About Me

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I'm an artist, educator, militant anti-theist , and I write. I gamble on just about anything. And I like beer...but I love my wife. This blog contains observations from a funny old man who gets pissed off every once in a while.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

WEDNESDAY #1489



I used to have a Nikon 35mm SLR with a long, long lens with a 4X converter. I could take photos like this...
It was great at family functions. I could zoom in on the interactions between people from across the yard and they never knew they were being photographed.
I have hundred...maybe thousands of photographs, but they are in slide form, and I don't have the wherewithal to have them converted.

The safest baby in the neighborhood...

A homeless guy asked me for money. I said, "You will just spend it for alcohol and drugs." He said, "So? That's what you are going to use it for!"
I shrugged and gave him a few bucks.


You have no idea how much I love playing poker...
The above image gives me a slight hard-on.

"I Did It My Way" still mellows me out more than any other song. He is a national treasure...

Dear You Tube,
It is pretty safe to assume we all want to 'Skip The Ad'.
The World


This famous image was photoshopped to include a black guy. I understand the sentiment, but history is history.
Can you imagine photoshopping a white guy among a group photo of the Tuskegee Airmen?

How very, very beautiful...

Million dollar ideas are a dime a dozen.


Meth, not even once...

I remember when I told my parents I wanted to marry Debbie. They didn't really approve. They thought she could do better.


Have had conversations lately concerning what is art, or more specifically, who is an artist...
I know that it may be wishful thinking, but artists aren't like other people...
Before I dared venture into this conversation with you, I asked many people if they thought artists were a different breed...a unique class of humans and they all said that they were....especially my wife.
One of the first things that came out was that artists will work very, very hard for no money. Other creative people simply don't do such things.
Oh, if we sell something, that's cool, but if we don't sell anything, we still keep working. And we do not devalue works of art because they won't sell.
A couple of other artists told me that if they won a multi-million dollar lottery, they would still make art. I doubt if a bridge designer would do that.
There is a reason they call it "fine" art; not to be confused with "mere" creativity or innovation.
In my opinion, fine art is the highest form of human expression, and I am humbled to be but a small speck on its vast landscape.
With that said, I present "Traveling Money", yet again.
If it speaks to you, I am very pleased. If it does not speak to you.....that is none of my concern.

******************

This, of course, is ludicrous....
If nothing else, algebra teaches us how to use our brains to solve problems...a skill not be taken lightly.


Talked to a woman about abortion.
I'm so torn on this issue, but that's not the point.
The point is, she thought abortion was just fine if the fetus could not live outside the womb.
I asked if we could not apply the same logic to euthanasia. If someone is too old to live on their own.....why not?


 They actually made that device...

If there's one thing blogging has taught me, it's how to type with one hand and eat with the other.


A credit card-sized disposable data sharables...

Last night my wife screamed "COSTCO!" in her sleep.


I smile when I look at him and think about how comical I would look attempting this...

A camera that remains stable...

Companies all over the country are having difficulty finding potential employees because they can't pass the simplest math quiz.....like, "Convert inches to feet" and "reading a tape measure."
Welcome to America, ya'll.


He recently honored by the state of Israel.

"PUT ME IN THE GAME, COACH!"

Found myself watching the intro into Sunday's Game Of Thrones and it had symbols and wording to indicate AL (adult language), AC (adult content) and V (violence).
I bet I was not the only one to be dismayed by the lack of nudity warning.



I came very, very close to death one time...
I was being electrocuted. After what seemed like an hour, but was, in fact, a couple of minutes, I got tunnel vision, and it looked just like you hear about that light at the end of an imaginary tunnel. But I knew what it really was and I took it as a very, very bad sign and with one final struggle, broke myself free.


Helping Hand and Leg Up means the same thing.



TOLD TO ME TO BE TRUE:
My bartender said that even though is is on the Do Not Call List, he still gets calls from advertisers. This man is so behind on the times that he still has an answering machine (did you know those still exists?) and one time the message left said, "Please hold for a representative..."
Then ten seconds later it said, "Sorry, no representatives are available at this time." Then it hung up.
Think about that a minute.



