka, one of Kahlua, one of Rumchata, pour into a glass with ice, top off with heavy cream. It's a riff on the White Russian so beloved of my role model, The Dude, from The Big Lebowski. Because it's an American creation with a Russian influence, I call it "The American Election," which is why I intend to throw a few together on Election Day. Whether that will be to celebrate or drown my sorrows remains to be seen, but that's one of the many beautiful things about booze: it works for both. But I digress. There is, of course, the matter of the fourth phase. No matter how much we try, no matter what techniques we employ, even those items which have enjoyed some time in the third phase of their existence will, eventually, crumble into dust. Some find that depressing. Not me. It means they're real, and to be celebrated. Things that are real will eventually pass into oblivion; anything that we think is eternal is but an illusion. Sure, some things will last longer than others (including, I would hope, my shot glasses, because glass is remarkably durable unless you break it on purpose), but eventually, entropy always wins. Until one day, far in the future, even entropy will stop and with it, time itself. But that makes it all the more important to appreciate things while we have them. |
| Well, it's November now. Which means another round of 30DBC for me. PROMPT November 1st Write about something you want. Pick something that you don’t necessarily need, but would make you happy simply to have. The first thing that comes to mind is a vaccine for... you know. Not just for me, of course. I'm selfish, but I'm not that selfish. There are a lot of people suffering from this, both by having it and by having friends and family go through it, not to mention lost jobs and broken social networks. I'm fortunate for many reasons, but one of them is that no one I know in real life is sick... but then, I don't know too many people in real life anymore. For myself, it might mean being able to travel again. I don't know if the foray I made to Alexandria last week was a good thing or not. I mean, I had a good time overall (except for that goddamned broken vending machine), but in a way, that just makes it worse. Winter is coming, as the saying goes, and with it an end to being able to sit on a patio and dine and drink beer in relative safety. More people congregating indoors, masked or not, means more chances for getting sick. I'm probably going to have to go back into hermit mode for a few months, which does not make me happy. Whether travel in itself would make me "happy" or not is an open question, though. I pretty much have everything I need and most of what I want (that flying car continues to elude me), and I'm self-aware enough to know that "stuff" doesn't make me happy; at best, it relieves the tedium of day-to-day existence. Hell, at this point, it might make me happier to dispose of a good bit of "stuff." Not to the point of going all minimalist or anything, but stuff does tend to accumulate. But I don't think of happiness as a goal to strive for. I mean, sure, there's that line in the Declaration of Independence, that pesky "pursuit of happiness" thing, but I have other motivations. Besides, I'm pretty sure that the word had different connotations 250 years ago. I find that happiness is elusive in pursuit of it for its own sake; rather, it's a byproduct of other activities.And I'm pretty simple, when it comes down to it. A good beer, some good music, a good book (all, of course, dependent upon my own subjective determination of "good") will do it. As will a few other things, like after I'm sick or in pain and suddenly I realize that I'm not; it's really my baseline physiological state, but feeling bad just emphasizes how good feeling ordinary is. Hell, I don't even like the word. "Happy." It comes from the same Old English root as the word "happen." As in, I see it as something that happens to you, like winning the lottery (which might or might not make one happy). "Hap," apparently, did have the denotation of luck or fortune - both good and bad. The two French words I know for the equivalent concept are: content(e) and heureu(x/se) -- the latter of which also has connotations of good luck or fortune, and the former of which it's so far impossible for me to read without thinking of the equivalent word in English, which is not exactly a synonym for "happy," but connotes (to me, anyway) a more general, less exuberant feeling of wellness. So I don't know if owning a flying car would actually make me happy or not, but I'm willing to take the chance. |
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