I’ve actually had a Flickr account for a while, now, but I’ve never really used it for much. I just got a new digital camera, though, and had to take the opportunity to take pictures of some of the local nature. The good thing about this is that I didn’t even have to go anywhere. I can pretty much walk right out of my front door and, boom, trees. Pretty groovy.
    Anyway, having taken some pictures, I was suddenly struck with the urge to do something with some of them. So, Flickr.
    In taking these photos, I realized there were a few with a certain, shall we say, theme. One of the things I played with was my camera’s “macro” mode, the point of which being that you can stick it right up close to something to get a very close-up photo. Super. But it got me thinking …
    If you want to take artsy-looking pictures, this is pretty much all you have to do. You just stick the camera right up close to something–it can even be something mundane and boring, doesn’t matter–and take an extreme close-up of it, preferably with the background behind said object all fuzzy and out-of-focus. Just keep doing this and … Tada! You’re an artist!
    Here are some of my samples exploiting this technique.

    This weird, knobby stick thing I found growing out of a tree is one of my favorites, because, if you look at the right-hand side, you can see something that vaguely resembles a creepy, upside-down skull face.
    This is, of course, one of the major differences between myself and some other people. I look at this and see a creepy upside-down skull face. Because I’m more or less an atheist. A Christian would have just assumed any image growing in the side of a tree must be that of Jesus. They would have declared it a miracle, called all the local churches, contacted the media, and the stick would probably have been printed in a couple of tabloids. But, no. I just see an upside-down skull.
    Anyway, this picture also illustrates another aspect of arty photos: Don’t frame the subject in the center. No. Framing things in the middle of the picture is for people taking crappy vacation snapshots. For artists, what you want to do is frame it off-center. Pretend you don’t even care that an interesting-looking stick is even there. Not caring makes you look cool. You want to give people the impression that you were just out to take a blurry picture of the backdrop, and, what do ya’ know, that stick just happened to be there, precisely positioned to just happen to be in perfect focus.

    This is my other favorite. It’s also a stick, but it’s not even an interesting one. This is pretty much a perfect illustration of the whole theme of my post. It’s a twig. It just happened to be there, hanging down from a branch overhead. There’s nothing notable about it. In fact, there’s this great, big, interesting landscape right behind, but, no, I focused on the twig.
    This makes people think. They ask themselves, “Why on Earth would this obviously gifted photographer take a picture of this twig? Why would he ignore the great scenery behind it?” Their minds then run wild, and they start inventing all sorts of theories. They ultimately decide that the picture of the twig is a brilliant metaphor for human life, as people become so caught up in the bad, the unpleasant, the everyday humdrummity of life–unduly focusing in on the twig, as it were–that they completely ignore the wonderful aspects of life and the beauty of the world around them–a la, the great, big, blurry background.
    They would then probably give me some kind of award and offer me a lot of money for my picture. Which would be a little silly since I can print out as many of these fuckers as I want, so it’s not like they’d be getting a one-of-a-kind painting or anything. But, they’d pay that money anyway, buy a print, hang it on their wall, and explain to all visitors about the subtlety of the composition and the profundity of the underlying themes.

… But really, the twig was just getting in the way of my big, pretty landscape, so I took a picture of it, instead.

    Since I’ve got this stuff on Flickr, I reckon you can always go there if you care to see more of my crappy photography. There may even be more of my crappy photography there in the future, depending on if I feel like it at the time.

Laughing all day long has some cardiovascular attraction to it, I think it falls safely within the “too much of a good thing harms” truism construct.

It can cause disruption to one’s social network as those around you alternatingly attempt to assist you and silence you for reasons of self-preservation. It can confuse your companion animals (provided they are mammalian, like cats or dogs) and may trigger law enforcement intervention during sojourns outside of the workplace or home.

Physical affection would certainly be curtailed as well, since embracing another person while laughing loudly can cause ear damage to the huggee.

I suppose proper pacing could reduce the adverse affects, and scaling the laughter to an occasional chuckle through a s**t-eating grin may, indeed, be a wholly superior option.

Do whatever, I guess; but I, for one, will just smile enigmatically.

I’m not interested in Symantec Endpoint Protection, it hasn’t the charisma of melba toast.

How many people actually want to experience life through the lens of this crappy, crappy product? I admire the sheer audacity of it, and there are features they have here that would be awesome had they not been nestled so lovingly in the pile of shit that surround them.

Maybe this is a product for the future, but I think its more dystopic than I want to survive in.

Damn you, Symantec! Why you so nasty?

Ages ages, I had some pages with things I wrote on my knee.
I think I carved them with a knife and had my way with rampant vice.
Vermicelli was like a noodle to my needle haired Christopher, wangled with wangly wanglehood.

    Aww… Lookit Sisco the cat. Not sure what he got out of such close proximity to my boots. But on the udder foot*, who could resist the odiferous charms of my Wolverines? I, for one, spend most evenings huffing my soul out and softening the resulting edge by consuming dishes full of Tostito Scoops and Salso**.      Gazing fondly at my foot coverings, I am once again struck by the notion that if I could bottle this stuff, I’d make a fortune. I don’t have time for the marketing effort, however, as this boot won’t huff itself.

    In other news: Vlad, a nice Romanian fellow who works for me, has had a baby son named Zanzuto. He’s at home right now, the beneficiary of genetic coupling with his wife Viorella. He is also enjoying a pile of perfectly re-usable baby supplies Riley has indicated either a declining interest in or has proven to no longer match the scale to which they were designed.
     Enjoy the baby food carousel, wind-up swing, baby chocks****, dog-eared copy of ‘What To Expect in the First Year,’ Bumbo seat, and collapsible bassinet*****, Mircea. See you next week… probably.

    In other animal young news, my company president, John Holmes, has adopted a golden retriever puppy named Leyla. We gave him no supplies, as none of our young were recently puppies.

* Also known as a mammaropod
** a more masculine salsa. I’m a MAN, god-damn it, and I will not eat like a Latina***.
*** Latino is the male form, you monolinguists.
**** They keep the baby from rolling. What else would you all them? Heather has a word, but I’ve forgotten it in a fit of rebellion.
***** You would think it would be hard to confuse one of these with a collapsible bayonet, but yet there it was.