I'm half German and half Irish. I want everything perfect........tomorrow.


 I'm assuming that was a prop in a movie.

Nice looping.

I've made an observation that may or may not be universal. I like changing you to U and are to R as well as dumping "whom". All of the people I have talked to about this are all (both of them) very good a language...one a retired English teach and the other a retired newspaper editor. 
I was not convinced. I saw the easier the usage, the better.



Just about everything we know about dark matter in the known universe...

I think that all porn sites should end in .cum instead of .com.


The queen's dogs. That is all.

Remember that house across the street from that baptist church? Well, the plot thickens....

Sometimes I find myself counting the hours since I woke up in the morning to see if I have have been awake long enough to take a nap. Four hours is my cut-off, but it's only a guideline really and I've been known to take a nap a mere 2 1/2 hours after I crawled out of bed.


 ...well.....maybe...

When you hear a young woman say that her boyfriend or husband doesn't masturbate...

One of my very own...

This took me a minute....

According to the internet, these devices are the #1 cause of head trauma in the world... 

I drink wine with steak and some other meals, but not with others. Consequently, I often open a bottle of wine and it sits until it goes bad. Therefore I asked my wife to buy me the little tiny bottles of wine that comes in a six-pack. Last night we had steak and I drank right out of the little bottle. This, irrationally in my opinion, upset my wife.


So? Like life has to have a meaning?!?

Did you notice....
 Whites are the only ones referred to as people.


I have no idea what this is or intended to be, but it's kind of cool to look at...


I heard an ad for a drug that stated: May cause uncontrollable bleeding events. Does that scare the holy shit out of anybody else?
The morning after pill is now available to anyone OTC.
Great! What's next; less abortions and unwanted pregnancies? God help us.



Solar panels. I think we are going see a whole lot more of these...



1 comment:

Jambe said...

He did it his way... whilst wearing a tie! The mindless drone!

:D

----

"I doubt if a bridge designer would do that."

That's an exclusivity-promoting prejudice. I don't like this trendy mainstream habit of pedestalizing and categorizing the ephemeral, the ineffable, the sine qua non of the creative experience as some sort of profession or mindset or otherwise individual-centered snowflakey notion of personal idiosyncrasy.

There is some truth behind words like "auteur". However, this popular trend of compartmentalizing or segregating "art" into some highbrow or "fine" or otherwise exclusive realm seems counterproductive to me.

Contemporary semantics is a fluid and innately-nascent topic of discussion, so there are no hard rules. I don't think you're necessarily wrong about "art", but... well, consider your mention of teaching Asian children. Do you think they are just genetically better at being artful, or is there something about their culture which makes them better at learning? If kids are tabula rasa and their culture is the biggest factor in their academic trends, what does that say about our (Western) culture, which is producing so many artless ne'er-do-wells? Might there be some relationship between American artlessness and our attitude of treating "art" as the special domain of a weird/select few?

For every neat sculptor and illustrator I know, I know at least one person who thinks as creatively and interestingly about things like managing the food supply, engineering medical devices or designing usability-centered living spaces. And, like the "fine artists", nothing about their appearance or mannerisms would give away their creativity or neat perspectives. Plenty of inventors, engineers, architects, tinkerers, etc go on doing what they love until they die.

It's definitely wishful thinking. See also self-serving biases.

Of course, again, this whole "art" thing is something of a continuum. I quoted Emerson in my last comment, and Whitman is apropos here as well: "I am large, I contain multitudes." Such is the breadth of the human condition that we can be at once consumers and producers, copiers and creators, learners and teachers, lovers and haters. Blah-de-blah.

---

wrt English spelling, I highly recommend this 2-minute video by the House Industries folks featuring now-deceased centenarian Ed Rondthaler, who reprised a great little flipbook-based presentation on the absurdities of written English:

http://vimeo.com/17561068/

Maybe I've linked it before, I dunno. Bad memory.

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